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The following are selected quotes from many articles that I have collected. They are written by two of my favorite staff writers of newspapers. Staff Writer Troy Anderson Troy Anderson 1-Decision Crucial to Foster Care -October 24, 2004 Nev Moore 22-The more families in DSS..more $$$ for everyone- January 2002 *23-How did Nev Moore end up in DSS- January 2002 Article 1- Decision Crucial to Foster Care Sunday, October 24, 2004 - Archive of Article 1 Decision crucial to foster care Sunday, October 24, 2004 - Los Angeles County has $250 million riding on an upcoming federal decision on whether it can use a portion of its foster care money to help keep the youngsters with their families instead. Article 2 - Reuniting families turning into success for county June 19, 2004 - Archive of Article 2 Reuniting families turning into success story for county For Gino Lee, failing grades were one of the symptoms of his unhappiness while living in foster homes for most of his 10 years. Since Sanders started, the number of children living in Los Angeles County foster homes has fallen from 30,658 to 27,806, a nearly 10 percent drop. The $1.4 billion DCFS budget pays to support a total of about 75,000 children in the system and adoptive homes. His father fought unsuccessfully for years to get his son back and formed the Southern California Family Group Decision-Making Institute to help other parents get their children out of foster care. Article 3 - Study finds foster-care finance key in abuses May 17, 2004 - Archive of Article 3 Study finds foster-care finance key in abuses The nation's troubled foster-care programs could be improved by reforming how child-welfare systems are financed and how they are overseen by the courts, a study released today says. Article 4- Parents of foster boys file lawsuit over deaths Monday, April 26, 2004 - Archive of Article 4 Parents of foster boys file lawsuit over deaths Two young brothers who died last July inside a hot Cadillac Escalade owned by their foster mother should not have been in the foster care system, according to a wrongful-death suit made public Monday by the boys' parents. Article 5 - Foster system probe sought by legislators. Friday, March 05,2004 - Archive of Article 5 Foster system probe sought by legislators State lawmakers asked Los Angeles County on Friday to begin investigating its foster care program, but said they may order a state probe of the system later this month. Article 6 - Foster care shake-up weighed February 16, 2004 Archive of Article 6 Foster care shake-up weighed
Pate said. "It's contrary to common sense that children are removed from their parents for little or no reason 80 percent of the time and placed in a system where they are more likely to be abused, all to service this sacred cash cow foster care system.' "Nobody is in charge here,' Mayer said. "That's been the consistent theme of our analysis. Article 7- Foster-kid cash lure may fade February 16, 2004 Archive of Article 7 Foster-kid cash lure may fade Monday, February 16, 2004 - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for an overhaul of California's foster-care system to end financial incentives that critics say encourage county officials and their contractors to make money off children in their care. Article 8- Panel of foster schools? January 26, 2004 - Archive of Article 8 Panel on foster schools? Concerned about the education that Los Angeles County's foster children receive at nonpublic schools, the Board of Supervisors today will consider forming a special panel to help improve student achievement. Article 9- Public hearings sought on foster care system January 13, 2004 - http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/news/archive/troy_anderson/public_hearings_sought_on_foster.htm Public hearings sought on foster care system State Assemblyman Mervyn M. Dymally, D-Compton, on Tuesday called for three public hearings in March to address findings that county governments and their private contractors profit off the plight of foster children. In a series of recent Daily News reports, officials acknowledged the existence of financial incentives for children to be placed in, and remain in, the foster care system. "(Dymally) wants to make sure the children first and foremost are getting the attention they are entitled to in a healthy and humane environment," said Kenneth Orduna, the lawmaker's chief of staff. "He also wants to ensure that tax dollars the state puts into the program are spent appropriately. "We've read these stories where children are being abused and people are getting the state and federal dollars. The children are not getting the care that is intended for them." Also on Tuesday, representatives of the national American Family Rights Association spoke before the Assembly Health Committee and gave lawmakers a report, calling on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to order a statewide investigation and audit of the child protective and juvenile court systems. "We're getting a very favorable response," said Dennis Hinger, executive vice president of the association. "A legislative aide to Schwarzenegger said he was extremely concerned (and) had been totally unaware of the problems going on with child protective services and promised to look into it and get results." The reports in the Daily News disclosed estimates that up to half of the 75,000 children in the Los Angeles County child protective system and adoptive