Los Angeles CASA does the most CASA thing in the world

There are more than 900 chapters of Court-Appointed Special Advocates. Of that number, one was led by a Black woman with lived experience. Now that number is zero. 

On May 19, UCLA Blueprint published this story about Dr. Charity Chandler-Cole,
director of Los Angeles CASA. On June 18, she was fired.

Here’s how that most sacred cow in child welfare, Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), works: 

Overwhelmingly white middle-class volunteers are given 30 hours of training, maybe 40, much of which can be taken online.* Then they’re sent into the homes of families that are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately nonwhite. The usually white, middle-class amateurs interview everyone, assess the families, spend what one study found to be an average of 12 minutes every working day investigating the case (less if the child was Black).

Then they can effectively decide if the child will go into foster care. They can effectively decide if the child stays in foster care.  They can effectively decide if the child will ever see his or her parents ever again. (Yes, judges do it officially, but CASA brags about how often judges do as they tell them to do.) 

What could possibly go wrong? 

Well, for starters, abundant research shows that it backfires. Studies find that CASA prolongs foster care, reduces the chances of reunification, increases the chances that children will “age out” with no home at all – and does nothing to improve child safety. (And by the way, though the amateurs also are volunteers, it turns out running all this costs taxpayers a fortune.) 

Second, no matter how well-meaning the volunteers, the program is so steeped in unfixable racial and class bias that runs so deep, two legal scholars called the entire program “an act of white supremacy.” 

But for a while there, it looked like one CASA program was serious about trying to do better, and it was a big one.  In 2021, the Los Angeles County CASA program hired as its director Dr. Charity Chandler-Cole. That was a shock. Charity Chandler-Cole is a Black woman with lived experience; someone who had risen above everything the system tried to do to her. And Los Angeles tears apart families at one of the highest rates among America’s largest cities. 

As The Imprint points out in this excellent story, among those who hailed her appointment was Karen Bass, then a Member of Congress with a strong interest in foster care issues, now mayor of Los Angeles. Said Bass: 

“Charity is the right leader at the perfect time for CASA/LA. She is a visionary who will be a tireless champion for the program and the children and families they serve.” 

But on June 18, the Board of Los Angeles County CASA fired Dr. Chandler-Cole.  That was not a shock.  That was the most CASA thing in the world. 

As The Imprint points out, it’s not like the Board didn’t know what it was getting: 

Her views were clearly stated upon her hiring. 

“If our CASAs don’t understand why these systems were created in the first place and that they weren’t created to really address the needs of our communities, then they can’t really go in understanding how to navigate this system that is not created to help young people from Black and brown communities,” Chandler-Cole said in a 2021 interview with this outlet. 

But, as the story also points out, that was 2021, the height of America’s short-lived racial justice reckoning.  Now, of course, there’s a lot less pressure for racial justice, and CASA can return to its comfort zone. 

In retrospect, a profile of Dr. Chandler-Cole and her work, published just last month, included a hint of what was to come: 

Not everyone was happy when Chandler-Cole got the job and began a series of monthly virtual fireside chats at which she talked about race and racism, immigration, and the particular needs of — and structural discrimination against — LGBTQ-plus kids and parents. Some volunteers and board members told her that her approach was scaring people. Some quit. One said she was triggered every time the new CEO used the words “social justice” or “racial justice.” [Emphasis added.] 

That article was published on May 19. One month later, Charity Chandler-Cole was out.  I guess too many CASAs were getting “triggered.” 

In one sense, the Los Angeles County CASA Board of Directors was absolutely right. Some board members told The Imprint: 

“The CASA Board determined that there was a fundamental misalignment between Dr. Chandler-Cole’s approach and CASA’s mission ..." 

That tells you all you need to know about CASA's real mission. 

*-Plus in-service – some CASAs get soooooo upset when you don’t mention the in-service.

The child welfare establishment just got four billion messages: Your system is not safe

 

 Five years ago, like many other states, California passed a law to reopen the statute of limitations so survivors of child sexual abuse could sue those responsible. What lawmakers had in mind, of course, was institutions such as the Catholic Church, then mired in scandal over abuses by priests and institutional cover-up. 

As a result, to take one example, the Diocese of Los Angeles has had to pay $1.5 billion in settlements with survivors. 

What lawmakers didn’t realize was that, horrific as were the predations of priests, they were nothing compared to the horrors inflicted in foster care – especially group homes and institutions. 

As a result, to take one example: Los Angeles County is likely to agree soon to pay $4 billion – you read that right, four billion dollars – to survivors of abuse inflicted on them when they were in the custody of the Los Angeles County foster care system and/or juvenile justice system.  The money will be divided among 6,800 survivors – and those are just the ones who suffered sexual abuse. 

This $4 billion settlement is the latest illustration of the fact that the entire model of American child welfare was built on a false premise: that child removal equals child safety. Sure, it was said, being torn from everyone a child knows and loves might do emotional harm (in itself a dismissal of profound trauma) but at least they’ll be safe. 

So let's apply the rhetoric we’ve heard from the child welfare establishment decade after decade to these cases.  Some of the 6,800 were placed through the juvenile justice system (which, in itself is more likely if a child was placed in foster care first) but for those among the 6,800 placed through the child welfare system: 

● In every one of those cases, someone decided to tear their family apart in the name of “child safety.”

● In every one of those cases, someone decided they were putting “child safety” ahead of “family preservation.”

