L.A. County Children And Family Services Might Have Had Incentive To Withold Information About Child Abuse Deaths

L.A. County Children And Family Services Might Have Had Incentive To Withold Information About Child Abuse Deaths

An examination of how Los Angeles County officials have restricted information about the controversial, abuse-related deaths of children under the jurisdiction of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) found on Monday that in many cases "there may be either conscious or unconscious incentives for child protective service officials to adopt a narrow" view of what documents need to be released under state law.

The county Office of Independent Review examination also found that, in the last year or so, law enforcement almost uniformly objected to the release of such information, making it difficult for county supervisors and media outlets alike not only to get to the bottom of the juvenile deaths, but in some cases to even be aware that abuse might have been a factor in their demise.

Release of public files in the deaths "have largely been forestalled by the 2009 and 2010 blanket objections lodged by law enforcement," according to the review.

California SB39 Implementation Status on Releasing Information on Child Deaths

California SB39 Implementation Status on Releasing Information on Child Deaths

Los Angeles County didn't report child deaths

Officials failed to publicly disclose fatalities resulting from abuse or neglect, an audit finds.

Los Angeles County officials have failed to follow state law that requires them to publicly disclose child fatalities resulting from abuse or neglect, according to an independent audit released Monday.

The violations involve "potentially dozens" of child fatalities, County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said.

"The board has been misled, but more importantly the public has been misled and that is really inexcusable," Yaroslavsky said. "There is only one possible motivation here, other than the right hand not doing what the left hand is doing, and that is an intent to withhold information from the public."

Audit: Los Angeles Co. underreports child deaths

County withheld files on foster-child deaths

Gennaco described many of the documents in question as benign - they contained information that would not have jeopardized any legal proceedings.

Tuesday's public discussion of the investigation was in many ways reflective of the reluctance by some officials to talk publicly about the deaths of children in foster care. The county's attorney, Andrea Sheridan Ordin, interrupted at times, urging board members to discuss specifics of cases in closed session.

L.A. County orders disclosure of all child deaths from abuse or neglect

Los Angeles County supervisors ordered child welfare officials to disclose deaths resulting from abuse or neglect, amid questions Tuesday about why dozens of such fatalities apparently were not made public.

Supervisors told county staff to come up with a plan to implement a series of recommendations proposed by Michael Gennaco, chief attorney for the county's Office of Independent Review. Gennaco, who was asked by the board to conduct an independent audit, reported that the inquiry uncovered at least 22 cases in the last 2 1/2 years in which the county had not disclosed the deaths of children under the scrutiny of the child welfare system.

Department of Children and Family Services Director Trish Ploehn told supervisors "there is no excuse" for how the department had handled the disclosures.

Gennaco said the failure to publicly disclose those deaths violated state law. Among his recommendations:
The release of all records inappropriately concealed.
An end to the department's practice of asking law enforcement agencies to issue any objections to the disclosure of records without first giving investigators an opportunity to review them.
An independent auditor to regularly evaluate the department's decisions about which fatalities to disclose to the public.

Murdered kids' info should be sealed, votes Assembly/Senate

Sparked by a recent leak to the Los Angeles Times from the LA County Department of Children and Family Services, legislation landed on Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk yesterday that will, if signed, result in the permanent sealing of autopsy reports of murdered children. The bill, written by Senate minority leader Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Temecula, (at right), passed a 60-1 vote in the Assembly and a 33-1 vote in the Senate Monday.

The legislation, SB5, allows family members to request that autopsies and other evidence be kept private if a child was killed during a crime. The request can be made only after a conviction.

The California Newspaper Association, which says the reports are important public documents, was the only opposition to the bill.

Reporting duties: Child protective agency must begin accurately reporting child deaths

THE county's reporting of child abuse deaths raises a serious question: Namely, who is the Department of Children and Family Services protecting? The children, or itself?

The background is that the rules for reporting the death of children from abuse or neglect changed under Senate Bill 39. Starting in 2008, protective service agencies were required by state law to make public information about child abuse or neglect death. The idea was that more transparency might increase the efforts that protective services agencies made to ensure children did not die in protective custody.

While he stopped short of saying it was a cover-up, Michael Gennaco, who heads the OIR, wrote in the report: "There has been some voiced concern about whether DCFS has interpreted child fatalities too narrowly in determining what qualify for purposes of SB 39." Later, he notes that "it stands to reason that the information provided by the disclosure of provisions of SB39 might ultimately cause criticism of the child protective services to occur. Accordingly, there may be either conscious or unconscious incentives for child protective service officials to adopt a narrow rather than broad view of whether, in a particular case, the SB 39 connectivity requirements for disclosure exist." He also noted that it's a lot of work for the agency to meet the reporting requirements for cases subjected to SB 39.

What's even more disturbing is that this mislabeling may have put more kids in danger if the failure to make that report meant other kids were left in homes where siblings died of abuse or neglect.

This is totally unacceptable. The reporting rules were adopted precisely to shine a light on the needless death of each and every child in the hopes of preventing future deaths. DCFS, either through intent or criminal ignorance, subverted that rule. And it makes one wonder if the organization thought there was something to hide.