A Tenure Marked by Some Praise--and Criticism

Peter Digre hit the ground running when he took over Los Angeles County’s scandal-plagued child welfare system: Flying in near midnight on New Year’s Day 1991, he went straight from the airport to meet the social workers staffing the county’s child abuse hotline.

With such visible, hands-on gestures, Digre has held the top post in the Department of Children and Family Services longer than any other director in the agency’s 13-year history. Under his stewardship, the department has expanded and is hailed by some as a national model.

But Digre’s critics have repeatedly charged that his flair for grand gestures comes at the expense of solid day-to-day management and has alienated him from the rank-and-file social workers who form the department’s backbone.

Such accusations surfaced again last week with reports that the Sheriff’s Department is investigating allegations that Digre thwarted efforts by his agency to shut down a foster home run by a political ally.

The La Puente foster home was closed in December after years of complaints from foster children and social workers that children placed there were hit or neglected by foster mother Sandra Rodriguez, a leader of a foster parents group and outspoken Digre supporter.

Digre has called the accusations that he interfered with the agency’s efforts to close the foster home “absurd,” and Rodriguez has denied the abuse allegations that led to the shutdown of her operation.

The controversy is the latest of several public flare-ups that have characterized Digre’s tenure.

He came under fire even before his first day on the job. County supervisors were divided over his appointment in late 1990; then-Supervisor Ed Edelman, a prominent liberal, spoke passionately against Digre.

Digre had been the No. 2 man at Florida’s Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. That agency was widely criticized for its handling of cases involving abused and neglected children, and Edelman at the time said his staff had been told that Digre was known in Florida as autocratic and difficult to work with.

The supervisors nevertheless agreed by a 3-2 vote to bring Digre in to take over Los Angeles County’s troubled agency.

When he arrived, the children’s department was so near collapse that state authorities were threatening to take over the entire operation. Endangered children often were not visited, parents did not receive court-mandated visitations, and some emergency abuse calls languished without an in-person response.

Digre quickly made his mark. He saw to it that social workers made their scheduled monthly visits to foster children, a practice that had been neglected for years.

“When he took over, some kids had not been seen for months and months. He reduced substantially injuries to kids,” said Norine Boehmer, who since 1991 has been a member of the county Commission on Children and Families, which oversees the department.

Digre has also been a masterful fund-raiser, tapping into state and federal funding sources that have enabled the department to grow even during the recession years. The children’s department budget--more than $1 billion a year--is now more than double what it was when Digre arrived.

“He’s a genius at coming up with dollars,” Boehmer said.

Regarded as among the brightest public officials in Los Angeles County, Digre used his post as a bully pulpit, traveling to Washington with Nancy Daly--a child welfare advocate who is now married to Mayor Richard Riordan--to lobby for children’s legislation.

But as Digre’s stature grew beyond the county, resentment simmered within his department. Up to one-third of the 2,600 social workers in 1996 were handling caseloads greater than the limits established in their contracts. The extra caseloads have led to burnout and higher attrition rates among social workers.

In late 1995, Digre took the kind of bold action that has won him praise from some outsiders but angered social workers. After an 18-month-old girl was shaken to death by her parents, Digre quickly fired the girl’s social worker, the social worker’s supervisor and the department’s regional deputy administrator.

The firings sparked a demonstration by more than 300 social workers, who picketed outside Digre’s office. Two of the employees were later reinstated, but social workers still cite the incident as one of several demoralizing episodes under his administration.

This year, a management audit recommended that Digre be teamed up with a powerful deputy capable of running the department’s day-to-day operations.

County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who voted to hire Digre in 1990, said the director’s tenure has been “an erupting volcano of problems due to his failure to manage effectively,” but he declined to say whether he would support Digre’s removal.

Digre can be fired by a majority vote of the five supervisors.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky also declined to comment on Digre. “It’s a personnel matter, and we owe it to the employee to handle it professionally, so I’m not going to say anything,” he said.

A source familiar with the board’s thinking said Digre’s support among supervisors is waning, with two ready to vote for his removal and two who might vote against him.

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Times staff writer K. Connie Kang contributed to this report.