State Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, stood outside the Santa Rosa County Courthouse on Friday, Sept. 4, and connected two things that had, until that moment, lived in separate worlds:
- 30-month custody fight for a Santa Rosa County child named Kenley, and
- Scathing Fifth Judicial Circuit grand jury report on the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) that had been filed three days earlier, on Aug. 27, in Marion County. Read DCF grand-jury-report-82726
Gaetz was joined by Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Sunny Isles Beach, a former Miami-Dade homicide prosecutor who took on the Zuraff family’s case pro bono.
- What began as a statement on a single reunification hearing turned into an extended, at times raw, question-and-answer session with parents, grandparents, advocates and reporters who had their own DCF horror stories to tell.
Background: The Zuraff Case
Joy Zuraff is a single mother whose daughter, Kenley, was removed from her home in March 2024, when the child was five years old, touching off what Gaetz called a “30-month ordeal.”
- Hardship on Mother: Zuraff was reportedly required to drive six and a half hours each way for visitation after DCF placed Kenley far from home—a hardship Pizzo said the system had effectively “set up to fail,” given that Zuraff was also raising an older daughter and working as her family’s sole income.
At one point, Zuraff’s father, Leonard, was approved as a placement for Kenley, only to be removed as an option weeks later because, according to Pizzo, someone determined his “attitude and philosophy align with Joy’s.”
Legal Help: Pizzo, who is not from the area and had no prior connection to the case, took it on pro bono after Gaetz’s office brought it to his attention roughly seven months before the press conference; three other senators also intervened.
Status: Kenley was returned home on June 10, 2026. Because state law requires six months of continued court jurisdiction following a reunification, the case was not yet fully closed as of the Sept. 4 hearing—the “second to last” hearing, per Gaetz, with a final hearing expected around Dec. 10.
- Presiding Judge J. Scott Duncan also imposed a gag order on Zuraff, which several speakers at the press conference criticized as an improper restriction on her ability to tell her story, though Pizzo defended limited confidentiality in dependency cases generally.
What the Grand Jury Found
The Marion County grand jury, seated for DCF Circuit 5 (Marion, Citrus, Lake, Sumter and Hernando counties), spent seven months reviewing DCF’s abuse hotline, its child and adult protective investigations, and its oversight of contracted “lead agencies.” Its report opens with the case that framed the entire investigation:
“On the very day this Grand Jury was empaneled, we indicted a defendant for the first-degree felony murder of a child. We found that DCF investigated and visited this family 14 times prior to the murder.”
Among the report’s key findings:
- DCF adult protective investigators routinely fail to respond to calls after 5 p.m. or on weekends, often instructing first responders to transport vulnerable adults to an emergency room or Baker Act facility even when there is no acute medical emergency—shifting DCF’s placement burden onto hospitals. One vulnerable adult reportedly waited up to a year in a hospital bed for placement.
- In Marion County, local law enforcement, medical professionals and first responders created their own independent “Co-Responder Program” because DCF’s operational gaps left no other safety net for vulnerable adults.
- DCF investigators have been observed coaching patients through mental capacity evaluations to produce a finding of capacity—which legally ends DCF’s obligation—even when real capacity issues were apparent.
- The grand jury reviewed seven individual case files, including two vulnerable-adult deaths and four child deaths, in which caregivers with documented histories of abuse, neglect or drug use were repeatedly left with or reunited with victims. In one case, a mother with 18 prior DCF investigations dating to 2006 was allowed to regain custody of a child who later died of abusive head trauma; she was charged with first-degree murder.
- The jury identified twelve cases across the circuit in which DCF or case-management workers were accused by law enforcement of falsifying records—logging phone calls, home visits and family interviews that never happened. Eight of the twelve resulted in official misconduct charges from the State Attorney’s Office.
- DCF declined or ignored invitations to send six employees to testify and explain its processes to the grand jury.
The jury issued 34 recommendations, ranging from mandatory body cameras for home visits and abuse interviews, to disqualifying prospective adoptive parents with a history of DCF investigations, to a “top-down financial audit” of DCF Circuit 5, to revisiting the sovereign immunity currently afforded to DCF contractors.
Gaetz: “So Has the Florida Legislature—and So Have I”
Gaetz told the crowd that Kenley—the girl at the center of the Santa Rosa case—had been home with her mother since June, but that it took four senators, three lawyers and what he called “the indefatigable spirit of a single mother” to get her there. He argued the grand jury’s findings show that story is not unique.
- Gaetz said, “If DCF and some of its contractors have failed, so has the Florida legislature, and so have I,” he said, referencing prior grand jury reports on DCF from 2002, 2011 and 2014 that he said “rang loud alarms” that went unheeded.
