The proposal also gives the governor only about $21 million of the $39 million he had asked for to expand child protection services.
The agreement may be only preliminary, said Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, who said budget negotiators may find additional funds for child welfare programs as they work to finish their $75 billion budget this week.
“It isn’t the final final until it’s on the floor,’’ he said, adding that as the House and Senate continue to work on a bill to overhaul the child welfare laws there may be additional funds.
The Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously passed a rewrite of the Senate’s proposal (SB 1666) to bring more accountability to the agency and more professionalism to the way child abuse investigations are handled. A similar bill passed its last committee in the House on Monday.
The budget agreement, reached by House and Senate Health and Human Services Appropriations Committees, allocates $13 million to hire 191 additional child protective investigators, who respond to child abuse complaints received by the state’s hotline.
Increasing the number of investigators, or “boots on the ground,” is the top priority of Gov. Rick Scott.
The funding is also a shift from where the House and Senate started and a reflection of the pleas by child advocates to shift more money into services that could make the most difference in changing family behavior.
Child advocates also asked for $25.4 million to allow the privately run local agencies that manage the cases of at-risk kids to hire more case workers as additional children are brought into the system by the new child protection investigations teams.
Edited
See:
Mary Ellen Klas @MaryEllenKlas>
News > Legislature 
Former Walter Reed pediatrician, now 83, charged with child sex offenses. Edited
