Legislature passes DCF bill to prevent child separations based on false abuse accusations

Parents of children with rare disorders that cause injuries resembling physical abuse will have added safeguards against government-imposed separations under a bill the Legislature just enacted.

Two days after the House unanimously passed the measure (HB 47), Senators voted 34-0 to make it law. The bill will next go to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who can sign it, allow it to become law without his signature or veto it.

It’s unlikely he’ll do the latter.

HB 47 revises Florida’s protective investigation procedures when a child has certain preexisting medical diagnoses, including Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, rickets, osteogenesis imperfecta and vitamin D deficiency.

It allows the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to delay immediately referring certain criminal allegations to law enforcement if a parent reports one of those diagnoses or requests a qualifying medical exam, but requires referral after the investigation if criminal conduct is still alleged.

The bill requires child protection teams to consult with qualified physicians or advanced practice registered nurses and mandates that DCF request relevant medical records in such cases.

It also gives parents the right to seek a second medical opinion within a set time frame, requires written reports of those exams, mandates case staffings when medical opinions differ, and requires health care providers to furnish requested records to DCF within 14 days.

Broward County Democratic Sen. Barbara Sharief, a Doctor of Nursing Practice who first introduced the legislation as her first-ever bill last year — it passed in the Senate — described the legislation as a “labor of love,” but one she initially had difficulty approaching.

When she started her medical career decades ago, she said, her work involved assessing families to make sure children could safely return home. After she won election to Senate District 35 in 2024, a parent approached her about the problem. She at first said no, “because I did not feel at that time that I wanted to go back into working with cases of child abuse.”

But she read the case file and medical records, which revealed a “glaringly obvious” pattern that made clear the child in question hadn’t been abused.

“This was probably something else,” she said. “Those are the things that scream to us, when we look at these cases and we see them. And I believe this bill will do something and fix something in our system that is broken and not right.”

Sharief originally titled the legislation “Patterson’s Law” after parents Michael and Tasha Patterson, who lost custody of their 8-week-old twin sons in 2022 due to previously undiagnosed Ehlers-Danlos, which causes fragile bones and easy bruising.

Years later, the couple are still fighting in court to get their boys back.

“This year will make it four years of litigation to bring our children home. We are yet in another appeal,” Tasha Patterson said in January, calling the current system “broken,” as it “chooses to defend (DCF’s) mistakes instead of (correcting) them.”

She detailed how DCF did not consider input from 12 experts on medically complex children and has continued to ignore evidence of non-abuse, including how her boys sustained additional injuries even after the state stepped in and while neither parent was with them.

“My hope is that the system can learn to prioritize accountability, transparency and fairness when new information emerges,” she said.

During the Committee process this year and last year, several others shared similar stories.

Diana Sullivan spoke of how DCF took her newborn daughter and other children from her and her husband after the girl began exhibiting symptoms of Ehlers-Danlos and osteogenesis imperfecta.

Maddeningly, she continued, the initial DCF report included rare health maladies as a possible cause for the infant’s injuries, but the state still chose to take the children rather than investigate those possibilities.

“We’re not asking for special treatment,” she said. “We’re asking for humanity, a system … that protects children without destroying the families who love them.”

Christie Lee, who worked in foster care in Hillsborough County, said in her nearly two decades on the job, the cases HB 47 concerns represent “the most egregious abuses of power” she had seen.

“Right now in Florida, a single medical opinion can set off a chain of events that permanently shatters an innocent family,” she said. “We can’t continue to accept a process where parents are presumed guilty, families are torn apart, and no meaningful check on power exists. A second medical opinion is not an obstacle to a child’s safety. It’s the bare minimum of fairness.”

Kim Young, a foster parent for almost 10 years who said she has cared for more than 100 children, said some of the kids in her care were clearly abused. But she called cases of misdiagnoses “not rare at all.”

“We’ve not been believing parents, and we’ve not been giving them the opportunity for a second opinion,” she said. “They don’t have a fighting chance.”

Sarah Mischler shared how her oldest child was removed from her custody at just 7 months old based on a misdiagnosis from a Jacksonville doctor working 170 miles from where she lives, who never physically examined the boy. She said she and her partner were accused of shaken baby syndrome based on an old bleed caused by a vacuum-assisted birth, and they fought for 11 months to keep their son, spending more than $100,000 in the process.

“What ultimately saved our family was the ability to obtain a second medical opinion,” she said. “And with that opinion, DCF completely dropped its (termination of parental rights case) against us, and our son was returned home.”

Sharief said Thursday that 118 people in Florida who claim to have had their children improperly removed due to incorrect suspicion of child abuse had expressed written support for her legislation. They sent a signed letter to all Senate members, she said.

Others backing the bill, she continued, include the Florida Nurses Association, Office of Criminal Conflict and Civil Regional Counsel, Disability Rights of Florida, the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Florida Justice Association and other medical, legal and child advocacy organizations.

“These are legitimate medical conditions that in some cases can present symptoms that resemble physical abuse,” Sharief said. “This bill ensures that if a parent informs the Department that a child has one of these diagnoses or requests an examination, that information is appropriately evaluated as part of the investigation.”

Miami Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia commended Sharief for her efforts.

Weston Democratic Rep. Robin Bartleman carried HB 47 in the House.

“Under current procedures, when a child is found with unexplained injuries, they do not have the right to get a second opinion,” she said ahead of the legislation’s passage in the lower chamber Tuesday.

“Parents deserve that right.”