Carol Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch of the Miami Herald win the April Sidney Award for “Innocents Lost”, an investigative multi-media package profiling some 477 Florida children who died after the state’s child protection authorities investigated their families for abuse or neglect but failed to take them into care.

Marbin Miller and Burch collected the death reports on each child who died of confirmed abuse or neglect within five years of Florida’s Department of Children and Families finding maltreatment in the home during a prior investigation, from 2008 onwards. They found that deaths had skyrockedted since the state implemented slashed funding for child protection in the name of “family preservation.” The reporters also found that DCF was low-balling the number of child deaths with priors they reported to the state legislature by as many as 39 cases a year.  

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