By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

When Gina Dortch and her husband, Kelly, take their family of seven boys out to eat, they tend to attract attention.

Gina’s short answer to the inevitable question: Yes, all of them are ours. Aaron, another Aaron, Austin, Kaylen, Christian, Aiden and Ashton - ages 20, 15, 14, 13, 12, 8 and 7.

But the full story is a little longer. Only three of the boys are their biological children. The other four are brothers who were separated in foster care but never stopped hoping they could be together.

In June, the Dortches adopted all four.

“It is not,” Gina Dortch says, “a quiet house.”

How it all began

Gina, 40, and Kelly, 41, of suburban Lake Worth, were high school sweethearts who had their first son Aaron, now 20, a year after they married. Kelly, a district manager for Amerigas, thought they would probably stop after one boy.

“Well,” he said, “they just kept coming.”

Six and a half years after Aaron, they had Kaylen, now 13. And then came Christian, 12.

More recently, they began thinking about adoption as a way to add a girl to the family. But they decided to become foster parents instead, figuring that they could help more children that way.

The first children to arrive after they got their foster care license in 2005 were Aiden and Ashton, the youngest of the brothers they would eventually adopt.

The Dortches were immediately struck by how much the boys, then 5 and 3, looked like they could be family. They have Gina’s freckles and Kelly’s red hair.

The oldest brother, then 12, moved in a few days later. Because his name was Aaron, just like their own oldest boy, they called him Little Aaron. But Gina thinks that one day soon, Little Aaron, now 15, will be taller than Big Aaron.

By the time the boys came to the Dortch home, they had already spent three years in foster care, often apart. Aiden and Ashton had been staying at a shelter in Royal Palm Beach, far from Little Aaron, who was in a Fort Lauderdale shelter.

Austin continued to stay with a Port St. Lucie family for more than a year after the Dortches took the other three brothers. Whenever they visited him, “the little kids would cry, because they missed him,” Little Aaron said.

The visits got to be so upsetting for the boys that they had to stop them altogether, Gina said.

In the fall of 2006, the judge assigned to the boys’ case asked Little Aaron if he could do just one thing for him, what that would be. Little Aaron said he wanted Austin to come live with them, too.

The Dortches agreed to take one more brother.

‘You’re not leaving again’

But at that time, the Dortches still weren’t thinking about adoption. Kelly worried that if something happened to him, Gina would be left alone with a large number of children.

In the summer of 2007, a local foster care agency found another couple that wanted to adopt all four brothers together. Gina and Kelly made the hard decision to let them go, thinking that it was the best thing for the boys.

They didn’t realize until it was too late that they had already become a family. Sometimes, she said, “you don’t see something that’s right in front of you.”

Everyone missed the brothers, she said. Her birth sons, who had been reluctant to share their house and parents with foster kids at first, were always on the phone with the boys at their new home, Gina said.

Things didn’t go well with the new family. Little Aaron, who missed the Dortches, acted badly. Gina and Kelly agreed that if the new family decided not to adopt, then they would.

In late 2007, Gina and Kelly got the call. The adoption was off. Their boys were coming back.

Gina told Little Aaron she understood that he was mad at her for letting them go.

It doesn’t matter what you do, she told him, “you’re not leaving again. This is it.”

Dining in shifts

Gina left her career as a nurse to care for her sons full time. Of her seven boys, five are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. One has cerebral palsy and seizures, and another is autistic.

“Everyone has a thing,” she said. In this family, “you’re not normal if you don’t have a thing.”

How does she manage?

It helps that she has experience: Dortch grew up helping to take care of three younger brothers, in a house that was a headquarters for neighborhood kids.

Another key is meticulous organization — “you should see my calendar.”

And when it’s time to head home from the baseball field, she always stops to count heads.

“I’m so scared that I’m going to leave someone behind,” she says.

She isn’t the sort of person who minds too much when things get broken, but she can’t stand a cluttered house, and upholds a policy that any Legos left on the floor go straight to the trash.

“They don’t last long in my house,” she says.

Dinner is just like a school cafeteria line, Little Aaron says, though Gina prefers to call it “buffet style.”

The younger boys sit on stools around the table — they gave up on chairs because the boys wouldn’t stop leaning back and breaking them. There aren’t enough seats for everyone, so they sit in shifts, or use overflow seating on a nearby couch.”We probably need a bigger table,” Kelly says.

Kelly does most of the cooking, often a big vat of spaghetti or hamburgers on the grill — about 15 for the family of nine. Weekends are a treat, with Kelly making a hot breakfast of bacon and biscuits.

He’s trying to turn Little Aaron into a chef, but the results so far have been mixed. Little Aaron, who does not share his dad’s perfectionist streak, says he is still working on not burning down the house.

Family motto: Be prepared

Dortch works hard to keep things calm. Still, you can’t help but notice that there are seven boys in the family.

The family’s 1,800-square-foot home has four bedrooms but only two bathrooms, so there is a lot of banging on the door.

There are arguments, baseball injuries and the occasional alligator encounter when the boys go fishing at a nearby canal. Gina has come home more than once to find a baseball-sized hole in the wall. The fire extinguisher has gone off twice.

One time it exploded in the trunk of the car, not the boys’ fault, but proof, Little Aaron says, that in this family, you need to be prepared for anything.

Flowers and love notes

The Dortches get by with Kelly’s income, as well as subsidy payments the state gives families who adopt from foster care. The adoption stipends aren’t as much as foster parents get paid, but they do help, Dortch said.

Christmasses are chaotic and happy. The kids get great presents — including big gifts like a video game system, Little Aaron says, “even though there are, like, 30,000 kids in the house.”

Dortch said she prefers it that way. She doesn’t like to be alone, and loves a house full of kids. Being a mother to a big family, she says, “is my calling.”

Seven-year-old Ashton follows her everywhere she goes, never wanting to be apart. When she finishes a shower, she often finds him waiting for her outside the bathroom door.

Aiden, 8, knows that his mom loves flowers, because he saw Kelly bring them to her on birthdays and other special occasions. He picks the small yellow ones that grow alongside the road, and presents them to her on the way to school.

He often writes her notes, telling her that he loves her, and recently helped make a box for her to keep them in. One day this summer, he sat down with a note pad and carefully printed a new message: “Thank you for being so nice to me,” he wrote. “Thank you for being so nice to me. Thank you for being so nice to me.”

Needed: patience and faith

Little Aaron said his family’s time in foster care was scary. He lived in at least five different places, always moving, often without his brothers.

One foster family was really nice, he said. They had their own boat and taught him how to fish. But that eventually fell apart, like all of the other places except the Dortches.

Many families who gave them up, Gina Dortch said, didn’t have the patience to deal with children who have been through so much, or the faith that things would get better.

Little Aaron learned not to get his hopes up. The first time he was told he couldn’t stay somewhere anymore, he was surprised, he said. “The second time, I was like, OK, lemme go pack my bags.”

By third time, he said, his bags were already packed.

Moving was hardest on his little brothers, he said, because they would get attached.

Of all the families he stayed with, the Dortches are the best, Little Aaron said. Some parents, he said, wanted them to “put on an outfit and pretend we are a perfect family, even when we all aren’t. Well, with this family, it was like, ‘I don’t care what you think about us. We have our problems, but we can work them out.’”

‘They’d actually punish me’

On June 19, the Dortches took all seven brothers to the Palm Beach County Courthouse to make the adoption official. They posed for pictures, and afterward went to Fun Depot, where they partied until midnight.

The adoption “was awesome,” Little Aaron said. “We’d been waiting for a long time.”

He felt happiness, but also a sense of relief.

“We don’t have to worry about each other anymore,” he said. “We are, like, safe.”

And not only did he get his one wish, to live with his three brothers by birth, he also got three more. Little Aaron, Austin and the Dortch’s birth son Kaylen have become the Three Musketeers, Gina said. And anyone who picks on a Dortch has six other brothers to contend with.

“It’s an ‘I have your back’ kind of thing,” she said.

Little Aaron can’t pinpoint a single moment when the Dortch home no longer felt like just another temporary stop. Only gradually, he said, did he start to believe that these parents weren’t going to give them up.

“They’d say I love you,” Little Aaron said. “That’s the first time that’s happened. They’d support me. They’d actually punish me if I did bad in school. Most families, they would just be like, oh, you got an F. I don’t care. You’re not my kid.” But the Dortches grounded him until he brought his grades up, the same as with their own kids.

And eventually, he knew that he and his brothers were finally home.

“It’s been feeling like a family for a long time,” he said.

Gina and Kelly plus 8?

Gina Dortch couldn’t be happier that her original plan to adopt a girl brought her four more boys instead.

Still, she can’t stop thinking about tiny dresses …

“I want to have that mother-daughter bond. You can plan their prom, you can plan their wedding. When she’s a baby, I want to dress her up like a doll, with all the frills and lace. All the things you can’t do to a boy.”

She has her eye on one girl in particular, a 14-month-old in foster care.

When this topic comes up, Little Aaron coughs and rolls his eyes. By the time that happens, he says, he had better be out of the house and far away, ideally working a crab boat somewhere off the coast of Alaska.

“I can get along with girls, just not sisters,” he says. The fundamental problem, as he sees it, is that “all girls are the same.”