homes were needlessly placed in a system that is often more dangerous than their own homes. State and federal laws have created incentives for placing children in the foster care system since the county receives $30,000 to $150,000 annually in state and federal funds for each child placed in the system, according to officials. "We want nationwide case reviews and 50-80 percent of the children returned to their homes who were taken by child protective service agencies for the federal funds," Hinger said. "These agencies have received federal reimbursement due to putting these children into foster care and adoptive homes. We want the redirection of federal funding to provide services to maintain the children inside the home whenever possible." Troy Anderson, (213) 974-8985 troy.anderson@dailynews.com Article 10 - Report: L.A. foster care system one of most dangerous in nation December 27, 2003 Archive of Article 10
LOS ANGELES - The county's foster care system is one of the most dangerous in the nation with foster children being up to 10 times more likely to die from abuse or neglect than elsewhere in the country, according to a newspaper investigation. Article 11- Children committing suicide at younger age Saturday, December 27, 2003 - http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/news/archive/troy_anderson/children_committing_suicide.htm Saturday, December 27, 2003 - 7:18:34 PM PST An analysis of 2,148 child deaths in Los Angeles County from 1991 to 2001 revealed that the number of homicides has dropped to historic lows, but the age of children committing suicide has also dropped to an all-time low of 9 years old. Of the deaths referred to the county's child death review team by the coroner from 1991-2001, a total of 497 children were killed by parents, relatives and foster parents in the county, including 158, or 32 percent, that the child protective system had open or closed cases on. In that time period, 324 children died from undetermined causes, including 63 with open or closed cases with the county Department of Children and Family Services. Officials suspect that many of these cases were homicides. The analysis of child deaths was performed for the Daily News by the county's Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect in El Monte. The deaths included homicides at the hands of parents or caregivers, drownings and suicides for children 17 and under and accidents and undetermined deaths for children 14 and under. DCFS officials said many of the children who died came into the system with very serious health problems that led to their deaths, including severe asthma, mental retardation and physical deformities, AIDS and cerebral palsy. About 1,500 children die each year in the county, mostly involving the deaths of premature babies. Of those, the coroner investigates the deaths of about 800 children a year. ICAN reviews 350 to 400 of those deaths and performs a comprehensive review on about 100 of them. ICAN executive director Deanne Tilton Durfee said the large number of deaths in the county is a very sad and tragic reality. "The only good news is that homicides by parents and caretakers is the lowest it's been since we started collecting data," she said. The number of homicides in 2000 and 2001 -- 35 each year -- was the lowest since ICAN began tracking the deaths in 1989. In 1991, the number of homicides hit a high of 61. In 2001, a record of five foster children were homicide victims. From 1991-2001, 280 children in the county committed suicide, including 68 whose families had open or closed cases with the DCFS. In 2001, there was a substantial increase in the number of suicides committed by those under age 13, including five victims under 13. One, 9-year-old Kerry Brooks, hanged himself with a shoelace from the closet door at his Compton foster home, becoming the youngest child suicide in county history. From 1991-2001, 1,047 children died in the county from accidental deaths. Of these, 215 had open or closed cases with the DCFS. For the third year in a row, the leading cause was auto-pedestrian accidents in 2001, including children backed over in driveways, hit by vehicles while walking, riding bicycles or riding scooters. Nationally, between 1,100 and 2,000 children die each year as a result of child abuse and neglect. Of the 1,236 deaths in 2000, 85 percent of the children were under age 6. In most cases, children die at the hands of their parents, according to a report by the New York City-based Children's Rights. In 1.2 percent of cases, the perpetrator was a foster parent, in 4.1 percent a day care provider and in 3.5 percent a relative. In 9 percent of the 1,225 deaths in 2001, the children's families had received family preservation services in the five-year period prior to the child's death. Less than 1 percent of the child fatality victims had been returned from foster care to their families prior to their deaths. Article 12- Foster care in crisis Saturday, December 27, 2003 - http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/news/archive/troy_anderson/foster_care_in_crisis.htm Foster care in crisis Los Angeles County's child protective system is one of the most violent and dangerous in the nation, and its foster children are up to 10 times more likely to die from abuse or neglect than elsewhere in the country, a two-year investigation by the Daily News has found. In 2001 in the United States, 1.5 percent of the 1,225 children who died from abuse and neglect were in foster care, but