DCF Employee's Boss Loses Job

Robert Mistretta, the supervisor of the child-abuse investigation of 2 1/2-year-old Alfredo Montes, learned he'd been fired from his job of two months from his wife, who heard the news on television.

Gov. Jeb Bush's televised comments Friday about the firings of a caseworker who falsified reports and her supervisor at the Department of Children & Families, caught Mistretta by surprise.

"My wife actually heard before I did," said Mistretta, 29, who supervised a six-person team of child-abuse investigators, including Erica Jones, who officials said lied about visiting Alfredo at his home near Winter Haven.

Mistretta said Saturday that he's being made a scapegoat for what are systemic problems with the state's poorly-funded child-welfare agency. Those problems, Mistretta said, are being exacerbated by knee-jerk firings of supervisors like himself.

"I lost my job for a case that I was never able to make a decision on," he said. "That's the hardest part for me to swallow."

Jones was arrested Friday and charged with falsifying records, becoming the first person charged under a new state law making the crime a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.

It was the highly publicized disappearance of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson of Miami that led to the new felony law. A state child abuse worker was accused of falsifying documents about Rilya.

Now, Alfredo's death in Polk County has again put Florida's child welfare agency on the defensive, after months of criticism for its handling of Rilya's case.

According to DCF documents, five calls were made to the agency's abuse hot line about Alfredo and his sister in the 23 months before July.

Jones was fired Friday and charged with falsifying records about the last abuse call logged at the hot line, the day of the boy's death.

Investigators said Alfredo was fatally beaten by a babysitter for soiling his pants. He was killed at a home in Auburndale, then his body dumped along Interstate 275 in Hillsborough County, the Sheriff's Office said.

Richard Chouquer, 23, is charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the boy's death. His girlfriend, Amandy Lawrence, 22, is charged as an accessory after the fact.

Mistretta said he is being swept up unfairly in the political firestorm that has developed.

Mistretta, who was a social service worker in Colorado before moving to Polk County, said he hasn't decided whether he will try to challenge the firing, and doesn't know if he has any legal options. If offered his job back, he would return to the DCF, he said.

While Mistretta does not condone Jones' actions, he said the rookie caseworker -- who was preparing to leave the agency to give birth and move to Maryland -- was overworked.

Jones had less than a year of experience investigating child abuse and a caseload that involved checking on about 50 families.

Mistretta was hired in February 2000 to train as an abuse investigator, and quickly rose through the ranks, in part, he said, because so many caseworkers have left the agency.

Mistretta said each of the six investigators under his supervision had about the same number of cases -- the result of high turnover made worse by the Rilya law.

Mistretta, promoted to supervisor on May 10, said he spent much of his time having to reduce backlogs. But even that was hampered after Rilya's case prompted a count of every child under the agency's supervision.

Mistretta said his priority was to review and attempt to close the 191 backlogged cases, so he wasn't able to get to each of the fresh 300 cases in a timely manner. One of those was Alfredo's.

The article above was posted before under the title "Bush Finds Scapegoat as Election Nears (my title)".

One of the moderators made a good comment about it:

However, the article itself appears to be legitimate, and highlights (IMO) the standard liberal tactic of shifting blame and "whining" about "unrealistic" job requirements.

Since that was our daily visit from the same troll (he'll be back two more times at least, even though on another website he said two days ago he had gotten bored with the routine, imagine that, he lied) we took out the account and since the thread was about the poster and not about the article, we left that copy of the thread down.

Thanks

who supervised a six-person team of child-abuse investigators,

Those investigators must need a whole lot of supervising if they need one supervisor for every six investigators. Gee, you might just think that they had some pretty incompetent investigators.

You might say that..BUT, it would probably be more accurate to say social agencies are over-saturated with supervision: some of whom spend most of their time thinking deep thoughts , sipping mocha latte, and saying : " This is important. This is very important !"

They also attend meetings with other "deep thinkers", and tell each other : " Yes ! This is VERY important !"

They have degrees up the kazoo...and about as much sense as God gave a piss ant !

Governor Bush would do well to fire most of these budget devouring, PC snobs, and hire somebody with the guts to put the money where it is needed : at the bottom end of the social work food chain !

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