A longtime Central Florida child-protection administrator has been tapped to back up the region’s newly named social-service chief from Oklahoma, officials said this week.
Late last year, Department of Children & Families Secretary Jerry Regier picked David Dennis to take over for long-time regional DCF chief Bob Morin. Morin’s top lieutenant, Susan Becker also was let go.
Phil Penley, a DCF veteran of more than 30 years, will take over Becker’s slot.
Morin and Becker were part of one of the largest one-day leadership sweeps in recent DCF history when Regier removed eight high-placed chiefs across the state and in Tallahassee in December.
Dennis, Morin’s replacement, worked with Regier in Oklahoma, where the two were in charge of that state’s juvenile-justice programs in the late 1990s.
