Juvenile Court Mental Health Care Probed : Social services: Treatment issues are under study in light of medication complaints at Orangewood Children’s Home. The panel’s report is expected in January.

The Orange County Juvenile Justice Commission is looking into mental health care for children in the county’s court system, largely in response to staff complaints of improper medication practices at Orangewood Children’s Home, an agency administrator said Thursday.

The 15-member watchdog panel plans to interview everyone from probation and social services officials to children in its probe into “a wide range of treatment issues,” said administrative officer Bruce Malloy.

Malloy said the inquiry has been quietly proceeding for eight months and a report on the panel’s findings is expected to be delivered by January to Frank Fasel, presiding judge in Orange County’s Juvenile Court.

The commission has interviewed about 20 people so far, including Zaida Ramos, a former supervisor of social workers and psychologists at Orangewood, Malloy said. Ramos complained last November to county officials that a psychiatrist at the 236-bed home for abused and neglected children was over-medicating children and possibly giving them inappropriate drug combinations.

The proceedings of the juvenile justice panel are confidential until an official report is released. Malloy said, however, that the inquiry will not be confined to Orangewood, and that the panel is probing some “longstanding concerns”--including some of the same issues raised in a report by the 1992-93 grand jury.

The grand jury report was critical of upper management in the division of Children and Youth Services and said that administrators intimidated staff members, distributed resources inequitably and were not accountable, among other things. Children and Youth Services provides treatment for children in the probation system--including Juvenile Hall--and at Orangewood.

A county mental health official said Thursday that he welcomes the inquiry.

“We don’t feel we have anything to hide,” said John Iagjian, Children and Youth Services’ program manager. “We have dedicated clinicians who do a very good job.”

Iagjian said the commission has talked to several people from his department but no one “has ever really shared with me the scope of [the panel’s] work.”

In response to a request from county Supervisor William G. Steiner, a former Orangewood director, a three-member audit team looked into medication practices at Orangewood earlier this year. After the audit was finished in late June, the lead auditor, a Torrance psychiatrist, refused for two months to deliver her findings to the county, saying she feared a defamation suit, according to county Mental Health Director Timothy P. Mullins.

Last week, Mullins said the psychiatrist, Dr. Melinda Young, agreed to hand in the report by the end of this week. The findings will be studied by the juvenile justice panel, Malloy said.

The commission is a committee of private citizens mandated by state law to look into issues related to juvenile court. It has subpoena powers and functions much like a grand jury, Malloy said.