Child’s Death Shows Judges Need Training, Sheriff Says : Violence: He calls court’s failure to remove boy from home where he was fatally beaten ‘mind boggling,’ and says too much emphasis is placed on preserving biological families.

Sheriff Sherman Block, chairman of a county task force on child abuse, called Friday for greater training of judges in child dependency court, saying the court’s recent failure to remove a 2-year-old boy from a home where he was beaten to death was “mind boggling.”

Block was referring to the case of Lance Helms, a toddler who died April 6 in a North Hollywood home. County social workers had warned repeatedly that he could be in danger there, yet a judge chose to leave the child in the home.

The sheriff, chairman of the county’s Interagency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, said the judiciary has not yet matched other branches of local government in preparing for often wrenching child welfare cases.

“There is a real need for training for the judiciary in this area and also for attorneys so they don’t walk into these courts with a law degree and not much else,” Block said in an interview. “There are training mandates for law enforcement and for social workers.”

“Judges move around so much,” added Block. “They may be in criminal court or civil or probate and then change. There are certain areas like dependency court that require specialized training, to assure they have an understanding of the consequences of their decisions.”

The supervising judge of the county’s dependency courts, where child welfare and custody cases are heard, could not be reached for a response.

Block said the case of Lance Helms, reported in Friday’s Times, so “shocked the conscience” that he hoped the judge in the case, Commissioner Richard D. Hughes, would explain the rationale for his decision.

A court official, who asked to remain nameless, said that cases are not subject to public review, even with the death of the child, because of confidentiality laws. But Block said an exception should be made in the Helms case. “If the child is dead, I don’t think the child is being protected now by confidentiality,” he said.

The sheriff also said he believes too much emphasis has been placed on preserving biological families at the expense of children’s safety.

Social workers for the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services had, in fact, recommended against giving custody of Lance Helms to his father, David. Executives at the agency have declined to discuss the case because of confidentiality laws.

A spokesman for the agency, Schuyler Sprowles, said that children’s safety is the top priority, but that critics of family unification efforts should be careful not to make a broad condemnation.

He said the agency has managed a “family preservation project” for two years which is only open to families in distress that stand a good chance of being “salvaged.” The approximately 400 families in the program are often there for economic reasons--problems feeding and clothing children--and they receive intensive counseling and economic assistance in an attempt to keep biological parents with their children.

“This is for families on the threshold of problems, not for ones that are involved in hard-core neglect or abuse,” such as the Helms case, Sprowles said.

Block said there is reason to hope that government agencies can do a better job of preventing child abuse. A database called the Family and Children’s Index is being compiled by the county so that police, doctors, social workers and teachers can determine whether children in their care have been victims of abuse or neglect more than once. The index will be on line by this summer or fall, allowing agencies to more quickly identify at-risk children and remove them from problem homes, Block said.