COVER STORY : Helping Families Heal : 90044 Project Aims to Reduce Child Abuse and the Strain on the Foster Care System by Delivering a Message of Hope to Parents

Overwhelmed by the escalating number of minority children in foster care because of abuse or neglect, Los Angeles County officials are moving to tackle the problem before it reaches the courtroom.

Project Los Angeles 90044 is the county’s latest effort to reduce the foster care caseload by simplifying the bureaucracy and helping lower-income parents better care for themselves and their children.

The three-year pilot program, started in September with the help of a $1.2-million federal grant, was named for the South-Central ZIP code that is home to the county’s highest number of child abuse and neglect cases. Social workers say the majority of cases in minority areas involve neglect due to substance abuse and the stresses of poverty.

“There was a time when children were removed from parents while (the parents) were getting over their substance abuse,” said Charles Louise Edwards, who heads the project. “We’re leaning more toward working with the families now in their homes and on their problems.”

The project targets parents with histories of substance abuse who live within the 5.3-square mile area bordered by Slauson and El Segundo boulevards and Normandie and Western avenues. With smaller caseloads--a maximum of 25 per social worker, half the county’s normal caseload--workers can more closely monitor families through regular home visits.

The 90044 project currently has 45 cases and three social workers.

By creating one office with representatives from four county departments who work on child abuse and neglect cases, the project aims to make it easier for parents to navigate the system.

“This is a new approach to delivering services,” said Saundra Turner-Settle, director of the county’s Black Family Investment Project.

“90044 doesn’t mean that children won’t be taken out of the home if it’s necessary, but this is a preventive measure and something that’s well-needed in the community,” she said.

Marcia, a 25-year-old recovering drug addict, is one of the project’s cases. Her month-old daughter was born with traces of cocaine in her system.

In her small New Hampshire Avenue apartment, Marcia rocked her daughter as she chatted with social worker Stephanie Saint-Louis during her weekly visit. Saint-Louis updated the young mother on the status of her entry into a substance-abuse program.

“Miss Saint-Louis and the program have really put me back on my feet. I look forward to her visits. They give me confidence,” said Marcia, who had tried quitting her cocaine habit on her own. “Without this program, I think they would’ve taken my daughter away.”

Marcia said that each time she tried to quit during the four years she smoked rock cocaine, a problem would arise that sent her back to the drug. After her baby was born with drugs in her system, Marcia decided to get professional help. “I wanted to turn my life around and knew I couldn’t do it myself. I needed more help than that,” Marcia said.

Marcia is hopeful that once she starts a drug-treatment program, her other child, a 9-year-old girl, will want to come back and live with her. The girl asked to live with her father because of Marcia’s drug problem.

“Each case is different and none of them is easy because all of the parents are struggling--either to resolve their problems or to figure out how to get help for their families,” said Saint-Louis. “Every time we get a parent into drug treatment, we’re happy.”

Linda, a 37-year-old cocaine addict, has been part of 90044 since October, after the child abuse hot line received an anonymous call about her. Linda is a difficult case, Saint-Louis said, because she is reluctant to get help for her addiction, a habit she once supported with welfare checks. On a recent Friday afternoon, Linda hesitantly went with Saint-Louis to a Watts-based drug-treatment program.

“This is an OK program for me, I guess. They’re trying to help me,” Linda murmured as she sat in the lobby of the drug-treatment center pondering the six months she would live there.

It was the last chance for Linda to kick her 10-year drug habit and avoid losing her children to the system. She lasted two months at her last drug-treatment center before quitting in December. Not participating this time would mean losing custody of her 15-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, who live with Linda’s mother.

When Linda was using cocaine, she said she neglected to enroll her son in school or make sure her daughter attended class. Her children had not visited a doctor or dentist in years.

As part of 90044, the program’s probation officer has enrolled Linda’s son in kindergarten and her daughter in a community day school that instructs students half of the day and teaches them work-related skills the other half. For the first time, her teen-ager has begun receiving A’s and Bs and sees some hope for her mother.

“It’s good that she’ll be away from here, away from those people who keep bringing her down,” the girl said. Linda finally agreed to receive treatment at the Watts facility. She has been there for three weeks.

The 90044 area is fraught with cases like Linda’s. In 1991, the county placed 1,360 children from the area in foster homes, 4% of the 31,549 children in the county’s foster care system. The next highest number of cases in the system came from the 90003 ZIP code, also in South-Central.

In the 90044 area, as in many predominantly minority areas, substance abuse and the stress of poverty are the two biggest causes of child abuse and neglect, experts say. But economic slumps, culture clashes and the lack of family and neighborhood support are also significant factors.

“The support system and concern that once existed in communities and neighborhoods is lost,” said Turner-Settle. “So when these people don’t have money to go to the doctor, to buy the necessary food, clothes or diapers, they go without.”

A sour economy creates more stress for families, who may take the frustration out on their children.

“As the economy goes bad around here, abuse cases go straight through the ceiling,” said Peter Digre, head of the county Department of Children’s Services.