● In every one of those cases, someone decided they were acting in the name of “child protection.”

● In every one of those cases, someone decided they were defending “children’s rights.”

● In every one of those cases, someone decided they were putting those “children’s rights” ahead of “parents' rights.”

● In every one of those cases, someone decided to “err on the side of the child.” 

Take a good, long look at how that worked out.  Then take another good, long look the next time you hear that same rhetoric from the take-the-child-and-run crowd. 

Oh, but that crowd will say, those 6,800 cases were just aberrations. The scandals say otherwise.  Just in this decade scandals involving rampant abuse have made headlines in Arizona, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Utah, Oklahoma, Washington state, or Arkansas,  Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island – and I’m sure I’ve missed some. 

The data also say otherwise. Yes, the majority of family foster homes are not abusive – it’s not clear if you can say even that about institutions; and, of course, institutionalization is inherently abusive.  Study after study, using conservative methodology, finds abuse in one-quarter to one-third of family foster homes – and the record of group homes and institutions is even worse.  

Foster care apologists also will say these suits deal with abuse from long ago, and really, truly, we’ve all cleaned up our acts since then! But that’s not what the U.S. Senate Finance Committee found just last year. 

Of course, instead of learning the right lessons, some lawmakers are rushing to try to extend protection not to the children but to the agencies responsible for the abuse. In California, private agencies that oversee foster homes and run group homes and institutions sought, and almost got, near immunity from lawsuits. That failed, so now they’re trying for a bailout. New York agencies are doing the same. So are their counterparts in Illinois.

The Los Angeles settlement is far from the end of the story, even in California. 

On the very day the Los Angeles settlement was announced the second of two sets of lawsuits was filed by scores of people who say they survived horrible abuse at the Polinsky Children’s Center in San Diego. 

Said one of the lawyers bringing the suit: “Based on our investigation, the county of San Diego was apparently one of the largest employers of child molesters in the state of California."

That should come as no surprise. Predators go where the prey is. 

San Diego County hasn’t commented on the lawsuits themselves (though the county wants you to know it "remains committed to the safety of all children provided temporary respite at Polinsky Children’s Center.") If the county ever does comment on the lawsuits, I’ll bet officials will say something about how that was all in the past and everything is fixed now. But the allegations cover 1996 to 2023. 

Back in Los Angeles, according to the New York Times 

“On behalf of the county, I apologize wholeheartedly to everyone who was harmed by these reprehensible acts,” the county’s chief executive, Fesia Davenport, said in a statement on Friday. “The historic scope of this settlement makes clear that we are committed to helping the survivors recover and rebuild their lives — and to making and enforcing the systemic changes needed to keep young people safe.”

But in a county that tears apart children at one of the highest rates among America’s largest cities and their surrounding counties, the only systemic changes that will work are: 

● Stop taking away so many children needlessly, so you don’t have to rely on substandard foster homes.

● Shut down the group homes and institutions. 

Having spent decades turning their backs on abuse in systems for which they have ultimate responsibility, one can only hope that for governments in California and across the country, getting hit with a $4 billion two-by-four will be enough to get their attention.

How to fail up in child welfare: Bobby Cagle oversaw a foster-care panic when he ran child welfare in Georgia. Now he’s going to run child welfare in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors

            In November, 2016, when the federal government finally released state-by-state data on the number of children trapped in foster care the year before (yes, the feds release the data more than a year after they get it) the Associated Press reported on the grim news this way:

            The number of U.S. children in foster care is climbing after a sustained decline, but just five states account for nearly two-thirds of the recent increase.

            Among those states, the one with the worst record – the one in which the number of children in foster care increased at the highest rate – was Georgia.

According to the state’s own data, the number of children trapped in foster care on any given day skyrocketed 64 percent from 8,136 in September 2013 to 13,266 just three years later. As of March, 2017, the most recent month for which data are available, the figure had reached 13,348.

UPDATE, NOV. 30, 2017: The federal government has just released state-by-state figures for 2016. Once again, Georgia's performance was dismal. In fact, Georgia alone was responsible for more than 14 percent of the entire nationwide increase in the number of children trapped in foster care on any given day.

            There was a similar surge in entries into foster care – the number of children taken from their parents over a course of year. That figure increased more than 45 percent from 2013 to 2016.

            What’s been happening in Georgia since the end of 2013, the sharp, sudden surge in the number of children taken away and the number of children trapped in foster care, is a classic foster-care panic. And the man in charge of the Georgia child welfare system for almost this entire time was Bobby Cagle.

Now, Cagle has a new job. By a vote of 3 to 2, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors turned down a candidate who almost certainly would have been superior – JooYeun Chang – and decided to let Cagle bring his take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare to the largest locally-run public child welfare agency in the country, the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).

Los Angeles already tears apart families at a rate far above the average for America's biggest cities and their surrounding counties. Now the Supervisors are bringing in someone likely to make that record even worse.

Before Cagle, Georgia was making progress

            Before Cagle took over, Georgia had reduced its rates of foster care placement and removal to among the lowest in the country. So I’m sure Cagle’s defenders will rush to haul out the most tired cliché in child welfare and inform us that the “pendulum” had swung too far.

            But the evidence says otherwise. From 2006 through 2013, even as the number of Georgia children in foster care steadily declined, the key measure of child safety – the rate at which children who have been abused or neglected are maltreated again – also declined. In other words, child safety improved. In contrast, during the years of foster-care panic this measure has gotten worse.

