GekeVenn: ECKERD

The move in Florida to a public-private partnership in foster care services came in the form of a project called Community-Based Care (CBC). Several “thought leaders” in Florida promoted CBC, including members of the Florida Department of Children and Families, several of which now work for Eckerd Connects / Eckerd Kids / Eckerd Youth Alternatives, a foster care and “human services” non-profit based in Tampa.

Community-Based Care was implemented in Florida in 2001, outsourcing foster care services to private agencies that are compensated with government funds. As such, it benefits these companies to employ well-connected lobbyists to influence issues such as government appropriations.

Lorita Shirley was one such CBC advocate who took over as “child protector” in Florida's Hillsborough County, working as chief of Eckerd's Community-Based Care department in 2012. Prior to her work with Eckerd, Shirley oversaw child welfare services for the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) in Osceola County. (Her first job, listed on the venn, was with the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, which was later replaced by the Department of Children and Families.)

Shirley's CBC department at Eckerd replaced a similar service provided by another private agency, Hillsborough Kids Inc., after nine deaths of foster children occurred in Hillsborough County over the span of two years. However, Shirley was replaced in May of this year after three foster children deaths in the span of three weeks. According to Mark Douglas, reporting for Tampa's News Channel 8, “Shirley has been at the center of controversy since February [of 2018] when our 8 On Your Side investigation revealed that foster kids were living day and night in the parking lot of a Wawa gas station instead of going to school, therapy and foster homes.”

Shirley was replaced by Chris Card, described in his Eckerd biography as “a founder of Florida’s child welfare reform called Community Based Care.” According to the Tampa Bay Times, “Card will receive a $240,000 annual salary in his new post. About $30,000 of that will come from outside funding sources so Eckerd complies with a new state law limiting executive pay at child welfare agencies to 150 percent of the DCF secretary’s salary of $140,539.”

Another early advocate of Community-Based Care was then-District Administrator of Florida's DCF, Ron Zychowski. When the deaths of three children in West Palm Beach and Delray Beach caused some to call for a revamp of the CBC model, Zychowski expressed opposition: “Zychowski and others believe that although tragic, the deaths of three children in South Florida should not force an entire child welfare system to change.” (as reported in the Palm Beach Post)

Eckerd Connects is also involved in a data-mining project called Rapid Safety Feedback, intended to predict child abuse risk. Working for Illinois' Department of Children and Family Services, Eckerd, along with a firm called Mindshare Technology, mined the department's electronic files and assigned predictive analytic scores.

But Eckerd's award of the no-bid contract -- in the form of a grant -- caused the Chicago Tribune to investigate its procurement, implicating former Illinois CDFS Director George Sheldon: “[T]he arrangement with Eckerd was among a series of no-bid deals Sheldon gave to a circle of associates from his previous work in Florida as a child welfare official, lawyer and lobbyist. Sheldon left Illinois under a cloud a month later, and a July joint report by the Office of Executive Inspector General and the DCFS inspector general concluded that Sheldon and DCFS committed mismanagement by classifying the Eckerd/Mindshare arrangement as a grant, instead of as a no-bid contract.”

As a result, thousands of children were identified by the algorithm as requiring urgent protection. However, the actual child deaths occurring while in foster care had little correlation to the predictive software's results. Illinois eventually scrapped the project, though versions of the software are still used by child welfare agencies in Ohio, Indiana, Maine, Louisiana, Tennessee, Connecticut, and Oklahoma.

DHRS = Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services
HKC = Healthy Kids Corporation (Florida CHIP program)
DCF = Department of Children and Families
PEI = Principles of Effective Intervention
YO = Youth Opportunity