A lot of necessary budget cutting is going on in the state right now. Many of the cuts are difficult. But in a few cases, the cuts are poorly thought out—- penny wise and pound foolish (as my mother would have put it).

The cut to Foster Youth Services is one of those cuts.

Foster Youth Services is a unique state program that helps !4,000 California kids in foster care stay in school and navigate their lives—help that is very much needed..

If you are not familiar with the stats, foster care kids, particularly the kids who age out of foster care, do not, as a group, have great outcomes—in school, in employment, in finding a stable place to live, at staying out of poverty.

More than one third of the nation’s runaway kids were in foster care during the year they ran away.

A third of those who age out of foster care wind upon the street, homeless.

Over 75 percent of foster youth students’ work is below grade level, 50 percent are held back at least one year in school. 75 percent of those who age out of foster care, fail to graduate high school.

However, if foster care kids are given tutoring, encouragement, and mentoring during their school years, their prospects change dramatically.

Created in 1981 as a pilot program, Foster Youth Services was so incredibly successful in keeping foster kids in school and helping them navigate their lives that, in 1998, it was expanded statewide to help foster kids from ages to 4 to 21, plus adolescents in juvenile detention facilities.

Suddenly kids began doing better.

Now, however, Foster Youth Services is scheduled to use its funding. It’s not that it’s being cut directly. It is that the funds especially designated for the program are no longer designated. This leaves the onus of providing funds for FYS will fall on the individual school districts—-WHICH ARE BUSY CUTTING EVERYTHING.

Thus it is the equivalent of defunding the program. And it is not in the state’s best interest to have this Foster Youth Services dumped.

This blog post by Amy Lemley has more.

A GAY CALIFORNIA VET AND HER SPOUSE IS DENIED BENEFITS

The AP has the story:

A gay Army veteran and her wife sued the federal government on Wednesday after they were denied military benefits granted to straight spouses.

The lawsuit announced in Washington involves a 12-year veteran of the Army, Tracey Cooper-Harris. After leaving the Army she married Maggie Cooper-Harris in California in 2008. Two years later, Tracey Cooper-Harris was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and she has received disability benefits through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as a result. But her application for additional money and benefits that married veterans are entitled to was denied.

THURS. THE 9TH CIRCUIT WILL RELEASE A PROP 8 RULING (NAMELY THE RULING ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT THE VIDEO RECORDING OF THE FEDERAL TRIAL WILL BE RELEASED)

Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog thinks today’s ruling may be a precursor for the next ruling-–which will be about whether or not the Prop 8 supporters who challenged the lower court ruling have the “standing” to have brought the challenge.

Heres a clip from the ScotusBlog story:

The first ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court on California’s controversial ban on same-sex marriage — but not an ultimate ruling on the ban’s constitutionality — will be released Thursday morning, the Circuit Court announced Wednesday. Coming out at 1 p.m. Washington time (10 a.m. in San Francisco), this will be a decision on whether the courts will release, for public broadcast and public viewing in general, the videotapes made of the historic federal trial on the ban known as “Proposition 8.”

The ballot measure approved by California voters in November 2008 barred gay marriages in California, but the state Supreme Court later ruled that — while Proposition 8 did not violate the state constitution — marriages already performed among same-sex couples remained legal. The ban itself, however, was then challenged in a federal court case that unfolded in a three-week trial two years ago. A video recording was made of the entire trial and, although some limited excerpts of it have been played before selected audiences, the full tape remains under seal in federal court.

Juvenile Court Presiding Judge Michael Nash did a brave and important thing on Friday—and then again on Monday. On Friday he issued a draft order to open the Juvenile dependency courts to the press, allowing fresh air into a system in Los Angeles County that has long been disastrously closed. Then on Monday, he had a hearing on the matter and announced that he planned to make the order permanent.

In case you’ve forgotten, Juvenile dependency courts are the places that hear child abuse and neglect cases.

Nash was originally going to open the courts to the public as well as the press, but he ran into a lot of resistance.

So, according to Friday’s draft order, the courts will remain closed to the public unless a certain set of criteria are met in individual cases. However, the new default position will be that press will be allowed in— unless anyone can show clear cause that having reporters in a hearing will harm a child.

As the order itself states:

Members of the press shall be allowed access to Juvenile Dependency Court hearings unless there is a reasonable likelihood that such access will be harmful to the child‟s or children‟s best interests.

