As more L.A. County children die, reform still falters

For years, county supervisors have blamed directors of the child welfare agency, but they haven't ensured youngsters' safety.

By Garrett Therolf and Kim Christensen

March 28, 2010

As deaths among abused and neglected children have mounted in recent months, Los Angeles County supervisors and their aides have summoned child-welfare director Trish Ploehn to lengthy closed-door sessions to explain what's gone wrong in her department and how she plans to fix it.

"The safety and security of the children within our child-welfare system is the most important part of her job," Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said last week. "This is a matter of great urgency for her and the Board of Supervisors, and we will all be judged by the results."

The department's problems, however, surfaced long before Ploehn was promoted to the top job in 2006, becoming the third chief since 1999. More constant has been the board that chose her, four of whose members have served for at least 14 years.

Time and again, when children under the county's watch have died or come to harm, the supervisors have called for reforms and turned up the heat on department chiefs -- leaders they picked. At least two of Ploehn's predecessors left under fire, with one remarking on his way out that it was the toughest job in the country.

The troubles of the nation's largest county-run child welfare department remain, many of them substantially unchanged.

"I will say, categorically, that the L.A. County Board of Supervisors is the greatest culprit," said community activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who has also called for Ploehn's firing.

"All of this is on their watch," he said. "It's their agency, and they have direct supervision and oversight of it. . . . If I see one more 'We're going to review it' from the Board of Supervisors, I'm going to scream."

In early 2000, after a task force reported that the county's foster care system -- then overseen by child-welfare director Anita Bock -- was in disarray, Supervisor Michael Antonovich said it "cries out for reform."

Four years later, Supervisor Gloria Molina hammered then-director David Sanders after the fatal beating of a Canoga Park child who was allowed to stay with his mother despite six previous complaints of abuse.

"Let's not kid ourselves," Molina said. "This is about people not doing their jobs. . . . The same ill-trained, ill-prepared social workers could have hurt other people. Don't you consider it a dangerous situation when you have something as blatant as this?"

Six years later, questions about training and deadly oversights still dog the department.

Under Ploehn, a 30-year department veteran, the agency's failings have come to light more readily than in the past, largely because of a state law that opened previously confidential records. Before the law took effect in 2008, virtually all information about children's deaths from abuse or neglect was kept from public view, ostensibly to protect the privacy of victims and their families. Reports about horrific cases leaked out sporadically.

The recent records show that about 35 children from families previously investigated by the department have died of abuse or neglect by their caregivers since January 2008.

When The Times reported last April that 14 such deaths had occurred in 2008 alone, supervisors expressed shock and outrage. But Yaroslavsky acknowledged the next day that the board had been aware of similar numbers in previous years.

A Times investigation last year also showed that supervisors and administrators had been explicitly warned over a period of 18 years that children were dying or being injured in part because agencies within the county weren't communicating.

Nonetheless, the number of recent cases, and their tragic details, have caused some to question Ploehn's abilities and whether she has the management team in place to get results.

She's had years to shape the department, having been named deputy director in 2003. Yet when asked to explain high-profile mistakes by her staff, she sometimes appears unfamiliar with the details or withholds information, even from the board, according to two sources familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Today, key posts in the department remain vacant, including that of top deputy. Important county departments have yet to join a computer system designed to share vital case information. And, citing budget problems, supervisors have denied Ploehn's request for hundreds of new social workers she says she needs.

Concerns about the department's performance were punctuated March 20 by the fatal beating of Deandre Green, 2, allegedly by his mother's boyfriend. The boy's father later told The Times that police and child-welfare officials were warned at least twice in recent months about possible abuse.

Earlier this month, 2-year-old Viola Vanclief was killed while in the care of a foster family agency that had a history of child-abuse incidents. Viola had been placed with the foster mother even though the woman had been the subject of five previous child-abuse complaints and her boyfriend was a convicted felon.

Such deaths have often shared persistent threads: social workers who did not follow procedure or did not have the information to make a proper assessment.

Before these cases surfaced, Ploehn, 55, had been widely credited for quickly recognizing the severity of the child-death problem and for plunging into efforts to fix it. Key to her plan were better technology to arm social workers with more information during investigations, the proposed addition of 300 social workers to the investigations unit and a far more intensive training academy for staffers.

The overwhelming focus on the deaths, Ploehn said, has obscured her department's good works.

"Our department is saving children's lives and preventing children from further abuse," she wrote in a statement to The Times.

"Each year, we receive 160,000 to 180,000 referrals to our child-protection hotline. We've experienced exceptional successes and gains in reforming child welfare, reducing the number of children in out-of-home care, and reducing timelines to permanency, reunification and adoption."

John Tanner, executive director of Service Employees International Union 721, which represents county social workers, credited Ploehn for listening to his group's reform proposals, despite the growing pressure on her and the department. He warned against firing Ploehn, saying it would destabilize reform efforts and repeat a pattern of scapegoating department heads.