But Gina Dortch is not one to be deterred.

“I think,” she says, “they’d be good big brothers.”

Looking for families

Florida’s Chief Child Advocate Jim Kallinger recently met with the Dortches in Boca Raton to thank them personally. A total of 3,674 children were adopted from Florida’s foster care system last year, an annual record.

Kallinger, the first to fill the new job created by Gov. Charlie Crist, said the state is working hard to recruit families willing to take teens, groups of siblings and children with disabilities. The state recently introduced a new Web site for families thinking about adoption, www.adoptflorida.org. There is also a hot-line, (800) 96-ADOPT.

At any given time, there are about 1,000 children in Florida waiting for homes.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
August 2, 2008 Saturday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: ACCENT; Pg. 1D
LENGTH: 1,943 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

WEST PALM BEACH - In March 2006, when the real estate market was still near its peak, city leaders broke ground on a development they said would give teachers, firefighters and other workers the chance to own a home.

MerryPlace, built in the heart of historic Pleasant City, was meant to bring new life to a long-neglected neighborhood full of renters, dilapidated houses and vacant lots.

But two years later, many of the lots that were supposed to sprout with condos and townhouses are still empty. And in the worst national housing downturn since the Great Depression, even government-sponsored affordable housing is proving to be a tough sell.

The West Palm Beach Housing Authority, which is building MerryPlace in cooperation with the city, has buyers lined up for only 12 of its 52 condominiums, none of which has been built. Plans for 47 townhouses and more than a dozen single-family homes are on hold indefinitely.

The housing authority parted ways this year with Marc Schoen, the first real estate broker hired to sell the development. Schoen, a managing broker for Prudential Florida WCI in Boynton Beach, called that decision “really, really mutual.”

MerryPlace “was the right intention, four years too late,” Schoen said.

Since taking over the contract May 1, the new broker, Deidre Newton of Community Real Estate Services, has worked mostly out of the trunk of her car. She meets prospective buyers outside the unfinished community center, where she unrolls the plans and shows buyers the lot where their condo will be built.

Newton remains upbeat. But she told housing authority board members at their meeting in June that she rarely has a finished model to show or a quiet place to sit with clients, because a separate company overseeing 128 rental units operates out of the only furnished home at MerryPlace. That company has let her perch on a couch in the rental office, she said, but it often is crowded.

Both brokers say there is no shortage of interest. Many people have contacted them, and the Web site, www.merryplace.org, gets a lot of hits. But most who are interested can’t qualify for a mortgage because they have too much debt or their credit scores fall below the minimum banks will allow.

Newton said she is working with an attorney to challenge information on people’s credit reports that could be dragging down their scores. One woman’s credit score fell short by only 2 points, and another would qualify if she had a cheaper car payment, she said.

Millions of dollars in subsidies lower the price of each MerryPlace unit by $43,478, and people can buy with only $1,000 down. Minus the subsidy that can be passed on to the next buyer, the prices range from $119,000 for a one-bedroom, 795-square-foot condo to $171,500 for a three-bedroom unit with 1,327 square feet.

Today, buyers can find better deals in the free market, Schoen said. Some older condos are selling for less than $100, 000 in the Villages of Palm Beach Lakes. In CitySide, across from the Palm Beach Mall, several nearly new units with granite counter tops and amenities including a pool recently sold for less than $200,000.

“There are much nicer properties in gated communities at lower prices,” Schoen said.

West Palm Beach Housing Authority Director Laurel Robinson said there are many reasons to be optimistic.

“I’d be silly if I wasn’t concerned,” she said.

But the part of the neighborhood designated for affordable rentals is almost complete, she said. As of Tuesday, 98 of the 128 rental units were leased, and 15 more were reserved.

The buildings in MerryPlace are brand new, with hurricane-impact windows and “green” features including top-grade insulation, gas cooktops and full-size Energy Star appliances. The living room floors will be wood, and amenities, now almost complete, include a community center, playground and picnic tables.

But perhaps most important, Robinson said, MerryPlace is within two blocks of the Intracoastal Waterway and a short bike ride from large employers such as Good Samaritan Medical Center and the Palm Beach County Courthouse.

High gasoline prices will lead many to look for affordable housing close to work, Robinson said.

“Look at the folks who got stuck up in Port St. Lucie,” she said. “Everything they thought they were gaining, they lost when they have to fill up the car.”

Poor timing, early criticism

If everything had gone according to plan, MerryPlace would have been built long before the national real estate bust. The city and the housing authority first applied for federal money to build in 1999 but were rejected. They tried in two successive years but were turned down again.

The authority came up with another financing plan and gradually bought land. Along the way, leaders faced criticism from city commissioners who said they were moving too slowly, and from residents who accused them of displacing poor people and strong-arming landlords into selling.

By the time Robinson stood with Mayor Lois Frankel to celebrate the groundbreaking in 2006, the South Florida real estate market was perched on the edge of a free fall.

The nation’s large builders have coped with the historic downturn by slashing prices, swapping land and even accepting losses in some places. But a government agency doesn’t have that kind of flexibility.

And there have been other problems. The housing authority can’t afford newspaper advertising or billboards, Robinson said. Sales representatives have made pitches to workers in nearby offices, but some key employers have declined to let them in.

Many of those factors contributed to the slow sales, Schoen said.

“In hindsight, there were a million things that could have been done differently,” Schoen said.

Mayor remains ‘optimistic’

Frankel said she remains “very optimistic” about the long-term future of the project. For people who work in the city, she said, “it’s going to start to look better than being in The Acreage or Royal Palm Beach or Wellington.”

MerryPlace is just one of many local improvement projects, including a major face-lift of the railroad tracks just west of MerryPlace and the rehabilitation of 25 private homes.

“I think we’ll sit down with the housing authority folks and talk about whether they’ll need to regroup,” Frankel said. “But it might just be a matter of waiting out the market and seeing where it’s going.”

Many programs offer no-interest loans that will lower buyers’ mortgages well below the purchase price. But most have to be paid back when the owner sells. For that reason, MerryPlace carries the same risks as any real estate investment — if prices fall, buyers could find themselves owing more than they paid.

But Newton said she wants to attract families who want to make Pleasant City their home for a long time, and who could see their homes’ values go up. Soon, she will be able to work out of offices on Dixie Highway.

“All of these pre-sales have been based on a picture,” Robinson said. “That’s a huge leap of faith.”

Sales at MerryPlace

All buyers must fall below income guidelines by family size. The limits include:

> $54,120 for a single person.

> $61,800 for a couple.

> $77,280 for a family of four.

In addition to a subsidy that reduces the prices of condos, buyers may qualify for the following subsidies:

> $10,000 for Palm Beach County School District teachers.

> $25,000 from the city of West Palm Beach for first-time homebuyers.

> Depending on income and availability of funds, additional money from the State Housing Initiatives Partnership, another program for first-time buyers.

For maps, floor plans and other information, go to www.merryplace.org.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
July 6, 2008 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1,263 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

RIVIERA BEACH - By the time Vincent Clark was charged with felony neglect in the drug-overdose death of his 21-month-old son, Darius, he had been accused of attacking women at least six times.

When Clark pistol-whipped Darius’ mother, Toccara Nobles, in March, workers at the state Department of Children and Families were concerned enough to designate the case “high-risk.”

That meant that under Florida law, department attorneys were required to ask the court for permission to supervise Darius.

The DCF made a “major mistake” when it failed to do so five weeks before Darius died, Administrator Perry Borman said Friday in response to questions from The Palm Beach Post.

Department leaders say they did not do enough to protect the toddler, who was found dead in his bed in late April with enough drugs in his system to kill an adult.

“We ought to learn as much from this case as humanly possible,” DCF Assistant Secretary George Sheldon said.

Among those lessons: When the DCF leaves children in a troubled home, workers may need to visit the family as often as once a day. They also must ensure that domestic violence victims have the help they need to leave their abusers, Sheldon said.

State and local DCF leaders say they will make changes as a result of Darius’ death, including efforts to keep better track of the help parents are receiving.

A bill awaiting Gov. Charlie Crist’s signature also would give the DCF the power to seek court orders to remove a dangerous parent from a household, rather than relying on a victim to do so.

John Walsh, head of the Foster Children’s Project of the Legal Aid Society in Palm Beach County, said Darius’ case is like others he has seen since the state began pushing to lessen the removal of children from homes.

“Maybe it is wanting to believe that families should be together so badly that you ignore the obvious signs of danger,” Walsh said. “You want to believe that the mother will actually keep him out of the home, when in a domestic violence situation, her word is worth almost nothing.”

Since January 2007, the DCF has reduced the number of children living apart from their birth parents by 18percent. Secretary Bob Butterworth has set a goal of a 50percent reduction, saying many former foster children have told him they would have been much better off with their birth parents.

But when children are left at home, Butterworth said this year, the DCF needs to offer supervision and intense counseling to parents struggling with domestic violence or substance abuse.

Nobles didn’t get that kind of help in dealing with Clark, whom police describe as a drug dealer who has been repeatedly arrested on charges of violence against women.

In 2003, Riviera Beach police said he smashed the windows at two homes because a woman would not come out to see him. In 2004, he allegedly shattered the window of another girlfriend’s car, just missing their 6-month-old baby. The same year, police said he punched a woman in front of their 2-year-old child.