From January, 1990, to October, 1992, as the county’s unemployment rate jumped from 5.8% to 9.5%, the number of emergency referrals to the county for child abuse leaped from 108,088 to an estimated 133,500.

As a result, the foster care system has been overwhelmed with cases, most of them minority children. In 1992, the county handled more than 120,000 cases of children who were abused or neglected, 70% of whom were minorities, mostly African-Americans and Latinos.

In its report of 1990-91 referrals, the children’s services department said that 44.8% of the children were black, 30.3% Latino, 22.8% Anglo and 1.3% Asian.

The figures do not necessarily mean that African-Americans and Latinos abuse or neglect their children more than other groups, experts say. It does mean, however, that incidents in these groups are reported more often, in part because many blacks and Latinos are already clients of other county agencies and subject to more scrutiny.

“Among higher-income people, it’s assumed that child abuse doesn’t happen because it can be hidden easier,” said Sandra Guine of the county’s Department of Health Services child abuse prevention unit. “They are not under the magnifying glass like poorer families who are in the system already for (welfare) assistance.”

In the African-American community, the majority of child abuse and neglect cases are related to drug use, Guine said. She also said most of the cases, such as Renee Warren’s, involve neglect rather than abuse.

An addict for more than 10 years, Warren, 40, smoked rock cocaine during her pregnancy and after her son was born in April.

“I was so full of cocaine that I couldn’t take care of him. I just got tired of neglecting my baby,” said Warren, now a patient at a substance abuse program for mothers. “I was losing my baby, losing a bond with him.”

Since the late 1980s, about 200 babies per month in the county have been found with traces of drugs or alcohol in their systems, according to the children’s services department.

“We’re talking about people who haven’t fed, dressed or cleaned their children properly; people who haven’t been sending their children to school,” said Hershel Swinger, director of the Children’s International Institute.

For 36-year-old Ralph of Glassell Park, a strict traditional Mexican upbringing, work problems, alcoholism, and smoking marijuana all contributed to the beatings he dealt to his two older sons six years ago.

The beatings happened mostly when Ralph was drunk; the then 7- and 8-year-olds would be struck repeatedly with a belt. As they got older the beatings tapered off, but Ralph’s anger continued along with his drinking.

“I guess my drinking took over me and . . . I would take it out on them,” said Ralph, who asked that his last name not be used. “I guess with all the (financial) problems that I had, drinking was a way of getting rid of them.”

Ralph, his wife and their sons have been in and out of counseling for four years, the last eight months of which has been spent with Armando Acosta, a family counselor at the Plaza Community Center.

For Asians, language barriers and cultural differences are two primary reasons for reports of child abuse and neglect, said Frank Nguyen, of the county’s Asian-Pacific Project, which works on bridging language and cultural gaps for Asians. While the number of Asians in the county foster care system is just 1.3% of the total, physical abuse accounts for 62% of those cases, most of which involve parents disciplining their children.

“Physical admonishment is something that was done in Asia by these families and that they brought here and use as a form of discipline,” said Paul Che, a social worker at the county’s Asian-Pacific project.

Most physical abuse cases among Asians and Latinos occur when the children are 10 to 14 years of age and try to assert authority with their parents, Nguyen said.

“In the Asian way, we keep everything inside; you can’t express your feelings to your parents,” Nguyen said. “But here in the schools, teachers want the kids to express themselves. And when they go home and do that with their parents that causes tension.”

Some cultural medicinal remedies used by recent immigrants have been thought by social workers to be forms of child abuse, such as the use of herbs instead of prescribed medication or the Vietnamese coin treatment. Coining, which is used to relieve headaches or colds, involves rubbing the chest and back with a mentholated ointment and then striking or scraping along the ribs, neck and shoulders with a silver coin or spoon. The treatment often leaves bruises.

“We have a constant flood of new immigrants coming in and the old practices will never change, so we have to become more culturally sensitive and we have to teach them what is and isn’t accepted here,” said Acosta.

Experts say that the key to stopping abuse and neglect is to cut to the root of the problem by educating parents--the goal of the 90044 program.

“There’s no doubt that we’re making some headway in getting help after we’ve seen the problem,” said Shayla Lever, head of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s child abuse prevention office.

“But until we start seriously looking at cause and effect, we’re just going to continue putting out fires, and there are many more than we can handle.”

Agencies Offering Help

Here are some organizations offering help to families dealing with child abuse and neglect:

COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN’S SERVICES Asian-Pacific Family Project (213) 727-4566 Black Family Investment Project (213) 846-2144 Project Los Angeles 90044 (213) 730-3153 Latino Family Preservation Project (213) 260-3120

OTHER ORGANIZATIONS Catholic Charities of Los Angeles (213) 267-0321 Kedren Family Preservation Program (213) 233-0425 Drew Child Development Corp. (213) 241-6800 Triangle Christian Family Preservation Network (213) 755-4087 North-Central LA Family Preservation Network (213) 250-1120 East L.A. Latino Family Preservation Network (213) 268-1107 SHIELDS For Family Project Inc. (213) 603-8292