"It's well known that there are seven departments led by interim directors. There have been six Department of Health Services directors over 15 years," he said, counting two acting chiefs. "Trish is pushing change. Everyone wishes it would come faster, but I still think she deserves support."

One of her most stalwart backers, Supervisor Don Knabe, called her "a remarkable leader even under the most enormous pressure" and vowed his continued support.

"I have worked with her for many years going back to her days in the Torrance office, long before she became head of the department a few years ago," he said in a statement. "She was the right choice then and she remains the right choice now."

It would be unfair to blame all of the department's problems on Ploehn, some experts say.

Eileen Mayers Pasztor, an associate professor of social work at Cal State Long Beach who has trained thousands of child-welfare professionals and advocates nationwide, contends that accredited agencies elsewhere have more rigorous standards. But they also have more support.

"We cannot expect well-meaning public and private child-welfare agencies to achieve outcomes that are not commensurate with the resources provided," she said. "That is not fair, and it's not right -- especially for the children."

But some critics, including Hutchinson, president of the Urban Policy Roundtable, think it is time for Ploehn to go.

"From the track record of this organization, it is clear that it is time for a total management shake-up, and that begins with the director," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-child-deaths28-2010mar28,0,5571870,print.story

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OPINION

L.A. County -- the biggest loser

A study estimates 250,000 residents aren't claiming $370 million in tax refunds because they don't know they qualify for the earned income tax credit.

By Anne Stuhldreher

March 28, 2010

There are some contests where you don't want to finish first. Being the biggest loser of free federal tax refunds is one of them.

Yet Los Angeles County just notched that dubious distinction in a recent study of California's participation in the earned income tax credit, or EITC, a refund that gives a financial boost to people at the low end of the pay scale.

The unheralded tax credit is a secret weapon in the fight against poverty. Last year, the tax credit effectively gave 2.5 million Californians $5 billion in raises. People who earn up to $48,279 can be eligible, although the idea behind the credit, introduced in the Nixon administration, is to give low-wage workers with families a leg up. The average refund is about $2,000, but they can be as high as $5,657.

It's a resource that's especially important for struggling parents and their kids. According to the Brookings Institution, the earned income tax credit lifts more children out of poverty than any federal program.

It's just as powerful for businesses. Research shows that people tend to spend their earned income refunds immediately. That spurs sales at local businesses, which in turn can hire more people and pay wages. In fact, in a study comparing stimulus options, Moodys.com found that what gets the biggest bang for the buck are investments that increase the spending power of the neediest.

But at a time when every dollar counts, we're letting earned income money fall through our fingers. The IRS says that California has one of the lowest participation rates in the country. Two Cal State Fresno economists, in a study commissioned by the New America Foundation, estimate that 800,000 Californians will neglect to claim $1.2 billion in earned income tax credits this year.

If the prediction comes true, the poor won't be the only ones suffering. The Cal State Fresno researchers applied "economic multiplier" models that show that California's economy will miss out on $1.4 billion in business sales, $342 million in wages and $88 million in tax revenue because the unclaimed refunds will never be spent.

And nowhere will those losses be greater than in Los Angeles County. The study estimates that 250,000 county residents don't claim $370 million in refunds. That works out to $446 million in sales that won't happen, more than 2,700 jobs that won't be created and $122 million in wages that won't be paid.

Of course, people don't willfully miss out on refunds. They do so because they haven't heard of the credit or don't think they earn enough to apply. And often they're confused. That's understandable -- the IRS considers 20 factors to determine if someone qualifies. Latinos and non-English speakers are among those most likely to fail to claim the credit.

That's why it's so important that people find out if they're eligible before April 15. You can call the county's 211 help line to learn more about the earned income tax credit and to get connected with 130 free tax preparation sites throughout the region. Or you can head to the Forum in downtown Los Angeles from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. It's the final day of First Lady Maria Shriver's "one-stop" fair designed to make it easy for people to find out if they're eligible for various kinds of aid and how to apply for them. Shriver held a similar event at the Fresno County Fairgrounds last weekend, and one organizer estimated that 26,000 people came, according to the Fresno Bee.

Many more people, though, need to hear the message. Our cash-strapped state can't afford for them not to.

Anne Stuhldreher is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy institute.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-struhldreher28-2010mar28,0,6630901,print.story

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From the New York Times

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OPINION - Op-Ed Contributor

Human Currency in Mexico's Drug Trade

Mexico City

IN Mexico, there is a strange practice known as the “art of renting.” If you're arrested for drunken driving, for example, you can pay someone to spend two nights in jail in your place. Some hospitals require that a relative be on hand for each patient, so I have seen old women hire themselves out to sit in waiting rooms pretending to be mothers and wives. It's rumored that childless adults who want to visit the Children's Museum here, on days when grownups must be accompanied by minors to enter, can rent a child outside the entrance.

