Experts worry child deaths will lead to `panic'

By Troy Anderson/Contra Costa Times

Following a series of high-profile deaths of children in Los Angeles County, child welfare experts are warning that foster care agencies could overreact to the renewed scrutiny by tearing hundreds of children needlessly from their families.

Several experts said that when the agencies faced public criticism in the past they have at times acted too quickly to take children from their families and place them in foster care.

They warn this reaction will further overload the system, making it even harder for social workers to help children in real danger.

"Children's lives - literally - may depend on stopping such a foster care panic," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

In the past year, well-publicized deaths of a child by the hands of a parent or caregiver in Los Angeles have included Dae'von Bailey, 6; Jasmine Granados, 2; and Lars Sanchez, 4. Bailey and Sanchez's alleged mistreatment had been reported to DCFS before their deaths.

Bailey's stepfather, Marcas Fisher, allegedly beat him to death in late July in South Los Angeles.

County Supervisor Gloria Molina last month said the death of a child from starvation, the decapitation of another child and the beating death of another child convinced her that "something did not happen - something fell through the cracks."

But county officials disputed the idea of a "foster care panic," saying they have seen no evidence of it.

Department of Children and Family Services Director Trish Ploehn noted the number of detention petitions filed in Juvenile Court has dropped from 941 in May to 896 in July. That's down from 972 in May to 934 in July of last year.

"Why is (a foster care panic) not happening in Los Angeles?" Ploehn asked. "The answer is our county's child welfare system, which has been significantly reformed over the past several years, is built on the belief that child safety is paramount and that children should only be removed from their families when necessary due to their safety."

But Wexler said social workers - fearful they could be disciplined or fired for leaving or returning a child to a parent who later kills them - know they will not face repercussions for needlessly removing children from their families and placing them in foster homes.

"After seeing scores of their colleagues transferred to desk jobs, seeing one county supervisor falsely blaming fatalities on efforts to keep families together, and seeing another declare that heads will roll, every caseworker is running scared."

Kenneth Krekorian, executive director of Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers, said he's noticed an uptick in the number of detention petitions filed in Juvenile Court to separate children from their families since the child deaths received widespread publicity.

"I don't know whether we have enough information yet to see if the increase is due to the deaths of these children," Krekorian said. "But I would agree with (Wexler). I've been doing this for many years and it does seem when there is something in the newspaper about a death of a child, or a notorious case, that there is an increase in filings afterwards."

County officials said eight social workers are currently assigned to desk duty as investigators probe the deaths and any mistakes made in the cases of the children who died over the past year.

Studies show a third of children are abused in foster care and when they leave the system many wind up homeless, on welfare, incarcerated or dead. A recent county grand jury report noted nearly 70 percent of people in California prisons and jails are "products of the foster care system."

The concerns about a foster care panic come as DCFS has made what its former director, David Sanders, called "revolutionary" reforms, reducing the number of children in foster homes on any given day from 30,000 in 2003 to 15,553 last month.

The Board of Supervisors has kept vacant for nearly three years the position of an independent entity charged with investigating child deaths and recommending what actions should be taken to prevent future tragedies.

Despite the drop in the number of children living in foster homes, Wexler said DCFS takes children away from homes at a much higher rate than most other large metropolitan areas. After falling for several years, the number of children entering the county's child protective system rose 24 percent from 8,299 in 2003 to 10,903 in 2007 before dropping to 10,083 last year, according to the Center for Social Services Research at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Board of Supervisors has expressed concerns that DCFS has become too focused on reducing the number of children in foster care. Since the recession began, concerns have mounted that the downturn could result in increased stress in families and more violence in the home.

Although Molina and Yaroslavsky did not return calls for comment, Karen Strickland, executive director of Find The Children, a Los Angeles-based missing children's organization, said she shares their concerns and has seen numerous cases where social workers have left children in the care of parents who are potentially dangerous to their children.

"I'm concerned about the assessment skills of these workers and the supervision these workers are getting," Strickland said.

Despite the recent tragedies, Ploehn noted the number of deaths of children from abuse and neglect "known to the system" has dropped from a high of 20 in 1999 to a record low of 11 in 2006. The number increased to 12 in 2007 and 14 last year.

Ploehn said more than 50,000 children were living in foster homes in 1999, the same year the county experienced the highest number of deaths due to abuse and neglect of children known to DCFS.

As DCFS has provided more services to help families stay intact, Ploehn said "children are indeed safer, not only from harm and possible death, but also safer from the negative effects of being separated from their family."

To prevent a "foster-care panic" in which social service agencies needlessly remove children from homes, foster care expert Richard Wexler offers a few recommendations to the Board of Supervisors:

Expand investigation of high- profile death cases to include equal attention to wrongful removal cases.

Seek changes in state law to provide for "total transparency," including opening court hearings in child welfare cases, and most case records, to the public and media.

Establish clear public benchmarks for progress, post the data prominently on the DCFS Web site and commit to measuring DCFS by those outcomes, "not by whatever happens to be on the front page that morning."

Suspend the use of "structured decision-making" in which computers decide when to remove children based on questionnaires filled out by social workers.

"They need to make clear to front-line caseworkers that wrongfully removing a child from a safe home is every bit as dangerous as leaving a child in a dangerous home," said Wexler.