With Florida’s coffers filling again and state leaders focusing on child protection, advocates are hopeful the 2014 legislative session will bring both policy and funding gains for children’s services as high-profile issues include a massive crackdown on sexually violent predators and an overhaul of the child-welfare system.
Children and Families
2-Year-Old Girl Brought to Hospital Bruised and Unresponsive; Palm Coast Man Charged With Aggravated Child Abuse
Stanley Wykretowicz, a 38-year-old resident of Palm Coast, claimed his 2-year-old daughter fell in the tub, but doctors discovered extensive internal and external injuries that required emergency surgery after the child was taken to a children’s hospital in Jacksonville. Wykretowicz is at the Flagler jail on $150,000 bond.
5 Years After 7-year-old Gabriel Myers’s Suicide, Psychotropic Drugs Still Overprescribed in Foster Care
At the time, about 5 percent of all U.S. children were treated with psychotropic medications, but in Florida’s foster care system, 15.2 percent of children received at least one such medication. Of these, more than 16 percent were being medicated without the consent of a parent, guardian or judge. Not much has changed.
Healthy Families and Other Children’s Programs Could Benefit From Scott’s Election-Year Budget
Scott’s proposed budget includes an additional $7 million for Healthy Families Florida, a program that reduces child abuse and neglect, and $3.6 million for Early Steps, which screens the youngest children for disabilities and delays, the better to catch them at the earliest and most correctable.
Virulent Flu Season Aside, Potent RSV Bug Is Taking a Toll on Florida Children
Respiratory Syncytial Virus, or RSV, is serious and highly contagious. There’s no vaccination around to keep your little one from catching it. And its seasonal duration is longer in Florida than in any other state, stretching from mid-August to March.
Again Breaking a Pledge, Children’s Advocacy Center Sets Ultimatum On Rape-Crisis Intervention as Top Cops Scramble
The Children Advocacy Center’s promise in July to provide rape-crisis exams to adults in Flagler and Volusia counties turned out to be relatively hollow, and was followed by an ultimatum that the CAC would get out of the business altogether by June, triggering a furiously critical response from State Attorney R.J. Larizza, Sheriff Manfre and other local top cops.
Despite Florida’s Resistance, A New Era Of Health Insurance Begins for Millions
Thousands of previously uninsured Floridians woke up Wednesday morning with peace of mind for the first time in years. More than half of Florida’s nearly 4 million uninsured are projected to qualify for coverage through the Marketplace. Another million would qualify if the Florida Legislature would permit it.
Palm Coast Couple Charged With Aggravated Child Abuse After Neglecting Broken Arm
Authorities learned that the couple allegedly had cruel means of disciplining the 3-year-old boy, including dousing the child in cold water for napping when he wasn’t supposed to, sitting the child by the front door, as punishment, for 10 to 60 minutes, “and twisting [the child] into a pretzel with legs behind [his] head, causing pain to the groin area,” according to the arrest report.
Troubling Scene of 1 and 2 Year Old Soiled and In Road Leads to Neglect Charges Against Mom
Josie-Lynn Walters, 22, a resident of Espanola, was arrested on two counts of child neglect–a third-degree felony–after her children were found wandering unsupervised and in soiled underwear for over an hour near a busy intersection as Walters slept at home.
Report Blisters DCF Over Abused Children’s Deaths as Florida Lawmakers Vow to Act
Florida’s recent series of child-abuse deaths took center stage at the Capitol on Tuesday, as a report blasted the state child-welfare system and as both chambers of the Legislature signaled they would craft bills to address the system’s shortcomings.