County Foster Care System ‘Broken,’ Grand Jury Reports

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

Offering a scathing view of the county Department of Children and Family Services, the report by the 1999-2000 grand jury also found that poor training, mismanagement and social workers’ large caseloads have contributed to creating 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 last week. “The best interests of the child are rarely paramount.”

The report, which focuses on the experiences of the approximately 7,100 children served by 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 the children’s department and the county’s foster care system.

But the latest message, while not new, is nonetheless important to keep the issue alive in the public’s mind and 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 the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Although focusing on children placed with private agencies--the majority of the county’s foster children--the 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 children’s department] come up with a plan to better care for children in their care.”

Some problems in the foster care system can be attributed to having too few social workers, their poor training and high turnover rate, the grand jury report said.

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

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

For example, children on certain prescription drugs 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,” the report says.

The children’s department also lacks a reliable system, computerized or manual, to track the most basic information about youngsters, such as up-to-date lists of foster families’ addresses.

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

The findings are based in part on interviews and surveys of social workers, children’s department management, children’s advocates and foster parents. Additional information was collected through visits to randomly selected agencies and homes.

Anita Bock, the director of the children’s 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,” Bock said.

Part of the report detailed the grand jury’s frustrations with the department while the panel tried 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.

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

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