County Accused of Letting Foster Children Suffer Abuse : Welfare: California’s chief of social services says L.A. agency has failed to protect its wards and report problems promptly.

The Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services has continuously failed to protect children in foster care from substandard conditions and physical and sexual abuse, including instances where 10 children were found sleeping on the floor of a garage and 20 infants were kept in 10 cribs, according to state officials.

State Department of Social Services officials said they are considering stripping the county of its authority to license and monitor foster homes.

In a scathing letter to Robert Chaffee, director of county children’s services, Linda McMahon, head of state social services, accused county officials of repeatedly failing to promptly report deaths, abuse and overcrowded conditions in foster homes to state officials who are responsible for revoking licenses of such facilities.

“The majority of the revocation cases sent to us from Los Angeles County involve sexual molestation, physical abuse or death of children in the care of foster parents,” McMahon wrote in the letter last month. “It is still typically six months to a year after the discovery of the incident before referral for legal action occurs. This is an unacceptable delay.”

Foster homes are operated by private citizens, paid with public funds, to care for children who have been declared wards of the court, usually because they have been abandoned, neglected or abused. Los Angeles County is paid $3.3 million a year by the state to license and monitor 3,800 foster homes that house more than 10,000 children.

McMahon’s five-page letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, details two recent cases in which county children’s services officials allegedly failed to take prompt action after discovering dangerous conditions in foster homes. In one case, county officials last July allegedly discovered 10 children sleeping on the floor of a foster home garage and 10 more youngsters living in one bedroom upstairs.

“Three of the children have been abused, two of them severely,” the letter said. Despite this, McMahon charged that county officials waited five months before reporting the case to state officials for license revocation.

When the home was finally closed in January, the letter says, “Los Angeles County removed five . . . children who were still in placement. Based on a medical examination, one of the children was determined to have been physically abused, resulting in a skull fracture and two broken limbs.”

The letter cites another case in which county officials in late November allegedly found one person in a foster home looking after 20 infants who were sleeping in 10 cribs. The home was licensed for only four children, but county officials allegedly failed to report the conditions to the state, pending a coroner’s report on the death of a baby who had been living at the home.

State officials learned of conditions at the home “through an independent source” and contacted Los Angeles County officials on Dec. 8.

“Los Angeles County did agree to remove the children,” McMahon said in the letter to Chaffee, “but only after the state informed your staff that 20 infants in a foster family home licensed for four placements was grounds in and of itself to suspend the license and remove all of the children.”

When the infants were finally removed from the home in December, McMahon contended in her letter, county children’s service workers were so ill-informed that they had to rely on the foster-care operator to identify the children and to help find their placement workers.

In several instances, McMahon charged, “The wrong children were given to the placement workers because the staff person at the facility and some of the placement workers did not know which child was which.

“After all of the original 20 children were removed on Dec. 8. 1989, another Los Angeles County placement worker placed a child in this same home over the succeeding weekend.”

McMahon contended in the letter that the county has shown no consistent improvement in its services to foster children despite efforts by state officials to provide such assistance as training in regulations and complaint investigations.

“There have been no long-lasting improvements,” McMahon wrote.

McMahon’s letter requested that Chaffee send state officials a “corrective action plan” by March 1 and implement the plan July 1. Otherwise, the state might terminate its contract giving the county responsibility for licensing and monitoring foster homes.

The state would take over licensing and monitoring responsibilities if the contract were terminated, according to Larry Bolton, assistant chief counsel in the state Department of Social Services.

Bolton said other counties have mutually agreed with the state to give up certain licensing authority in the past, but said he was unaware of a situation in which the state unilaterally terminated such a contract with a county.

McMahon contended in her letter that the recent cases she cited of alleged child abuse and grossly overcrowded foster homes as examples that have “highlighted the county’s continuing failure to meet its contractual obligations with the state.”

“These facts,” she warned, “have caused my deputy directors and me to re-evaluate our position on whether it is responsible for the state Department of Social Services to continue to contract out the foster-care licensing to Los Angeles County.”

In a March 2 letter in response to the accusations, Chaffee said McMahon’s concerns in the letter were “difficult to appreciate” and contended that McMahon had referred to “isolated incidents” in her criticisms of county foster-care officials. Chaffee also complained that McMahon’s letter had not mentioned any of “the recent program enhancements my staff has made.”

In his letter, Chaffee also questioned McMahon’s authority to request a formal plan to correct alleged deficiencies without rewriting the state contract that pays the county to license foster-care homes.

“I find no provision for a formal corrective plan,” wrote Chaffee. “Under a contract of this type we would expect to consult with you or your staff on a regular basis and discuss our performance under the agreement. However, if additional or new information is required . . . these additional requirements must be specified into the agreement.”

Chaffee was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

Emery Bontrager, executive assistant to Chaffee, told The Times that county officials are themselves considering turning over foster home licensing to the state.

“That would certainly be on the agenda. . . . “ he said. “If the state considers they can do it better than we are, it’s their program.”

Bolton said state officials have not yet decided on the next step in the dispute.

In a Feb. 13 memo to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, in response to McMahon’s letter, Chaffee said his staff was reviewing the state contract “to determine what impact there would be should (it) be terminated.”

The memo also said: “On first reading the state letter appears to be a litany of past problems. . . . “

Bontrager, in a telephone interview with The Times, reiterated the contention that the state’s “isolated” examples contain “distortions” and represent a small portion of the thousands of cases handled.

In a separate letter, McMahon told Chaffee last month that the state had rejected as “unacceptable” a county plan to correct alleged deficiencies in procedures used to visit children in foster homes.

The “visitation compliance plan” was drawn up in connection with a lawsuit against the county Department of Children’s Services filed by several public-interest law firms that are attempting to force social workers to visit foster children at least once a month as required by state regulations.

The state Department of Social Services was also named in the suit upon the motion of the county, but state lawyers took the unusual step of filing a court document siding with the public-interest attorneys.

“(The state Department of Social Service) has filed a cross-complaint . . . against the county defendants because it has found that Los Angeles County has failed to meet the minimum visitation requirements in the state regulations,” says the document, filed in April.

The county has also been charged in other suits with negligence in connection with failure to make regular visits to foster children. Last June, a foster child was awarded $7 million in Superior Court after evidence showed she had been repeatedly raped as a toddler in a foster home in the early 1980s. Evidence indicated the child was left in the home after other children were removed because they were sexually molested and that social workers rarely visited her and ignored a psychologist’s report in 1983 that she lived in “a chronic state of terror.”

Another foster child was awarded $5.5 million last January in Superior Court. Court documents allege that in 1985, at the age of 6, the boy was placed in a foster home where he was severely abused, sexually and physically. In 1986, the youngster was reduced to a quadriplegic when he was nearly drowned at the foster home. Social workers allegedly rarely visited the home.

Bontrager said these were isolated cases that happened several years ago.

In her letter regarding the visitation plan, McMahon accused Chaffee of failure to be specific about problems in county visiting procedures because of pending lawsuits.

“It appears that this concern had a strong influence on your approach to the plan and your unwillingness to make the modifications necessary to ensure approval,” McMahon wrote.

County officials would not discuss the visitation case, citing pending litigation.