Decision crucial to foster care
County seeks family reunions 
By Troy Anderson
Staff Writer Los Angeles Daily News

Sunday, October 24, 2004 - Los Angeles County has $250 million riding on an upcoming federal decision on whether it can use a portion of its foster care money to help keep the youngsters with their families instead. 

County officials say keeping families united through counseling and other assistance is a crucial step in continuing reforms, which already have produced a 38 percent decline in abuse and neglect of children in the foster care system from October 2003 through July. 

"Their statistics are just staggering," said Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen, who has strongly backed a radical culture change in a system with one of the highest rates of abuse in the nation. 

So far this year, no children have been killed in foster care. 

That follows a record five foster child homicides in both 2001 and 2002, followed by two slayings last year. 

All combined, 14 foster children were killed by foster parents since 2000. That compares to six slayings since 2000 of children who were killed by their parents after they were returned home from foster care. 

In addition, thousands of foster children have been reunified with their families, and 97 percent of them have so far been able to remain safely at home. 

Under Department of Children and Family Services Director David Sanders' direction, the agency has begun an unprecedented effort to reunite foster children with their natural families. Unprecedented? More like before CAPTA '74

The number of children in foster homes has fallen from 30,658 from March 2003, when Sanders started, to 26,975 in August 2004. 

"I think there has been a big culture shift," Sanders said. "But I think we have a long reputation to overcome. I think the more we do to help families, the less scared parents will be. The families will no longer be so scared that, wow, here is a DCFS worker, and my children are going to be taken." 

Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va., said the foster care system is, at long last, beginning to turn around. 

"With fewer children in foster care, the county can be more selective about where it puts children," Wexler said. "There is less need to turn a blind eye to abuse in foster care, less need to rely on marginal foster parents, and less need to overcrowd foster homes. 

"So it's not surprising that the county's scandalously high rate of abuse in foster care is, at last, declining. Conversely, if the county caves in to any pressure that might arise to stop its reforms, abuse in foster care will increase again, and far more children will suffer." 

However, the progress that has been made could be dealt a serious setback if the federal government rejects DCFS's request to use $250 million of its $1.4 billion budget on services to help families overcome their problems. 

Last December, DCFS admitted for the first time in a series of Daily News stories that half of the children in the system had been unnecessarily taken from their families and placed in more dangerous environments because of financial incentives in state and federal laws. 

These laws, according to state documents, encourage counties and their private contractors to earn money by placing and keeping children in foster care. The county receives $30,000 to $150,000 in state and federal revenues annually for each child placed. 

DCFS has asked the federal government to bend the rules on how federal money for foster care is spent. Under current laws, the vast majority of this money can only be used to pay for the expenses of caring for children in foster care, not on the services that would help families stay together, like mental health counseling or substance abuse treatment. 

Wade Horn, director of the U.S. Administration for Children and Families, said progress DCFS is making is promising. 

"We agree with the county," Horn said. "They ought to be able to use (these) funds more efficiently. And we've proposed legislation not just to allow Los Angeles County, but every state in the nation, to do just that if they so choose. But we've gotten nothing but objections from the Democrats in Congress." 

Janis Spire, executive director of the Alliance for Children's Rights, said she is "cautiously optimistic" about the progress being made, but is concerned whether DCFS is not opening cases on families that may be mistreating their children in an effort to reduce the number of children under DCFS supervision. 

"We are seeing an increase in the number of children where DCFS should be opening up a case and keeping an eye on the situation," Spire said. "It appears that they may not be opening as many cases as there could be children in potential jeopardy." 

Troy Anderson, (213) 974-8985 troy.anderson@dailynews.com