in the county 14.3 percent of the 35 children who died of mistreatment that year were in foster care, government statistics show. The percentage in the county from 1991 to 2001 averaged 4.23 percent. The taxpayer-funded county and state systems are so overwhelmed with false allegations -- four out of every five mistreatment reports are ruled unfounded or inconclusive -- and filled with so many children who shouldn't even be in the system, experts say, that social workers are failing in their basic mission to protect youngsters. Nationally, two out of three reports of mistreatment are false. Since 1991, the county Coroner's Office has referred more than 2,300 child deaths to the county's child death review team -- and more than 660 of those dead children were involved in the child protective system, including nearly 160 who were homicide victims. In many of these deaths, county Children's Services Inspector General Michael Watrobski made recommendations to the Department of Children and Family Services to conduct in-house investigations to determine if disciplinary action was warranted against those workers involved in the cases. Of 191 child deaths Watrobski investigated since 2001, he made a total of 63 recommendations to address systemic problems to improve the way the system works in an effort to reduce the number of child deaths. Despite spending more than $36 million on foster care lawsuit settlements, judgments and legal expenses since 1990, DCFS disciplined less than a third of the social workers responsible for the lawsuits, most of which involved families who alleged social workers' negligence contributed to the deaths and mistreatment of their children in foster care. "That's pathetic," county Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said. "When you have a department that is responsible for the health and safety of children there is no excuse to have a dismal record of accountability like this." Meanwhile, in the various facilities that make up the county's foster care system, between 6 percent and 28 percent of the children are abused or neglected -- figures comparable to the rate in New Jersey, which many experts have long called the state with the most dangerous child welfare system in the nation. In the general population, only 1 percent of children suffer such mistreatment. "When I stepped into this job, I said that too many kids are hurt in foster care," said DCFS Director David Sanders, who started in March after the forced resignations of the previous four directors. "That is absolutely glaring and the fact this department has never been willing to say that is a huge problem. "It is clear when you compare us to other systems, we have more kids being hurt in our care than in other systems. That is absolutely inexcusable. I can't say that more strongly. If is a reflection of a system that isn't working." Despite the staggering number of child deaths and mistreatment of thousands of children, Sanders said the department's efforts have saved the lives of hundreds of children over the years. He also noted that the vast majority of foster parents don't mistreat children. And child advocates say for the first time in the county's history the DCFS director is taking unprecedented steps to reduce the number of deaths and percentage of foster children who are mistreated. "In the past, the system has failed to protect children in its care," said Andrew Bridge, managing director of child welfare reform programs at the private Broad Foundation. "The new leadership at the department has been left with that legacy and is taking aggressive steps to fix it and protect children." DCFS statistics show the percentage of foster children abused and neglected averages about 6 percent, but in the foster homes supervised by private foster family agencies, an average of 10 percent of children are mistreated. However, the rates range up to 28 percent in some homes, Sanders said. Statewide, the rate averages close to 1 percent. In New Jersey, the foster care mistreatment rate ranges from 7 percent to 28 percent in different parts of the state, said Marcia Lowry, executive director of the New York City-based Children's Rights advocacy organization. Of 20 states surveyed in 1999, the percentage of children mistreated by foster parents averaged a half percent. The rate of abuse ranged from one-tenth of a percent in Arizona, Delaware and Wyoming to 1.6 percent in Illinois to 2.3 percent in Rhode Island, according to federal statistics. Susan Lambiase, associate director of Children's Rights, was surprised to learn of the percentage in Los Angeles County, calling it "absolutely horrendous." "(Los Angeles County is) a child welfare system in crisis because the children are getting pulled from their homes to keep them safe and the system cannot assure that they are being kept safe," said Lambiase, whose organization has filed about 10 class-action lawsuits to place state child welfare systems under federal consent decrees and is considering what action it might take in Los Angeles County. "It's unacceptable," she said. "This is a malfunctioning foster care system given that its role in society is to protect children from abuse and neglect." Critics say social workers are so busy filling out paperwork and investigating false reports that they are overlooking the warning signs of many children in the community in real danger and are not able to properly ensure the safety of children in foster care. "When you overload your system with children