A panel of child-welfare experts, including two top administrators from the state Department of Children & Families, examined the death of a 7-year-old Broward foster child who was on psychotropic medications -- without the required consent -- when he hanged himself in a Margate home.

The panel's report, expected to be released publicly later this month, says child welfare authorities too often rely on the potent medications to manage abused and neglected children -- but fail to offer psychiatric treatment to help them overcome the trauma they suffered.

``Psychotherapeutic medications are often being used to help parents, teachers and other child workers quiet and manage, rather than treat, children,'' the report says. It adds: ``We have not clearly articulated the standard of psychiatric care expected for children in state foster care.''

After The Miami Herald reported that Gabriel had been given several psychiatric drugs linked by federal regulators to potentially dangerous side effects, including suicide, DCF Secretary George Sheldon appointed a work group to study the care given to the boy, as well as the agency's overall reliance on mind-altering drugs.

``There was a lot of evidence presented to the work group -- from kids and from folks in the system -- raising a lot of concern over the purpose of these drugs,'' Sheldon said.

Sheldon cautioned that the draft of the report is not final and ``is subject to a lot of change'' after work group members review and tweak it.

The use of psychiatric drugs among children in state care is widespread.

Among the report's other findings:

• Psychiatrists and pediatricians ``often lack [a] medical history'' for the foster children they treat, ``yet still prescribe medications.''

• Mental healthcare for foster children is ``fragmented,'' poorly funded and often does not include caregivers, who receive little to no training. Disabled children in state care often are excluded from mental healthcare because Medicaid will not pay for therapies specially geared to children with intellectual impairments.

• The state has failed to implement recommendations from prior task forces that studied the deaths of foster children or the use of psychiatric drugs. Indeed, DCF has failed to even assign ``responsibility'' or ``accountability'' for implementing such reports.

``Let's just hope they don't put this on a shelf and ignore it like all the other reports,'' Moore said.

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