In 2005, police charged him with pulling a gun on a woman, calling her a “bitch” and threatening to shoot her.

But he spent little time in jail because the women refused to testify against him. In 2007, he punched Nobles in the face. She told police she would prosecute and seek a restraining order, but didn’t.

Even so, DCF attorneys decided after the pistol-whipping in March that they could protect Darius by getting Nobles to sign a safety plan saying she would get a restraining order against Clark and attend counseling.

Five weeks after that decision, the toddler was dead, with oxycodone and cocaine in his system. Though it is not known how the toddler got the drugs, Nobles had let Clark spend the night.

In the weeks before the child’s death, DCF employees designated the case a “red flag,” meaning it deserved their highest attention. But though they contacted the mother by phone, they didn’t visit her home between March 8 and April 21. And they failed to find out that Nobles had skipped her hearing for the restraining order.

“We became convinced that this mother was sincere in seeking a restraining order,” Sheldon said this week. “Should we have followed up? No question.”

Walsh said abused women often sign safety plans immediately after the violence, when the police are there and they know the DCF could take the children.

“Of course you are going to tell them anything, and probably even believe it yourself. … Is it true? No, of course not,” Walsh said. “I can’t tell you how many cases we’ve seen like that.”

Richard Wexler, a national advocate who urges foster care systems to keep children home with their parents, also sees problems with the case.

It can be extremely difficult for women to leave their abusers, he wrote this week in an e-mail.

“So while Toccara Nobles may well have meant it when she signed the service plan, it’s easy to imagine that resolve crumbling in the face of manipulation or threats from an abuser,” Wexler wrote. “DCF was not sufficiently on guard against that possibility. The case got a red-flag staffing but was treated with only yellow-flag urgency.”

Borman said he plans to make changes as a result of Darius’ case. He hopes to set up an electronic system that could automatically remind investigators to follow up on referrals to services such as domestic violence counseling.

The DCF investigates about 900 reports of child abuse and neglect a month in Palm Beach County, Borman said, taking the children in only about 5 percent of cases. He said the state needs to do a better job of tracking what it does for the others.

Darius’ death will not deter the state from its goal of keeping more families together, Sheldon said.

“But what it does mean is that we have to be especially vigilant to make sure services get to that child,” he said.

Staff writer Rochelle E.B. Gilken contributed to this story.

A family at risk

> Vincent Clark, 29, is a felon with a history of drug charges who was accused of attacking women at least six times, according to Riviera Beach police records. He is charged with felony neglect in the death of his son.

> Toccara Nobles, 25, had no history of felony arrests before she was charged with neglect in Darius’ death. She backed away from her promise to get a restraining order against Clark and allowed him to sleep over the night Darius died.

> Darius Clark was 21 months old when Nobles and Clark discovered him dead in their bed on April 21. The medical examiner found he had enough drugs in his system to kill an adult.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
June 21, 2008 Saturday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1,082 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

RIVIERA BEACH - A month before toddler Darius Clark died with cocaine and painkillers in his system, employees at the state Department of Children and Families met to consider whether his mother could protect him.

They knew that the 21-month-old child’s father, Vincent Clark, was a violent drug abuser with a long felony arrest history. On March 7, he pistol-whipped the mother, Toccara Nobles, so badly that she had to get staples to close the wound on her head, according to DCF records released Friday.

The next day, Nobles agreed not to let Clark near her children and promised to get a restraining order and attend domestic-violence classes.

But the DCF records show no evidence that any investigators visited the family to see whether Nobles was following through on those promises until April 21, when the toddler was discovered dead from a drug overdose.

They also failed to check court records to see whether Nobles had gotten a restraining order before Darius died. If they had, investigators would have found that the mother applied for an order but never appeared for the court hearing March 28, meaning Clark had a legal right to visit Darius whenever he wanted.

On April 20, Nobles allowed Clark to spend the night with her two boys even though he was wanted on felony charges.

Nobles has told police she woke up in the middle of the night and found “white stuff” around the child’s mouth. She wiped it off and went back to sleep. The next morning, Nobles and Clark found Darius dead in their bed.

Riviera Beach police investigators found a bottle of pills on the bedroom dresser, according to police records. An autopsy revealed he had enough oxycodone in his system to kill an adult. The positive test for cocaine meant that Darius could have been around people who were smoking crack, according to DCF records. The state’s investigation had been open for nearly six weeks. DCF had not interviewed Darius’ 6-year-old brother.

DCF has not yet completed its formal review of the case. But spokeswoman Leslie Mann said in an e-mail Friday that his death was a tragedy that the department “could not have foreseen.”

The March incident was the third report to DCF of domestic violence between the parents. In November, Clark was charged with battery after Riviera Beach police said he came to the home where Clark was living, tried to take the children and punched her in the face. The police report listed Clark’s occupation as “drug dealer.”

A police detective called DCF after the pistol-whipping in March, saying he was “very upset” that the mother had not gotten a restraining order after the last beating.

Nobles had no felony arrest record herself, and she had a supportive extended family that included a mother and father who work for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. There were no allegations the children were being abused, so the decision came down to whether she would protect them from Clark.

On March 8, Nobles signed a DCF “safety plan” promising that the father would have no contact with the children. She said she would move, apply for the restraining order and go to domestic violence classes.

Six days later, DCF workers met for a “red flag staffing” - ordered in serious cases - to decide whether they should recommend supervision. That would have allowed investigators to drop by unannounced to make sure Clark wasn’t living there. They decided to take the case to DCF attorneys.

But on March 19, DCF’s legal staff decided not to take her case to court. Under recommendation, they checked “no judicial action needed.” For the reason, they wrote: “mx (mother) protective.”

“The father was not living in the home, mom was pursuing a restraining order, and we were acting on the belief that the children were safe,” Mann said Friday.

Both parents are charged with felony neglect in his death. His 6-year-old brother is living with his maternal grandmother, a lieutenant at the Palm Beach County Jail.

Three days after Darius died, DCF got a report from Knowledge is Power, the domestic-violence program Nobles pledged to attend.

“Client was a no-show to scheduled classes,” the document said.

Darius Clark’s short life

State records show 21-month-old Darius Clark’s death in April followed a trail of family violence and broken promises:

> July 18, 2006: Darius Clark is born to Toccara Nobles and Vincent Clark.

> Nov. 21, 2007: Clark shows up at a relative’s home and tries to take Darius and an older son from Nobles. He punches her in the face and is charged with battery. She does not file for a restraining order.

> March 7, 2008: Clark pistol-whips Nobles, requiring her to get staples to close a wound on her head. It is the third report of violence between the couple that the Department of Children and Families investigates.

> March 8: The mother signs a DCF safety plan promising to have no contact with Clark, a repeat felony offender who police say is a drug dealer. She tells an investigator she will move away from Clark, get a restraining order and attend domestic-violence courses.

> March 19: DCF attorneys decide not to ask for court supervision of her case, which would have allowed investigators to check whether the father was around the children, because they believe Nobles is able to protect the children.

> March 28: The mother fails to show up for a hearing on a restraining order she applied for March 13, so a judge dismisses it. Clark therefore has a legal right to be around the children whenever he wants.

> April 20: Nobles allows Clark to spend the night with her, Darius and their 6-year-old son on Ninth Street in Riviera Beach even though he has several felony warrants for his arrest. Nobles says she wakes up in the middle of the night to find ‘white stuff’ around the toddler’s mouth, but goes back to sleep.

> April 21: Nobles wakes up around 7 a.m. to get Darius ready for day care and finds his body stiff. Clark tries CPR, but Darius is dead on arrival at St. Mary’s Medical Center.

> April 24: The Knowledge is Power program reports to DCF that Nobles never showed up for domestic violence classes.

> June 5: Nobles is charged with felony neglect in the baby’s death after the medical examiner finds cocaine in the baby’s system and enough oxycodone to kill an adult. Clark, who was previously arrested on the other warrants, faces the same charge of felony neglect.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
June 14, 2008 Saturday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1,052 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

A local hot line has seen a dramatic spike in suicide calls from people in Palm Beach County who are facing foreclosure and can’t pay their bills, according to numbers released Friday.

Since the start of the year, 256 people in the county told operators at the 211 hot line that they were thinking about suicide. Of those, 44 told operators that their main reason was that they had lost a job, were facing foreclosure, couldn’t afford to pay their bills or were homeless.

During the same period in 2007, from Jan. 1 to June 10, the hot line received 137 suicide calls from people in Palm Beach County. Only 15 of those gave economic reasons.

The callers’ problems seem markedly different than in the past, said Susan Buza, executive director of 211 Palm Beach/Treasure Coast. Many callers, she said, have tried to find work for months.

One man said he had gotten hurt at work, then was fired. Another told the operators that he and his children were about to be evicted because he couldn’t find anyone to hire him.

“They are not seeing any opportunity to get a job. And they are not seeing that this is going to turn around for them in a week or two,” Buza said. “They have been out looking for jobs so they are really desperate and feeling that their backs are up against the wall.”

Operators at the hot line, which has taken calls for help in Palm Beach County since 1971, “have never seen anything like this,” Buza said.

