County Orders Audit of Children’s Agency

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday ordered a comprehensive audit of the Department of Children and Family Services in an attempt to improve an often unresponsive child abuse hotline, bolster the number of adoptions and cut the swelling ranks of youngsters in foster care.

In ordering the first review of the children’s agency in its 14-year history, county lawmakers turned aside a proposal to double the hiring of social workers, saying that they didn’t want to expand the 5,000-employee department until its management improves.

“This isn’t just a matter of [spending] more money,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who proposed the review along with Supervisor Don Knabe. “I’m sure not going to do that before we see the root causes of the problem. And it’s a multidimensional problem.”

Yaroslavsky said previous expansions of the agency’s operations had not solved its problems. He noted that the department’s budget--largely augmented by state and federal funds--leaped $200 million, or 30%, in three years. Its staff expanded 16% over that time, and it spent $19 million more than budgeted in overtime last year.

The board’s action came two days after The Times reported on the department’s often inadequate response to reports of child abuse and neglect. Callers have waited on hold for an hour on the county’s child abuse hotline; nearly a quarter of calls are disposed of without in-person investigations; and social workers at times conduct only superficial child abuse investigations.

But supervisors at Tuesday’s hearing stressed that problems within the agency are not limited to the hotline. They cited several troubling reports involving the department since 1996:

* The county grand jury’s finding of substandard care in many group homes, which currently house about 3,000 children placed by the agency.

* Accounts of unsafe conditions in the county’s emergency children’s shelter.

* A state auditor’s report that the agency does not provide some critical services to abused and neglected youngsters.

Peter Digre, the agency’s director, said he welcomed the board’s audit. He called it a “great resource” that could help improve department operations.

Supervisors did not criticize Digre. Yaroslavsky said the agency’s shortcomings are “very complex,” and praised the director for securing more federal funding for the department, which has an annual budget of nearly $1 billion.

But Yaroslavsky cautioned in an interview after the unanimous vote that Digre should make sure he spends as much time focusing on his agency as he does lobbying for policy changes in Washington and Sacramento.

One top county administrator, speaking on condition of anonymity, was even more pointed, calling the audit “a wake-up call to the director to start making some changes. It’s not just the hotline. It’s every aspect of the department that needs improvement.”

The county auditor-controller’s office will conduct the audit, probably in concert with an outside consultant. The review, as well as other studies ordered by the supervisors Tuesday, will focus on:

* The workload of social workers, several hundred of whom oversee more children than permitted under their union contract.

* The increased turnover among the social workers. Attrition has jumped 61% in the last two years, raising questions about morale and management practices. “There is a problem,” Yaroslavsky said.

* The growing ranks of children whom the agency oversees, most of them in foster care. In the past decade, the number of children supervised by social workers in Los Angeles County jumped from 43,000 to 78,000.

* Troubles plaguing the county’s adoption hotline. Supervisor Mike Antonovich said his office had detected problems on the line, meant to help recruit prospective adoptive parents. He said callers sometimes can’t get through, are misdirected within the agency or receive incorrect information.

The board approved a separate proposal by Antonovich to improve service at the child abuse hotline--on which staffing this week was increased substantially with the addition of 20 social workers to answer phones.

The plan requires the children’s agency to find a better method of training hotline workers, to study ways to become more consumer-friendly and to regularly document performance improvements to the supervisors.

“What is upsetting,” Antonovich said, “is that we are far from providing the level of services to those who are the most in need.”

Outside observers applauded the board’s action, calling it long overdue. They said they have been particularly concerned by the explosion in the number of children in foster care. Some said the department often does not adequately measure the needs of foster children or provide them or their families with services to accelerate their departure from the overburdened system.

The growth in the number of children in foster care “ought to set off alarms everywhere,” said Andrew Bridge, executive director of the Alliance for Children’s Rights. One indicator of the problem: There are many more children being overseen by Los Angeles County’s child welfare agency than by New York City’s.

“I don’t think there is any question that the current assessment process for children [in L.A. County] is largely inadequate and requires vast improvement,” Bridge said.

The board initially was set to vote on a proposal by Supervisor Gloria Molina to double the hiring of social workers. She proposed hiring an additional 600 of the employees by the end of June, instead of the 300 more hires ordered earlier.

But Molina withdrew her proposal after it became clear that the majority of board members would not approve the extra hiring without the audit. The board, instead, voted in favor of Molina’s plan to accelerate the already approved hiring of 300. The supervisors agreed that in three months they will reopen the discussion of expanding the staff by the full 600 workers.

For the complete Orphans of Addiction series, with photos and a discussion area, go to https://www.latimes.com/ orphans