Richard Wexler of the NCCPR—the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform— expressed the view of the many child welfare experts who have been advocating for LA’s court to get some fresh air. Here’s a clip from Wexler’s blog post on the topic:

If Judge Nash proceeds with this order as written, it will be a significant step forward in holding the county Department of Children and Family Services and the courts themselves accountable for what the system does to children and families in Los Angeles. As we explain in our Due Process Agenda, none of the many other state and local systems that have opened these courts has closed them again because all the fears of opponents proved groundless…

Not everyone agrees. Former foster child, Marcy Valenzuela wrote an Op Ed for the LA Times last fall explaining why she felt the courts should stay closed.

Juvenile dependency courts exist to protect children and youths who have been neglected and abused, so it’s shocking that the presiding judge who oversees the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s juvenile division is pushing a plan that puts foster children and youths at risk of further harm.

If Judge Michael Nash’s order stands, vulnerable children, youths and their families, who are already dealing with painful consequences of neglect and abuse, would face the additional burden of proving why the most intimate details of their lives should be kept private.

The primary movers against letting light into the courts, are not child advocates, but the unions for the grown-ups, those who represent the social workers, et al. They have fought hard to keep the hearings secret.

However, Nash is clear on the issue.

There is a lot that is not good [in the dependency courts], and that’s an understatement,” the LA Times reported that Nash said earlier this year at a Sacramento hearing on the issue. “Too many families do not get reunified…. Too many children and families languish in the system for far too long. Someone might want to know why this is the case.”

Exactly.

According to advocates who were present at Monday’s meeting, Nash said he would issue a final order very soon.

AND LEST WE STRAY TOO FAR FROM THE LASD & JAILS…THE LA TIMES EDITORIAL SAYS: YES, LA COUNTY’S JAILS ARE BROKEN, BUT EVERYBODY NEEDS TO THINK BEFORE PRESCRIBING A $1.4 BILLION DOLLAR ONE-DIMENSIONAL, BUILD-A-JAIL FIX

Or words to that effect. Mainly, Monday’s very well written editorial echos what we said last week before and after the board of supervisors meeting, regarding the need to look at the whole picture before rushing off and throwing a billion and a half dollars at jail building.

And by “the whole picture, this includes the suggestions contained in the very lengthy and very smart Vera Institute report on the county’s jail over crowding issue and what to do about it ( a report that was, by the way, ordered and paid for by the county). And it also means waiting to look at the upcoming report on the same issue from jails and prison expert Jim Austin, due in late February.

Anyway, a big thank you to the Times editorial board, who said all of the above more elegantly than we did.

THEN WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF WISE GOVERNANCE….WHAT’S UP WITH GOV. JERRY TRYING TO DO AWAY WITH THE HAYDEN BILL, WHICH HAS PROTECTED CALIFORNIA’S PETS FROM NEEDLESS EUTHANASIA SINCE 1998?

Former California senator Tom Hayden (and current critter owner) explains everything. (See above video.)

Yes, yes, we’ve heard that the legislative analyst says that doing away with this bill will save the state money. Okay, sure. And having no shelters at all will save the state even more money. BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT A GOOD IDEA.

Raise fees. Whatever. But do not even think of trying to vaporize the law that prevents precipitous critter euthanasia—which could, in turn, mean that if by some chance our four-footed family members get lost, get out of the house for an unscheduled walkabout, or get separated from us by some unforeseen force majeure, they could be killed dead before we’ve had the chance to track them down.

No. Not a workable solution, Jerry.

Seriously—Ask yourself, WWSD? What would Sutter do?

Okay, see? I rest my case.

Last year, California legislature passed AB 12, the bill that gives another three years of aid to the young men and women who “mature out” of foster care.

The measure hopes to fix one of the largest problems in California’s foster care system—namely the fact that foster care kids are cut off from nearly all help or support the minute they turn 18. This occurs with very little preparation or help in getting an apartment, a car, a job, health care….and all the other elements of adult life. They are given a few referrals and a bag holding their possessions. That’s it.

As a consequence, sixty-five percent of those who “age out” do so with nowhere to live, and 51 percent are unemployed.

When combined with whatever abuse and/or neglect brought a kid into the system, the effects of this sudden abandonment are stark. One in four former foster kids who matured in the system will be incarcerated within two years of leaving foster care. One in five will become homeless before they turn 20-years old.

Although the bill was passed more than a year ago, AB 12 is not set to kick in until January 1, 2012.