The hot line also serves Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River and Okeechobee counties but has not yet tabulated those suicide numbers.

Buza said she began adding up the numbers after operators noticed a rise in calls from people who could lose their homes. “When we started looking at it, we were really shocked,” she said.

Though the job market is extremely difficult, 211 keeps a directory of local services. Operators refer people to food pantries, churches, job training, credit counseling, programs that help people keep their homes and government assistance such as food stamps.

For help, simply dial 211 from anywhere in the five-county area.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
June 14, 2008 Saturday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 7B
LENGTH: 347 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

LANTANA - Before the court order that separated Bert Sayre from his family and forced him into isolation, he had no idea what was making him so sick.

And at first, neither did the doctors. But by last May, the roofer from Tampa was too weak to lift his daughter, then only 3 years old.

On his third trip to his third hospital, he finally got the diagnosis. He had tuberculosis, a disease that is now rare in the United States but was once the nation’s leading cause of death.

The antibiotics that doctors prescribed to treat Sayre made him sick, and an emergency room doctor told him they were killing his liver. Sayre was afraid he would die.

The Florida Department of Health judged his disease a threat to the public and said he may have caused the complications by drinking. Sayre denied that and fought commitment because he didn’t want to leave his daughter. After a Hillsborough County court hearing where Sayre said everyone wore a mask, a judge ordered Sayre to A.G. Holley State Hospital.

Sayre, 52, lived for months in an isolation room inside the hospital while he was contagious. He wasn’t the most cooperative patient at first.

“Believe me, I am an ornery old cuss,” he said.

Doctors there confirmed that conventional medications were hurting his liver, even at the locked hospital, where he had no way to drink. They saved his life, Sayre said, by finding another drug that worked. Now, after eight months of treatment, he is leading bingo games to help pass his remaining time inside the hospital.

Sayre said he was in disbelief when he heard that during the state’s legislative session, House Healthcare Council Chairman Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach, proposed closing A.G. Holley to save money.

“You don’t understand how dangerous this disease is, until you get it,” Sayre said.

Instead of shutting down the hospital, Bean added a last-minute amendment to the state budget that requires the state to privatize the 50-bed hospital, built on Lantana Road in 1950.

The state last week asked parties interested in redeveloping the property to notify the state by June 9.

Legislators including Bean and state Rep. Mary Brandenburg, D-West Palm Beach, have said Florida should look at models in other states to see how they care for tuberculosis patients.

But health directors in other states, who are struggling to isolate and treat people who carry dangerous strains of the disease, say Florida’s hospital in Lantana is the envy of the nation.

States across the country have laws that allow judges or health department doctors to lock up people who could spread tuberculosis but refuse to take medication or wear a mask.

With no facility like A.G. Holley, some states, including California, confine people to motel rooms and post guards outside the door to keep them from leaving. And in other states, jails and prisons are the only option for contagious people who won’t cooperate.

Arizona made national news and faced an expensive lawsuit in 2007 when it committed tuberculosis patient Robert Daniels to a jail cell for months with no phone, windows, shower or television.

Dr. Karen Lewis, tuberculosis control officer for Arizona, said state health officials have “looked to A.G. Holley as a wonderful model of what we as a state would love to have.”

In Georgia, which confines about six tuberculosis patients a year by court order, health officials have to rely on local jails and a private prison hospital. The state would be “very interested” in paying to send its own patients to A.G. Holley if the two states could work out payment arrangements, spokeswoman Taka Wiley said.

“If it were possible, we would strongly consider an agreement with A.G. Holley Hospital,” she said.

In other states, there is often financial pressure to release patients before they are fully cured, said Dr. Lee Reichman, executive director of the New Jersey Medical School Global Tuberculosis Institute.

“I wish I had an A.G. Holley Hospital here,” he said.

Many of A.G. Holley’s patients complain about the hospital because they don’t like to be locked up, Sayre said, but they don’t realize how lucky they are.

“You think you are in jail,” he said. “But I know I don’t want to be in jail. I want to be right here in this bed with my remote, getting better. In jail, they treat you like a leper.”

A.G. Holley’s doctors are experts on the disease, while many general physicians “just don’t have the knowledge,” Sayre said.

The hospital’s medical executive director, Dr. David Ashkin, says polls show the overwhelming majority of Americans support isolating people with deadly communicable diseases who don’t accept treatment.

“But if we are saying as a society that we need to protect the public from this person,” Ashkin said, “don’t we owe it to that person to give them the best care possible?”

However, the hospital no longer needs such a large building or the surrounding land, and the town of Lantana has long worked with the state on a plan that would preserve the tuberculosis treatment program while attracting a medical research complex to the site. Dale Brill, who heads Gov. Charlie Crist’s Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development, is overseeing development plans.

Brill said A.G. Holley is a “world-class facility” and did not ask Bean to write the budget amendment that privatized it. A draft of Brill’s invitation to bid for development of the land requires that any private institution taking over the tuberculosis program retain or at least give hiring priority to current workers, have 10 years of public health experience, be “intimately involved” with protecting the public from tuberculosis and take orders on patient care from the state.

The program could stay on the same land in Lantana, move elsewhere in Florida or become part of a teaching hospital.

Patients at A.G. Holley are confined to isolation rooms, where negative pressure keeps contaminated air from leaving, until they are no longer contagious. Patients who are contagious are required to wear masks when they walk through the hospital. They also may go outdoors, where the disease doesn’t spread because of the air and sunlight.

After patients stop coughing bacteria into the air, they can take off their masks and spend time in the hospital’s recreation room, which has television, video games and pool. Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous groups are available, and the hospital offers arts and crafts, including crocheting.

Patients who earn the trust of administrators and are no longer contagious may leave for fishing trips, entertainment and church.

In 2007, the state of Florida reported 980 tuberculosis cases. When told they have a potentially fatal disease, most people faithfully take medication over several months until they are cured. But a small percentage refuse. Others get sick when they combine the TB medications, which are processed in the liver, with drugs or alcohol.

Difficult patients are potential incubators for new, dangerous forms of tuberculosis. When people start taking the drugs but stop before they are fully cured, the strongest bacteria survive. The patient then develops a more dangerous, drug-resistant strain that can be spread to as many as 30 people over time. Each case of tuberculosis resistant to conventional drugs can take up to $500,000 and a year or more to treat.

Awsha Sanders, 26, was ordered to A.G. Holley against her will on Feb. 26. She said she has long been obsessed with cleanliness, but couldn’t avoid germs at the homeless shelter in Tampa, where she saw women coughing blood into the sink.

She lost a baby at five months because she was so sick with tuberculosis. Health department workers tried to give her drugs, often coming to meet her in local parks.

When they said she had missed 18 doses, she was ordered to A.G. Holley.

Sanders said she fought commitment because she doesn’t like to be held captive. But she is glad she came.

“God knows where I would have been, or how much sicker I would have been,” she said.

Sayre thinks he probably caught tuberculosis from another roofer.

It was the first he had heard of the disease since he was tested in school as a little kid.

“You think it’s only overseas,” he said. “But anyone can get this.”

He is scheduled to be released soon and hopes the state will preserve the same high standards for the patients who come after him.

If they don’t, he said, “people are going to die. And they are going to spread it like wildfire.”

About tuberculosis

> The disease was once called consumption, because it seems to eat away at the body, causing weakness and severe weight loss. The bacteria attack the lungs, causing a bloody cough.

> Tuberculosis is not as contagious as the measles or chicken pox, but medical experts estimate that one person can spread the airborne disease to up to 30 people over time.

> Though about one in three people worldwide carry the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, only one in every 10 who have the bacteria will get sick.

> The disease was once the leading cause of death in the United States, and many states are now grappling with drug-resistant strains.

Treatment in the U.S.

How other states handle contagious tuberculosis patients who refuse to cooperate with treatment:

> California: Uses guards to keep patients inside hospital rooms, motel rooms or the patients’ homes. Tuberculosis patients who are mentally ill can be sent to the state’s psychiatric hospital.

> North Carolina: Patients who repeatedly refuse treatment can be criminally prosecuted as ‘health law violators.’ They are sent to one of three prisons.

> Texas: Replacing its 1953 state tuberculosis hospital with a $35.2 million, 75-bed facility.

> New Mexico: Has an agreement to send patients to Texas.

> Massachusetts: Opened a 12-bed wing for tuberculosis inside a public hospital.

> Missouri: Has eight beds inside a university hospital dedicated to tuberculosis patients.

> Georgia: Has special rooms in local jails or a private prison.

> New Jersey: Has isolation rooms in a teaching hospital.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
May 25, 2008 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1,659 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

LANTANA - Discussions about privatizing the state’s tuberculosis treatment program started weeks before lawmakers changed the state budget to make it mandatory.

Two potential suitors say they received calls from Gov. Charlie Crist’s economic development office about a month ago, asking whether they would be interested in taking over the program, now run by A.G. Holley State Hospital in Lantana.

One call went to the National Jewish Medical and Research Center, a renowned program based in Denver whose president is a former vice president at a medical technology company in Fort Lauderdale.

Another went to Jorge Dominicis, president of GEO Care, a Boca Raton-based company that runs psychiatric hospitals for the state.

