‘Official Child Neglect’

As licensing workers who work with foster parents in Los Angeles County, we appreciate the concerns expressed in your editorial.

The attention focused on foster care through the tragic death of a child in foster care recently should not obscure the fact that most foster parents provide good to excellent care to the abused or neglected children that society has placed in their homes. They do so despite a woeful lack of financial or institutional support from government.

The $291 per month allocated for the care of infants is utterly out of line with the financial realities of raising children in 1986. Considering the additional problems faced by children deemed by responsible institutions (the courts) to require removal from their biological parents, these funding levels become even more unrealistic.

Among the 12,000 foster children in Los Angeles County, some have been so profoundly scarred by their experiences that they need the closest care and supervision, including significant medical and psychological attention. Yet, Los Angeles County only allocates 155 “slots” for such so-called “D-rate” children.

Support services and the staff to provide them are well below what is truly needed to provide both support and accountability within the foster care system.

Finally, quite different social priorities are needed. Social services programs, which could prevent or reduce child abuse and neglect, like social services generally, have been sharply cut in recent years, while funding for military purposes goes up and up and up. Think about it!

The views we express are our own, not those of the County of Los Angeles.

WALTER LIPPMANN

PATRICIA KAMOTO

DOLORES W. TOMPKINS

LUONG TRAN

HARRIET ELLIS

JUDY MELTON

Los Angeles