Miami Executive Chosen as Head of Children’s Agency

Los Angeles County on Monday selected an outspoken former single mother who once ran Miami’s social service department to head the county’s troubled child welfare department.

Anita M. Bock will take the reins of the Department of Children and Family Services on Dec. 1, replacing an interim administration that has held the massive agency together through a tumultuous year that saw its longtime director leave and a series of deaths of children in foster care. She will receive a starting salary of $171,570 a year.

Bock’s years of experience in the private sector, her combination of toughness and compassion for children, and her experience as a young single mother convinced the Board of Supervisors to select her, officials said.

“I think she’s tough enough to turn that department around,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. “It’s not going to be a picnic. There are a lot of changes to be made.”

Bock spent six years as a district administrator in Miami for the state’s Department of Children and Families before she was forced out by a new governor earlier this year. She clashed with legislators over funding and occasionally with the rank and file of her own department about how the agency was run, but won praise from others for her passionate stewardship.

“She looks at the child welfare system and government from a private perspective,” said Imran Ali, who runs the Miami unit that investigates child abuse allegations. “The child welfare community loved it, but I think the staff had a lot of growing pains. Eventually, they came around to her thinking.”

Before coming to the Florida Department of Children and Families, which runs social service programs ranging from health care to adoptions, Bock, a lawyer, worked as an executive at a steel construction company and at a variety of law firms, and as a business systems analyst at Burger King.

Out of the four candidates considered for the directorship of the nation’s largest child welfare agency, Bock had the least child welfare experience and the longest history in the private sector. That apparently weighed in her favor in the minds of supervisors.

“Anita brings vision and a strong management style to the Department,” Supervisor Don Knabe said in a statement repeatedly describing Bock as “tough.” “This was not a decision entered into lightly. This decision literally impacts the very existence of thousands of children in this county.”

But Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who was the lone supervisor not to vote for Bock, said he was concerned about her lack of child welfare experience. “I wanted a director who would be aggressive in eliminating red tape,” said Antonovich, who abstained from the 4-0 vote. “I hope she proves me wrong and we can work together to place our children in loving homes.”

The Department of Children and Family Services is responsible for the care of 80,000 abused and neglected children, placing them in foster care, reuniting them with their biological parents or arranging adoptions. Its previous director, Peter Digre, drew sharp criticism for his management style from caseworkers, board members and outside auditors.

Digre abruptly resigned last spring, and soon thereafter three children died in foster care in three months. Two veteran county administrators, Sandra Davis and Walt Kelly, have run the department in the interim, winning praise from supervisors and some department officials for dealing with the agency’s problems as it was rocked by a further spate of child deaths.

Into this tumultuous picture comes Bock, who is no stranger to controversy. During her time in Miami she often fought with conservative legislators and once drew the ire of her own department’s workers after issuing a detailed memo ordering them to treat the public with greater courtesy.

“She was an incredibly determined and tough-minded but fair manager,” said Kathy Truell, who worked as spokeswoman for the agency under Bock’s tenure. “She’s an incredible woman.”

Yaroslavsky cited Bock’s personal story as another reason for her selection. Two of the South African-born Bock’s younger siblings were mentally disabled. When she was a college freshman, at age 19, Bock became pregnant and had to hide her condition in the rigidly Calvinist South African society.

She came within a hair’s breadth of allowing her baby to be adopted, but at the last moment persuaded her parents to help her raise the child.

“Someone who’s been through what she’s been through finds themselves responsive to the plight of children on the margins of society,” Yaroslavsky said.