Both said they had talked intermittently during the past two years about taking over management of A.G. Holley. Both told Crist’s Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development that they might consider bidding for the work.

A Crist spokesman, however, said Wednesday that the governor’s office did not push for the budget amendment, which came last week on the second-to-last night of the 60-day legislative session.

Crist’s economic development director had no idea how the measure came about, gubernatorial spokesman Sterling Ivey said.

The flurry of activity follows years of inconclusive talks about A.G. Holley, dating to former Gov. Jeb Bush’s administration.

State Rep. Mary Brandenburg, who supports exploring privatization, said the efforts haven’t always been well coordinated.

“I can understand why anyone might think the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing,” said Brandenburg, D-West Palm Beach, whose district includes Lantana. She and Dominicis informally discussed GEO Care’s interest in the program as recently as last year.

State Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach, who inserted the language into the budget, said last week he had no specific company in mind to take the program private.

Ivey said Dale Brill, director of Crist’s economic development office, approached Brandenburg and other legislators several weeks before the session’s end and mentioned the possibility of privatizing the hospital. The meeting included Bean, head of the House Healthcare Council.

Ivey said Brill didn’t talk to Bean about A.G. Holley in the last week of the session and didn’t ask for the amendment. “He (Brill) said, ‘I have no idea how the language got in there,’” Ivey said.

Bean’s amendment requires the state to find a private company to design, build and run a TB hospital in an unspecified location. It gives the state health department until July 1 to begin that process and calls for a contract that could last 20 years.

The town of Lantana and the Palm Beach County Health Department have long worked with officials in Tallahassee on plans for the property that houses the aging TB hospital east of Interstate 95. But the state seemed to be moving slowly until this spring.

National Jewish’s president and chief executive officer, Dr. Michael Salem, said his talks with the state have been “very preliminary.” He said he would “need a lot more discussion in order to understand what the state would want to do.”

The hospital already has a regional office in Boca Raton for education, outreach and fund raising. In the past three years, 800 patients from Florida have flown to National Jewish in Denver for care.

“If there is some way we could serve the people down there in a significant way, even more than we do now, it’s something that we would consider,” Salem said.

National Jewish, which finished its first hospital building in 1893, has been ranked the top respiratory center in the country by U.S. News and World Report for 10 years. The nonprofit has no hospitals outside Colorado, but has been expanding, hiring many new specialists in the past 18 months, Salem said.

He said he has watched with interest as the Mayo and Cleveland clinics have expanded in Florida while the state has lured branches of The Scripps Research Institute and the Burnham Institute for Medical Research.

Two years ago, under Bush, the state Department of Health asked companies interested in taking over A.G. Holley to submit proposals. GEO Care was the only one to respond, and the state opted not to privatize.

GEO Care runs psychiatric hospitals under contract with the Florida Department of Children and Families, including a program for mentally ill jail inmates in Martin County. It’s a subsidiary of the security company GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut.

As recently as last year, Dominicis said, he talked with Brandenburg about possibly managing A.G. Holley.

“I’ve known Mary a long time,” Dominicis said. “I’m not sure who approached whom.”

Dominicis said he told the governor’s office in a brief conversation last month that he might be interested. But on Wednesday, Dominicis said: “We are not interested.”

He said that after learning details of a state Health Department consultant’s report from 2007 that criticized GEO Care’s first proposal to take over A.G. Holley. The consultant said GEO wasn’t qualified and might not offer any savings.

Dominicis agreed that tuberculosis treatment is a specialized field, but said the report’s findings on costs were “ludicrous.” He said GEO would have worked with the state and would have hired most of the experts working at A.G. Holley, as it has in other hospitals.

Brandenburg would like to see the state do an objective study of what system would best serve TB patients and the public: “It has almost seemed to me that there are a lot of different people going in different directions.”

A.G. Holley timeline

Proposals for treating the tuberculosis patients committed to A.G. Holley State Hospital have changed over the years:

December 2004: A state advisory council begins meeting to decide the future of the A.G. Holley campus in Lantana.

January 2006: Plans for a medical research center on the site, almost complete, include a new 50-bed hospital that the state Department of Health would run.

July 2006: Under Gov. Jeb Bush, the state Health Department asks companies to submit proposals to privatize the hospital. Only GEO Care responds.

2007: Health Department consultants recommend against privatization.

Spring 2008: An economic development adviser to Gov. Charlie Crist contacts executives at GEO Care and Denver-based National Jewish Medical and Research Center, asking whether they might be interested in managing the hospital. Separately, state Rep. Aaron Bean, chairman of the House Healthcare Council, calls for cutting the hospital’s $11 million budget in half, closing it and requiring the state to look for private bidders to take the patients.

April 27, 2008: House and Senate leaders agree on a budget that includes full funding and would keep the hospital open.

May 1, 2008: On the next-to-last day of the legislative session, Bean inserts an amendment to the budget that requires the state to seek private bidders to design, build and operate a new TB hospital. The location of the new hospital is not specified.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
May 8, 2008 Thursday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1,167 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

LANTANA - More people will become sick and die from tuberculosis if lawmakers close A.G. Holley State Hospital without an effective plan to treat difficult patients, county health department directors from around Florida warn.

Leaders of 49 of the 55 health departments that responded to a survey this month said they don’t think their communities can handle A.G. Holley’s approximately 50 patients. Most of those patients have been involuntarily committed to the state hospital in Lantana because they are contagious but refuse to take their medication. Tuberculosis is caused by bacteria and is spread through the air from one person to another when a person coughs or sneezes.

Dr. Kevin Sherin, who oversaw the online survey for the Florida Association of County Health Officers, said the hospitals in his area “would be hard pressed to know what to do” with homeless people and other difficult patients who have severely drug-resistant strains of the disease but refuse treatment.

Forms of tuberculosis that don’t respond well to medication “are something we don’t want to break out,” said Sherin, who also heads the Orange County Health Department. “It could kill lots of people.”

Many health directors said they rely on doctors at A.G. Holley for advice.

“Most of our docs here do not know how to treat a difficult case of TB properly, nor do they want to,” a representative of the St. Lucie County Health Department wrote.

“We have a long way to go before we can even pretend to be able to handle this on a local level,” a representative from Madison County wrote.

The association disclosed the responders’ affiliations but not their names.

The Florida House this month approved a state budget proposal that orders the closing of A.G. Holley, which opened in 1950 and is the last free-standing state tuberculosis hospital in the nation.

Alongside patients who have been committed for refusing treatment, the hospital also houses those who have difficult cases or complications such as AIDS. Some are in A.G. Holley voluntarily.

Tuberculosis can be fatal if untreated, but an aggressive public health campaign over several decades has made the disease rare in the United States. House leaders believe that A.G. Holley has outlived its usefulness and say the state can cut $5 million from the hospital’s $11 million budget by closing it and contracting with private hospitals.

“Other states get along very well without a TB hospital. I think we can, too,” said Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach, chairman of the House Health Care Council.

Bean said he was not moved by the survey results. “I’m still confident,” he said.

Gov. Charlie Crist has asked the state Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development to work with the legislature and the town of Lantana on possible redevelopment of the hospital property. Some private organizations have expressed interest in taking over the care A.G. Holley provides, said Rep. Mary Brandenburg, D-West Palm Beach.

“The Florida Legislature certainly is not going to eliminate funding for care of tuberculosis patients,” she said. “What the discussion has been is how best to provide that care and how best to protect the public health.”

When 49 states are “doing it differently,” Brandenburg said, “that tells me that they may know something that we don’t know.”

But employees of some local health departments say they worry about the care people would get at hospitals that aren’t set up for contagious patients who may have to be isolated for months.

A survey respondent from the Nassau County Health Department said the agency had one patient who was confined to one of Florida’s university hospitals. The patient was kept in “a small room at the end of a long hall” and had no social stimulation or chance for exercise, the representative wrote.

The care was not optimal, the respondent wrote, and the treatment was “inhumane.”

A representative of the Jackson County Health Department said the county sent a patient to A.G. Holley this year because it did not have a facility or a thoracic surgeon necessary to treat him.

“This 28-year-old would be dead today if not for the quick action and treatment he received” from A.G. Holley, the representative wrote.

The anonymous survey was sent to directors and administrators at every county health department in Florida. Some directors responded themselves and others passed the survey on to local experts, Sherin said.

Leaders of the state Department of Health have expressed similar misgivings, saying they doubt the patients could find adequate care elsewhere. Many of the patients have no insurance, they noted.

People who support closing the hospital keep saying they trust the state to come up with a plan, said Rep. Shelley Vana, D-Lantana.

“But if you trust the Department of Health, they are telling you they can’t do it,” Vana said. She plans to use the survey in the debate about the hospital’s future.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in the U.S., but the fatality rate fell to fewer than one in 100,000 cases by the mid-1990s, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The first tuberculosis sanitarium in the nation was established at Lake Saranac, N.Y., in 1885. By the 1950s, there were more than 800, with more than 70,000 beds. By the mid-1970s, the number of beds had dropped to fewer than 10,000.

Staff writers Dara Kam and Ron Hayes contributed to this story.

