Fingerprint Snafus Slow Foster Program

Los Angeles County’s foster care program was partially disrupted Tuesday as officials struggled to comply with a new law requiring more fingerprinting of prospective caregivers.

The change, aimed at protecting children from abuse, has created snags in operations of the county Department of Children and Family Services, which places about 600 children with relatives each month.

Under a state law that took effect Saturday, relatives willing to provide foster care for children removed from unsafe homes must undergo criminal background checks, including fingerprinting.

But only five of the county agency’s 19 new fingerprinting sites were up and running Tuesday, leading to irritation and delays. Background checks under the new system could take up to 72 hours, potentially forcing children into temporary foster homes that are already licensed.

The department offers only one fingerprinting site in the San Fernando Valley--in North Hollywood--and the scanners there are not working yet, according to agency officials. Neil Rincover, a department spokesman, said all the scanners will be running within two weeks. Many of them are still being tested by contractors, agency officials said.

“They’re all real close to being operational,” Rincover said. “We haven’t had any waiting or any backup in the first four days.”

But Paula Gamboa, president of the local social workers union, disagreed. “There’s been a disruption of services,” she said, adding that she has fielded dozens of calls this week from social workers complaining about problems with the new system.

“We’ve supposedly been preparing this for over a year, but all these sites are not up and working,” Gamboa said.

Judging by the hectic scene at the agency’s Emergency Response Command Post downtown, one of the few centers where scanners were working Tuesday, the department can use all the breathing space it can get.

A small knot of relatives were waiting to be fingerprinted in the morning, sitting patiently for more than an hour, some of them trying to entertain small children. Raymond Alvarez, a jovial grandfather waiting with his wife, Maria, said he did not mind the delay.

“The only inconvenience is there’s no parking around here,” he said as his wife played with three of their grandchildren, trying to distract them with a few toys in the makeshift play center.

Meanwhile, agency workers struggled to straighten out the documents necessary to process requests. They couldn’t fingerprint the Alvarezes without paperwork from another social worker, who had yet to fax it to them.

“We haven’t gotten the fax. What fax number do you have?” one worker said into the telephone as another shuffled through a stack of papers. “We’ve been waiting for a very long time.”

Another social worker dropped by in the midst of the confusion to ask whether her clients needed to set up an appointment to be fingerprinted. She was told that they do, an answer that conflicted with information she had been given earlier.

“Nobody knows what the hell’s going on or how we’re supposed to be doing it,” she said in frustration as she left. “What they’re telling us now is not what they said before.”

Before the new law was passed in 1997, criminal record checks were required for other foster parents but not for relatives. Proponents argued that expanding the checks would shield children from family members who had a history of drug abuse or molestation.

“We have to know who these kids are going to,” said Jayne Murphy Shapiro, president of Kids Safe, a Granada Hills-based child advocacy group. “The perpetrators on the street are just as dangerous as the ones behind closed doors. . . . Obviously, we do not want the kids to have any delay getting into a home. But a 72-hour wait is better than, God forbid, going into the wrong hands.”

The downtown center, the only one open on New Year’s weekend, processed just nine sets of fingerprints Saturday and Sunday, said Marilyn Brown, a senior manager in the department. The background checks were completed in a matter of hours and the children were released to the relatives, she said.

Under the new system, if a check reveals a criminal past or some other blemish, the county can temporarily place the children in emergency shelters or approved foster homes until the relatives are cleared.

The county has enough beds available to care for children in the interim, said Amaryllis Watkins, the department’s acting deputy director for resources.

Gamboa asked the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to review the law to see if the county could temporarily resort to its old system, without fingerprints, until the problems are resolved.

“What it’s doing is discouraging placements with relatives,” she said. “If the department’s priority is to keep families together, they’re defeating the whole purpose.”