who don't need to be in foster care, workers have less time to find the children in real danger," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va. The Daily News investigation found that up to half of the 75,000 children in the system and adoptive homes were needlessly placed in a system that is often more dangerous than their own homes because of financial incentives in state and federal laws. These laws, according to state documents, encourage counties and their private contractors to earn money by placing and keeping children in foster care. The county receives $30,000 to $150,000 in state and federal revenues annually for each child placed. Some examples of settled cases involving the deaths of foster children include: Long Beach resident Jacquelyn Bishop, whose twins were taken away because she hadn't gotten her son an immunization. Kameron Demery, 2, was later beaten to death by his foster mother. The foster mother was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to prison. In 2000, the county settled a wrongful death case with Bishop for $200,000. Gardena resident Debra Reid was awarded a $1 million settlement last year for the death of her 9-year-old son Jonathan Reid, who had been in foster homes in El Monte and Pomona. He died of an asthma attack in 1997 after social workers didn't notify the foster mother of his severe asthma and diabetes conditions -- a tragic irony, because the boy was placed in foster care after county social workers alleged Reid was neglecting her son by not providing appropriate medical care for his diabetes and asthma. Reid's other son, 10-year-old Debvin Mitchell, who received $100,000 as part of the settlement after he was wrongfully detained, said his foster parents were "brutal" to him during his one-and-a-half years in multiple foster homes. "I thought that it was cruel and unusual for being beaten like that for no reason," said Mitchell. "When I came home, I had bruises everywhere. I feel good to be back with my family where I don't get beaten for silly things for no reason and most of all I'm glad to be back with my mom." Anthony Cavuoti, who has worked as a DCFS social worker for 14 years, said the department does a poor job of protecting children. "The nominal goal is to protect children, but the real goal is to make money," he said. "A caseworker used to have 80 to 100 cases. Now we have 30, but we have to file five times as much paperwork. If the workers put kids before paperwork and administration, they are going to be forced out or harassed. With such a mentality, children are always in danger." In a historic step to address the problem at the root of the system's failures, Juvenile Court Presiding Judge Michael Nash recently called for a historic reevaluation of half of the 30,000 cases of children in foster homes to determine who could be safely returned to their families or relatives. If properly done by providing the services families need, experts say this step combined with the DCFS request for a federal waiver to use $250 million of its $1.4 billion budget on services to help keep families together could ultimately reduce the number of children in foster care and social workers' large caseloads, giving them more time to help protect children in truly dangerous situations. "The court system itself should only be for those cases that reflect serious cases of abuse and neglect," Nash said. "We have to have more of a talk first, shoot later mentality rather than a shoot first, talk later mentality. We can do a much better job." Sanders said more than 25 percent of those children will probably be able to return home. Concerned that two-thirds of his 6,500-employees are working behind desks, Sanders said he plans to move 1,000 staff promoted to office jobs by previous directors back to the streets as social workers, which will reduce caseloads and give workers more time to spend with families, a critical element to assure the safety of children. Article 13 - Ways to care for an ailing foster system Sunday, December 07, 2003 - http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/news/archive/troy_anderson/ways_to_care.htm Ways to care for an ailing foster system Following years of scandals and heartbreak in the nation's largest child-protective system, Los Angeles County officials and child advocates hope a new director and innovative ideas will dramatically improve the lives of local foster children. "We spend $1.4 billion annually on foster care in Los Angeles County," said Andrew Bridge, managing director of child welfare reform programs at the private Broad Foundation in Los Angeles. "We are not getting what we should for that $1.4 billion. And for the first time, Los Angeles County is beginning a constructive conversation to change that." The proposed reforms by the county and state are set to begin next year. Congress plans to take up legislation in the summer that could radically change the way the child welfare system is funded. President George W. Bush has proposed a $5 billion-a-year flexible block grant that could be used to help keep families together -- rather than placing their children in foster care. Most of the funds are now used to pay for the care of children in foster care. "It's not going to cure everything," said Wade F. Horn, assistant secretary of the U.S. Administration for Children and Families. "States could still choose to spend the money on things that don't matter. "But for a state with innovative leadership that wants to invest in