Secret child-death records to be revealed

Los Angeles County’s top child welfare official—confronted with contradictions in her agency’s own records—vowed Tuesday to make public the deaths of dozens of children who’d been abused or neglected but whose cases had been questionably kept secret.

That pledge from Trish Ploehn, director of the Department of Children and Family Services, came on the heels of an independent study that raised new concerns about the agency’s compliance with a 2008 state law requiring the disclosure of child deaths that result from abuse or neglect.

The report, written by the county’s Office of Independent Review, said DCFS’ actions had effectively “frustrated” the law’s goal of preventing future tragedies by enhancing public scrutiny and promoting a more informed debate from which sound policy can flow.

For a third straight week, the issue of public access to child-death documents dominated the Board of Supervisors meeting—this time with less rancor but with a slew of new questions that have turned up the heat on Ploehn, who has spent the better part of a year defending her department and its stewardship.

On Tuesday, during her testimony before the board, Ploehn managed to diffuse some of the latest criticism by quickly making it clear that she agreed “100 percent” with at least one of the more troubling findings in the Office of Independent Review report.

The report disclosed that DCFS, in confidential dependency court documents, had classified upwards of 60 child deaths as resulting directly from neglect and abuse. But when it came to complying with a state law known as SB 39, DCFS exempted many, if not all, of those cases from public disclosure by concluding that they were not directly caused by abuse or neglect.

Ploehn blamed a lack of communication—and a difference in missions—between the two branches of her office responsible for the conflicting findings.

The dependency court filings, she said, relied on a broadly worded statute used to immediately remove at-risk siblings from homes where children had died and where there’d been evidence of abuse or neglect. The SB 39 cases, she said, required a much narrower finding that the death of a child was caused specifically by abuse or neglect.

“There was no communication or consultation going on between these two entities,” Ploehn told the board. “Therefore, we were in parallel universes.” She said every case in which DCFS had invoked the most serious claims of abuse or neglect in court filings would now be reclassified as a public document under SB 39 “and we will release those records.”

Michael Gennaco, who heads the Office of Independent Review, said he found no evidence of a concerted effort by DCFS to conceal child death cases. During the review, the OIR “received no information to believe that this alleged inconsistent approach in assessing child fatalities between different components of DCFS was either intentional or designed,” Gennaco wrote in his report and repeated during his Tuesday testimony before the board.

That statement, however, brought a quick word of caution from Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

“I don’t think you have all the information that you’re going to have going forward,” Yaroslavsky warned Gennaco, adding: “There are reasons to believe this is not just an accidental disconnect, [that] the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing.”

Last week, Yaroslavsky raised the possibility that DCFS may be failing to comply with the public disclosure requirements of SB 39 to shield itself from criticism. Specifically, he pointed to the case of an 11-year-old boy who had hung himself in June after years of physical abuse. That case, Yaroslavsky said, had not been publicly disclosed, even though the boy’s suicide seemed to be the direct result of the abuse he suffered.

On Tuesday, under questioning from Yaroslavsky, Gennaco acknowledged that the boy’s death was one of the anonymous examples in his report, one in which DCFS had cited abuse as the cause of death in court documents but made no similar finding under SB 39.

“The issue for me is whether…the public is getting complete and accurate information about child deaths, which was the purpose behind SB 39 in the first place in 2008,” said Yaroslavsky, who praised a series of recommendations Gennaco offered to bring more clarity and continuity to DCFS’ procedures. “I raised it last week and I was right.”

In his report, Gennaco said that DCFS’ public disclosure of child-death cases also had dropped dramatically in the past two years because of “blanket law enforcement objections to the release of information.” He blamed this on DCFS’ failure to give law enforcement officials copies of the files to determine what information might—or might not—jeopardize an ongoing criminal case. In the absence of such details, Gennaco said, it’s understandable that law enforcement agencies would opt to keep the entire case confidential.

“It is apparent that that the stream of information about SB 39 child deaths that was flowing in 2008, has been largely shut down two years later as a result of law enforcement’s blanket holds,”  Gennaco wrote.

So many Los Angeles County cases are being excluded from public disclosure in this way under SB 39, Gennaco said, that there’s “a virtual paralysis of the statute’s intent.”

He suggested that DCFS immediately begin providing more information to law enforcement agencies before decisions are made about public disclosure and that continuous reviews are made of case files to determine when additional information can be released.

Overall, Gennaco concluded, DCFS must develop a mindset and procedures that recognize the intent of the state law is to provide more, rather than less, information to the public and thus “ensure that there is a consistent and principled determination of what constitutes SB 39 cases subject to disclosure.”

Posted 8/31/10

Golden voice, golden man

For our Boys of Summer—the fading L.A. Dodgers—it’s almost time to sadly invoke that old bromide, “Wait ‘till next year.” But for our Voice of Summer—the incomparable Vin Scully—that saying is cause for celebration. Scully has announced he’s returning for another year, his 62^nd with the Dodgers, dating back to the Brooklyn days.

For me, and millions of you, his voice has been an uplifting summer soundtrack for decades—musical in its rhythm and lyrics.

In junior high, I remember carving out the pages of one of my dad’s books (a prized book, it turns out) so I could hide a transistor radio and listen in class to Scully call the ’63 World Series. Of course, I got caught—with no regrets.

