Florida agency vows transparency in child death records

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Child-welfare officials said Monday that they are creating a new position within the agency in an effort to improve transparency when releasing child-abuse-death records.

The Department of Children and Families has been under intense scrutiny after a series by The Miami Herald highlighted the deaths of 477 children in the past five years. The newspaper accused the agency of recently shifting its internal policies regarding the sharing of information about child deaths in a way that left the records they released so heavily redacted they were nearly useless.