services that have proven effective in preventing child abuse and neglect, this would give them the flexibility to do that and reduce the need for costly (foster care) intervention later on." Critics are skeptical about whether officials will follow through with their plans, citing innumerable failed attempts to reform the system in the past. Critics also expect heavy opposition from what they call the private "child-abuse industry," which has grown wealthy and powerful over the years off the $20 billion-a-year child welfare system, a two-year investigation by the Daily News found. A recent state Department of Social Services report found the indirect costs of child mistreatment and foster care, such as juvenile delinquency, adult criminality and lost productivity to society, total $95 billion annually. At the heart of the system's failures, state officials admit in documents, are "perverse financial incentives" in federal and state laws that encourage local governments to earn money by placing and keeping too many children unnecessarily in foster care. "Financial incentives, inherent in the state and federal government structure, are encouraging the retention of children in foster care until they reach adulthood," researcher Julia K. Sells wrote in a report on child welfare privatization for the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute think tank. "States are actually profiting from keeping children in the system because they continue to receive federal funds." David Sanders, director of the county Department of Children and Family Services, said experts estimate that as many as half of the county's foster children could have been left in their parents' care if the appropriate services had been provided to the families. This year, the county settled a class-action lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California that called for improvements in the mental-health treatment foster children receive. It also led to the closure of the long-distressed MacLaren's Children Center in El Monte -- the site of numerous horror stories of abuse, neglect and even death over the years. "Throughout this case, there is a stream of tales of sadness, desperation and despair," U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz said when he approved the settlement. "There is no doubt, there are almost no instances where someone said the system has worked well. "But this settlement is a start. It's a very admirable change and innovative. The foster care system has proven to be totally inadequate and disgraceful so far." The investigation also found widespread misuse of taxpayer funds and some of the highest salaries in the nation among the nonprofit foster family agencies and group homes responsible for most of the 30,000 children in foster homes. The $1.4 billion DCFS budget, which has swelled from $103 million in 1985 when the department was created, pays to support a total of 75,000 children in the system and adoptive homes. In the private foster care agencies that oversee most of the children, some executives receive up to $310,000 a year in salaries and benefits and spend millions of taxpayer dollars for posh offices, expensive furniture and luxury cars, according to tax returns and county audits. County officials and child advocates acknowledge that reforms are needed to overhaul the way the county contracts with group homes and the foster family agencies that recruit foster parents and oversee children's care. Another key reform, according to child advocates and county officials, began in November when the Board of Supervisors voted to negotiate with the federal government for a waiver that would allow DCFS to use $250 million of its $1.4 billion budget on services to help keep children with their families, instead of placing them in foster care. Using a similar federal waiver and a program known as "performance-based contracting," Illinois was able in the late 1990s to reduce its foster care population by half and prevent many needless foster care placements. DCFS recently renegotiated contracts with foster-family agencies and is in the process of negotiating a new contract with its group homes. The new contracts are expected to hold the agencies accountable for providing safe homes and good education for foster children. Under the current "buck-a-head" payment structure, the private agencies lose revenue when children are reunified with their families or put up for adoption, child advocates say. "There are a lot of twisted incentives," said Benjamin Wolf, associate legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union in Chicago, which sued Illinois in the late 1990s and forced the state to use performance-based contracting. The innovative form of contracting improved children's lives and forced about half of the agencies to close because they couldn't meet the new standards. Los Angeles County Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said the county should have only 12,000 to 15,000 children in foster homes. "We have way too many kids in our system," said Janssen, who was one of the first county officials to support reforms now under way. DCFS officials expect a tough lobbying campaign to get the federal waiver and don't expect a decision until March. "We really think this offers an opportunity to start to fix the system," said Sanders, who took over as head of DCFS last March after the Board of Supervisors called for the resignation of the previous director. "It's not the silver bullet, but