Tallahassee, Florida — Florida’s Department of Children and Families had already done the work of deciding which child-welfare agencies needed a closer financial review. Its risk assessment identified six for on-site monitoring. When state auditors asked what happened during fiscal year 2024–25, the answer was zero visits. The department also completed no desk-based financial reviews under the grant that year.
The finding appears on pages 69–71 of the Florida Auditor General’s March 2026 statewide audit, Finding 2025-034. It matters because these agencies carry out public responsibilities that directly affect families. Florida contracts with them to manage cases for children placed outside their homes, provide services intended to prevent removals, and administer foster care maintenance payments.
What the $41.2 million figure measures
Florida spent approximately $87.7 million in federal Social Services Block Grant funds during the audited year. About $42.2 million involved awards passed on to other organizations. Of that amount, approximately $41.2 million related to 18 lead-agency subawards. The 18 refers to awards; the six refers to agencies selected for financial monitoring.
The $41.2 million establishes the scale of the work entrusted to lead agencies. The auditors identified an oversight failure. They did not identify $41.2 million in missing money or attribute that amount to the six flagged agencies. What Florida lost that year was an opportunity to examine spending, check compliance and correct problems while the contracts were operating.
Florida missed two different kinds of oversight
A financial review asks whether an agency can support its spending with records and whether the spending fits the award. A program review asks whether the agency met its obligations in delivering the service. Florida assigned those responsibilities to separate offices. Both matter to a family counting on a contractor to arrange services before a child has to leave home.
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On the financial side, DCF assessed risk, identified the six agencies and then completed neither on-site nor desk reviews. On the program side, it did not assess each agency’s risk to decide what to examine, and auditors reported that it performed no programmatic monitoring under these subawards during the fiscal year. The finding is specific to this grant. It does not describe every contact between DCF and a contractor.
The state had received a warning a year earlier
The prior statewide audit, Finding 2024-048, identified a meaningful difference. In fiscal year 2023–24, Florida had performed financial monitoring, but it had not used individual risk assessments to guide program monitoring across the lead agencies. A year later, the program-monitoring issue recurred, and auditors also found the gap in financial reviews. They classified the later finding as a material weakness.
DCF acknowledged the finding. Management told auditors it was reassessing its financial monitoring process and allocating staff to strengthen oversight. It reported developing a standardized assessment tool and beginning risk assessments and monitoring. Those actions address how Florida selects future reviews. The question left by the audit is when each of the six agencies actually received the review the earlier assessment called for.
The records that would show whether Florida followed through
DCF’s corrective action plan for Finding 2025-034 lists December 31, 2026, as its anticipated completion date. For each flagged agency, the useful records would be the original risk assessment, the date of the eventual visit, the monitor’s findings, any corrective action the agency owed and the record showing who checked its completion. A scheduled visit answers only the first part of that inquiry.
FAN has reported on a separate Florida grand jury that examined what happened after repeated contacts with a family. That proceeding concerned casework. This audit concerns the state’s supervision of its contractors. A useful comparison comes from Texas, where officials terminated a foster-care contractor’s agreement after a separate audit. The question for Florida is what consequence followed its own warning and what documents a family or legislator can inspect to verify it.
Why federal auditors are looking at Florida and Kansas
The HHS Office of Inspector General announced a federal review of foster care case-management contractors on July 30, 2026. It identifies Florida and Kansas as the two states that privatized virtually all child-welfare services and says it will examine how they monitored providers’ compliance with contracts. As of November 9, that project remains active. Florida’s six missed reviews are a finding of the state Auditor General.
In the companion investigation, Kansas auditors traced contractor oversight all the way to a child’s monthly visit. Florida’s audit leaves an equally concrete test: can the department produce six completed reviews and show what it did with the results?
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