A.G. Holley survey responses

Employees of health departments from throughout Florida predict dire consequences if lawmakers close the state tuberculosis hospital in Lantana:

“Closure of A.G. Holley will result in more TB infections and deaths due to lack of specialized treatments.” - St. Johns County

“That means exposure, exposure,exposure … spread of disease … more cases … more manpowerand money to treat cases … back to square one!!!” - St. Lucie County

“Help,I am in shock.” - Jackson County

“This is our last resort to getting difficult clients treated to cure! The likely drug-resistant TB cases that will result from the inability to adequately treat non-adherent clients is frightening!” - Alachua County

“Don’t do it. This is a much-needed facility for essential services that can’t be provided elsewhere. No one could provide the comprehensive service and monitoring necessary for any amount of money, in the individual counties.” - Marion County

Source: Florida Association of County Health Officers

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
April 22, 2008 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1,077 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

When Isaiah White was 6, he was one of the youngest patients living at SandyPines psychiatric hospital in Tequesta.

There, the first-grader was forced into full body restraints and left in a place called the “quiet room.” When he misbehaved, workers injected him with Haldol, a powerful drug meant for adults with schizophrenia.

Now, at age 11, five years after the psychiatric treatment that his mother believes made his emotional problems worse, Isaiah is a regular kid who collects skateboards and hangs out with friends.

This year, he started smiling in family photos for the first time, Cheryll White said.

“He is starting to enjoy life,” she said. “He’s not the angry little guy who runs around with his arms folded.”

The family gained some relief this month when she agreed to settle a lawsuit about his treatment at SandyPines. She alleged in the suit that workers at the center for emotionally disturbed children forced Isaiah into isolation for excessive periods and once left him lying in his own vomit.

White’s attorney, Arthur Schofield, said Tuesday the amount of the settlement is confidential, but “it’s a good sum of money and I hope it helps Isaiah.”

The Palm Beach Post wrote about Isaiah’s treatment at SandyPines in 2003, quoting from hospital records that documented the Haldol injections and restraints. SandyPines Chief Executive Officer John Thompson declined to comment for that story and could not be reached Tuesday.

But in December 2005, when White filed suit, Thompson issueda statement saying, “We are looking forward to proving these spurious allegations completely false and unfounded and will defend our position to the fullest extent possible.”

In 2006, Health Management Associates Inc. of Naples sold the psychiatric hospital to a new corporate owner: Franklin, Tenn.-based SP Behavioral LLC, an affiliate of Psychiatric Solutions Inc.

Isaiah, who is now in sixth grade, was born with life-threatening breathing problems. As a baby, he was given a tracheostomy that left him unable to cry or speak until the breathing tube was removed. He returned to the hospital for multiple surgeries that must have terrified him, White said.

She believes the trauma he endured during that time led to his violent behavior. By the time Isaiah was in preschool, he was frustrated and defiant, attacking his teachers and family members. White became afraid that he would stab one of them with the scissors and knives he grabbed from drawers.

Overwhelmed, afraid he would hurt someone and unable to pay for a residential program such as SandyPines, White temporarily gave up custody of Isaiah to the state in 2002. The Department of Children and Families sent him to a therapeutic foster home and then to SandyPines.

White repeatedly voiced concerns about her son’s treatment at the center, which she believed compounded Isaiah’s trauma by reminding him of his frightening hospital stays as a young child. But the final decisions were no longer up to her because she had relinquished his custody to DCF so Medicaid could pay for his care.

Isaiah lived at SandyPines from September 2002 to March 2003, when he was transferred to a smaller psychiatric program in Broward County. There, White said, her son’s behavior began to improve.

White said Isaiah got even better after he came home. White moved the family to Georgia and focused on her parenting, learning to set boundaries and curbing her impulse to spoil Isaiah because of everything he had been through.

Isaiah is 5-feet-6 now, almost as tall as his mom. He still has medical problems, White said, but everything else seems different now. He hasn’t been restrained since the fourth grade. The school district officially has dropped the label “emotionally disturbed” from his file. He isn’t in therapy.

“I no longer fear Isaiah at all,” White said. “I feel I have total control.”

For years, Isaiah never smiled, not even for the camera, White said. This year, he looks happier in photos, she said.

A few years ago, she allowed him to read the story written about him in 2003 and asked him what he thought. His answer was simple:

“It reminds me of where I’ll never go again.”

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
April 16, 2008 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 693 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

When a single mother of six was killed in Belle Glade, it was up to Alan Abramowitz, then the second-in-command of the county’s Department of Children and Families, to help decide what would happen to the children.

As Robert Barker, then head of Palm Beach County’s foster care agency, Child and Family Connections, remembers it, the father of the four older siblings offered to take in all six, including the two who weren’t his.

A foster care supervisor who visited the father’s home thought he seemed earnest, but on short notice, no one could be sure that he was capable of parenting six kids.

If something went wrong, Abramowitz could have to face bosses, judges and possibly even the media, all demanding to know why he had taken a gamble on the man. But few would blame him, Barker said, if he sent the kids to a shelter.

The decision Abramowitz made on that day several years ago shows how he became one of the most influential proponents of a revolution in Florida’s foster care system.

The six children were sad, scared and alone. They should go to the one parent they had left, Abramowitz decided.

Since 2003, when Abramowitz accepted his first management job at the Department of Children and Families in Palm Beach County, he has become one the state’s most passionate salesmen for the idea that Florida needs to fix foster care by having a lot less of it.

That view, though still controversial, is gaining momentum. After DCF Secretary Bob Butterworth’s first year on the job, he said his conversations with young adults who were in foster care has convinced him that many of them would have been better off with their parents.

In 2007, the number of children removed from their birth parents after a report of neglect or abuse dropped significantly for the first time in a decade, from 21,000 a year to fewer than 18,000.

Though Abramowitz is far from the only state administrator intent on reversing the tide, he may be the most outspoken. And wherever he has gone, the number of children in state care has dropped.

He left Palm Beach County in 2004 to run the state agency’s operations in Flagler and Volusia, then moved to the region around Orlando. In 2007, Butterworth sent him back to Palm Beach County to deal with a crisis at the county’s foster care agency.

During the six months he spent here, about 400 kids, a quarter of Palm Beach County children in state care, were returned to their parents or found new homes with relatives and adoptive families. In January, Butterworth dispatched him to lead DCF in Miami-Dade County.

The dangers of leaving a child with ill-equipped, drug-addicted or potentially abusive parents are clear. But less publicized are the dangers of taking children into foster care, where there is also a risk they will have unstable and chaotic lives, being yanked from their neighborhoods, separated from siblings and repeatedly disappointed by caregivers who say they intend to keep them, then don’t.

Abramowitz said a recent MIT study confirms what he has long felt. It shows that children taken by workers who tend to remove more children than their colleagues have higher rates of pregnancy, arrest and unemployment.

“There are monsters,” Abramowitz says, “on both sides.”

‘JUST PROTECT THE CHILD’

Abramowitz, 46, grew up in a close-knit military family. His brother Sid Abramowitz played offensive tackle for four NFL teams in the 1980s. Another brother, Col. Dave Abramowitz, oversees Iraqi soldiers as chief of staff for the Iraq Assistance Group.

Alan Abramowitz served in the Army Reserves and National Guard, and still wakes up around 3 a.m. on weekdays. His resume matches his restless energy. He served the Peace Corps in Thailand from 1990 to 1992. After graduating from law school at Florida State University, he worked briefly as a prosecutor, then as a public defender in Central Florida.

In 2000, Abramowitz left his job as assistant general counsel for the Department of Juvenile Justice to take a position as an attorney for DCF. There, Abramowitz saw firsthand the dysfunctional cycle that had gripped the department for years.

High-profile murders of children triggered public outrage. Experienced investigators quit under the strain and withering criticism from the media.

Fearful of another death, workers took more children into foster care. Overwhelmed new hires had no time to discern which parents could be helped, and which were potentially dangerous. And more children were hurt.

In that climate, a siege mentality set in. DCF leaders routinely hid behind spokespeople, refused to turn over documents and hunted for scapegoats.

Abramowitz remembers one seminar for DCF workers. In order to protect yourself, the instructor told the workers, protect the child. That focus on self-preservation was dead wrong, Abramowitz said: “Just protect the child.”

LEAPED AT JOB IN 2003

In 2003, when Abramowitz was still an attorney for DCF, the state wanted new leaders in Palm Beach County.

Vern Melvin, the Treasure Coast DCF administrator who agreed to serve as interim leader in Palm Beach County, knew Abramowitz from their days working at the Department of Juvenile Justice. He asked whether he would be interested in the No. 2 position.

Melvin told him he would have to clear the move with his supervisors. The next morning, Melvin’s phone rang at about 5:30 a.m. It was Abramowitz, calling about the job. Melvin suggested he try back at a reasonable hour.

From the time Abramowitz got his formal offer and immediately accepted, he knew that, to change the agency, he needed to change the public perception of it.

In March 2003, a month after Melvin tapped Abramowitz, the pair took the unusual step of issuing a news release to announce embarrassing news. Crews were working on an old DCF office when they found missing child abuse files dating back to 1998 squirreled away above the ceiling tiles.

The cases were old, the worker was gone and the kids were safe, but still, they decided to preempt negative coverage by alerting local news organizations.