            So why the foster-care panic?

Of course Georgia officials cited drug abuse, the all-purpose excuse for skyrocketing foster care. But many states have drug problems, they don’t all let their foster-care populations increase by more than 64 percent. And while the problem of drug abuse, like the problem of child abuse, is serious and real, it does not follow that the knee-jerk solution needs to be tearing apart families.

That is a lesson we should have learned from a previous “drug plague” – crack cocaine. University of Florida researchers studied two groups of children born with cocaine in their systems; one group was placed in foster care, another left with birth mothers able to care for them.  After six months, the babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development: rolling over, sitting up, reaching out.  Typically, the children placed with their birth mothers did better.  For the foster children, the separation from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine.

It is extremely difficult to take a swing at so-called “bad mothers” without the blow landing on their children. That doesn’t mean we can simply leave children with hopelessly addicted parents.  But it does mean that in most cases, drug treatment for the mother is a better option than foster care for the child. 

No, it's not just drugs

But Georgia officials also cited two other reasons. Georgia is a state-run child welfare system, but individual county offices each had their own child abuse hotlines. In 2013, Georgia created a single, centralized hotline with one statewide number. Reports alleging child abuse increased sharply – presumably because of all the attendant publicity. Such publicity typically is accompanied by pleas to report anything and everything no matter how absurd.

People do just that. So there should have been greater skepticism about reports and more careful screening.  In Pennsylvania, for example, where as in California, individual counties run child welfare, after the legislature passed a series of feel-good laws in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, reports alleging child abuse soared.  In Philadelphia, which has weak leadership, entries into foster care soared, too. But not in Pittsburgh, where the head of the county human services agency understood that the increase was likely to consist largely of false reports and trivial cases.

There is no evidence that Cagle brought the same critical eye to the surge in reports in Georgia. That’s probably because of the third factor.

As AP put it “Another factor [in Georgia] has been public outrage over some highly publicized cases in which children died from severe abuse even though caseworkers had prior indications they were at risk.”

That is, of course, the classic trigger for foster-care panics. And that is where leadership makes all the difference. Instead of refusing to be stampeded into tearing apart more families needlessly, Cagle threw gasoline on the fire. He drastically curbed a program to divert what appeared to be less serious cases to voluntary help, instead of launching full-scale child abuse investigations.  True, not every study has found that this approach, commonly called “differential response” is safe.  Only 25 out of 26 did -- and many found that safety improved.

Cagle’s move further strained caseworkers, leaving them less time to give any case the careful attention it needs. That may explain why the key measure of child safety, reabuse of children known-to-the-system, actually has worsened during the foster-care panic.

The same lousy system, only bigger

Cagle’s response: a caseworker hiring binge. But if all you do is hire more workers, even as you undermine safeguards against needless removal, all you get is the same lousy system only bigger.

The foster-care panic also may have contributed to the death of a two-year-old foster child, Laila Marie Daniel. A foster-care panic creates an artificial “shortage” of foster homes, making caseworkers less likely to scrutinize those homes carefully. But while Cagle was quick to suggest that deaths of children at the hands of birth parents required systemic changes, such as curbing differential response, he dismissed the Daniel case as an aberration and fired the caseworker and supervisor handling the case.

So why would a track record like this appeal to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors?  Because Cagle is good at doing what a majority of Supervisors appear to cherish most: placating politicians and media.

Anything that smacks of “cracking down on child abuse” is popular with a press and public that reacts, rightly, with shock and horror at what a few sadistic brutes do to their children, but is largely unaware or uninterested in the enormous harm that needless foster care does in cases that are far more typical, such as cases in which family poverty is confused with “neglect.” Two massive studies have found that in typical child welfare cases children left in their own homes typically fare better even than comparably-maltreated children placed in foster care.

So the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which fanned the flames of foster-care panic in Georgia much as Garrett Therolf did did when he covered that beat for the Los Angeles Times, gave Cagle a fond farewell when the L.A. appointment was announced. The quote from “Together Georgia,” a trade association for the state’s foster-care providers, is particularly gushy.

While placating the press, the pols, and the providers, Cagle made caseworkers happy by hiring more of them and by doing something genuinely constructive, giving them a raise.  But he also wasted money on a giant pay raise for foster parents – in some cases raising their pay by more than 60 percent.  That same money could have been used for child care and rent subsidies so parents didn’t lose their children in the first place because of poverty.

So it’s clear that Bobby Cagle knows how to make journalists, politicians and foster-care agencies happy. But the impoverished families of Los Angeles now have even more reason to be afraid of DCFS.

Foster care in Los Angeles: Opening courts in L.A. already is proving its value.

A story in today’s Los Angeles Times aptly illustrates the benefits of opening court hearings to the public in cases of alleged child abuse and neglect.  It also illustrates the one drawback – which has nothing to do with privacy.

The story appears even as the organization for lawyers who supposedly represent children in these cases is appealing the decision by Presiding Juvenile Court Judge Michael Nash to open these hearings to the press and, under some circumstances, the public.  According to the Times, the organization for lawyers supposedly representing parents plans to join the suit.

The real reason for the appeal also was illustrated in today’s story.

The story was the one that almost always appears when courts first are opened: reporters rush in to see what really goes on, and give readers their first glimpse of this reality.