Years later, as a new UCLA grad, I wrote to Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley offering my services in the booth alongside Vin. Mr. O’Malley wrote back saying thanks, but that the broadcast team was in good shape.

Then, in my early 50s, I had the honor of interviewing Scully on radio station KPCC for 30 minutes. I’d ask a question and off he’d go—eloquent, funny, profound.

Yes, here in Los Angeles we’re facing serious social and economic problems. But it’s good to know that, like in so many years past, one transcendent man will be there to provide comforting continuity amid the changes and challenges.

Posted 8/26/10

New bill would broaden child welfare database

Los Angeles County child-welfare officials won an important victory in Sacramento this week in the quest to help social workers better investigate allegations of child abuse.

Passed unanimously in the Assembly and Senate, Assembly Bill 2322 expands information available to county social workers in a computer database called the Family and Children’s Index (FCI), which provides child welfare workers with key medical, law enforcement and social services data as they launch child welfare investigations.

The new legislation would allow Los Angeles County to include in FCI convictions for crimes against children by family members and others living with a child who has come to the attention of child welfare authorities.

“This will provide key information for social workers who often have to make split second decisions about how best to protect a child,” said Dawyn Harrison, a principal deputy county counsel working on FCI issues.

Under the old system, social workers had to wait days or weeks to obtain information about convictions of family members and could learn nothing about convictions of non-family members. Speed is crucial when Department of Children and Family Services emergency workers use FCI as they launch investigations into reports of alleged abuse or neglect.

The bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Mike Feuer and former speaker Karen Bass, is awaiting the signature of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“We have indications that he is going to sign it,” said Ryan Alsop, the county’s assistant Chief Executive Officer for intergovernmental and external affairs.

The new law would take effect immediately.

Posted 8/26/10

Orange Line Extension briefing in Canoga Park

Metro Orange Line Project staff will host a community briefing and construction update on September 2, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. at the community room at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Topanga Community Police Station, located at 21501 Schoenborn Street in Canoga Park.

When the new section is completed in 2012, the Orange Line Extension will stretch four miles, from Warner Center north to Chatsworth.

The public is encouraged to register and be a part of the electronic distribution list to be kept informed of construction activities. Send Community Relations a note with your name and email address at molextension@metro.net or call them on the Project Hotline at 213-922-3668.

Posted 8/26/10

L.A. County property values take deep slide

Total property values in Los Angeles County sunk last year by the sharpest margin since 1995, during the depths of the last housing recession.

The property rolls in the county fell $18.5 billion, to a total of $1.089 trillion—a 1.7 percent decline from 2009.

The valuations are disclosed in the L.A. County Assessor’s newly-released 2010 Annual Report. The yearly snapshot of 2.3 million residential and commercial properties details changes in value in all of the county’s 88 cities and unincorporated areas, providing residents with a guide to property trends in their communities.

Assessor Robert Quon attributed the drop chiefly to the housing malaise.

“The largest factor was the continuing decline in home values,” said Quon, who was appointed as assessor on April 1, after 39 years in the department, to replace the retiring Rick Auerbach. Quon is not running for the post in the November election.

But also contributing to this year’s decline was a rare occurrence: no inflation.

In previous years, rising inflation has meant higher valuations, which are allowed under Proposition 13, so long as they don’t exceed 2 percent. This year, inflation actually fell by .3 percent, Quon said. The result: $2 billion less on the assessment rolls. “This is the first year that [the inflation factor] has been negative,” Quon said.

In preparing this year’s report, Quon said his office focused on areas hit hard by the housing bubble-and-bust, reviewing the values of 583,000 homes and condominiums, most of which were purchased between 2003 and 2009,

Of those, about 400,000 had declined in value. The average single family home plunged by $162,000, while condos fell by $133,000. The good news was that the lowered assessments brought a reduction in property tax bills for those condo and home owners of between $1,500 and $1,800, respectively.

The outlook for local government, however, is not so good.

The reduced revenues in cities that saw values decline will mean a drop in funding for schools and public services that depend on property taxes, Quon said.

“If there is a reduction in value that is warranted, we go out and reduce those values, regardless of what it means for government revenue,” Quon said. “We are trying to be accurate” to be certain no property owners aren’t charged more than their fair tax burden.

Overall, property values fell in 61 of the county’s 88 cities and in unincorporated county areas. Los Angeles fell 2.3 percent; Long Beach slumped 2.9 percent; Beverly Hills lost 2.6 percent and Santa Monica edged down 0.9 percent.

The steepest declines were in the Antelope Valley; Palmdale fell by 12 percent, while assessed values in Lancaster shrank by 14.4 percent

The unincorporated areas, listed in a single category and not broken down by location, saw a 2.6 percent decline.

Meanwhile, values rose or held steady in 27 cities. In addition to county-leading Arcadia (up 4.4 percent), Hidden Hills rose 2.0 percent, Glendale rose 1.3 percent and Malibu climbed 1.2 percent.
Despite the drops, Quon says the county’s property tax base remains “strong.” It’s the third highest total on record—topped only by 2008 and 2009. He said the county hasn’t suffered as much as neighboring counties that have been hit even harder by the housing crunch.

Also, in another bit of encouraging news, Quon said property foreclosures in Los Angeles County in 2009 dropped to 36,500 from 41,300 in 2008.

Posted 8/26/10

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