In much the same way, you can rent people to beat up or kill your enemy or lend their names as signatories for your shady business deals. I've often thought of renting another person to write under my name. Then someone else would have to address the drug-related violence, like the killing of an American consulate worker and her husband this month in Ciudad Juárez. Hillary Clinton met with our president, Felipe Calderón, last week to discuss a new counternarcotics strategy. Perhaps the writer impersonating me would be able to muster some enthusiasm about the results.

All of us here are scared of the drug violence, and yet most don't take it personally. Ordinary citizens feel that this situation barely affects them. Bad things happen to other people ... over there.

It's as if the whole country were made up of people who rent and people who are rented, as if one half of society has contracted the other to carry out the role of mutilated corpse, hit man, corrupt official or missing woman. There are no victims or criminals — just hired men.

Only by distancing ourselves is it possible to function in a country where there can be 24 men found lying on the side of a highway, each one with a bullet in his head, or where the corpses of kidnapped people can be found to have their mouths stuffed with magnificent bouquets of yellow flowers.

Amazingly, people here are not shocked by such images. They are not novel. Today's violence is indistinguishable from all of the violence of our history. The victims of drug gangs take the place of the hundreds of women murdered in Juárez in the last decades, of massacred indigenous people and of the plague of kidnappings and torture from the southern to the northern border.

Perhaps we've managed to forget, as we buy and sell one another so extravagantly, that death's deals alone are permanent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28bellatin.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From Fox News

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Netanyahu Tries to Play Down Tensions With U.S.

Associated Press

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday that Israel and the U.S. are "allies and friends" and can work out their differences.

JERUSALEM - Israel's leader tried to play down tensions with the U.S. on Sunday after a rocky meeting at the White House last week, saying that relations with Washington remain solid.
In his first public comments on the matter, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet that Israel and the U.S. can work out their differences.

"The relationship between Israel and the U.S. is one between allies and friends, and it's a relationship based on years of tradition," Netanyahu said. "Even if there are disagreements, these are disagreements between friends, and that's how they will stay."

The U.S. has criticized Israeli construction in east Jerusalem -- the section of the holy city claimed by the Palestinians. It has asked Israel for gestures toward the Palestinians to help relaunch peace talks, which were about to start earlier this month when the latest spat over settlements broke out.

The planned peace talks were thrown into doubt after Israel announced plans to build 1,600 new apartments for Jews in east Jerusalem. Israel made the announcement while Vice President Joe Biden was visiting, drawing sharp condemnations from Washington and calls to cancel the construction plans.

Netanyahu, who has consistently rejected calls for any halt to building in Jerusalem, got a chilly reception at the White House last week. He gave no sign of giving in to the U.S. demand or resolving the dispute by the time he left.Ties between Israel and the U.S. are more tense than they have been in years.

Netanyahu was to discuss the matter with his Cabinet ministers at their weekly meeting Sunday, and told reporters before the meeting that he had taken "certain steps in order to narrow the gaps."

No details from the reportedly tense Obama-Netanyahu meeting have been made public. The administration's precise demands on Israel and what Israel has offered in return have also remained under wraps.

Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967 and later annexed it, a move that was never recognized by the international community. The current tension surrounds Israeli construction in the Jewish neighborhoods it has built in east Jerusalem. The international community considers these neighborhoods to be illegal settlements, no different from the more than 120 Jewish settlements that dot the West Bank.

Netanyahu says that Israel will retain its east Jerusalem neighborhoods in any peace deal so building there does not harm the chances for peace.

The Israeli construction plans and deadlock in peace efforts have helped fuel recent Palestinian protests in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

On Sunday, Israel said it was imposing a closure on the West Bank as a security measure for the duration of the weeklong Passover holiday. The measure, which was to begin at midnight, bars almost all Palestinians from entering Israel. Such restrictions are routine during Jewish holidays.

The past week has seen an uptick in violence in and around the Gaza Strip, which has been relatively quiet since Israel's offensive there ended early last year. Militants have increased rocket fire into southern Israel, and a gunbattle along the Gaza-Israel border Friday left two Israeli soldiers and one Palestinian civilian dead.

Netanyahu said Hamas, the Islamic group that rules Gaza, was responsible for the violence and said Israel would respond "aggressively" to any attacks.

Abuse Victims May Bring Suits Against Vatican

Sunday Times

U.S. lawyers are now determined to sue the Vatican for access to material that may shed light on relations between Rome and American bishops and the extent to which there may have been a policy to hush up abuse by priests.

New revelations about Pope Benedict XVI's alleged role in covering up accusations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy have exposed the Vatican to the risk of lawsuits brought by victims around the world.