Abramowitz has called reporters to notify tell them about child deaths, allowed them to sit in on internal discussions about individual cases and asked the courts to release closed records. He has responded to public records requests within minutes.

His likability comes from the fact that he is the ultimate extrovert: completely unguarded and without reserve, said Children’s Services Council Executive Director Tana Ebbole. You can rely on Abramowitz to say what he thinks and do what he says, Ebbole and others say.

“What you see is what you get,” Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Ronald Alvarez said.

Abramowitz loves to work a room, usually cracking jokes at his own expense. When he walks intoa meeting, colleagues often jump up to hug him.

Many have pointed out that his boundless energy borders on hyperactivity. Abramowitz says he considered that possibility, and asked a doctor whether he might qualify.

The verdict was negative for attention deficit disorder, but he still wonders whether he might have obsessive compulsive disorder. Abramowitz doesn’t mean that in the sense of tics or hand-washing but rather, in going over and over a problem in his mind, until he can find a solution.

TOO FAR, FAST, SOME SAY

At DCF, much of his thinking has centered on one theme: What can be done to turn the tide of removals?

To help change the way his workers think, he encourages them to treat birth parents as allies instead of suspects and use mediations instead of court hearings in some cases. Decisions about whether to remove a child are made as a group, instead of by individual investigators.

Some in Palm Beach County, including some attorneys who represent foster children in court, have misgivings about Abramowitz’s fervor.

They believe he went too far, too fast here, leaving children in marginal homes before there was time to develop the intense supervision and rehabilitation programs that keep kids safe.

Answers about whether Abramowitz succeeded here may be in data that measure how many children were abused again by their caregivers within six months of the initial report. Those numbers are not yet in for Palm Beach County.

But with a leader such as Butterworth, and a federal policy approved in 2006 that allows Florida to spend money once earmarked for foster care on family preservation, Abramowitz believes there will be major change in the way the Florida treats children and families.

“There is no going back,” Abramowitz said.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
March 16, 2008 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 1C
LENGTH: 1,411 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

WEST PALM BEACH - When Charles Infantolino drew a losing hand in a game of seven-card stud Sunday, he won a record poker jackpot at the Palm Beach Kennel Club.

Infantolino’s losing hand of four queens won him $116,700 in an upside-down payout called the “bad beat.”

The jackpot is claimed when a player draws an almost unbeatable hand, then loses to an even better one.

Everyone at the table wins in a bad beat, but the runner-up is the luckiest. The “loser” wins half the jackpot, the “winner” takes a quarter and the other players divide the rest.

Nobody had been able to claim the bad beat jackpot at the kennel club in almost two months, and the jackpot swelled to $233,400.

Managers at the kennel club believe that is the highest ever in a poker room at Florida’s regulated dog and horse tracks.

Many players had been hoping to win for weeks. Infantolino, 64, said he knew they had the jackpot when a woman at his table, Tasha Johnson, laid out her hand — the ace, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of spades.

“I said to myself, ‘I got the four queens. She’s got the straight flush. We’ve got the bad beat.’”

All the players at the table yelled, then jumped out of their seats, card room manager Jonathon Miller said.

Security quickly surrounded the table, and more than 300 players in the room applauded.

Footage of the cards from overhead cameras confirmed the win, Miller said.

Johnson, 29, of Riviera Beach won $58,350. She has played poker for six years, she said, but had never won more than $500.

She called her mom, who was speechless.

She is thinking about putting a down payment on a house. But first, she said, “me and the girls are going to go out.”

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
February 25, 2008 Monday
MARTIN-ST. LUCIE EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 3B
LENGTH: 274 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Outgoing Juvenile Justice Secretary Walt McNeil said Thursday that he did not see any problem with allowing three employees of his state agency to work on a juvenile justice reform project in Texas - in partnership with a top executive for a large Florida contractor they were supposed to oversee.

The partnership came about after Richard Nedelkoff, who was then chief operating officer of one of Florida’s largest juvenile justice contractors, Eckerd Youth Alternatives Inc., was asked to take over reform efforts at the troubled Texas Youth Commission.

Nedelkoff, who makes $160,000 in Texas, reached out to Rex Uberman, assistant secretary for residential services at the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, and asked whether he could bring his expertise to Texas.

Uberman is responsible for distributing and overseeing $195 million in state contracts for programs that treat juvenile delinquents, including $19.2 million that goes to Eckerd each year.

Texas is not paying Uberman as a consultant, but is reimbursing his travel expenses, including airfare, hotel, rental car and food.

Uberman said Thursday that he knew Nedelkoff was still working for Eckerd Youth Alternatives when he agreed to help, and saw no problem with an unpaid arrangement. But he told Nedelkoff he preferred the request come from the state.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry obliged with a letter to McNeil, dated Jan. 16, that asked whether Texas could have Uberman’s help for 30 to 60 days, using about 25 percent of his time.

“Mr. Uberman comes highly recommended by Richard Nedelkoff, whom I recently appointed as conservator of TYC (Texas Youth Commission),” Perry wrote. “I believe that Mr. Uberman’s experience and expertise will prove helpful to the State of Texas particularly in the assessment of TYC facilities, operational reviews, policy development and strategic planning.”

FLORIDA REVISING ITS SYSTEM

McNeil, who is leaving the agency to take over the Department of Corrections, authorized the agreement. He said Thursday that he did not think there was a conflict of interest because Uberman and the two other officials were not working as paid consultants.

Nedelkoff left Eckerd Youth Alternatives through a mutual decision Thursday, to avoid “even the appearance of any impropriety,” Eckerd President and CEO David Dennis said.

Eckerd had agreed to allow Nedelkoff to work both jobs after he was chosen to lead the Texas agency in December, but decided that the “dual relationship is no longer one that he and I believe is tenable,” Dennis said.

“In trying to turn around the Texas Youth Commission, Richard has a strong need to bring in consultants from other states and state agencies, including the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice,” Dennis said.

Uberman, who makes a salary of $100,000 in Florida, said McNeil allowed him to spend two workdays in Texas this month. He also used five of his own weekend and holiday days on two separate trips, one over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.

Juvenile Justice also agreed to lend the time of Mary Mills, who oversees youth programs in North Florida, and John Criswell, who oversees quality assurance for the agency.

Those officials were scheduled to participate in a teleconference next week, Uberman said, but have not yet done any work, he said.

Florida’s juvenile justice system is in the midst of its own reform effort.

The Blueprint Commission report, released Tuesday, calls for sweeping changes in the way Florida treats delinquent youth, and key officials, including Uberman, are deciding which contractors’ programs will be expanded or reduced.

Eckerd Youth Alternatives, which was built decades ago by drugstore chain founder Jack Eckerd, has held its contracts for years but could, like any provider, lose money as the state shifts its priorities.

Catherine Craig-Myers, a Tallahassee lobbyist who represents many private juvenile justice contractors, but not Eckerd, as head of the Florida Juvenile Justice Association, said she was surprised that McNeil would agree to lend three officials to Texas at a time when Florida needs them to fix a “broken” system here. Often when she calls the agency with questions and suggestions, Craig-Myers said, workers say they are understaffed.

“If we really are understaffed and we really do have a workload issue, how can the department afford to loan three of their employees to the state of Texas?” she said.

TEXAS PLANS HEARINGS

Texas state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, who co-chairs a special legislative committee overseeing reforms at the TYC, said Thursday that he didn’t understand why Nedelkoff was bringing in people “who have business relationships with his private company,” and said he had “real concerns about the mixture of oversight and contracts.”

Whitmire said he would pursue the issue in hearings.

“I’m sure your elected officials would be just as interested as we are,” he said.

Roy Miller, who lobbies legislators for juvenile justice and other children’s issues as President of the Children’s Campaign Inc., said all state officials have to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

“I’m stunned that anyone would look at this and not see a conflict of interest,” he said.

“While their motivations may be sincere, the decision brings into question a wide range of relationships, and overall is poor judgment,” Miller said.

Uberman said he told Texas leaders that his time would be extremely limited once Florida’s legislative session begins this spring, and doesn’t anticipate spending more than two workdays a month in Texas.

He said the trips would be mutually beneficial to both states, allowing them to share ideas.

“Never in my wildest dreams two or three weeks ago, when the state of Texas asked me to help, would I think that anyone would have a concern,” Uberman said.

Capital Bureau reporter Dara Kam contributed to this story.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
February 8, 2008 Friday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 976 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

WEST PALM BEACH - More than one in 10 people who drank city water when it was contaminated with fecal bacteria said they got sick, according to a survey of residents released by the Palm Beach County Health Department on Wednesday.

The more unheated tap water that residents drank in September and October, the more likely they were to say they felt ill, surveyors found.

The health department targeted a random sample of 5,000 households out of 23,763 West Palm Beach residential water customers between Oct. 12 and Nov. 2. Most of the households chosen for the survey didn’t have a home phone number, failed to return messages or didn’t want to participate.

But of the 315 water customers who agreed to the interview, 38 people — or 12 percent — said they had symptoms such as diarrhea, stomach pain and nausea. Of those, six said they sought medical treatment.

The survey asked residents how much unheated tap water they drank in the weeks before and after Sept. 28, when the city discovered the bacteria and issued a boil-water notice affecting 120,000 people.