The Times sent two reporters, Garrett Therolf and John Hoeffel.  Their story led with a case from the court of Judge D. Zeke Zeidler, in which a severely-abused child was not getting the help he needed.   Specifically, the caseworker from the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services hadn’t done nearly enough to find a permanent home for the child.  According to the story:

When the caseworker described her limited efforts to comply with the order, the jurist delivered a stern rebuke.

"You as the government have chosen to become vested with this child" by removing him from his home, Zeidler said. "But the court does not find that the department has provided sufficient services."

The story concludes this way:

After Zeidler's hearing, the interim director of the county's child welfare agency said he would look into the judge's complaint about efforts to find the injured boy a permanent home. "I am always concerned when I hear that a judge is not satisfied with the efforts of a social worker," Philip Browning said.

Presumably, Browning wasn’t sitting in that particular courtroom at that moment.  Presumably, he was notified of the judge’s displeasure by a reporter.

So opening courts already has made a difference:

● Because a reporter was present this time, he could let the acting director of DCFS know that there will be a public price to pay if the child doesn’t get the help he needs.  Odds are the child now will get that help.

● Next time, knowing that a reporter might be present, the caseworker is likely to do a better job of finding the right placement for a child, or whatever else is required of the worker.

● The privacy of the child was protected – no names were used. 

SOME LAWYERS ARE EASILY “FREAKED OUT”

But there was more:

We got a first glimpse of what passes for legal representation in this court.  One judge was so clueless about how to handle open courts and the repeated objections filed by lawyers wanting their hearings closed that the whole process ground to a halt.  But Judge Zeidler handled everything with aplomb.

Even more revealing:

It wasn’t just the lawyers supposedly representing children who were objecting.  So were the lawyers who supposedly represent parents – even though the Los Angeles grassroots group advocating for families whose children have been taken, DCFS-Give Us Back Our Children – has been outspoken in its support for open courts.

Worse, some of the parents’ lawyers objecting to open hearings didn’t bother to check with their clients first.  Why?  According to their boss, they were just too “freaked out” by the thought of the general public finding out what they do and how they do it.  According to the Times:

"I think everyone is freaked out because this has only been in effect a couple of days," said Kenneth Krekorian, executive director of the law firm representing parents. "This is a big change for how things have historically happened."

Krekorian acknowledged that some lawyers were objecting to media presence without checking with their clients. He said he had advised his attorneys to consult with their clients before acting.

"How can you object without any direction from your client?" Zeidler asked one attorney. "Maybe he's a parent who doesn't feel he is getting adequate services, or maybe he feels his due process rights are being trampled and wants someone to know."

What does it tell you about the general quality of family representation in Los Angeles County that the chief lawyer actually had to explain to his staff that it’s generally a good idea to ask their clients what they want before purporting to speak to them – and still, they didn’t always do it?

THEY DIDN’T FREAK OUT IN NEW YORK

By the way, I’ve seen no news account from any other state that has opened these courts in which the attorneys were similarly “freaked.”  On the contrary, it was no problem in places like Minnesota and New York City, and it’s still no problem.  In fact, all over the country, no state that has opened these hearings has closed them again, and one-time opponents have become converts.  Yet the groups now suing or preparing to sue to close courts in Los Angeles apparently never consulted with their New York counterparts – or simply didn’t care about the reality of open courts.

There is a possible explanation for this:

This isn’t the first indication that the lawyers representing children in Los Angeles know that the public would be upset if it knew exactly what constitutes “representation” at these hearings. As attorney Edward Opton pointed out in a letter to judge Nash, the description of what they do and how they do it, in the memo sent to the judge by the children’s lawyers opposing his order is, in itself, remarkably damning.

All this suggests the real reason why the lawyers for children (and reportedly, soon, the lawyers for parents) are trying to close the courts again.  They don’t want people to see the quality of their work.  In particular, I suspect they fear a repeat of what happened in Santa Clara County. 

After the San Jose Mercury News won rare, temporary access to courts in Santa Clara County as part of a year-long investigation by reporter Karen De Sa, the newspaper’s series on the abysmal quality of representation forced the provider of defense counsel for families to completely reorganize and operate under the equivalent of what child welfare agencies might describe as a “corrective action plan.”  (The firm came within an inch of being replaced entirely, an outcome many advocates would have preferred.)

THE ONE DRAWBACK TO OPEN COURTS

As I said at the outset, the Times story also reveals the one real drawback to opening courts: A biased reporter will filter everything through his biases.

So, with all the cases to choose from, the story in which Garrett Therolf is the lead author of course begins with one of the very rare cases in which a child was brutally abused, instead of one of the many more typical cases, often involving children who never needed to be taken from their homes.

We knew this would happen and supported opening courts in Los Angeles anyway, on the theory that the solution to the problems of journalism is more journalism and, ultimately, better reporters would set the record straight.

But Therolf’s bias also came through when he completely shut out of his story a group opposing open courts that does not have a vested interest, and therefore is the most credible.

Members of the California Youth Connection, a group made up of current and former foster youth, are terrified of the most intimate details of their lives becoming public.  Their opposition killed legislation to open these hearings statewide.

So 19-year-old Lucias Bouge, who had been through at least 40 separate placements in the six years after his grandmother died, told a reporter about how at school, he never told anyone he did not live with his parents – and how we would not have wanted classmates to find out because of a public court hearing.

