MIAMI, May 28 (UPI) -- A blue-ribbon panel formed to determine how a girl missing for more than a year was lost by a state social services agent turned over its final report Tuesday to Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Fla.
Rilya Wilson, 5, of Miami, disappeared in January of 2001. One of Rilya's caretakers, Geralyn Graham, said someone identifying herself as a social worker came to the door and took Rilya away for neurological testing.
"The Rilya Wilson case has become a catalyst for us to pause and to reflect on this, not from a public policy point of view, but from the perspective of human beings," Bush said. "How is it a child could probably live her entire life without any degree of love?"
Bush thanked the panel for the job it did but rejected, at least for the moment, calls by state legislators that he fire department Secretary Kathleen Kearney. He blamed the demands on politics and next fall's election.
"If this is a case where a case worker was completely derelict and a supervisor didn't do his job, and it didn't go any further than that, I'm not sure it's necessary," he said.
Caseworker Debra Muskelly has been accused of filing reports that said Rilya was fine after she had been missing for several months. She and her supervisor resigned from the department in March after experiencing problems in other cases.
Commission Chairman David Lawrence, the retired publisher of The Miami Herald, said the panel came up with 15 short-term suggestions and 20 that were longer term.
The four-member panel recommended that the Department of Children and Families conduct criminal background checks of the state's 62,000 foster parents, photograph foster children four times a year, visit each of the 44,000 children in state care once a month and have them come to court every six months.
The panel asked the Legislature to increase pay for agency workers and for the full criminal background checks. It told the lawmakers and the agency that most of the changes should be made within six months.
Kearney said she should be able to meet the deadlines.
She said the recommendations "make good sense. They are practical and realistic."
The commission agreed to meet again in September to check progress and suggests adding two or three members to provide more diversity to its membership that includes two white men and two white women.
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform said the report was "nearly 100 percent useless," judging by news reports.
"It is disappointing, but not surprising that what was inevitably a quick-and-dirty review of DCF lets Kearney off the hook," said NCCPR Executive Director Richard Wexler. "Stating the disappearance of Rilya Wilson is not related to 'malfeasance' by Kearney misses the point. The Rilya Wilson case is only the latest in a series of scandals brought on by Kearney's take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare."
Wexler said Kearney overwhelmed the system with huge numbers of children who didn't need to be in foster care, leaving workers with little time to find children in real danger.