NEW STUDY SHOWS HUMUNGOUS PROBLEMS THAT AB 12 WILL (HOPEFULLY) HELP TO CURE

A unique study focusing on LA County’s Foster Care youth was released last week. Its brand new set of disturbing findings put a spotlight on the fact that the extra three years of help that AB 12 is scheduled to provide is desperately needed—like yesterday.

The research, which was funded by the Conrad Hilton foundation and conducted by University of Pennsylvania professor Dennis Culhane, with help from the LA County CEO’s Office, looked at how well or poorly kids did 3-7 years after exiting foster care and/or LA’s juvenile probation system.

The results were predictably disturbing.

Yet the numbers were by far the grimmest for kids who had been in the possession for both county agencies—the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and LA County’s extremely troubled juvenile probation.

The young adults in this double duty group are known as the “crossover” youth.

Among the study’s key findings:

One-third of former foster youth and one-half of crossover youth experienced a period of extreme poverty during their young adult years. For example, a youth exiting the foster care system had cumulative earnings of just under $30,000 over the first four years. The amount of income earned by crossover youth is far more dismal — less than $14,000 over four years.

Of those leaving foster care, 68 percent accessed public welfare benefits during the first four years after leaving the system—costing the County of Los Angeles an average of $12,532.

As for the crossover kids, a staggering 82 percent applied for and collected some kind of public assistance benefits during the first four years after exiting the system—bringing their average total cost to LA County to $35,171 over four years.

The rates of using public welfare declined for both groups in years 5 to 8 but the numbers are still substantial —41 percent for foster youth and 54 percent for crossover youth.

(By the way, this study is the first ever to look at outcomes for crossover youth, those who are involved in both foster care and juvenile justice systems. This is a population of kids that deserves MUCH more focus in the future. )

A HOPEFUL GLIMMER

Both the researchers and foster care advocates were interested to note that almost half of the former foster youth and crossover youth enrolled in community colleges, despite the fact that they were poor, often jobless, in some cases homeless, and often prone to depression and other emotional conditions.

A dispiriting two percent actually received an Associate Degree, but the researchers felt that the willingness to try was significant.

“This study provides compelling evidence that these young adults, especially the crossover youth, should be targeted with housing support, education, employment services and mentoring, if the county and the state are to avoid a lifetime of public dependence by this highly vulnerable population,” said Dr. Culhane. “The good news is that this is a population that can be easily targeted with assistance and that current costs to the county could be potentially offset by reduced incarceration and public assistance costs.”

In other words, when—through AB 12 and related programs—we spend a little bit of extra money and effort on kids transitioning out of foster care, juvenile probation, and those double whammy crossover kids, a lot of money will be saved over these kids’ lifetimes in the way of public assistance and criminal justice costs.

More importantly, the bleak trajectories of these young men and women’s lives can be redirected toward hope and accomplishment.

“..I understood the incredible challenges foster kids faced as they prepared to enter a world that they were not ready for,” said U.S. Representative Karen Bass in a statement released last week. Bass, who was one of the original sponsors for AB 12, said she hopes it will become a model for the county.

And just one more thing to put all this in perspective: A 2007 report indicated that, nationwide, kids who grow up with their own parents typically don’t become self-sufficient until age 26 — and their parents on average contribute $44,000 after they turn 18 in rent, utilities, food, medical care, college tuition, transportation and other necessities to help them get there.

So, yeah, three extra years of a extra help for our County’s kids whom we’ve taken into our collective care is the only sane or wise thing to do.

MEANWHILE….ELSEWHERE IN FOSTER CARE NEWS: WHILE SACRAMENTO DITHERS OVER WHETHER TO OPEN LA COUNTY’S DEPENDENCY COURTS TO MEDIA SCRUTINY, PRESIDING JUDGE MICHAEL NASH SAYS HE WILL DO IT ANYWAY.

Both the LA Times Garett Therolf and the LA Weekly have the story, but Jill Stewart writing for the Weekly, is in a particularly satisfying state of fury about the delays in opening the courts.

By the way, Jill’s anger has mostly to do with abusive parents who get their kids back and do terrible harm to them, whereas I’ve mostly seen the other side, where kids are terribly traumatized when taken from parents unnecessarily.

As Therolf writes of Judge Nash:

“There is a lot that is not good [in the dependency courts], and that’s an understatement,” Nash said earlier this year at a hearing in Sacramento on legislation that would have opened dependency courts. “Too many families do not get reunified … too many children and families languish in the system for far too long. Someone might want to know why this is the case.”

