L.A. County chooses Sanders to lead child welfare reform campaign
Los Angeles County’s new Blue Ribbon Commission on Child Protection selected David Sanders to lead its far-reaching effort to reform programs for the county’s abused and neglected children.
Sanders was elected chairman at the commission’s first meeting on Thursday, bringing significant credentials as the former child welfare chief in Los Angeles and Minneapolis. He currently serves as an executive at Casey Family Programs, an influential nonprofit dedicated to child protection reform.
Sanders said the county commission would take a big-picture look at all relevant county departments and contractors with a simple mission: “There has to be confidence that people are treated fairly and kids are safe,” he said.
Sanders led Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services from 2003 to 2006 and was considered a rival of current chief Philip Browning to lead the department after the 2010 ouster of the agency’s top executive, Trish Ploehn.
Ploehn had previously served as a key aide to Sanders, during a period when the number of the children placed in foster care decreased dramatically and the county placed greater emphasis on keeping families together with education, drug treatment and other support.
At Casey Family Programs, Sanders helped lead a 10-year, nationwide campaign to reduce the number of children in foster care.
That record could put Sanders at odds with Browning’s emphasis on safety in response to a series of child fatalities and torture cases. That policy shift has coincided with an increase in the number of Los Angeles County foster children from 18,700 to 19,700 over the last year.
Sanders said it was too early to predict what the commission might eventually recommend. He said he is focused on establishing a meeting schedule and ground rules for the group’s access to confidential child welfare records.
On Thursday, members of the public raised a variety of issues they hope will be addressed, including poor-quality foster homes, high rates of detention for black children, union rules that protect problematic county workers and high caseloads for agency workers.
The commission was narrowly approved by the board of supervisors in a 3-2 vote after the torture death of Gabriel Fernandez, an 8-year-old Palmdale boy who had been the subject of repeated calls to the county’s child abuse hotline.
ALSO:
Proposal would let ride-sharing firms operate in state
Cab operators circle City Hall to protest ride-sharing firms
Los Angeles taxi drivers will protest ‘high-tech bandit cab’ apps
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