The fact that what CYC fears simply has not happened in state after state where these hearings are open has not been enough to overcome that fear.   The fact that the Times used no names in the one case it describes in detail today probably won’t allay those fears either.  No wonder.  If there is one group that has good reason not to trust anything told them by an adult it is current and former foster youth.

But the fact is, if Bouge gets his wish and the courts are closed again, all he will accomplish is to make it more likely that more children among the next generation of foster youth will have to endure exactly what he did.

I wish CYC had examined other states before giving in to its fears, something discussed in detail in these posts to this Blog.  But the fact that I, and Garrett Therolf, disagree with CYC is no reason to shut them out of the story.

We know about Bouge’s concerns because Hoeffel wrote about them for the Times’ LA Now Blog.  Similarly, last year, when CYC came out against opening courts statewide, it was almost certainly disappointing to Karen De Sa at the Mercury News.  But she gave their side of the story a full and fair airing, and the Mercury News put it on the front page.

But in the Los Angeles Times story that made the print edition today, with Therolf as the lead author, CYC was shut out.

I think Louis Bouge is wrong.  But Los Angeles Times readers, even those who read the paper the old-fashioned way, in print, had a right to “hear” Bouge and decide for themselves.  Garrett Therolf denied them that right – just as he has denied them the right to hear from the families needlessly torn apart by DCFS.

Open courts will give better reporters a chance to tell the whole story. 

UPDATE: LA child welfare hearings are open NOW

UPDATE, FEB. 2: I discussed the opening of these hearings on KPFK Radio this morning.  The audio is available here.


Court hearings in cases alleging child abuse or neglect in Los Angeles County are now presumed open to the media.

Presiding Juvenile Court Judge Michael Nash issued his final order last night.  It’s effective immediately.

Journalists will be allowed in unless a party to the case can persuade the judge that this would be “harmful to the child’s or children’s best interests.”

Members of the public will be admitted as well, if they can show “a direct or legitimate interest in the case or the work of the court” and their presence would not be “harmful to the child’s or children’s best interests.”

This marks a significant victory for all of us in child welfare who want to see courts and child welfare agencies made more accountable.  It will be that much harder for the county Department of Children and Families, private foster care agencies, and the courts themselves to cover up their mistakes.  

Open hearings are not a panacea.  But they have led to modest systemic improvements, and often big improvements in the outcome of individual cases.  And none of the fears of opponents has come to pass. Full details are in our  Due Process Agenda.

The former chief judge of New York State’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, and the judge who opened these hearings in New York State, Judith Kaye put it best:

“Sunshine is good for children.”

As noted in the previous post to this Blog, with this change, nearly half of America's foster children live in jurisdictions where court hearings are presumed open, as least to media.

GUEST BLOG: Foster care in America: The case for open courts

The Presiding Judge of Los Angeles County Juvenile Court, Michael Nash, is planning to open court hearings in child abuse and neglect cases to the press and the public.  He has solicited comment on a draft order opening these hearings.

A particularly compelling response came from attorney Edward Opton, who has practiced law in Oakland, California, since 1981.  He works with a national organization that advocates for the rights of low income children and youth. As Opton points out, toward the end of the letter, the description of the process offered by those who want the hearings closed actually is one of the strongest arguments for making them open.

With Opton’s permission, his letter to Judge Nash is reprinted here:


LETTER FROM EDWARD OPTON TO JUDGE MICHAEL NASH

Dear Judge Nash:

This letter responds to the several comments you have received in objection to the current proposed blanket order concerning WIC 346.

The objectors to a juvenile court that would be presumptively open, but closed upon proper showing of good cause, without exception ignore the reasons that, in democracies, courts normally are open to the public.  The objectors point to a panoply of potential harms, almost all hypothetical, that might occur if dependency courts were open; but as to the benefits of open courts they say not a word. 

I suggest that the objectors are failing to take notice of a thousand years, or more, of history, in which the openness of the judicial system has developed hand in hand with government of the people, by the people and for the people, while closed courts, secret courts, Star Chambers have been the tools of dictatorship, oligarchy and arbitrary rule.  It goes without saying—but needs to be said more often—that the co-development and co-incidence of openness in government, including open judicial systems, on the one hand, and democracy on the other, is no accident.  Justice flourishes in the open; injustice in the dark.  This is a basic principle.  It is supported by theory and, even more important, by mankind's collective experience.  That experience is called history.

It follows that pleas for exceptions, for courts that operate in secret, cannot be persuasive unless they show that the particular proceedings they would keep secret differ in some exceptionally important respect from the great variety of proceedings, practically the whole of our judicial system, that are conducted in the open. 

The objectors to the Court's proposed blanket order do not and cannot make the case that the potential costs of open dependency hearings, such as embarrassment and stress, are different from or greater than  the identical “downsides” of openness in many other judicial settings. 

Consider, for example, marital dissolutions, applications for domestic violence restraining orders, mental competency hearings, and criminal proceedings of all types.   In all such proceedings, the alleged misbehavior of adults is contested.  Often the alleged misbehavior is reprehensible, and no matter whether the evidence of human failure concerns a bank president or a bank robber, it has the potential to embarrass not only the adult plaintiffs, defendants and witnesses, but also their families, including their children. 

