Director Credited With Reviving Children’s Agency : Social work: Peter Digre has improved responsiveness and record-keeping. But he has a long way to go.

The call came to the county child-abuse hot line from a neighbor concerned about the sound of a wailing baby. Something in her gut said the child was in trouble, and she didn’t know what to do.

Four years ago, the call probably would have been given a low priority, meaning that it might have been as long as 10 days before it was checked out. Even today, that is probably how it would be handled in other counties that adhere to the state’s minimum guidelines for so-called low priority cases.

But ever since Peter Digre took over as director of the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services in 1991--when the agency was on the brink of oblivion and under pressure from the state to shape up or shut down--all hot-line calls concerning children 4 or younger must be investigated before the end of a social worker’s shift.

In this case, that policy may well have saved the infant’s life. A social worker and a police officer went to the house and found the child stuffed into a plastic bag, hidden behind a couch, but still alive.

“We don’t know how many kids we save” with the more aggressive policies, said Bill Garcia, who runs the hot line. “We’ll never know. But the director says, “How do you know nothing is going on until you go out and see the child? “

Basic concepts such as that have been at the heart of Digre’s increasingly successful efforts to transform the county agency from a laggard to a leader and from an embarrassing liability into a source of pride.

The 50-year-old administrator, known as a passionate advocate for children, said the philosophy underlying his agenda is simple:

Foster kids need to see doctors, and records should be kept of their ailments as well as their immunizations and checkups. They should have school records. When they turn 18 and leave the system, they ought to have a place to live and a means of support. Kids should not be sent to live with relatives who are habitual criminals or child abusers. And parents ought to know what it will take to have their children come home.

“For Pete’s sake,” Digre said, using a characteristic phrase, “we’re the only parent some of these kids have, and it’s really crucial that we are following up on what they need.”

Those procedures were being followed only sporadically when he arrived from Florida, where he was deputy secretary of the state’s Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, but are now standard practice. Robert L. Chaffee, Digre’s predecessor in the agency that serves 50,000 abused and neglected children a month, was a social services administrator who had never been a children’s social worker.

“We have made some real substantial steps in the right direction,” Digre said. “But we’ve got a lot to do.”

Making the job more difficult has been an explosion in the demand for the agency’s services, brought about in part by an increase in the welfare rolls of a million cases over the past four years. Because poverty contributes to neglect, the number of child-abuse cases rose by nearly a quarter from 1992 to 1993. A large percentage involved homelessness.

The increase in abuse has led to a shortage of foster and group homes, causing social workers, many of whom are still saddled with overwhelming caseloads, to question how much progress has truly occurred during Digre’s tenure.

Even so, Digre said the job has been easier than he expected, largely because of the help that he has gotten from unions, the county Board of Supervisors and the county Commission on Children’s Services in lobbying for funds.

“When Peter came on board we . . . finally got a professional with the background and experience and passion for doing the job he was hired to do--help abused children, help families, and find a way to serve them better,” said Nancy Daly, a longtime member of the commission, which monitors the department’s performance and played a key role in forcing Chaffee’s departure in 1990.

“We haven’t solved the problems that are out there,” she said, “but we have the kind of leadership we were looking for.”

Because Los Angeles is home to 35% to 40% of the state’s foster children, whatever it does in caring for youngsters gets attention. Now Digre and his ideas are gaining influence as well, said Eloise Anderson, the director of the state Department of Social Services, the agency that four years ago threatened to take over the county department. “I listen to him because he’s very instrumental in the state,” she said.

Specifically, Anderson cited Digre’s creation of an ombudsman’s office to investigate complaints, and the unique approach he has brought to the department’s efforts to preserve families and head off abuse through such services as drug treatment, day care, housing assistance and parenting classes.

Using mostly nonprofit and private agencies, the relatively new programs have achieved a 20% reduction in the number of children removed from their homes.

“What’s positive . . . is that there is a vision for this agency and there was not before,” said Carole Shauffer, a San Francisco lawyer who in 1988 helped file the widely known “Timothy J” class-action lawsuit against the department to force it to visit children in its care more often.

Instead of fighting against the agency, Shauffer is working with it to improve services for children. She recently assisted the department in developing a “bill of rights” to give children assigned to long-term group homes more control over their circumstances.

She said the department has shown an openness to change on behalf of children and their families. “They’ve gone from being last in the state to being people that the state looks at as innovators.”

Digre’s reputation for innovation has spread beyond Los Angeles and the state. Last month, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s wife, Matilda, a children’s advocate, took a daylong tour of the agency’s facilities with Digre for a firsthand look at the department’s turnaround.

The problems facing Digre when he arrived went back to the agency’s creation in 1984, when children’s advocates convinced the county Board of Supervisors that an independent agency could serve children better. But independence did not come easily, and Chaffee, who had been with the county welfare department, took over in 1985 to take care of such simple problems as paying bills on time and arranging for enough desks and office supplies.

Digre’s task, according to one administrator, has been to take the bureaucratic shell and furnish it with the elements of a functional child-welfare system.

For example, the department’s failure to respond when a child was in imminent danger topped the list of 27 shortcomings cited in the state’s 1990 notice of noncompliance with its standards. Now, internal audits show, social workers comply with the rules 96% of the time. Such statistics caused the dark cloud of state oversight to be lifted in 1993.

