Grand Jury Assails Children’s Services

Overloaded with paperwork and lacking enough education and on-the-job training, Ventura County’s foster care social workers are not providing quality service to their clients, according to a grand jury report released Monday.

As a result, the program--especially its protective services for children--suffers from “a lack of consistency . . . in effectiveness,” the report said.

Social workers are not visiting their clients often enough at home, the report said. Further, there is little follow-up. The well-being of a child, the study said, is not monitored once he or she leaves the foster care system.

The report also recommended tighter security to ensure that children are not placed in foster homes where family members are on probation or parole.

In August, the grand jury launched a probe into several foster care facilities operated by Children and Family Services, which is under the auspices of the county Public Social Services Agency.

Children and Family Services employs 33 social workers who are responsible for about 300 children in 185 foster homes. In addition, they monitor the cases of another 400 children who may go into foster care. Those children live with relatives or their own parents on a supervised basis.

The size of their caseloads permits monthly home visits at the most, the report said. Of the 33 workers, 15 have master’s degrees, 11 have bachelor’s degrees, two have associate’s degrees and five have no college degree.

Of the six supervisors, three have master’s degrees and three have bachelor’s degrees.

The grand jury recommended that master’s degrees be required for all foster care social workers and supervisors. Jurors also suggested employees receive ongoing training and education.

Frank Ferratta, Children and Family Services interim deputy director, had not read the report on Monday. But he took issue with most of the points in the report, saying reforms were already underway.

He said time spent on a new computer system prevented his staff from making more frequent home visits.

“We’re doing our part in a statewide process to computerize our foster care system,” Ferratta said. “It takes an enormous amount of time to put all of our data into the system.”

He also said the agency does a criminal records check on each person who lives in a foster home before a child is placed there. He said he was not aware of a case in which a child was placed in a home with a person on probation or parole.

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He agreed, however, that more employees should have master’s degrees, but stopped short of saying it should be a requirement.

There is already a plan in place to hire an outside consultant to review the problems within the system, he added.

“As for the suggestion that we need to fast-track our adoption process, I completely agree,” he said. “We have already started that procedure.”

Under federal law, couples have up to one year to prove they are fit parents. On Jan. 1, a new law was passed to give county officials more authority to speed up the adoption process.