In other words, the objectors' arguments that children might be harmed would apply with equal or greater force—or lack of force—to a large proportion, perhaps half or more, of all judicial hearings.  The objectors offer no rationale for making dependency hearings an exception to the general rule of open courts.  That general rule no doubt has costs for families, children included, but the benefits of open courts overbalance those costs.  No evidence has been offered that the balance of costs and benefits in dependency court is uniquely different, so different that the normal principles of our judicial system should not apply.

                                                                        * * *

The history of secret judicial proceedings teaches us that secret proceedings are unfair, unjust proceedings.  I know of no exceptions.  One side, the institutional side, has the advantage.  The other side, the individual, is the subject of the proceeding but seldom an effective participant, for she finds the procedure is stacked against her.  The forms of justice may be observed, but the reality is otherwise.

Consider, for example, typical dependency proceedings in Los Angeles Courts as described by a knowledgeable group of objectors to the proposed blanket order.  The objectors, who are children’s attorneys and/or executives who employ children's attorneys, describe the dependency court as a scene of manifest injustice:

“The typical work day of children's attorneys in court is very full.  Attorneys are constantly required to multi-task and juggle between many responsibilities.  Once the attorneys enter the courtroom in the morning, they are reading the 5-10 court reports they have just received minutes before and then they meet with and interview extended family members, caregivers and clients in the shelter area of the courthouse.  These conversations can take anywhere from 10-45 minutes or more depending on the child's current state of mind, the nature of the hearing, the complexity of the family situation and the number of children in the family.  The child's attorney must also negotiate settlements with parents' counsel and county counsel.  Throughout the day they are continuing to read late reports that are handed to them and speak to parties who continue to arrive.  When their child clients are present their attention must be focused on the child talking with them, explaining what is happening and watching for nonverbal clues regarding their clients well-being and any current distress or anxiety.”  (Letter from executives of Children's Law Center to Hon. M. Nash, November 28, 2011, p. 9.)

One might rephrase the objector's description of a routine day in court in transactional/operative terms as follows:

Children's attorneys come to court with two or more strikes against them and their clients.  They are handed written reports that caseworkers have compiled.  They now see for the first time the written evidence that will be used that day to consign their clients to be separated from their family, or to be reunited with the family.  Their clients may or may not have been consulted in the preparation of those reports, and if their clients were consulted, what they said may or may not be fairly represented in the reports.  The child's attorney was not present when the caseworker interviewed the child, and so, if there is a mismatch between what the child reportedly said to the caseworker and what the child is saying now to the attorney, the attorney is not in a good position to determine which version, if either,   is more reliable.  The children's attorneys must attempt on the spot to patch together oral evidence from family members and caregivers who they, the attorneys, may never have met before—and all this must be attempted not in a law office, with desks, quiet, privacy and staff, but in “the shelter care area of the courthouse.”  In this chaotic scene, the children's attorneys often cannot provide effective legal counsel.  Cases usually are resolved according to the recommendations of the Department of Children and Family Services, and the presence of the children's attorneys often is little more often a matter of form.  The formalities must be observed even if the reality of effective legal representation has become a distant memory, a law student's aspiration that has drained away in the assembly line routine of dependency court reality.

Does the above extrapolation from the objectors' November 28 letter fairly represent the reality of dependency court?  Is it totally off base, partially correct, or uncomfortably close to the truth?  The writer of this letter does not know, and that is the problem.  The secrecy of dependency court makes independent assessment impossible. 

What the writer of this letter does know is that allegations of unfairness, of “stacked decks” in dependency courts, are widespread, and they are of a remarkable consistency, though they enter cyberspace, via blogs and on-line comments to newspaper stories, from people who mostly are strangers to one another.  Such complaints are also consistent with principles of organizational sociology (or from another perspective, commonsense organizational politics): when isolated individuals and an institutional bureaucracy resolve conflicts in a setting where the bureaucracy is a repeat “player” and the individuals are not, the rules of engagement almost always develop to serve the interests of the repeat player, the bureaucracy—and especially so when the proceedings are secret. 

Fixing foster care in LA: Paging Dr. Sanders

Trish Ploehn, the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, is in danger of becoming the Martha Coakley of child welfare. Her bungling threatens to undermine reform not only in Los Angeles but all over the country.

That became clear when Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten weighed in today concerning Ploehn's outrageous decision to withhold information about child abuse fatalities. As has been typical of the opinion writing at the Times on these issues recently, Rutten's column was thoughtful, reasonable and restrained. (The cheap shots and other excesses actually have come from what are labeled news stories.)

Almost all of the column dealt with Ploehn's stonewalling, so I found myself in complete agreement with seven of its eight paragraphs. But in the penultimate paragraph, Rutten veered off course, albeit understandably, given the stonewalling. He wrote:

This factual vacuum is preventing a review of whether the county acted wisely over the last few years when it allowed the child welfare department to reduce the number of youngsters removed from their families and placed in foster care by about 60% to around 19,900. At least some of the supervisors and their aides are concerned that social workers are being discouraged from moving imperiled children to the safety of foster care because spending fewer federal and state block grant dollars on that service frees the money for use in programs more highly favored by the Department of Children and Family Services' hierarchy.

On those points, Rutten is mistaken. In fact:

● The start of the reduction in foster care predated the changes in how foster care is funded in Los Angeles by at least seven years.

● While the number of children in foster care on any given day has been declining (until the recent foster-care panic set off by the Times news stories may have ended the decline) the number of children taken away over the course of a year increased every year from 2004 through 2007 – and, as has been discussed often before on this blog, the entry number is the one to watch to know if a community is serious about keeping families together.