Rino Patti, the dean of USC’s School of Social Work, has worked closely with Digre and admires the progress that he has made. Still, he said, much more remains to be done. “It’s one thing to say that you have visited so many families on a timely basis, but it’s another thing to say that you’re doing something good for them.”

It is more likely that social workers will accomplish something positive if they have more time, said Phil Ansell, an official with the social workers union. He said caseloads as high as 80 or 90 per worker were one of the most important causes of the agency’s past failures.

Next month, the agency will pass an important milestone when it completes the hiring of about 300 new social workers, enabling the agency for the first time in its 10-year history to measure up to state “yardsticks” for manageable caseloads--generally about 40.

As a result, Ansell said, “we’re light years ahead of where we were” and “children are getting better service and protection.”

To secure the resources necessary to pursue what he sees as his obligation to provide more services, Digre spends several days each month in Sacramento and Washington hunting down funds, including some for which the county had not previously applied. State and federal programs provide nearly 90% of his agency’s $800-million budget, which is up by $300 million since 1991.

“We work the federal titles every way we can,” Digre said. “It’s like a football player dodging tacklers; we have dozens of options to try. My job is to get the resources to the staff to take care of the kids, and I’m going to keep on pushing.”

Soon after he started, he persuaded the state to apply for a federal program never before used in California to set up a training consortium linking the department to social work schools at USC, UCLA and Cal State Long Beach. Now in its third year, the consortium has a $5.4-million annual budget to provide classes for department veterans as well as eight weeks of training for all newly hired social workers.

A similar consortium is being set up to serve other children’s departments in California.

One view of Digre’s impact can be seen at the hot line, which receives an average of 14,500 reports of child abuse or neglect a month from police officers, teachers, doctors and concerned citizens.

In 1991, when he arrived, hot-line operators wrote out the details of abuse allegations by hand, while computers gathered dust on their desks. They asked callers only nine basic questions and faxed often illegible reports to outlying offices.

Today, the hot line, like the department, is more businesslike: The computers are running, meaning that taking a report is quicker and the result is more readable. The operators ask a list of questions that fill seven computer screens.

And each worker has a list of 17 “mandatories” that require an immediate visit. For example, a social worker must visit every baby born with drugs in its system before its release from the hospital. In other counties, social workers visit the family’s home days later to find out if the mother is still using drugs and breast-feeding.

“Before, it was left to our discretion, but now it is codified,” said John Riggles, a licensed psychotherapist who takes calls on the hot line. “I feel real positive about it. In the past, where I would want to make it an ‘immediate response’ case, my supervisors would say, ‘It’s not that dangerous’ and overrule me.”

Some workers at the hot line, and elsewhere in the department, said Digre is obsessed with paperwork and record-keeping to ensure compliance with his policies. Indeed, the department conducts monthly and bimonthly audits to make sure that visits are being made and criminal background checks are being done.

And some of the agency’s more than 2,500 social workers said middle managers use the audits to terrorize workers into working faster. “There’s an ‘I’ll get you mentality,’ ” said Arlene Thomas, who was an emergency response worker attached to the hot line before she quit recently.

She said the years of disarray and the demands of the cases have left many of the agency’s social workers burned out and ineffective. Although Digre’s “heart is in the right place,” she said, “the children are still not being attended to the way they should be.”

Some foster parents said the department has not been supportive and is now trying to take away funds that are paid to them to take care of children with special needs.

It is “difficult to find out how extensive these problems are,” said Margarita Mendez, who chairs the children’s services commission. “There have been good specialized programs developed, but I’m not so sure what is happening with the core of the kids, the ones that get once-a-month visits and who see four social workers at the beginning of the process.”

But, she said, Digre is open to hearing about such issues. “I can go in and complain and he listens and he tries to change things.”

Still, she and others said, the agency is huge, one of the country’s largest, and it’s going to take time to turn it around.

Even a little change, however, is refreshing, said Beverly Muench, a deputy director of the department who was responsible for preparing the corrective action plan that got the state to give up its control last year. In the past, she said, she was ashamed to admit that she worked at the agency. Now, she’s proud.

“We’ve finally mastered the basics,” she said. “We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re headed in the right direction.”

Measuring Improvement

Since Gerald Peter Digre, a career social worker and administrator, became director of the Los Angeles Department of Children’s Services in 1991, the agency’s budget has increased to about $800 million and the number of children’s social workers has gone up by 550. Calls of abuse and neglect to the agency’s hot line have increased to 14,500 per month. Here are some other indicators of change the agency has reported:

1991 1994 Child abuse allegations investigated 68% 96% in a timely manner Compliance with state rules 74% 95% covering foster child visitations Compliance with 54 state 26% 92% standards on safety, other issues Criminal history of relatives who are Unknown 91% proposed care givers checked for evidence of child-abuse offenses Foster children who have 36% 100% medical records Children who have had Unknown 89% recent health checkups Adoption placements 808* 1,152* Youths leaving system at age 18 with Unknown 94% a means of support and medical coverage

* Reflects 1990-91 and 1993-94

Source: Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services