LA COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN AND FAMILY SERVICES WITH MORE DEAD CHILDREN
Published On 04-26-2009 , 8:03 AM
WHILE most of my e-mail "alerts" or "be sure to read" messages over the past week have focused on the recently released government memos authorizing torture tactics that were previously denied by the Bush administration, there was one article among the many that brought the issue of torture much closer to home.
While public conversation has pretty much centered on whether the Obama administration should or will prosecute those who committed the harsh interrogation tactics including water boarding against suspected terrorists, where's the dialogue and/or outrage concerning the deaths of 14 abused children as reported this week by Los Angeles Times writers Garrett Therolf and Kim Christensen?
Not a peep on my end of things.
Have we locals become so accustomed to our Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services helping to provide funeral homes with small bodies that the recent revelations are just another ho-hum matter?
According to the story, the young children, many under the age of 2, who died last year of abuse and neglect, came from families who had been reported to the Department of Children and Family Services multiple times and had been investigated by them.
A few slip through the cracks is what we've pretty much heard in years gone by when these things comes to light. But not exactly the answer we're getting this time around. Trish Ploehn, director of the Family Services Department, says the county's review of child-death cases has been insufficient in recent years and that the suggested reforms did not take place.
Ploehn says, among other things, a better computer system would assist social workers in accessing from other departments, mental and other health-related information regarding the family.
What happens to relatives, friends or neighbors who call the department to report the baby didn't really fall down the stairs like mom said she did?
When the babysitter discovers burns on the toddler's buttocks and mom says it's just a rash, what's the sitter supposed to do? Who is the sitter supposed to call for help?
Don't let me be misleading because the department sometimes does answer the call, as in the case of one 2-year-old girl who died last year weighing only 18 pounds, 7 ounces, who had been in foster care but was placed back with her family and visited by a social worker only two months before her death from severe nutritional neglect.
The question shouldn't be who to call for help but instead let's ask why when we call the designated department they don't do their job.
A better computer system most surely wasn't needed in the case of the 2-year-old who starved to death topping the scales at what 5- or 6-month-old babies normally weigh.
Is there really some kind of correlation between children dying when they should have been under the watchful eye of the Department of Children and Family Services and that of the Bush administration, figuring they could institute whatever interrogation tactics they wanted?
You betcha! The Bush folk figured they could do what they wanted with no repercussions. And maybe there won't be any in the long or short run.
And the Los Angeles County DCFS figures the kids are dead and most likely, based on past experience, there won't be any repercussions that amount to very much - either in the long or the short run.
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