Florida Child Welfare Trainer

The Training Consortium at the University of South Florida, promotes the health and overall quality of life for children and their families by generating and providing state-of-the-art knowledge to professional child welfare workers to support effective practices and methods for keeping children safe and secure in child welfare systems. They offer many resources and opportunities for leadership growth and professional development. Along with traditional training, they also offer team-building seminars and workshops to help enhance organizational performance and customer satisfaction.

Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis is a certified Florida Child Welfare Trainer. Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis completed the training, at the Child Welfare Training Consortium to learn the latest thoughts and methods on child welfare. The training offers rigorous courses aimed at managing the ins and outs of the Florida child welfare system. Deborah says that this training was integral to her rise to the position of Child Protection Investigators Supervisor. She can implement some of the changes she learned about at the Training Consortium and instituted some of the new philosophies amongst her subordinates. They are all focused on getting all of the information involved in every situation. Their assessments must be completed with all pertinent information on a child abuse or neglect case. O’Flaherty-Lewis demands from her workers that they bring her information not only on what exactly happened in each case, but also why it happened. O’Flaherty-Lewis believes that with this information, she can help many families and children in her community.   Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis works for Broward County in the Sheriff’s office managing many Child Protection Investigators all doing good work in the community.

Tips on How to Report Child Abuse

It is required by Florida Law to report any suspicion of child abuse to the Florida Abuse Hotline. If a person knows or has reason to suspect a child is being abused, abandoned, or neglected by a parent, legal custodian, caregiver, or another person responsible for the child’s welfare or that a child is in need of supervision and care and has no parent, legal custodian, or responsible adult relative available to provide care to report their knowledge or suspicion as soon as possible.

When the Florida Abuse Hotline has been alerted of possible child abuse, it is then handed over to the proper County office for further investigation. Within Broward County, there is a specialized unit within the County Sheriff’s office. This unit is Child Protection Investigations Unit. Specially trained investigators, known as child protective investigators, focus on child safety issues while law enforcement personnel handle any potential criminal investigations.

Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis, a Child Protective Supervisor, within the Broward County Sheriff’s office has helped to develop the organizational goals and strategies for Broward County Child Protective Services. Her experience is working with at-risk kids in some of the worst situations in Broward County has formed relationships with various community resources and committees all dedicated to helping children have better family lives. She knows how to navigate the various levels of county and state oversight, dealing with the Juvenile Justice Department, Child Protective Services, and foster care agencies. Her intimate knowledge of the system and some of the families of the community allows her to find the best solutions for every case she sees.

 

Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis: Meticulousness Counts

Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis is known as a meticulous record keeper. Her tenure as the Child Protection Investigators Supervisor for the Broward County Sheriff’s Office is marked by her ability to keep excellent records of all child abuse or neglect cases under her jurisdiction. Some child welfare workers may scoff at the notion of record keeping, countering that an importance on field work is more worthwhile, but O’Flaherty knows that full assessments getting to the root of problems in the home can make all the difference in a child’s life.

Since Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis rose to supervisor, she has made it a priority that all of her investigators create meticulous assessments looking into the underlying problems of a child abuse or neglect case. O’Flaherty-Lewis says that she needs to understand each child’s personal situation in addition to how the family around the child works. This information is crucial to her recommendations and the reports she presents to her contacts within the Juvenile Justice Department, the Department of Probation, Family Court, the Children’s Aid Society, and the Department of Education. Her years as an investigator have given her many contacts within the system that she can use on her clients’ behalf. She considers her network part of her job to nurture and develop for the sake of the children she is attempting to save every day.

As Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis knows from her years as an investigator handling some of the most difficult cases of neglect and abuse, well-kept files can mean the difference between case workers getting all the information they need and children falling through the cracks. She considers meticulous files on all of her cases the basis for all of her work.

Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis: DCF Transformation Project

In May of 2013, the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) kicked off the Transformation Project. The Transformation Project, championed by DCF Executive Director Alan Abramowitz, was implemented to cut the waste from the child welfare program. Child Protection Investigators Supervisor for Broward County, in southern Florida, Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis, says that resources are being wasted on high rates of re-abuse in some cases, repeat investigations, and excessive staff turnover. Abramowitz and O’Flaherty-Lewis believe that a focus on robust engagement with families will help the state reduce these unnecessary costs and allow more families to get the help they need.

At the core of this relatively new focus are better abuse and neglect assessment practices. As a supervisor of child protection investigators, Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis says that comprehensive assessments of every situation are crucial in helping families and children in even the most difficult situations. By gathering more complete information on not only what happened, but why it happened in every case, investigators give their superiors more options when deciding how to handle cases.

Too often in the years before this new focus was proclaimed there were misinformed case workers coming to hasty conclusions based on incomplete information. The resulting decisions resulted in sometimes devastating consequences and wasted effort. Abramowitz’s emphasis on better assessments led to reduced instances of re-abuse and revisited investigations. Instead of getting caught up in wasted effort and redo work, case workers and other child welfare professionals needed to focus on getting the job done right the first time.

Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis – Child Protective Investigator Supervisor

Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis is a well-known Child Protective Investigator Supervisor within the child welfare community in the Broward County’s Sheriff’s office. She serves as the liaison between law enforcement agencies, Child Protective Services, the Juvenile Justice Service, and foster care agencies to determine the best course of action in some of the county’s most difficult cases. In all cases of child abuse and neglect, the details are heartbreaking, sometimes horrific. O’Flaherty-Lewis says that to survive the day-to-day stress and heartache, one has to operate with an open heart and an open mind.

Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis says that it is easy to become discouraged even after one day on the job working within the child welfare community, but the great case workers who stay and try to help as many children as they can, have to truly believe in their work. This belief makes it easier to withstand setbacks and roadblocks. O’Flaherty-Lewis herself has encountered many difficult situations over her years working in Child Protective Services. She wouldn’t have risen to a supervisor position if she let those profoundly discouraging moments wear down her motivation.

Deborah O’Flaherty-Lewis says that the most rewarding part of her job is watching a family learn how to become functional and realize that they need to make changes in the way they operate as a family unit. She is encouraged by the fact that in most child welfare cases, the love is there, but parents don’t always have the tools and advantages that other parents take for granted when raising their children. She loves to provide these families with the resources they need to take better care of their kids.