The LA County of Child and Family Services Admits Children don't Do Well in Foster Care!

'A forever family': There are numerous challenges facing Department of Child and Family Services
Community: Los Angeles County’s foster system struggles to help children


RELATED CONTENT
Also see "The right path", which details the story of Dwayne Brown, a 17-year-old boxer who lives with a foster family in Saugus.

Editor's note
This is the first in a three-part series. See Monday's issue for the second installment.





By Jonathan Randles
Signal Staff Writer
jrandles@the-signal.com
661-259-1234 x519
POSTED May 15, 2010 4:30 a.m.

The Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services works with relatives of foster children to find safe, stable homes for them.

It isn’t easy.

Between 2006 — when county supervisors hired Patricia Ploehn to head up the department — and 2009, the agency reduced the number of children in long-term foster care by almost 4,000 and cut the average length of their stay by nearly 300 days.

“Through our experience, we know kids don’t do well in foster care,” said Neil Zanville, a spokesman for the department. “Ten, 15 years ago we had absurd numbers of kids in the system.

“If we can keep (children) out of system, making sure there are no overt safety threats, it’s a win for everybody.”

The county tries to reunite children with their biological parents within 18 months of their removal from the home, Zanville said.

But the home needs to be safe, and the family needs to work with county social workers, he said.

If concerns are raised about a child’s safety, social workers will meet with parents, neighbors and other community members to try to address the problem before a child is removed from the home.

Harder to place
The older the children are the less likely it is they’ll find a permanent home, officials said.

Those stuck in the system the longest have a tougher time adjusting to adult life after leaving foster care, usually at 18 years old.

Long-term existence in the system can result in youngsters who are emotionally closed off, experts say.

When finding foster homes for kids, the department has a special unit of social workers who try to pair older kids up with guardians who will develop permanent relationships with a child, Zanville said.

According to a University of Chicago study released this month, 58 percent of youth “aging out” of the system at 18 graduate high school by 19 years old — compared to 87 percent of youth not in foster care.

One in four of those foster kids will be behind bars by the time they’re 20.

No substitute
Thousands of social workers provide emotional support for the more than 30,000 kids in the county’s system, but it’s no substitute for a permanent family home, officials said.

“That stable, loving, nurturing family means everything,” Zanville said.

“Emotionally speaking, we can’t even measure that — to have people (to) care for you and come back to as opposed to having nothing at all. You want a forever family.”

http://www.the-signal.com/news/article/28723/