● Los Angeles still takes away children at a higher rate than most other metropolitan areas.

● In Los Angeles, caseworkers no longer decide whether to remove a child from the home - a computer does it. I'm not kidding. And the computer relies on a system called Structured Decision Making (SDM), which has been found to be permeated with racial bias, something discussed in this excellent study by the Center for the Study of Social Policy. As we note in our material on Los Angeles child welfare, SDM, as used in Los Angeles, amounts to computerized racial profiling.

● There is no guarantee of "the safety of foster care" – not even close. Not when study after study finds abuse in one-quarter to one-third of all foster homes.

● When the records finally become public – and either by media pressure, legal action, or leak, they will, they will tell us nothing about the overall safety of Los Angeles County children who have come to the attention of DCFS. That is for a reason for which we all can be grateful: though each is the worst kind of tragedy, in a county with 3.2 million children, the number of fatalities easily can rise or fall due to random chance. But don't take my word for it, even the Queen of Child Fatality Review, LA-based Deanne Tilton Durfee, said as much, to the competing Los Angeles Daily News.

As for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, or the B.S., as this gang of five should properly be called, it is the worst governing body in American child welfare. If they are, in fact, concerned about anything besides getting their names in the paper, they haven't shown it.

SPECULATION FILLS THE INFORMATION GAP

But when a child welfare agency stonewalls, speculation will fill the information gap, and those who want to undermine reform are only too glad to whisper in the ears of journalists. If a columnist who does not specialize in child welfare is not hearing the rest of the story, that's Trish Ploehn's fault, not his.

In this case, the speculation is particularly dangerous. As regular readers of this blog know, Los Angeles is operating under a waiver from federal funding rules. It's worked brilliantly in Florida, and, even in Los Angeles, it's had modest success. But if the master narrative around the country becomes "blame the waiver for fatalities" – and there are plenty in child welfare whom, I suspect, are gleeful at that prospect, then it kills any chance of this approach spreading, and may even endanger renewal of the existing waivers.

So, what can be done about it? Simply firing Trish Ploehn won't be enough. The odds of the B.S. finding someone any better to replace her are slim – in no small measure because few people are going to want to work for a Board of Supervisors with such a long, dismal track record of politicizing child welfare. But it might be possible to bring in someone for a fixed term, say a year, to let in some fresh air and begin turning things around.

My first choice would be Bob Butterworth, who did such a brilliant job leading the turnaround of child welfare in Florida. He has a great grasp of child welfare, he has the political skills, and his signature initiative in Florida was candor - he pulled the state child welfare agency out of its bunker. But I can't imagine why he'd want the job even were it offered.

But there's someone else who might have more reason to step in: David Sanders, Ph.D. Sanders was Ploehn's immediate predecessor. He is the only DCFS director in recent years to leave the job voluntarily, and the only one who could cope with the B.S. He initiated the waiver that's now under fire, so he has a strong interest in seeing that it works.

He also made some mistakes. Entries into care increased during his tenure, and he's the one who brought in Structured Decision Making. But the fact that he pushed for the waiver suggests he saw the problems and was moving to deal with them, when he left to become Executive Vice President of Systems Improvement at Casey Family Programs, the multi-billion dollar foundation that loves fancy titles and spent more than 51 hours on this Blog and NCCPR's website last year.

A few years ago CFP essentially vacuumed up many of the best and the brightest in child welfare around the country (and when they ran out of good people who would accept their offers, they started scraping the middle of the barrel, too.) It's time that Casey gave something back, by "lending" Sanders to Los Angeles to help fix the mess that Trish Ploehn did so much to create.

Foster care and family preservation in Los Angeles: Judge Nash isn’t helping

One of the most legitimate criticisms of American media from the left is that positions that in most other Western democracies would be part of the mainstream debate are shut out in America. American media present the full spectrum of opinion from center to right.

The health care debate is a good example. The debate is confined to President Obama's centrist proposal at one end, to right-wing yahoos screaming about "death panels" at the other. Proponents of, say, single payer, an option that is the norm in many other countries, are shut out.

The Los Angeles Times is setting up a similarly-skewed debate over family preservation. The debate is limited to people like officials from the county Department of Children and Family Services, who say there is just enough of it, to Times reporters, who have made clear in story after story that they think there is too much of it. Those of us who think that a county that takes children at one of the highest rates among America's largest metropolitan areas actually should be doing more to keep families together are marginalized.

So for the Times reporters, an op ed column last week by Michael Nash, presiding judge of the Los Angeles County Juvenile Court, was just what they needed. Nash insisted that Los Angeles County – and every other county in California – is doing everything it possibly can to keep families together.

Nash wrote to refuse a now-notorious Times headline (which, notwithstanding the lead reporter's denials , accurately reflected the story). The headline said: "County to end emphasis on family over foster care." Commented Nash:

The headline did not at all reflect the state laws under which the county's welfare system operates, and it sent a very negative message to readers. It reinforced the widespread perception in many communities that our child welfare system does more to break up than preserve and build families, the cornerstone of our society. This misperception often limits cooperation with the system.

Later, he writes:

…the emphasis of child welfare in California is and will continue to be on family over foster care, regardless of what The Times writes in a headline. … We are not going to run scared from our obligation to prioritize family unity, even in the face of deep budget cuts. I urge The Times and others to continue following our system.

