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L.A. County’s top child welfare official backs off comments

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Los Angeles County’s top child welfare official pulled back Friday from her published comments in The Times that the department was suspending efforts to reduce the number of children in foster care.

Trish Ploehn, director of the county Department of Children and Family Services, was quoted in an article Friday as saying the efforts would continue “only when I can assure everyone that the work we do results in safety for the child who is going home” to his or her family.

After a flurry of criticism flooded her e-mail and voice mail, Ploehn issued a press release later in the day backing off those remarks. “The department continues to remain steadfast in its commitment to reducing the number of children in foster care and to increasing the number of family reunifications,” the statement said.

For years, the county has focused on family reunification and preservation, seeking above all to rehabilitate once-abusive parents through drug treatment, anger management and other services. The number of children in foster care dropped from a high of 52,000 in 1997 to a low of 19,900 last year.

More recently, the county has wagered federal dollars on success, accepting a limited amount for foster care so that it might put more dollars toward mending families.

The county’s experiment, which has been undertaken by only a small number of agencies across the country, has been touted by Ploehn and others as a national model.

But a series of child deaths last year among children left in -- or returned to -- unsafe homes jolted Ploehn’s department. “These cases had a very deep effect,” Ploehn said last week.

At that time, Ploehn said the foster care levels might have declined as much as they could. “It’s possible that we are already at the level where we are supposed to be.”

On Friday, Ploehn said she was accurately quoted. But she said she was distressed to be hearing from child welfare officials and advocates across the country, wondering if her commitment to keeping families together had wavered.

She said it had not. Asked whether she still believed that the foster care numbers might have gone down as far as possible, Ploehn said, “I don’t think anyone can answer that question.”

garrett.therolf@latimes.com

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