Brent Kallestad
Associated Press
July 22, 2009

Although there were a record number of adoptions in Florida last year, there are still problems.

Gov. Charlie Crist met with a handful of adoptive parents Wednesday at the governor’s mansion where a Wakulla County couple outlined their concerns about the number of children in foster care who are overmedicated.

Mirko and Regina Ceska from Crawfordville praised the governor for his enthusiastic backing of giving more children homes but asked for his help in keeping them safe in the foster care process.

“The foster people that are taking care of these kids, many of them that we have seen don’t want these kids to have too much to do,” Mirko Ceska said. “So they really put them asleep. They really do.”

Regina Ceska, a nurse, said the 12-year-old twin girls they adopted a year ago were on 11 separate medications, some she considered highly unsafe. She said one of the pills prescribed by a psychiatrist for the girls was a psychotropic drug called Seroquel, which is used for the treatment of schizophrenia.

“When we saw them the first time and they were on all those medications,” she said. “Their behavior was absolutely terrible and you could almost not control them.”

Read entire article: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/AP/story/1152626.html