So the parameters of the debate are Judge Nash, who says, in effect, "we're already doing everything possible to preserve families, just try and stop us!" vs. the Times reporters, whose stories make clear they harbor the misimpression that this is being done at the expense of child safety.

Left out entirely are those who us who note that:

●
Entries into care have been going up in Los Angeles County in most years after 2003 – which means DCFS and the courts have, indeed, been "run[ing] scared from our obligation to prioritize family unity…" even before any budget cuts.

●Los Angeles County takes children at a higher rate than, among other places, New York City, metropolitan Chicago, and Miami. And there is solid evidence that lower rates of removal improved child safety in those places.

"THE LAW MADE US DO IT"

Judge Nash spends half the op ed quoting sections of California law which supposedly prove the state's commitment to family preservation. But mostly these are just broad statements of principle, like "It is the intent of the Legislature that nothing in this section disrupt the family unnecessarily or intrude inappropriately into family life." [Emphasis added.] And who, exactly would say they favor unnecessary disruption or inappropriate intrusion?

Then there's this one: "Before taking a minor into custody, a social worker shall consider whether the child can remain safely at home." Among the things the law says should be considered: whether there are any reasonable services that might allow the child to stay in the home safety. And who, exactly, would say that workers should not even consider this?

The extent to which these clauses are empty rhetoric can be seen not only in how Los Angeles compares to other big cities, but also by comparing counties within California. There is enormous variation in rates of removal, even though Judge Nash is quoting state law, which, last I heard, is supposed to apply to every county.

All of which means that, like most counties and states, child welfare systems in California do indeed do "more to break up than preserve and build families."

The only purpose these provisions really serve is to give bad child welfare agencies something to hide behind when they screw up. Oh, they say, we didn't leave this child in a dangerous home because our workers are too overwhelmed to investigate any case properly, or because we cut the training budget, or this particular worker was incompetent. No, they say, "the law made us do it."

That prompts more news stories, outraged editorials and press releases from state legislators eager to gain 15 minutes of fame by proposing changes in the law, supposedly to "emphasize child safety over family preservation." Actually, that emphasis already is in California law – it's in one of the sections Judge Nash cites in his op ed column, but that never stopped a grandstanding legislator.

Then the law passes, and a foster care panic that might have been confined to one county goes statewide. The only winners are the grandstanding lawmakers – and the reporters at the Times who can list the change in the law on journalism awards entry forms under "what did the stories accomplish?"

It's all self-serving nonsense, and now Judge Nash has served up a heaping helping of it.

And it's not hard to see what's really worrying the judge. It's his fear that, when people see the system as it really is, it "often limits cooperation with the system." In other words, families might fight for their rights, instead of accepting the way DCFS and the courts put them through the wringer with no-service service plans and meaningless hoops to jump through.

IF THE JUDGE IS SERIOUS

Judge Nash does make some good points toward the end of his column. He writes:

In fact, the policy of supporting families is consistent with child safety. … The history of child welfare in Los Angeles -- of which I have been a part for 20 years -- shows that wholesale removal of children from their homes fails children and their families, jeopardizes child safety and is, over the long term, detrimental to us all. … A few tragic cases are no reason to turn the clock back to the days of wholesale removal of children.

But if he really means that, there are some things he can do right now:

● Demand that California join more than 15 states that have opened court hearings in child maltreatment cases to press and public, so we can see the typical cases, not just the horror stories. In past years, moves to change state law have been blocked by the California chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.

In some states, judges have the power to do this in their own courtrooms without waiting for legislators to act. If Judge Nash has that power, he should exercise it immediately – not just in carefully-selected cases where everyone knows in advance and can make themselves look good, but in every case – so no one, including the judge, knows when a reporter might stop by and see what's really going on. That way "The Times and others" really will
be able to follow what goes on in the system.

As is noted in the previous post to this blog, and outlined in detail in NCCPR's Due Process Agenda, of all the states that have opened their courts this way, not one has closed them again, because the Chicken Littles were wrong and the fears of opponents never came to pass. The former chief judge of New York's highest court said it best when she opened these courts in her state. Said Judge Judith Kaye: "Sunshine is good for children."

● Demand that DCFS director Trish Ploehn climb out of her bunker and comply fully with the letter and spirit of California law, which requires her to make public records in cases of child abuse deaths or near deaths.

● Demand that the law be changed to require such disclosure of records in all cases, not just deaths or near deaths, to avoid creating the misimpression that the errors in child welfare go only one way.

● Demand that California pass a law specifically allowing Ploehn, and her counterparts in every other county, to comment on specific cases. That helps override the "veto of silence" in which a family complains of wrongful removal, the agency chief says "oh, there is so much more to it than that, and I wish I could tell you, really I do, but I just can't; confidentiality, you know" and the reporter, who didn't really want to do the story in the first place, meekly slinks away from it. New York, Maine, Iowa, Alaska and Arizona already have such laws. While they don't force an agency chief to comment at least in those states, reporters who know about the law also know that the agency chief does have a choice, and simply is stonewalling.

And most important:

● Demand that parents get adequate defense counsel. That means lawyers with low caseloads and their own support staff, so they can do their own investigations and challenge those cookie-cutter no service service plans. In Washington State, which pioneered this approach, even the lawyers who represent the child welfare agency in these cases support it. Details, again are in our Due Process Agenda.