at least it's an opportunity to start the kind of major reforms we need to have in place." Like many of the reforms the state and county have agreed to, critics are skeptical about whether the proposed reforms will help much, noting that the child welfare system has long abused its power to break up families for its own financial gain. "It's a money-changing game," said Beverly Hills attorney Debra Opri, who won a $75,000 settlement earlier this year from the county on behalf of a Pasadena man whose distraught wife pushed their two children off a courthouse roof, killing them, and then jumped to her death. She had just learned her children would be returned to foster care. DCFS had made a series of errors in the case that the father claimed led to his children's deaths. "Instead of selling sprockets and gidgets, the children are getting sold," the lawyer said. Manhattan Beach attorney Sanford Jossen, who filed a class-action lawsuit in 2000 alleging staff at MacLaren Children's Center manhandled children and broke their bones, wrote in a court objection to the ACLU settlement that it seduces the public into believing reforms are on the way, but in reality does little more than create a six-member advisory panel to make recommendations with no timeline for implementation. "In this respect, history continues to repeat itself," Jossen wrote. "Studies are done. Recommendations are made. Implementation does not occur. More delays result. The proposed settlement agreement creates the illusion of promise, but on closer inspections provides for nothing." State Department of Social Services spokeswoman Blanca Castro said the state is redesigning the foster care system and focusing on what can be done to keep families together. The result is several recent reports by the Child Welfare Services Stakeholders Group, a group of 60 child welfare experts, that call for an "ambitious and far-reaching overhaul" of the state's foster care system. The reforms, starting in January, call for Los Angeles and 10 other counties to use a series of innovative programs that have been successful elsewhere in the nation. "We don't expect to turn this around overnight," Castro said. "It's taken us 20 years to get to this point. It's going to take five to 10 years to turn this boat around." Troy Anderson, (213) 974-8985 troy.anderson@dailynews.com Article 14 - Federal plan aims at keeping families together Sunday, December 07, 2003 - http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/news/archive/troy_anderson/sgvtrib_12-7-03.htm Federal plan aims at keeping families together Following years of scandals and heartbreak in the nation's largest child-protective system, Los Angeles County officials and child advocates hope a new director and innovative ideas will dramatically improve the lives of local foster children. "We spend $1.4 billion annually on foster care in Los Angeles County,' said Andrew Bridge, managing director of child- welfare reform programs at the private Broad Foundation in Los Angeles. "We are not getting what we should for that $1.4 billion. And for the first time, Los Angeles County is beginning a constructive conversation to change that.' REFORMING THE SYSTEM The proposed reforms by the county and state are set to begin next year. Congress plans to take up legislation in the summer that could radically change the way the child- welfare system is funded. President Bush has proposed a $5 billion-a-year flexible block grant that could be used to help keep families together rather than placing their children in foster care. Most of the funds are now used to pay for the care of children in foster care. "It's not going to cure everything,' said Wade F. Horn, assistant secretary of the U.S. Administration for Children and Families. "States could still choose to spend the money on things that don't matter. "But for a state with innovative leadership that wants to invest in services that have proven effective in preventing child abuse and neglect, this would would give them the flexibility to do that and reduce the need for costly (foster care) intervention later on.' Critics are skeptical whether officials will follow through with their plans, citing innumerable failed attempts to reform the system in the past. THE "CHILD-ABUSE INDUSTRY' Critics also expect heavy opposition from what they call the private "child-abuse industry,' which has grown wealthy and powerful over the years off the $20 billion-a-year child- welfare system, a two-year investigation by this newspaper found. A recent state Department of Social Services report found the indirect costs of child mistreatment and foster care, such as juvenile delinquency, adult criminality and lost productivity to society, total $95 billion annually. At the heart of the system's failures, state officials admit in documents, are "perverse financial incentives' in federal and state laws that encourage local governments to earn money by placing and keeping too many children unnecessarily in foster care. "Financial incentives, inherent in the state and federal government structure, are encouraging the retention of children in foster care until they reach adulthood,' researcher Julia K. Sells wrote in a report on child-welfare privatization for the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute think tank. "States are actually profiting from keeping children in the system because they continue to receive federal funds.' David Sanders, director of the county Department of Children and Family