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MIAMI » When 4-year-old Rilya Wilson disappeared from foster care in 2002, it was more than a year before officials realized she was missing. After all, her caseworker said she had been making scheduled visits to the child's home all along.
In one of Florida's most infamous child welfare bungles, Wilson was never found and is presumed dead. Her caseworker subsequently pleaded guilty to official misconduct, including fudging paperwork and never visiting the child.
Now agency officials are arming caseworkers with a GPS style device that costs about $2,250 each and documents when and where every child visit occurs. Nearly 250 DCF caseworkers in Miami are carrying the devices to home visits, doctor's appointments and court sessions.
The Florida Department of Children and Families added a $1.75 million technology component last week to the devices, which upload information directly to the state database in Tallahassee. Now at each home visit, the child's picture is taken, stamped with a date, time and GPS coordinates.
In a few weeks, workers will be able to add notes like whether there's food in the pantry or bruises on the child. Instead of caseworkers driving back to the office to enter that information into the system, it's done remotely and in real time.
Florida is among the first in the country to use this technology, which is essentially a software program installed into a Blackberry and
Experts say the technology not only provides reliable information about child visits but helps protect caseworkers who are often in dangerous neighborhoods by letting law enforcement know where they are. The tecnhology also includes a panic button for caseworkers to use in event they are in danger.
"We're hoping this will allow the caseworker to actually spend more time with the child in the environment so they can observe more because if you're worried about paperwork then by default your attention goes to that," said Ramin Kouzehkanani, who developed the software for DCF.
More than 70 Florida child-welfare workers falsified records in the last two years, leaving 14 children in unsafe homes and causing the state Department of Children and Families to temporarily lose track of at least six other children.
The falsified records included reports about mandatory monthly visits with foster children and reports about child abuse investigations, according to state records. Caseworkers questioned about phony paperwork repeatedly complained they had been assigned too many children to watch.
Experts say in cases like those when people fail, technology won't.
When caseworker Gilianne Francois visited 16-year-old Azariah at his new group home Thursday, she spent time asking him about his new roommates and how he hopes to play football this season. She clicks a picture of Azariah's impish smile and seconds later it's in Tallahassee's database.
But for Francois, the devices are less about the convenience.
"I don't have to worry about my integrity being in question," Francois said. "The question about whether you saw the child or not is not an issue because I have my phone and I take a picture every time."
Experts say the devices are also good for Francois' safety. A study in Kentucky found that anywhere from 50 percent to 80 percent of public human service workers there experienced threats, damaged property and physical attacks during their career.
Kentucky social worker Boni Frederick was fatally beaten and stabbed in 2006 while facilitating a visit between a woman and her infant son.
"Personally I would like to see every caseworker in the country with this tool at their disposal," said Jerry Friedman executive director of American Public Human Services Association in Washington. "The ability to track that for a worker who is in trouble could be very valuable for law enforcement officials."
