Upon acceptance of a referral from the Department of Children and Families or law enforcement, the child protection teams may provide one or more of the following services:
- Medical diagnosis and evaluation
- Nursing assessment
- Child and family assessments
- Multidisciplinary staffings
- Specialized and forensic interviews
- Expert court testimony
Additionally, child protection team staff provide:
- Training for child protection investigators and other community providers of child welfare services.
- Training for emergency room staff and other medical providers in the community.
The Child Protection Team does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, or disability.
Eligibility
The existence of suspicion of child abuse or neglect that has been reported to the Florida Abuse Hotline and accepted for investigation provides automatic eligibility for CPT assessment activities. There are no financial criteria for team services.
Mandatory Referral Criteria
Child abuse, abandonment, and neglect reports that must be referred by child protective investigators to child protection teams include cases involving:
- Injuries to the head, bruises to the neck or head, burns, or fractures in a child of any age
- Bruises anywhere on a child five years of age or younger
- Any report alleging sexual abuse of a child
- Any sexually transmitted disease in a prepubescent child
- Reported malnutrition or failure of a child to thrive
- Reported medical neglect of a child
- Symptoms of serious emotional problems in a child when emotional or other abuse, abandonment, or neglect is suspected
- A sibling or other child remaining in a home where one or more children have been pronounced dead on arrival or have been injured and later died as a result of suspected abuse, abandonment, or neglect