Despite Gain, Foster Care Licensing Role Still Denied County : Social services: Director of L.A. department says his workers have enough to do in checking on children as required by law.

The county Department of Children’s Services, despite its progress toward correcting serious flaws in child welfare programs, will not regain the authority to license foster care homes soon, state officials told a government watchdog panel Wednesday.

High-ranking officials of the state Department of Social Services testified in Los Angeles before the Commission on California State Government Organization and Economy, informally known as the Little Hoover Commission. The state took over foster care licensing from the troubled county agency 15 months ago.

The state does not expect to return the licensing program to the county in the foreseeable future, Donna Mandelstam, a state licensing official told the panel, which is investigating foster care statewide.

Loren D. Suter, a state Department of Social Services deputy director, told reporters that the county may never resume its foster home licensing role.

That prospect did not seem to bother the county’s children’s services chief, who told the commission he has enough of a burden trying to reform the agency he was brought in to overhaul a year ago.

“We’ve got a very, very full plate just making sure that 100% of (foster) kids are seen by social workers every month,” said G. Peter Digre, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services. “That’s a much higher priority to me.”

He said that such visits are now made in 90% of the required cases, compared with a 50% rate in January, 1991, when he took over the agency.

The Little Hoover Commission has been investigating foster care in California since last year. Its only previous hearing on the issue was held in November in San Francisco.

Commission Chairman Nathan Shappell said the panel came to Los Angeles to review foster care in the county Children’s Services Department because of revelations in 1990 that foster children’s lives and safety were endangered by flaws in the program.

The ensuing scandal forced the agency to relinquish control of foster home licensing to the state and to perform a complete overhaul with state assistance.

The deficiencies included inadequate screening of foster parents, poor regulation of licensed homes and shoddy investigative and oversight practices.

In some cases, neglected and abused foster children routinely went without seeing a social worker for months--despite regulations requiring monthly visits in most cases.

Suter agreed with Digre that the department has improved in that area, but said there is progress still to be made.

For instance, he said, the department has not fully developed new auditing procedures to catch bureaucratic deficiencies and detect early signs of abuse.

Mandelstam said that when the state took over the licensing process in Los Angeles County, every foster care case had to be audited by hand and entered into a computer.