We need sunshine for both sides of this kid-wrecking coin.

AND, FINALLY….MORE ON JAILS:

For those of you following the jails scandal saga (and if you aren’t, why in the world aren’t you?) be sure to read Sunday’s LA Times’ story by Jack Leonard and Robert Faturechi about how jail duty was used to punish certain problem deputies.

NOTE: WE’LL HAVE MORE ON THE JAILS AND THE LASD THIS WEEK

A SECOND SMART LA TIMES EDITORIAL ABOUT THE LA COUNTY FOSTER CARE SYSTEM AND THE POLITICAL WINDS THAT DRIVE IT

In the second LA Times editorial this week about DCFS and the LA County Board of Supervisors who are micromanaging it, the Times notes that the Sups have fired one head of DCFS this year and run through two other interim directors, Now they have hired yet one more interim director, County Welfare Chief, Philip Browning

Let us hope that Browning can figure out what is going so wrong in DCFS’s culture that that allows the bad decisions that have led to kids’ deaths, and what is beginning to go right in the department, that needs more nurturing.

And keep those clear-eyed editorials coming.

SENTENCING THE JUDGE IN THE PENNSYLVANIA KIDS FOR CASH CASE

The PA judge who took high ticket bribes in return for sending kids to certain juvenile incarceration facilities, whether thee deserved be locked up or not, is finally about to be sentenced. Michael Rubinkam of the AP has the story. Here’s how it opens.

As a juvenile court judge, Mark Ciavarella Jr. routinely deprived kids of some of their most basic constitutional rights. Their right to a lawyer. Their right to understand the charges against them. Their right to a fair, impartial hearing.

Ciavarella enjoyed all of those protections while defending himself against federal charges that he took millions of dollars in kickbacks while sending youth offenders to privately owned detention centers. Not that it changed the outcome.

Convicted in one of the biggest courtroom scandals in U.S. history, the disgraced former judge could face more than a decade in prison when he is sentenced in Scranton on Thursday.

“I hope he gets sent away so he can see what he put others through, see what he made kids go through,” said Brian Larkin, 19, who once appeared in Ciavarella’s courtroom.

The denouement of the “kids for cash” case comes more than two-and-a-half years after Ciavarella and a second Luzerne County judge, Michael Conahan, were charged with orchestrating a scheme to enrich themselves by stocking for-profit detention centers with young offenders. Conahan pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing….

FLA TOUGHENS LAWS AGAINST FELONS—AND HARMS PUBLIC SAFETY RATHER THAN THAN HELPING IT

Steve Bousquet at the St. Petersburg Times reports on a new study in Florida. The study found found felons who successfully get their rights back tend to stay out of prison. But such pesky facts have not fazed FLA legislators who have recently made it harder for a felon to regain these rights.

Here’s a clip from the story:

….a new report by the Florida Parole Commission shows that a released felon in Florida whose civil rights are restored is much less likely to commit a new crime than others in the overall population of released prisoners.

The report, quietly delivered to officials a few weeks ago, has not been discussed publicly.

The agency studied 31,000 cases over a two-year period in 2009 and 2010 and found that about 11 percent of people whose civil rights were restored ended up back in custody.

The overall re-offense rate in the state is three times higher — 33 percent — according to the Department of Corrections.

“This report shows clemency is working very well, as 89 percent of convicted felons granted a second chance have not re-offended,” said Reggie Garcia, a Tallahassee lawyer who has helped felons navigate the complicated clemency process for the past 17 years….

The NY Times’ Adam Lipdak writes about a man named Edmond Demiraj who risked his own and his family’s lives to inform on an Albanian mobster in return for legal immigration status for his wife and children. But the feds went back on the deal.

Here’s a clip from the story’s center:

…Mr. Bedini was allowed to post bail and promptly fled to Albania. With their witness no longer of value to them, federal authorities deported Mr. Demiraj, also to Albania.

Mr. Bedini was waiting. He kidnapped, beat and shot Mr. Demiraj, the bullet just missing his kidneys.

Mr. Bedini also went after members of Mr. Demiraj’s family, kidnapping two of his nieces and forcing them into prostitution in Italy. “This was payback to your Uncle Edmond for when I was in the United States,” he said as he beat the women, who were 19 and 21.

This lurid narrative is set out in a recent federal appeals court decision and related court documents. The ruling, issued in January, contained good news: Mr. Demiraj survived the shooting, and his nieces escaped thanks to, as a dissenting judge put it, “sheer luck and a kind taxi driver.”