The contamination was probably caused by problems at the city water treatment plant sometime between Sept. 19 and Sept. 25. City officials discovered the contamination on Sept. 28, when test results came back positive from a sample taken two days before. Another test on Oct. 30 showed fecal coliform and E. coli bacteria in the water coming from the treatment plant.

Surveyors can’t say for sure that the contaminated water caused the illnesses, because they relied on people’s own reports, rather than medical tests. Salmonella, norovirus and a variety of other common germs cause the same symptoms as water-borne bacteria.

But in a normal month, the report said, only about 2 percent of the population has some kind of gastrointestinal problem. Twelve percent of the population reporting stomach sickness in one month is “very high,” health department Director Dr. Jean Malecki said. “That makes this important.”

With tests showing fecal bacteria in the water on Sept. 26 and Oct. 30, the plausibility of a cause-effect relationship is even higher, Malecki said.

In recent months, the city has cleaned its water with chlorine, a more powerful disinfectant, and brought in an independent contractor to make improvements to the water treatment system. The chlorine treatments are scheduled to end Feb. 14, at which point the city should have the best water quality in years, Mayor Lois Frankel said.

Though “we’ll never definitively know” what made people sick, Frankel said, “what is important is that something like this doesn’t ever happen again and that we don’t even have to speculate whether someone got sick or not.”

The sample size of 315 people is a limitation to the study, Malecki said, and it is possible that people with complaints were more likely to call back after receiving a message from the health department.

But a key finding, Malecki said, is a strong link between how much water people drank and whether they reported symptoms.

Those who reported having drinks with unheated tap water before the boil water order were eight times more likely to say they felt sick than those people who drank no tap water, the report said. And people who drank the most water were more likely to report symptoms than people who drank less.

Surveyors found that link to be statistically significant, meaning that there is less than a 5 percent possibility of the difference in reported illness rates being caused by random chance.

The survey asked people how much water they drank between Sept. 1 and the boil-water notice on Sept. 28.

It also asked how much they had to drink from the time of the boil-water notice until the date of the call from surveyors in October or November.

The results show that some of the people who got sick continued to drink unheated water, despite a warning from the city.

Frankel said the survey “confirmed to me the importance of having a good system to get the word out to people and the importance to everyone when they are told to boil water, to do that.”

City leaders have repeatedly stressed that despite the anecdotal survey, there are no confirmed cases of water-borne illnesses.

A total of 128 people called the health department themselves last fall to say they thought the water was making them sick. None of their stool samples tested positive for water-borne bacteria, Malecki said, but bacteria can clear the body quickly and wouldn’t necessarily show up in lab tests days later.

Of the 38 people who reported sickness in the random survey, most said they recovered on their own with five days. But the survey still sends a message about the importance of clean drinking water, Malecki said.

“People expect to have safe, potable water,” she said. “And if it is not, people get angry — not just sick.”

Frankel said city leaders have worked “24 hours a day” to improve the water system.

“We don’t want people to think they got sick from the water or may have gotten sick from the water,” Frankel said. “That just shouldn’t be.”

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
January 24, 2008 Thursday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 838 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

The closing of a Pahokee program for juvenile offenders is meant to help bring about a revolution in the way the state of Florida treats arrested teens.

No longer, Department of Juvenile Justice leaders say, will the state send teens to large correctional institutions like Sago Palm Academy, where they are locked in cells originally built for teens convicted as adults.

The last of more than 250 teens at the Pahokee center will likely be transferred out of the program in June, bringing an end to an era when the state put much of its money into expensive facilities ringed with razor wire.

Many in the state’s juvenile justice system, including the leader of the private company that ran the Pahokee program, say they welcome the philosophical change from big institutions to smaller community programs, where they can spend more time working with the teens’ parents. But they question whether state legislators have the political will — and the money — to invest in that those ideals.

“The intention is great,” said Palm Beach County Juvenile Court Judge Peter Blanc. “So many times juveniles get no family therapy or family counseling and go right back into the frying pan.” But locally, he said: “All I see is closings. I don’t see any openings.”

The Department of Juvenile Justice plans to keep 40 beds in Palm Beach County for juveniles sentenced by the courts but has not yet decided where they will be. And until that happens, local teens who are arrested could go even farther from home than Pahokee.

The legislature included a proviso in its recent special session that says the state can no longer maintain institutions with more than 165 teens. Some programs will likely scale back; others like Sago Palm, are scheduled to simply close.

“Back in the early ’90s, we built prisons for kids, we really did,” said Catherine Craig-Myers, who represents the private groups that run juvenile justice programs under state contract as executive director of the Florida Juvenile Justice Association.

Research shows that smaller programs are more effective at preventing kids from committing more crimes, she said. But they are also more expensive, because they don’t have the same economy of scale.

Florida’s juvenile justice programs have long been starved of money, she said, and if legislators cut the budget in the current economic downturn, Craig-Myers said, “none of these good things are going to happen.”

Sago Palm’s facility outside Pahokee was originally built as a program for teens who were sentenced to the adult prison system. But it opened instead as a program for kids charged as juveniles.

The first juvenile program there, called the Pahokee Youth Development Center, began in 1997 with 350 kids and quickly became a nationally-known example of what not to do.

State investigators uncovered chaos, abuse and fights. The for-profit contractor that ran the center, Correctional Services Corp., admitted it held teens beyond the time they were supposed to be released so they could bill the state for more money.

Another for-profit contractor, now called G4S Youth Services LLC, took over the program eight years ago and made dramatic improvements. For the last several years, Sago Palm consistently earned strong marks on state evaluations. A total of 106 students have graduated high school there since the 2004, school district officials said, and the GED passing rate is 90 percent.

Blanc said he didn’t know of any specific problems at the center under G4S, but never had a great deal of hope for the kids he sent to the facility.

“I kind of had a general feeling that if someone went out there, it wasn’t going to be a happy ending,” he said.

Juvenile Court Judge Ronald Alvarez, who was one of the first to uncover abuses at the center under the former contractor, said he saw improvement under the new management but is still “delighted” to see the end of an era. If you treat children like criminals, he said, that is how they will act.

“I’ve been looking forward to this moment since the day they announced they were going to start it,” he said.

Gail Browne, President and CEO of G4S Youth Services, said she is sad to see Sago Palm close, but understands the state’s intention.

“I think if a small program is adequately funded, it’s certainly easier to run, and I think you can probably develop better relations with the families if the families live nearby.”

But small programs that don’t have enough money can be even more dangerous than big ones, Browne said. A bad program with few kids can more easily fly under the state’s radar, she said, and there are fewer sets of eyes to discourage mistreatment of kids.

The facility was built as a hybrid between an adult prison and a juvenile program, she said, with both cells and classrooms, razor wire and extra space for recreation. The company used a lot of creativity to convert it into a juvenile program, she said, “but I don’t think it’s an ideal setting.”

Many in Pahokee hope that the building will not become an empty monument to a state’s changing priorities.

Browne said that about 85 percent of the program’s 183 full-time jobs came from Pahokee or other towns around Lake Okeechobee. Most make around $10 or $11 an hour to start, and the total payroll is $7.5 million. The Department of Corrections could take over, preserving jobs in an impoverished town, but no decisions have been made.

Larry Wright, a Pahokee resident who works at the local flower shop, served on the advisory board that brought the program more than a decade ago. A program for juvenile offenders was initially a hard sell to local residents, but after much work and salesmanship from the state, the town embraced the idea.

Today, he said, “we just like having them here. They are good neighbors.”

Wright, who has volunteered at the program, said many parents visited the facility, and were grateful it had given their boys a second chance to avoid adult prison. He questions why nobody in Pahokee was consulted by state legislators or the Department of Juvenile Justice before the decision, when it would cost so many local jobs.

“The governor should be the one to come to Pahokee and just spend a few hours with us and look at our community and understand what we are going through,” Wright said.

State Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, said he told Gov. Charlie Crist he feared the closing would create an additional hit to one of the poorest towns in the state.

“I was very concerned that we are going to close a facility has been working well, in a community that depends so much on the jobs it creates — if nothing replaces it,” Aronberg said.

Staff writer Laura Green contributed to this story.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
January 13, 2008 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 2C
LENGTH: 1,111 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

INDIANTOWN - Tired of facing tight state budgets for people with disabilities, one local nonprofit is trying an unconventional method of raising money: bibb and romaine lettuce.

Fred Eisinger, who heads Seagull Industries for the Disabled in Riviera Beach, has done all the usual money makers: thrift stores, golf tournaments, charity luncheons. But all of those together bring in about $50,000 a year, not enough to run his residential and work programs for adults with disabilities such as Down syndrome.

So Eisinger began eyeing Seagull Ranch, a 20-acre plot the charity owns in Indiantown. And he decided to start farming.

This month, Seagull delivered 250 heads of lettuce to its first client, The Breakers resort in Palm Beach. Seagull earns $2 a head, which it will use to pay for its programs.

The deal also benefits The Breakers, which is helping to lead a local movement to reduce greenhouse gases by buying food that does not have to be trucked long distances. The hotel’s goal is to serve fruits and vegetables on the same day they were picked.

“The Breakers strives to source the absolute finest quality ingredients from carefully sel