Reforms Called for in Group Foster Homes

Elected officials and child welfare advocates called Wednesday for increased oversight of the nearly 500 group homes for Los Angeles County foster children, in the wake of a grand jury report that said some of the facilities provide miserable care.

Suggestions for reform of the $238-million-a-year industry ranged from moving children out of the homes to hiring an outside monitoring agency for the facilities to retraining county social workers on reporting problem homes.

Critics said they expect the facilities--which are home to about 3,200 abused and neglected children--to provide care commensurate with their generous funding.

“We are spending a fortune on these homes, at $50,000 or even $60,000 for one kid for a year,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. “For that we could put the kid in at least an Embassy Suites [hotel] if not a Four Seasons. We should be getting as close to perfect care as is humanly possible.”

Yaroslavsky plans to call hearings to allow group home operators and the county Department of Children and Family Services, which helps oversee the homes, to answer allegations in the grand jury report, which was released Wednesday.

Yaroslavsky said some of the shortcomings detected by the grand jury should be evident to county social workers, who typically visit foster children once a month.

“With some things, you walk in the door and you know there is a problem,” he said. “We are not getting the kind of feedback from the social worker visitations that we should be, to protect the welfare of the kids.”

The lawmaker conceded that the county’s 2,757 social workers are burdened with excessive caseloads. He said he would do his best to find money to hire more workers, despite the county’s overtaxed budget.

Foster care group homes are usually the placement of last resort for children who have been removed from their birth families and have not fit in with traditional foster families. County officials said Wednesday that they have been attempting to move children out of the homes. They said there were 3,137 in the facilities at the end of 1996, far fewer than the 5,000 reported by the grand jury.

Beverly Muench, senior deputy director of the children’s department, said the majority of group homes are up to state standards and “very responsive” when problems are pointed out.

But several advocates for foster children said more needs to be done to remove children from the homes and to improve the lives of those who are left behind.

Traditional families and foster families should have their efforts to care for difficult children supported with so-called “wrap around” services, such as tutoring, psychotherapy and job training, said Robert Stevenson, whose law firm represents thousands of foster children.

“These sorts of outside programs have been used in Chicago and other places and been very successful,” Stevenson said. “It takes more advanced planning and coordination than a group home. But maybe, at least, a pilot program could be started to try keeping more kids in regular homes.”

Such an initiative would require changes in state and federal laws, which pay group homes liberally but are stingier with money for outside contractors such as therapists and teachers.

Andrew Bridge, executive director of the Alliance for Children’s Rights, an advocacy group for foster children, said children with mental illnesses, in particular, need more attentive care.

“They are not receiving any serious treatment, and the department doesn’t really know what to do with them,” Bridge said. “We need to have small homes of six beds or less to deal with these kids in a therapeutic way and not simply put them away or drug them.”

Muench said the department recently solicited 50 proposals from companies that want to provide homes that cater to the needs of the mentally ill.

Another child welfare advocate, Carol B. Shauffer, said the state--specifically the community care licensing division of the Department of Social Services--needs to take greater responsibility in its licensing of the homes. “They have got to maintain standards for those facilities,” said Shauffer, executive director of the Youth Law Center.

Others, including the grand jury, suggested that yet another agency might need to be chosen to oversee the homes. The investigative group also called for better sharing and dissemination of information. It noted that county social workers have no central database recording complaints against group homes--so that even problem facilities are able to continue admitting new children.