Gaetz said he is working with Sen. Pizzo, Sen. Jennifer Bradley and Sen. Erin Grall to draft legislation for the 2027 session—one or more bills, he said, that will incorporate many of the grand jury’s 34 recommendations. He outlined 10 provisions likely to be included:
- DCF can contract out services but not accountability; contracts should be performance-based and overseen “tightly” by DCF, which itself should answer to the governor and legislature.
- A family’s rights should not depend on which county they live in or which contractor holds the local contract—standards should be uniform statewide.
- Legal consequences for agency staff or contractors who falsify records or give false testimony to the court.
- Stronger due-process protections for parents to present evidence and dispute agency findings without fear of retaliation.
- An end to unnecessary removals and placements hundreds of miles from a child’s home community.
- A requirement that DCF and its contractors employ qualified, licensed therapists and medical providers, with fines and contract cancellations for agencies that don’t verify credentials.
- A requirement that the DCF secretary—not “a low-level bureaucrat”—personally review and approve any decision to seek termination of parental rights, which Gaetz noted the judicial canon of ethics treats as second in severity only to the death penalty.
- A stronger role for judges as a check on DCF in dependency cases.
- Legislative follow-up on a forensic audit that found one lead agency had excessive executive compensation and improper procurement practices. (“This lead agency disputes these findings,” Gaetz said. “We intend to get to the bottom of it.”)
- Repeal of sovereign immunity for DCF contractors and providers, so there are “enforceable legal consequences” for misconduct, negligence or false information that harms children or families.
Pizzo: A System “Set Up to Fail”
Pizzo, a former Miami-Dade prosecutor who handled child homicide cases, said he came to Santa Rosa County at Gaetz’s request and left disturbed by what he found. “The system is an absolute mess,” he said, contrasting the transparency of criminal court with what he described as a child-welfare system built around “a cloaked kind of bubble of confidentiality where people exploited” the lack of scrutiny.
Pizzo credited DCF Children’s Legal Services director Gráinne O’Sullivan, dispatched from the governor’s office, with getting Kenley home, but said the case illustrates a broader statewide split: the Fifth Circuit grand jury found DCF not doing enough, while in the Panhandle, he said, many families believe the opposite—that DCF removes children too aggressively, on too little evidence, and sends them hours away from home.
“The entirety of testimony is usually hearsay. Without fact, there’s no confession, there’s no video. The quality of evidence is crap.”
He noted the six-month post-reunification court jurisdiction period set by statute—which he and Gaetz helped write—may itself need revisiting, since it kept Friday’s hearing from being the final one in the Zuraff case despite the family’s apparent readiness to move on.
Public Comment: A Recurring Pattern
Roughly a dozen parents, grandparents and advocates spoke or asked questions after the senators’ remarks, describing their own experiences with DCF and its contracted case-management agencies. Recurring themes included:
- Sovereign immunity—one attendee said an Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office representative told them DCF investigators and contractors were immune from criminal prosecution. Gaetz said that is incorrect: sovereign immunity bars civil claims, not criminal prosecution, and repealing it for contractors is part of the senators’ 10-point plan.
- Retaliation and long-term consequences for people with “verified” DCF findings against them, including a former DCF employee turned teacher who said a six-year-old finding has followed her career and cannot be expunged the way a criminal charge could.
- Removals based on hearsay, including from a newly hired child protective investigator—one mother said her five-year-old was removed by a CPI who had been on the job one month and had never met the family.
- Family placement barriers—Stephanie Bell of Safe Families for Florida argued relatives willing to take in children are too often turned away, worsening the foster-home shortage.
- A mother who said she was investigated by DCF for 60 days, and had her children questioned individually, after a hospital reported her for requesting IV pain medication during a postpartum hemorrhage she says she never asked for treatment beyond stopping the bleeding—she asked the senators to hold reporting medical providers accountable for false claims as well.
Asked what recourse exists for families right now, before any legislation passes, Gaetz was direct: he has no investigative or prosecutorial authority.
- “They did not hand me a badge,” he said, repeatedly directing people with evidence of criminal conduct to the State Attorney’s Office, the sheriff, or the Florida Attorney General, and telling others to pursue private counsel or legal aid while the legislature works on systemic fixes.
What’s Next
Gaetz said the legislation is still being drafted and could take the form of one comprehensive bill or several smaller ones; a decision hasn’t been made. He warned supporters not to expect quick results. “There will be considerable forces who will oppose any kind of change,” he said, “because there are people making a great deal of money off the system the way it works right now.” A similar DCF reform effort passed the House but died in the Senate last session, according to one advocate who spoke at the event.
- Both senators said they intend to hold public hearings once bills are filed and encouraged families—supportive or opposed—to testify.
- Those hearings may identify the DCF contractors and the roles that have played in the alleged abuses.