Services, said experts estimate that as many as half of the county's foster children could have been left in their parents' care if the appropriate services had been provided to the families. CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT This year, the county settled a class-action lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California that called for improvements in the mental health treatment foster children receive. It also led to the closure of the long-distressed MacLaren Children's Center in El Monte the site of numerous horror stories of abuse, neglect and even death over the years. "Throughout this case, there is a stream of tales of sadness, desperation and despair,' U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz said when he approved the settlement. "There is no doubt, there are almost no instances where someone said the system has worked well. "But this settlement is a start. It's a very admirable change and innovative. The foster- care system has proven to be totally inadequate and disgraceful so far.' WIDESPREAD MISUSE The investigation also found widespread misuse of taxpayer funds and some of the highest salaries in the nation among the nonprofit foster- family agencies and group homes responsible for most of the 30,000 children in foster homes. The $1.4 billion DCFS budget, which has swelled from $103 million in 1985 when the department was created, pays to support a total of 75,000 children in the system and adoptive homes. In the private foster- care agencies that oversee most of the children, some executives receive up to $310,000 a year in salaries and benefits and spend millions of taxpayer dollars for posh offices, expensive furniture and luxury cars, according to tax returns and county audits. REFORMS NEEDED County officials and child advocates acknowledge reforms are needed to overhaul the way the county contracts with group homes and the foster- family agencies that recruit foster parents and oversee children's care. Another key reform, according to child advocates and county officials, began in November when the Board of Supervisors voted to negotiate with the federal government for a waiver that would allow DCFS to use $250 million of its $1.4 billion budget on services to help keep children with their families, instead of placing them in foster care. Using a similar federal waiver and a program known as "performance-based contracting,' Illinois was able in the late 1990s to reduce its foster- care population by half and prevent many needless foster- care placements. DCFS recently renegotiated contracts with foster-family agencies and is in the process of negotiating a new contract with its group homes. The new contracts are expected to hold the agencies accountable for providing safe homes and good educations for foster children. DUBIOUS INCENTIVES Under the current "buck-a- head' payment structure, the private agencies lose revenue when children are reunified with their families or put up for adoption, child advocates say. "There are a lot of twisted incentives,' said Benjamin Wolf, associate legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union in Chicago, which sued Illinois in the late 1990s and forced the state to use performance-based contracting. The innovative form of contracting improved children' s lives and forced about half of the agencies to close because they couldn't meet the new standards. Los Angeles County Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said the county should have only 12,000 to 15,000 children in foster homes. "We have way too many kids in our system,' said Janssen, who was one of the first county officials to support reforms now under way. DCFS officials expect a tough lobbying campaign to get the federal waiver and don't expect a decision until March. THE SILVER BULLET "We really think this offers an opportunity to start to fix the system,' said Sanders, who took over as head of DCFS last March after the Board of Supervisors called for the resignation of the previous director. "It's not the silver bullet, but at least it's an opportunity to start the kind of major reforms we need to have in place.' Like many of the reforms the state and county have agreed to, critics are skeptical whether the proposed reforms will help much, noting that the child- welfare system has long abused its power to break up families for its own financial gain. "It's a money-changing game,' said Beverly Hills attorney Debra Opri, who won a $75,000 settlement earlier this year from the county on behalf of a Pasadena man whose distraught wife pushed their two children off a courthouse roof, killing them, and then jumped to her death. She had just learned her children would be returned to foster care. DCFS had made a series of errors in the case that the father claimed led to his children' s deaths. "Instead of selling sprockets and gadgets, the children are getting sold,' the lawyer said. Manhattan Beach attorney Sanford Jossen, who filed a class- action lawsuit in 2000 alleging staff at MacLaren Children's Center manhandled children and broke their bones, wrote in a court objection to the ACLU settlement that it seduces the public into believing reforms are on the way, but in reality does little more than create a six-member advisory panel to make recommendations with no timeline for implementation. "In this respect, history continues to repeat itself,' Jossen wrote. "Studies are done. Recommendations are made. Implementation does not occur. More delays