County Closing Down Chain of 4 Foster Homes

Los Angeles County officials on Thursday moved to close a chain of four boys homes that they said neglected children while the operator misspent or failed to account for $128,000 in foster care funds.

Fred’s Group Homes--two in South-Central Los Angeles and one each in Compton and Lancaster--have been under scrutiny by local and state officials since an audit earlier this year found that operators were not providing enough food, clothing, counseling and other services for up to 45 boys. The audit also concluded that operator Fred Baker had spent public funds on personal expenses--ranging from car and home payments to parking tickets.

The county finally decided to close the homes, operated by Baker and his wife Jacqueline, when the couple refused this week to permit county auditors to review their books again.

The youths, ages 7 to 17, will be removed from the four homes over the next week and placed in other facilities. The move is unusual in a field in which authorities often struggle to find enough facilities to house troubled children.

In an interview Thursday at his Normandie Avenue group home in South-Central Los Angeles, Fred Baker adamantly denied that he had misspent any of the money he receives to care for children and teens. He said he has lost a home, borrowed from relatives and spent his own money on youths who he deeply cares for.

In addition, he repeatedly lashed out at county regulators, accusing them of discrimination. He said officials want to put him out of business because he is one of the few black group home operators who receives a relatively high level of compensation from the state.

“I will not go back down to the plantation. I will not be a slave,” a nearly tearful Baker said. “We have a Constitution in this country.” As he spoke, he repeatedly displayed a commemorative plaque he received for community service. The plaque depicted the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and, when Baker pushed a button, it broadcast the refrain: “I have a dream.”

Baker takes in boys with severe emotional and behavioral problems. Just last year, officials said, his funding was increased to $53,000 a year per child to meet their extraordinary needs. Over the course of a year his funding could add up to $2.3 million, depending on how many children he serves.

He said the closure will throw their already-troubled lives into chaos, and he said he has filed a lawsuit challenging the authority of county officials to audit his business. He says only state licensing officials have such power.

County officials insisted their action has nothing to do with Baker’s race. They said he has failed to meet state requirements in caring for foster children and has been unwilling to submit to a review by the county auditor controller’s office. Officials said they warned Baker that failure to allow the audit would lead to his closure.

“Our contract says that we can audit them,” said Amaryllis Watkins, who oversees group home operations for the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. “We have to know what is happening and we have to be able to check on the operation. We want these young kids to have the highest level of services.”

An earlier review by the county department concluded this summer that $128,000 in foster care payments were either not properly accounted for or were used to pay Fred Baker’s personal expenses. Those improper payments went, in part, to pay for a property that Fred Baker owns in Georgia, for his Los Angeles home, for utility bills and for parking tickets, the audit said.

Baker said that during more than a decade in foster care he has sacrificed considerably to do his job well. He said he took a second mortgage out on a Saugus home in an attempt to secure money to finance programs for his charges, but then lost it through foreclosure.

Baker said he lived in the home and wanted to also use it as a recreation center for his young clients.

Public records and interviews with a bank executive revealed that Baker this year lost a seven-bedroom, four-bath home, once valued at $422,000, after failing to make his mortgage payments.

Baker said that he used foster care funds only to reimburse some of the $300,000 or more of his own funds that he estimated he had put into the business.

But the county’s 26-page May audit--which evaluated a six-month period in 1995--contends that payments were almost always made to Baker on time. It cites a litany of other complaints against Baker’s employees, ranging from alleged verbal and physical abuse of youths to failing to provide proper clothing and adequate food for the foster boys.

Auditors interviewed 16 boys at Baker’s four homes. Of those 16, seven told investigators that staff members had used excessive force, including shoving and chokeholds. Three-quarters of the boys surveyed said they were targeted with verbal threats and taunts.

One of Baker’s child-care workers was suspended this summer after hitting a teenage client at the end of an argument, said an official with the state Department of Social Services. Baker said Thursday he removed the Lancaster home employee voluntarily after the incident, which occurred during an outing to a park. State officials said they plan to serve Baker with an order to make sure the worker stays away.

Six residents of the Compton and Normandie homes said they did not feel safe and that “residents use drugs on the premises and stealing is rampant within the homes,” the audit said.

A review of some of the youths’ case files showed that serious problems were not properly reported to the county or state licensing authorities, the audit said. Troubles included residents smoking marijuana, “police involvement,” and clients endangering themselves or others, according to the audit.

The document goes on to say that residents on medication often did not receive proper psychiatric care or have paperwork authorizing their use of psychotropic medications. Group therapy, family counseling and other treatments required for his charges were also not performed as often as required, the audit said.

Baker called these charges and others “lies, lies, lies,” although he declined to discuss specifics, saying he plans to use his pending lawsuit, filed last week, to air his grievances against the county.

Fred’s Group Homes in October was approved by state regulators to receive increased foster care payments for expanding services. In recommending an increase in compensation for Fred’s, Paul Freedlund, a top executive with the county children’s agency, wrote in August that the home provided “good services.”

The group home’s yearly compensation rate subsequently was increased from $38,940 per child to $53,076.

But during the first three months of the new payment schedule, Baker did not hire the 17 workers that he said he would to qualify for the extra money, the audit said.

Baker countered this charge Thursday, saying that he has hired 27 child care workers and six social workers, bringing total staffing to more than 80. “They are just lying, just lying,” Baker said.

Finally, the audit questioned how much the Bakers allocated for their salaries and how they accounted for it. The couple allotted $192,000 annually for their salaries, $23,751 more than regulations allowed, the report said. The Bakers did not draw the money in cash, instead accruing the costs as a liability against their corporation. The audit offered no further explanation and investigators declined to comment.

Confronted with the allegation, Baker said he had gone for years without drawing a salary and had to borrow from relatives and mortgage his own home to bring enough money into his group homes. Those considerable personal sacrifices, he said, more than compensate for any of the spending that officials are now challenging.

As he spoke Thursday at the beige stucco home with barred windows, Baker frequently became angry and said he was being persecuted. Several times, employees, some in tears, came into his office to lend support. A 10-year-old boy who lives there rushed in, embraced Baker, and cried, “Don’t close down! Don’t close down!”

“When you snatch my kids from me, I got nothing,” Baker said. “These kids don’t have anywhere to go. They don’t know what they are going to do with them. It’s vindictive.”

County official Watkins and other county officials conceded that the closure of homes like Baker’s can be a troubling action. Most of the children in the home have already been rejected or abandoned by their own parents and forced out of foster care.

One teenage boy said in a recent interview that he had bounced from home to home before ending up in jail for a petty crime. He said he felt unattended and forgotten during several months he spent at Fred’s home. His expectations were so low, though, that he was happy anyone would take him, he said.

When asked about his life in more than 10 different facilities, he hung his head. “All placements are the same to me,” the teenager said. “There are just a bunch of new faces and they run a new game on you. It’s never a real home.”