Readers React: Problems with L.A. County child services go to the top, says former social worker

To the editor: Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services Director Philip Browning is quoted as saying, “We made so much progress in the past few years.” (“Social workers charged with child abuse in case involving torture and killing of Gabriel Fernandez, 8,” April 7)

My response: Really?

Though the four social workers charged in connection with 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez’s 2012 death may have been negligent, the real issue is Browning and an institution that is terminally dysfunctional.

I was hired as part of the surge in social workers in 2014. I lasted eight months before resigning in disgust. New workers were told that the goal of the department was to limit our caseload to 24 cases. When I left, I was sitting on 32.

It’s certainly convenient to scapegoat the few bad apples, but the real issue is a fatally flawed bureaucracy and its apologist director that the public and the Board of Supervisors should hold equally accountable.

George Walczak, Oxnard

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