Relocation of Juvenile Dependency Courts Criticized : Antelope Valley: Troubled children and their families will face three-hour bus rides to Monterey Park complex.

Hundreds of abused children and their families from the Antelope Valley face grueling commutes starting in July when juvenile dependency courts will be moved from Van Nuys to a new $60-million complex in Monterey Park.

The pending change to the new building, designed especially for the needs of troubled children, brought complaints this week from Lancaster City Manager Jim Gilley, aides to county Supervisor Mike Antonovich and county children’s services workers during a meeting of county officials in Lancaster.

“We’re talking about putting 6-year-olds on the bus at 5 a.m. in the Antelope Valley to get to a ‘child sensitive’ court,” Antonovich aide Lori Howard said, noting that many of the families involved are poor and face three-hour bus rides to Monterey Park.

The presiding judge of the county’s juvenile courts called that prospect “terrible” and said he supports opening a satellite court for the Antelope Valley, but he said the county lacks the money.

“I’m sorry. But what else can I tell them?” said Judge Jaime Corral, referring to Antelope Valley parents.

The dependency courts decide whether to remove children from their homes and place them with foster parents or care homes after county children’s services workers file complaints that the children have been abused or neglected. If the judge determines the children have been mistreated, they and their families must make repeated visits to the court, sometimes as many as six a year, to allow the judge to monitor the situation.

By county estimate, the courts now oversee about 1,000 Antelope Valley children, out of about 40,000 cases countywide, and get 600 to 700 new cases each year from the area.

The July 6 opening of the Monterey Park complex has been long-awaited. Throughout the county, abused children and their families who now go to dreary courts in Van Nuys or downtown Los Angeles, in or near the buildings where adult criminal cases are handled, finally will have a facility of their own.

But enthusiasm is muted in the Antelope Valley, because residents will face drives of about 65 miles from Palmdale and about 75 from Lancaster. Some families already complain about the trip of more than 40 miles to the Van Nuys courts.

“We do not feel the people who are already traumatized in the system need to be traumatized even more” by fighting long commutes from the Antelope Valley to Monterey Park, said Kathryn Barger, another Antonovich aide. “We’re not going to give up till we get a resolution of this.”

The issue affects more than the children and their families. Overburdened county children’s services workers in the Antelope Valley also are disturbed by the change because the commute to and from a 15-minute court hearing in Monterey Park will consume most of their workday, Barger said.

County officials decided about four years ago to consolidate the eight dependency courts that are now downtown and the six in Van Nuys into the new Monterey Park complex. At the same time, they rejected an alternative plan to disperse the courts into about five centers spread throughout the county.

The focus was on the advantages of the new facility, which county officials call unique. The six-story building has play areas on each floor of courtrooms, television sets showing the Disney Channel, and upholstered seats in the hallways, where children can relax or nap.

The Antelope Valley did not get much attention in the mid-1980s, county officials said, because its population and share of the dependency court caseload was much smaller. But the area’s rising number of residents and reported child-abuse cases in recent years have made the distance an issue now.

To get from the Antelope Valley to Monterey Park using public transit, families will face a two-hour bus ride to downtown costing $5 a person. They then will have to take an RTD bus to Monterey Park. There they will board a county shuttle bus from the nearest RTD stop to the courthouse.

Antonovich aides said he wants the judges to consider keeping one of the Van Nuys courts operating even after the Monterey Park complex opens. Another option would be to add a modular building for a dependency court to the already cramped courthouse in Lancaster at a cost of about $750,000.

Corral said he likes the latter idea, especially if the courtroom could be used half of the time as a dependency court, which handles civil proceedings, and the rest of the time as a juvenile criminal court. “But without the money, I don’t see how,” the judge said.

Charlene Saunders, county administrator of dependency court services, said she sympathizes with the courts’ clients in the Antelope Valley, but said they coped with similar commutes until 1988, when some of the dependency courts, previously all located downtown, were shifted to Van Nuys.