result. The proposed settlement agreement creates the illusion of promise, but on closer inspections provides for nothing.' KEEPING FAMILIES TOGETHER State Department of Social Services spokeswoman Blanca Castro said the state is redesigning the foster-care system and focusing on what can be done to keep families together. The result is several recent reports by the Child Welfare Services Stakeholders Group, a group of 60 child- welfare experts, that call for an "ambitious and far-reaching overhaul' of the state's foster-care system. The reforms, starting in January, call for Los Angeles and 10 other counties to use a series of innovative programs that have been successful elsewhere in the nation. "We don't expect to turn this around overnight,' Castro said. "It's taken us 20 years to get to this point. It's going to take five to 10 years to turn this boat around.' Troy Anderson can be reached at (213) 974-8985 or by e-mail at troy.anderson@dailynews.com Article 15 - Critics say bonuses for adoptions warp intention, sell out children Sunday, December 07, 2003 - http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/news/archive/troy_anderson/2sgvtrib_12-7-03.htm Critics say bonuses for adoptions warp intention, sell out children Bonuses that Los Angeles County and other government agencies get from the federal government for each foster child placed in an adoptive home act like bounties on the heads of children, critics say. The 1997 Adoptions and Safe Families Act gave counties a $4,000 bonus for each child placed in an adoptive home, and an additional $2,000 for a "special needs' child. On Dec. 2, President Bush signed legislation increasing the bonus by $4,000 for children adopted at age 9 or older. Since the program was implemented in 1997, the federal government has paid $445 million in adoption bonuses. Critics say the law places a premium on putting children in foster care and accelerates the time frame for severing parental rights. "I think it's black- market baby marketing,' said Encino resident Diane Lynne Ellison, 59, who has served as a foster parent for more than a decade. "If they see a baby, they swoop in on it.' For foster children who cannot safely be returned to their families, county Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said adoption is the best way to provide them with a loving, stable family. "If they don't have this love and support, the consequences of them being left in the world are staggering,' he said. "More than two- thirds of them will end up in cemeteries or penal institutions. That is unacceptable.' Dr. David Sanders, the new head of the Department of Children and Family Services, agreed that children who can't safely be returned home need to be placed in adoptive homes, but he has his concerns. "What you have now is an incentive to initially remove the child and an incentive to adopt them out,' Sanders said. "I think when you put these two together, there is a problem.' A former DCFS child- abuse investigator, who requested anonymity, said adoptions of children are "pushed through at all costs' even before adequate background checks are made of prospective adoptive parents, because DCFS officials want to get the federal adoption incentive. Since 1997, when 530,000 children were in foster homes nationwide, more than 230,000 have been adopted. But more children have taken their place, and 540,000 are in foster homes now. California has seen adoptions of nearly 20,000 children since 1999 a 140-percent increase over the levels in the preceding several years and received $18 million in federal Adoptions Incentive funds, the most of any state in the nation. It received $4.4 million this year. Los Angeles County has placed more than 11,000 children in adoptive homes since 1998, and collected $3 million in adoption bonuses in 2001-02, the most of any county in the state. Some critics say the adoption incentives have only served to fuel the needless removal of children from their parents, pointing to a nearly threefold increase in adoptions in the county in the first few years after ASFA passed, although the number of adoptions has dropped from 2,900 in 2001 to 2,121 last year. Adoptive parents receive from $424 to $1,337 per child per month, depending on whether the child has special needs. About 75 percent of children in foster care are now labeled as "special needs,' qualifying their caretakers for the higher payments, experts say. Adoptive parents can receive even higher payments, from $1,800 to $5,000 per month, for disabled children. The average amount of time it takes to adopt a child in Los Angeles County is one of the longest in the nation at 5.2 years compared to 3.9 years in New York City. The state of Illinois averages 11 months from the time parental rights are terminated. Troy Anderson can be reached at (213) 974-8985 or by e- mail at troy.anderson@dailynews.com Article 16 - Foster care reform bring hope Sunday, December 07, 2003 - http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/news/archive/troy_anderson/foster_care_reform_bring_hope.htm Foster care reform bring hope New director, federal grant part of plans for $1.4B county system. By Troy Anderson Staff writer Sunday, December 07, 2003 - 7:30:35 PM PST Second of two parts Following years of scandals and heartbreak in the nation's largest child-protective system, Los Angeles County officials and child advocates hope a new director and innovative ideas will dramatically improve the lives of local foster children. |