Panel Seeks Review of Children’s Case Files

An independent review board should be created to monitor the handling of child-welfare cases in Los Angeles County, says an advisory panel reviewing the case of a 10-year-old actress killed in West Hills last summer by her father.

The Commission for Children’s Services sent a three-page letter Oct. 24 to the County Board of Supervisors outlining its recommendations. The panel is expected to discuss the ideas Monday.

The commission recommended that the independent review board have authority to inspect confidential case files, sometimes at random.

The 14-member commission, appointed by the supervisors, does not have such authority and had to obtain a court order to inspect Department of Children’s Services files in the Judith Barsi case.

But the commission did not disclose further details about the handling of the Barsi case because of state confidentiality laws.

‘Outside of the System’

“We need somebody outside of the system looking at how it is treating children,” Commissioner Nancy M. Daly said.

The bodies of Judith; her mother, Maria Benko Barsi, and her father, Jozsef Barsi, were discovered July 27 in the family’s West Hills home. Authorities determined that Jozsef Barsi shot his daughter and wife, set the house afire and shot himself.

The Department of Children’s Services has acknowledged that it was told in May about threats that Jozsef Barsi made to his family. But the department dropped its inquiry in June after Maria Barsi assured a caseworker that she was moving into an apartment.

Strong Criticism

Commission members said in September that the department dropped the inquiry prematurely. The advisory body’s Oct. 24 recommendations to the supervisors contained stronger criticism: “. . . this tragic case may be an example of the type of situation which could possibly be avoided if appropriate administrative and case-handling techniques were employed, as well as bringing caseloads within acceptable levels.”

The caseworker handling the Barsi inquiry had been assigned 67 cases, 27 more than a full caseload.

In the letter to the supervisors last month, the panel repeated its concerns about “insufficient staffing and overburdened caseloads” and urged county officials to seek funds to implement the recommendations.

Children’s Services Director Robert L. Chaffee on Friday again defended his agency’s handling of the Barsi case and said caseloads had nothing to do with the tragedy.

“You had a man who was bound and determined to kill his family, and that’s what he did,” Chaffee said. “Unless you had a police officer on the premises with the mother 24 hours a day, it would have happened. . . . I don’t see how this agency could have stopped it.”

Judith Barsi was not interviewed by the county caseworker because the girl’s mother advised against it, Chaffee said. In the letter, the commission recommended interviewing--in private--children “as age permits.”

Chaffee said that he agrees with some of the recommendations and that his agency has already begun training its workers to become more sensitive to the impact of domestic violence on children.

But the suggested independent review body appears to be impractical in view of state law governing the confidentiality of child-welfare cases, he said.

“I really don’t know what private review of specific information would gain,” Chaffee said. “You’ve already got safeguards since the court reviews all material relevant to a minor.”

The commission also recommended establishing guidelines and policies for questions such as home visits, domestic violence cases, when a case should be closed, when it should be reopened and how risks to children should be assessed when a case is first reported.