Remind the Foster Care System of Its Duties

We are not lawyers or social workers. We are actresses and mothers who care enough to speak out against the great injustices being inflicted on the more than 50,000 children living in the Los Angeles County foster care system.

These include children who are moved from home to home, sometimes having up to 15 placements, with social workers changing almost as often; children sent to foster homes that have been deemed dangerous by some agencies and not by others; children repeatedly immunized or unknowingly given different medications by different doctors.

L.A. County recently settled lawsuits for $4 million involving a foster child who was overmedicated with phenobarbital, Xanax, Prozac and three other psychotropic drugs. As a result, the child fell into a coma and suffered brain and liver damage.

Poor tracking of children and the inadequate sharing of information within the system has had devastating results. In one of the most tragic incidents, an 11-month-old, Danzel Bailey, starved to death while under the Department of Children and Family Services’ watch.

The Alliance for Children’s Rights, a nonprofit children’s advocacy group, recently won a court battle against the Department of Children and Family Services, forcing social workers to visit children on a monthly basis--something they were already mandated to do. If case workers want to skip a visit, they will have to convince a judge that their absence does not violate the best interests of the foster child. It has taken two years at an untold cost to taxpayers for this finding to be made.

During the trial, the alliance argued that the best interests of the child should always be paramount. The county argued, however, that its discretionary powers should be paramount and that to rely solely on the best interests of the child would “lead to absurd results.”

This leads us to ask two questions: First, if the Department of Children and Family Services is not serving the best interests of the child, whose interests is it serving? Second, why would a department whose sole purpose is to protect the safety and welfare of children take this position?

This lawsuit was a golden opportunity for Anita Bock, the director of the department, to demonstrate leadership and improve the services for children and families in her care. Instead, she chose to fight for the right for her department to visit or not visit children at its own discretion. It is obvious that she feels that her department does not need to be held accountable to anyone but itself.

She is wrong.

Even now, although the county has lost at the trial and appellate levels, it plans to keep fighting. Only two supervisors, Mike Antonovich and Zev Yaraslovsky, have consistently supported preserving the best interests of our children. Why are taxpayer dollars being used for high-priced lawyers to oppose the best interests of children?

The Los Angeles foster care system is the largest in the country, and the journey through it for many children is a treacherous one. We cannot fathom why the Department of Children and Family Services has been allowed to hold so tightly to a system that is irrefutably broken rather than spearheading changes that would serve the interests of the children they are supposed to protect.

Whatever motives are at play, ask in the strongest terms that the Board of Supervisors make the welfare of children as high a priority as it makes new roads. It is time for board members to demand that the department properly do its job and take responsibility for these children as the law demands. And to once and for all protect their fragile and promising lives.

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Rhea Perlman is an actress, mother of three and a longtime child advocate. Ally Walker is an actress, mother of two and also a child advocate. E-mail: rpawcan @aol.com.