Tucson firm gets DCF child welfare oversight contract

The regional Department of Children and Families is giving a 5-year child welfare oversight contract valued at that amount to Camelot Community Care, a not-for-profit managed by Providence Service Corp., a Tucson-based company listed on the NASDAQ.

Camelot will have total oversight over all child welfare cases in a five-county area -- Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry and Glades -- as well as control over the pursestrings of state money that most local organizations need to provide services to troubled children and families. As one of its first major decisions, Camelot has picked three groups as case-management organizations for the five counties, an important designation that gives them near-complete responsibility for directing children to the right groups and programs.

Two of those organizations -- The Ruth Cooper Center and Lutheran Services -- are non-profits with a long history of providing care in the area. But the third selection is drawing criticism from local child welfare advocates.

Family Preservation Services, though it has been active elsewhere, has a small presence in Southwest Florida. And it is a for-profit company owned by Providence Service Corp., the same company that has many connections with Camelot.

In essence, a not-for-profit that is assuming governmental powers is planning to give a large amount of money and authority to a corporate sibling with little experience in the area, bypassing several more-established local groups.

Camelot officials said they selected Family Preservation Services based on the company's merits and that they weren't influenced by Providence's financial considerations.

Harry Propper, the new CEO of Camelot Community Care, said that while Providence did handle many of Camelot's management functions such as human resources, much of its accounting and some analysis, it didn't direct Camelot's selection process.

But interviews with Camelot and Providence executives and local child welfare advocates suggest that the two organizations are interconnected on many levels -- and that Providence executives have a good deal of say in the decisions Camelot makes.

William Boyd Dover, president of Providence Service Corp., is chairman of Camelot's five-member board of directors. Martin Favis, a development officer for Providence, is another member of Camelot's board.

Providence's financial performance is also dependent on how much money the not-for-profit Camelot generates. Under a 10-year deal signed in July 2003, Providence will get 10 percent of Camelot's contract amount in return for managing the not-for profit, according to the company's chairman and CEO.

And in a corporate press release, Providence said that it had "designed the system that Camelot will put in place on behalf of the Florida Department of Children and Families."

Providence and Camelot executives said in interviews that it had been a collaborative effort.

"The parties that evaluated the candidates who wanted to be case-management organizations had some objectivity and ranked them and published those rankings," said Fletcher McCusker, chairman and CEO of Providence Service Corp. "It just turned out that our subsidiary was ranked third."

According to federal records, McCusker served as chairman of Camelot Community Care in 2001 and 2002.

Local child welfare advocates, including some who weren't chosen as case-management organizations, said that the selection of Family Preservation Services goes against a tenet of Bush's plan for social services: Community-based organizations should build alliances with each other so they can make decisions about care to reflect local needs and concerns.

"Privatization works best when they develop a huge network of local providers," said David Schimmel, the head of the Naples-based David Lawrence Center, which provides a range of child welfare and mental health services. "Camelot is looking to keep as much of it as possible and use as little of it on other community providers."

Case-management organizations work as supervisors that direct children and families through the social service process. They have a great deal of power and responsibility over those who enter the system -- mostly children from homes where there has been abuse or neglect -- since they are often their only guides through issues like adoption, foster home placement and, in some cases, reuniting families. Most case managers now are DCF employees.

Camelot officials said that about $6 million in annual funding would be split evenly among the three groups that it had selected as case management organizations for the area. The Ruth Cooper Center will handle cases in Charlotte and northern Lee County; Lutheran Services will take over the rest of Lee County and Family Preservation Services will manage Collier, Hendry and Glades counties.

About $16 million more annually will go to other programs and functions at Camelot's discretion.

Even those critical of Camelot's plans said they respected The Ruth Cooper Center and Lutheran Services as groups that understand the community and needs of its children. But they questioned the sudden infusion of money to Family Preservation Services.

Last year, Family Preservation Services received $26,406 from DCF -- all for mental health services, according to DCF records. It received no contracts to handle child welfare cases in Southwest Florida. In that same year, the local DCF parceled out $5.2 million in child welfare contracts to other organizations. Camelot now controls those funds.

Mike Murphy, the district administrator for DCF in Southwest Florida, said that Family Preservation Services had a "minimal" presence in the area, though it had done more in other parts of the state.

"Subcontracting with corporate partners is pretty common," he said of Camelot's decision.

Camelot was the only bidder to take over the local DCF's child welfare program.

But local advocates said they supported Camelot's application to run child welfare in the area because they believed that subcontracting to corporate cousins was exactly what Camelot told them it wouldn't do. In meetings, they said, Camelot promised that it would let local groups handle the caseload while it provided some administrative functions.

Those meetings helped lead to the creation of The Children's Network of Southwest Florida, an umbrella program of Camelot that oversees community-based care in the area. But local advocates say that the results don't match the initial talks and assurances.

"The model was Camelot as an administrator rather than a provider," said Kevin Lewis, executive director of Southwest Florida Addiction Services. "What they appear to put forward as far as their plans appears to have a different flavor."

He said that he worried about the emergence of two social service networks -- a Camelot and a non-Camelot group -- that would compete for the same amount of money and thus serve fewer people in the area.

Before it became intertwined with Providence Service Corp., Camelot Community Care was part of a similar symbiotic relationship with another for-profit named Camelot Care Centers that managed many of the not-for-profit's operations. Providence purchased the for-profit company in March 2002. In July 2003, it began its 10-year arrangement with the not-for-profit Camelot, according to McCusker.

Local advocates said Camelot changed its management approach a few months after its relationship with Providence began. Camelot began pressing to include Family Preservation Services in its plan, local advocates said.

Camelot officials said that they evaluated all the programs and picked the ones they felt were the best. The three organizations are still negotiating before they sign contracts. Camelot will not take over all of the child welfare functions in the area until 2005; it must still clear some regulatory hurdles.

"We wanted to make sure there was experience with child welfare services and performance with family contracts," said Debbie Webb, communications director for The Children's Network of Southwest Florida.

"It's still very early," said Jill Turner, the head of the Children's Advocacy Center of Southwest Florida.

She said she hasn't dealt much with Camelot yet and hopes it would do a good job.

"I desperately want this to work," she said.

So do Providence executives. The company has about 12,800 clients in 17 states, but officials say they expect a lot of growth to take place as Florida renovates the way it handles child and family services by funneling money and programs to private companies and groups.

Family Preservation Services recently won two contracts worth a total $6.5 million to handle child welfare for counties in the central and eastern parts of the state. But Southwest Florida is the only region where Providence is slated to both manage DCF functions and provide everyday care.

"Florida is very important to us," McCusker said. "Most for-profit companies go for a large margin . . .To us, it's more a question of the kind of work we're involved in."