Guest opinion: Cottage Home bill crucial for child welfare system

Bill Prummell
Special to The News-Press
Charlotte County Sheriff Bill Prummell is speaking on behalf of the Florida Sheriffs Association and the Don’t Let Florida Go to Pot campaign.

Children in the welfare system are among the most vulnerable in our population. As law enforcement officers, we are often on the front lines of seeing tragic and unfortunate situations where children have to be removed from their homes. Whether it’s from abuse, neglect or dangerous living conditions, we’re all too familiar with calls to our office that end with kids entering Florida’s child welfare system. 

While our hope is to see fewer children entering foster care, it will always be essential that we have safe and secure places for kids to go when it’s not possible for them to remain with their parents or guardians. Unfortunately, those of us who work child abuse and neglect cases see the realities of how hard it can be for child welfare caseworkers to find suitable foster homes for kids, especially sibling groups that are often difficult to place in traditional foster homes. It’s more than troubling when we hear reports of youth having to sleep in hotels, offices or even cars until a home can be found. 

For more than 60 years, sheriffs throughout Florida have supported the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches and the organization’s mission to prevent juvenile delinquency and give kids the ability to face the future with a sense of direction, ability and hope. We have seen their record of success and how their cottage-home, family-style model has helped countless boys and girls who were in need of love and stability. These types of homes have been a critical part of our foster care system, often allowing sibling groups to stay together instead of splitting up brothers and sisters and sending them into different foster homes. 

It’s been disheartening to see cottage homes like the Youth Ranches get swept up in attacks against residential group homes and efforts to strip all group homes of federal and state funding. Under the federal Family First Prevention Services Act that was passed in 2018, states are now ineligible to receive federal funds when children are placed in a group home longer than two weeks. In Florida, over 40% of our state’s child welfare budget is federally funded. It’s understandable — given the potential to lose such a large chunk of federal dollars — that the Florida Department of Children and Families has pushed the community-based care agencies they oversee to move away from placing children in group homes. However, as a result of the Family First law and the restrictions on using group homes, cottage home organizations are being forced to adjust their operations and, in some cases, leave the child welfare system entirely. This move is projected to leave a huge gap in the available placement options for children removed from homes where abuse and neglect occur. 

In Manatee County, for example, the Youth Ranches converted their residential group home last year into a child day camp program. When local caseworkers stopped placing children there because of backlash from DCF, it no longer made sense to keep a residential campus open with empty cottage homes. While a camp program will still benefit many children locally, the Bradenton-Sarasota area has lost multiple cottage homes with nearly 30 beds for children coming into the state’s care. Without Congressional action, we will see more family-style group homes, with the much-needed services they provide to children and families, making similar changes and no longer being available to help children in need of a loving family-style home.  

The CHILD Act (H.R. 8443), introduced in September by Rep. Neal Dunn and co-sponsored by Reps. Alcee Hastings, Val Demings, Greg Steube and Darren Soto, is a critical piece of legislation that will ensure cottage homes like the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches and others throughout the country will remain available for children in need. The bill — supported by a growing list that includes the Florida Coalition for Children, Florida Sheriffs Association, Heartland for Children and Children’s Network of Southwest Florida — would appropriately add cottage homes as a federally-approved placement option in the child welfare system and allow states to place foster children in these homes without losing federal funds. The CHILD Act is needed to remedy the consequences of the Family First Prevention Services Act — before we look up and realize we’ve lost many of the organizations that are best equipped to serve our most vulnerable children. I urge the rest of Florida’s Congressional delegation to support this important piece of legislation.

Bill Prummell is the Charlotte County Sheriff and past chairman of the board of the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches.