Grand Jury Finds Foster Care System in Disarray

Los Angeles County’s foster care system is beset by so many problems that the agency in charge doesn’t know where all the children are on a given day, and all the computerized data tracking troubled foster homes have been lost because of inadequate backup procedures, according to a grand jury report.

Offering a scathing view of the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, the report by the 1999-2000 Los Angeles County Grand Jury also found that social workers’ high caseloads, poor training and organizational mismanagement have contributed to a “broken” system, “characterized by numerous problems and flaws” that could be endangering children’s health.

“Despite a widely stated child-first philosophy, decisions made throughout the system . . . appear to be motivated primarily by cost considerations and secondarily by shifting policies and politics,” states the 59-page report released June 23. “The best interests of the child are rarely paramount.”

The report, which focuses on the experiences of the approximately 7,100 children in private foster care agencies that contract with the county, comes on the heels of other studies in recent years, including one by the Board of Supervisors, that have severely criticized both the department and the county’s foster care system.

But its message, while not brand new, is nonetheless important because it will keep the issue alive in the public mind to compel change, child advocates say.

“People in Los Angeles should be very angry,” said Andrew Bridge, executive director of the Alliance for Children’s Rights. “We have a foster system in Los Angeles County that doesn’t protect children but re-abuses them.”

The report is comprehensive and well-written, said Rita Cregg, director of the Child Advocate’s Office of Los Angeles Superior Court.

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Although focusing on children placed with private care agencies--the majority of the county’s foster children--the panel’s findings also mirror the experiences of the 3,400 children in state foster homes, she said. “It should certainly be a call to action, and the community should demand that [the department] come up with a plan to better care for children in their care.”

Some problems with the county’s foster care system can be attributed to having too few social workers, as well as their poor training and high turnover rate, the report said.

Compared with New York City, whose social workers have an average of 12 cases each, the typical Los Angeles County social worker has 45 to 50 cases. With such a burden, county social workers spend about 30 minutes or less a month with each assigned child, according to the report.

County social workers sometimes fail to pass on critical information to foster families, such as a child’s medical history, because of a misunderstanding about confidentiality laws or failure to process required paperwork on time, the report found.

For example, children on certain prescription drugs, such as antidepressants, could be abruptly taken off their medication simply because they change homes. “Foster parents are not informed if children are (or potentially are) HIV positive, have hepatitis C, or other highly contagious diseases,” according to the report.

The Department of Children and Family Services also lacks a reliable system, computer or manual, to track the most basic information about children, such as up-to-date address lists of foster families.

“As a result, the department does not know in aggregate where all the children in its care are on any given day,” the report said.

The grand jury’s findings are based on interviews or surveys with social workers, department management, children’s advocates and foster parents. Additional information was collected through on-site visits to randomly selected agencies and homes.

The grand jury also reviewed internal documents and randomly selected investigation files. For comparative purposes, the grand jury gathered information on foster care systems in New York City; St. Louis, and Cook County, Ill.

Anita Bock, director of the child services department, said she had not seen the study, but added: “I am sure the grand jury report is consistent with what we already know.

“We take this information very seriously, and we will utilize it as we work to turn this agency around.”

Part of the report detailed the grand jury’s frustrations with the department while trying to gather data for the study. It found that some of the most basic information--such as the number of private agencies used by the county and the number of children in the system’s care--varied depending on where in the department it went for the information.

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When the grand jury, using addresses provided by the department, tried to invite 300 foster families to participate in a focus group, it found that 7% of of them either lived elsewhere, had been decertified or were no longer foster parents.

There was no reliable system for tracking problematic foster families, according to the report, revealing that the department’s unit in charge of investigating complaints in foster homes had lost “all historical data” because of a computer error.

While the grand jury report attributed the problem to a Y2K glitch, Bock said it was caused by “inadequate backup procedures” and was not Y2K-related. That unit now has to manually reenter all the lost data.

Among the study’s recommendations:

* The county should develop a child-centered approach to foster care with clearly defined ways to judge performance, based on the child’s well-being.

* There should also be better communication and cooperation between the department, the private agencies and foster families.

* There should be a reduction in the number of cases per social worker.

“They need to . . . revamp the whole foster care system,” said Lupe Ross, president of Foster Parents of Los Angeles County, an organization with more than 1,000 members. “These past 10 years have been a disaster.”

Asked Bridge, who also chaired the Board of Supervisors task force that produced an earlier report on the dismal state of county foster care: “Is it we’re incapable of caring for kids, or we just don’t care?”