Child Welfare Unit Accused of Cronyism

A little-known Los Angeles County program for reuniting abused, abandoned or neglected children with relatives in foreign countries has recently come under fire, with critics claiming that officials have been putting cronyism ahead of their young charges’ welfare.

As a result of the criticism, the Department of Children’s Services has restructured its international placement unit and is planning to change its policies for repatriating children, according to Catherine Tracy, the department’s chief deputy.

Tracy said the coordinator of the program, Patricia L. Davis, exercised “poor judgment” by selecting her friends and close associates to serve as volunteer escorts for the children, giving them an opportunity to travel to such countries as Mexico and Honduras at county expense.

Davis said she has been told she will be suspended for three days for providing misleading information after she was asked for a list of escorts.

Defends Escorts

Workers have complained that Davis endangered the returning children by failing to limit the escorts to licensed social workers. But there have been no charges that any children were harmed.

Davis, who denied wrongdoing, said the escorts she selected were best qualified to transport the children. “I need to send someone who knows the politics of the country,” she said. “They have to be bilingual and bicultural. That way they don’t have any problems.”

Established 11 years ago, the program is designed to facilitate reunions ordered by the Dependency Court for children who have been removed from unsuitable homes or have lost their parents through auto accidents or other misfortunes. Children have been sent as far away as Egypt, Hong Kong or New Zealand.

If the child has a parent or other close relative in another country, the court may determine that it is in his or her interest to be sent there--even if the child is a U.S. citizen.

“We believe that children should stay with their parents,” Tracy said. “We have wonderful foster parents, but it’s not the same.”

Last year, 67 county children were repatriated, mainly to Mexico and Central America, Tracy said. Of these, 17 were accompanied by escorts chosen by Davis. The others were old enough to go by themselves or traveled with attorneys or guardians as ordered by the court.

The program, which costs about $125,000 a year, also assists welfare workers in foreign countries who are considering repatriating children with American relatives to the United States.

Charges that Davis engaged in favoritism surfaced last summer after a group of workers complained to Social Service Union Local 535 that they were being passed over when escort opportunities arose.

The union asked for a list of escorts but instead was given a “bogus” roster of 20 volunteers designed to conceal the identities of the actual participants, according to an affidavit filed with the Civil Service Commission by a worker in the placement unit.

“I was instructed to ask friends, relatives, anyone I could think of, if they would allow their names to be used as persons authorized to accompany the children,” employee Eva Gonzalez Ortiz said in her deposition.

‘Bogus’ List

Ortiz, who included her mother and aunt on the “bogus” list, filed her declaration in connection with an effort by the county Chicano Employees Assn. to have a fired worker reinstated. The workers’ group charges that the East Los Angeles office of the department, where the international unit was located until last week, is rife with favoritism.

The program has been relocated to MacLaren Hall in El Monte. Davis will remain with the unit but has been placed under closer supervision.

Davis, who intends to contest the suspension, denied she was trying to mislead the county and said the “bogus” list contained names of potential, as well as actual, escorts.

Tracy acknowledged that the volunteers Davis selected were not fingerprinted or screened but said “that tended to be true because we knew the volunteers. They came from social agencies.”

Nevertheless, she said, the policies for recruiting escorts need to be “strengthened and tightened up” so that the trips are widely available to bilingual social workers, not just “a select few people.”

In no case, however, will the social worker assigned to the child be allowed to make the trip. “We want the recommendation (to the Dependency Court) that the child go back to his native country made out of the best interest of the child, not because that worker has an aunt in Guadalajara that she’d like to see,” Tracy said.

Sharon Frederick, a social worker and field representative for Local 535, bristled at the suggestion that case workers might not be impartial.

“That’s sickening--that the department would think we can’t make assessments on where a kid goes because we’d get a free trip,” she said. “It’s like saying, ‘We don’t trust our social workers.’ ”