“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children,” declared Dietrich Bonhoffer, an influential German Lutheran theologian hanged by the Nazis in 1945.

Words full of wisdom. If we agree with him, then the level of morality in South Florida is sadly lacking.

Two days ago marked the one-year anniversary when Nubia Barahona’s decomposed corpse was found stuffed in a garbage bag, doused in abrasive chemicals on the flatbed of her adoptive father’s truck. The 10-year-old girl and her twin brother, Víctor, were tortured so brutally that it is nauseating to hear the horrific details as they were released publicly last week.

The Florida Department of Children and Families ignored multiple red flags of the abuse, which led a panel of experts who studied her death to describe the agency’s woeful performance as “fatal ineptitude.” In the wake of the tragedy, DCF secretary David Wilkins announced that his agency was moving forward with a long-term reform to significantly improve Florida’s child -welfare system.

Pure demagoguery!

Just last month, police officers found a 9-year-old boy naked and squalid, meandering through North Miami Beach. He was so emaciated that his bones protruded from his skin, and he had a black eye.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman compared him to a concentration camp survivor: “He looks like he just came out of Auschwitz.”

DCF knew about the child since 2002, when state investigators removed the boy and his siblings after complaints of physical abuse by their parents, Marsee Strong and Edward Bailey. And what a great job DCF is doing: Two years later the parents were reunited with them.

As in the case of Nubia, DCF investigators, caseworkers, doctors, therapists and educators were in close contact with the undernourished child. It’s inconceivable that they did not notice his haggard state or the visible marks of abuse by his parents. Officials allege that his weight loss occurred within one month. It is impossible for a child to become so skeletal in such a short period of time. Once again our officials were blind.

Who are these investigators who fail to notice a skin-and-bones kid or a girl losing her hair and stealing food? Are they trained in child development? What about the doctors, therapists and teachers in contact with the abused minors? Our tax dollars pay you to ask the hard questions, probe, push, demand answers from abusive parents and guardians and notice — especially notice — when a child is losing her hair or looks like rag doll with a black eye.

DCF’s performance appears particularly negligent in Miami-Dade, a county where the high poverty rate triggers child abuse cases — though this scourge is not foreign to other socio-economic strata. Supervisors and managers do not know how to connect the dots. They need to be working with front-line employees. In some cases, it seems there is no sense of urgency in their work. If an investigator finishes his shift, the case must immediately be transferred to someone else.

For example, Andrea Fleary, an investigator assigned to the Barahona case, wrote in a safety evaluation that the twins were “safe” following a visit to their home in which she never saw them. Days before Nubia’s death, she put on hold her investigation on a Friday at 9 p.m. alleging that investigations are halted on weekends. DCF officials denied her assertion.

One of the solutions to the agency’s woes would be to replace DCF investigators with police officers trained specifically in child abuse and domestic violence. Cops are not likely to accept a story that doesn’t make sense. This measure would be much more expensive and would draw opponents. Yet, how much is the life of a child worth? Another option would be to require that DCF investigators be trained by law enforcement.

Of course, the more effective solution is educating parents and implementing preventive measures. Specialized programs like Healthy Families do precisely that and our Florida legislators aim to put them on the chopping block, as well as services for teenagers leaving foster care.

Again, Florida seems to be woefully inept at protecting its most vulnerable citizens.

Mahatma Gandhi once declared: “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children.”