Foster Kids’ Crying Needs

Children in the county’s gargantuan foster care maze won a victory last week when a court ordered social workers to check in on them at least once a month. But the 2,100 social workers who watch over the 53,000 kids under county supervision were never ultimately to blame for the neglect some foster children suffer, and they alone can hardly be expected to solve the problem. The same cannot be said of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

The Alliance for Children’s Rights, a public interest law firm, filed suit two years ago to get the county’s Department of Children and Family Services to stop allowing social workers to skip monthly visits to some foster care kids. The state regulations that require monthly visits also provide grounds for granting exceptions or waivers. Child welfare advocates had alleged that the department, chronically short on funds and staff, too often made such exceptions and as a result failed to closely monitor all the neglected and abused kids in its care. In some cases, six months passed between visits. For a child, especially a child with developmental delays or emotional problems, six months is a lifetime.

Last week, an appellate panel found that the agency granted too many exceptions to the monthly visit rule, apparently for the convenience of overloaded social workers. Now any social worker who wants to skip regular visits must convince a judge that the best interests of the child involved will remain protected.

A trial court decided last year that the department misused its discretion in granting exceptions. But the supervisors voted to appeal and came up with the money to pay county lawyers--who at one point offered to settle the case by preposterously suggesting that children as young as 10 years old be allowed to surrender, in writing, their right to a monthly visit.

On Tuesday the board will consider a motion by Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Michael Antonovich ordering county lawyers to drop the case and the department to comply with the ruling. Easier said than done. The number of kids in foster care has dipped in recent months, but social workers complain that the amount of work each case requires--the visits, conferences, phone calls and documentation--is up. Some have staged sickouts and other job actions.

There’s no doubt that the social workers need reinforcements fast, and the supervisors should scramble to find money to hire them. In the interim, however, the supervisors must not tolerate any action by an employee that puts these children, the most vulnerable among us, at risk. In fact, they need to keep a much closer eye on the Department of Children and Family Services in every respect. Court orders, no matter how forcefully written, won’t solve the problems in this troubled but vital department.