Mounting anger at the Catholic Church's failure to act on predatory priests in the U.S., Europe and Mexico has plunged the papacy into an institutional crisis described by an American Catholic newspaper last week as “the largest in centuries.”

Yesterday the Vatican denounced the “aggressive persistence” of critics who were attempting to “involve the Holy Father personally in the matter of abuse.” A spokesman told Vatican Radio that the Pope's record was “above discussion.”

Yet the talk in Catholic circles was of little else as the Pope's former life as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, archbishop of Munich and senior Vatican administrator, came under intensifying scrutiny.

Last week it was alleged that, as head of the Vatican office monitoring priestly misconduct, Ratzinger failed to punish Father Lawrence Murphy, who abused up to 200 boys at a Wisconsin school for the deaf.

Click to read the full story at the Sunday Times

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/03/28/abuse-victims-bring-suits-vatican/

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From MSNBC

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Slain girl's dad: ‘We need to protect children'

ESCONDIDO, Calif. - More than 1,000 people paid tribute Saturday to a 14-year-old girl whose remains were found more than a year after she disappeared walking to school. Her father urged anyone who cried for her to demand a crackdown on child predators.

Amber Dubois was a voracious reader with a fertile imagination and a profound love of animals, friends, family and teachers told the audience on a sun-drenched track field at Escondido High School, north of San Diego. Her favorite animal, the wolf, appeared in front of the stage along with a llama, snake, monkey and goats.

The ceremony ended when the parents of Amber and three other California girls who have been kidnapped and killed each released a dove on stage. They included the parents of Chelsea King, a 17-year-old whose body was found five days after she was last seen running Feb. 25 in a San Diego park .

Amber's bones were discovered March 6 in a rugged, remote area north of San Diego. She vanished Feb. 13, 2009, carrying a $200 check to purchase a lamb she was to raise for Future Farmers of America. The check was never cashed.

'Robbed'
Taylor Doyle, a friend, recalled riding horses with Amber at summer camp, reading books with her in bed and seeing her "radiance and beauty" at freshman homecoming. She hoped to attend college with Amber and raise children together.

"Now I'm robbed," she said. "Whoever did this robbed me of having this legacy."

John Albert Gardner III, 30, is the only suspect that police have named in Amber's death but he has not been charged. Authorities have not said what led them to the remains.

Three days before Amber's bones were found, Gardner pleaded not guilty to murdering Chelsea King and attempting to rape another woman in December. He served five years of a six-year sentence for molesting a 13-year-old neighbor in San Diego in 2000.

Maurice Dubois, Amber's father, recalled how his daughter teased him — how she laughed when a goose attacked him at a park and fiddled with his ear while he was driving. On a more serious note, he pleaded with the audience to demand that laws aimed at stopping child predators are funded and enforced.

Video: King's alleged killer tied to another slaying?

"We need to protect the children we have left, the children we have around us," he said. "I don't want this to go in vain. I want us to make a change."

Marc Klaas, who founded Klaaskids Foundation after his 12-year-old daughter was abducted from a slumber party in 1993 and later found slain, also demanded tougher enforcement.

"We worked so hard, we passed so many laws, we keep thinking we've made a difference, but it keeps continuing, it keeps going on. Ladies and gentlemen, we have to hold our politicians accountable," said Klaas, who helped in the search for Amber.

Speakers remembered a quiet but self-assured girl who made friends easily.

Carrie McGonigle, Amber's mother, said her daughter collected rat's bones as a young girl and kept them in her bedroom.

Carrie McGibney, an eighth-grade teacher, said Amber read books while walking down the hallway and flipped the pages under her desk while simultaneously taking history notes.

Another eighth-grade teacher, Pat Gross, said Amber stayed after class to discuss books. She last saw Amber a week before her disappearance when her former student dropped by to tell her of her plans to raise a lamb.

"It was the Amber I knew and remember — kind, enthusiastic and innocent," Gross said.

Mark Reyburn, her high school agriculture teacher, Amber was a talented public speaker who found her niche in his agriculture class and looked forward to a career in animal sciences.

Reyburn said he had to admonish Amber to stop reading while he was lecturing.

"She would reply with her big blue eyes, 'While I was reading, I could hear you,'" he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36070806/ns/us_news-life/print/1/displaymode/1098/

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Scores trapped in flooded China coal mine

BEIJING - At least 152 people are trapped after a coal mine flooded in northern China, an official said.

The Wangjialing coal mine in Shanxi province was flooded Sunday when 261 miners were working in the pit, a duty officer at the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety said.

The man, who refused to give his name, said 109 of the miners escaped but the others remain trapped and rescue work is continuing. The cause of the flood is still under investigation, he said.

Although China's mine safety record has improved in recent years, it is still the deadliest in the world, with blasts and other accidents common.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36071439/ns/world_news-asiapacific/print/1/displaymode/1098/

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