Mr. Demiraj and his nieces are now lawfully in the United States. He owns a small painting company near Houston. But the decision in January also brought bad news for Mr. Demiraj. It ordered the deportation of his wife, Rodina, and teenage son, Rediol, who have both lived in the United States since they entered the country unlawfully in 2000. (The two youngest Demiraj children were born in the United States.)

The idea that members of his family will be forced to return to Albania terrifies Mr. Demiraj….

Raging Against the LA Times Book Section cuts, an upbeat story about helping Foster Car kids get to college, a seemingly unnecessary court decision, a weird move by the City Attorney….and more.

RAGING AGAINST THE CUTS: TOM LUTZ CALLS THE LA TIMES BOOK REVIEW “FREELANCER” LAYOFFS FOR WHAT THEY ARE

It literature is important to you at all. Read this, damn it! Here’s a clip:

The Los Angeles Times proudly announced last week that it was as dedicated as ever to book coverage — “we have not changed our commitment,” said Vice President of Communications Nancy Sullivan. Sullivan was speaking to Publishers Weekly’s Wendy Werris, explaining that a new round of layoffs in the section and the cutting loose of the book section’s freelancers was not to be taken as a sign of what it clearly was: a further contraction of the section’s purview.

“Freelancers” in this case means not just those of us who have written the occasional review for the Times over the years but the new class of non-employees, the many people who used to be on staff and were laid off before being rehired as freelancers, like Susan Salter Reynolds; book columnists Reynolds, Richard Rayner, and Sonja Bolle were among those let go. Reynolds is a prime example of the new class of the gradually dis-employed: she has been writing succinct, insightful reviews for the Times for the last 23 years, usually three pieces a week, although often adding a fourth or even fifth in the form of a more in-depth review or feature (she is a woman who clearly does not sleep). For the first 21 of those years she was a staff writer, but for the last two she’s been a freelancer. The difference was a deep cut in pay, the loss of health insurance and a retirement plan, and the outsourcing of her office to her own house. The workload remained the same.

BREAKING THE CURSE OF FOSTER CARE TO HELP KIDS IN THE “SYSTEM” GET TO COLLEGE

This story by Martha Groves of the LA Times will both break your heart and give you hope. Here’s how it opens:

For foster children, the prospect of ever completing college is remote: 24% of the general population will someday wear a university cap and gown, but fewer than 3% of all foster children ever earn a degree.

But a privately funded pilot program at UCLA hopes to improve the odds.

The First Star UCLA Bruin Guardian Scholars Summer Academy is a 5 1/2-week program that sponsors and fundraisers hope will one day develop into a year-round boarding school for college-bound foster children in Los Angeles County.

On Friday, 14-year-old Thalia and 23 other foster youth celebrated their “graduation” from the program’s first session.

The incoming ninth-grader brushed up on math, wrote poetry, learned to meditate and visited Disneyland, Universal Studios and a Nickelodeon TV set. In the bargain, Thalia and the other participants each got a laptop computer, a flip cam — and four University of California college credits.

“This program took me to another place,” Thalia said….

Read the rest here.

SO WHAT REALLY IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN HOT WEATHER AND VIOLENCE?

Wired Magazine takes a look at what science has to say about rising temperatures and rising crime stats and how one may or may not affect the other.

A HIGHLY POLITICAL (AND POSSIBLY ILLEGAL) MOVE BY CITY ATTORNEY CARMEN TRUTANICH?

The LA Times’ Jack Leonard reports on Carmen Trutanich’s $2 million check caper and DA Steve Cooley’s reaction.

DEAD PEOPLE CAN’T BE SUED FOR PUNITIVE DAMAGES

Okay, this probably doesn’t rise to the level of a Must Read. Rather it is an interesting oddity that the Iowa Supreme Court got dragooned into having to render a ruling on this seemingly obvious issue. The Des Moines Register has the story. Here’s how it opens:

The Iowa Supreme Court Friday affirmed a long-standing prohibition on winning punitive damages from dead people and issued a two-month suspension to a Des Moines lawyer with a track record of mishandling clients’ money.

In the case of Estate of Johnny Vajgrt vs. Bill Ernst, justices ruled 6-1 to affirm a Marshall County court ruling that blocked Ernst from obtaining more than $2,300 from the estate of Vajgrt.

The case involved a 2005 incident where Vajgrt sought and received permission from Ernst, a neighbor, to enter onto Ernst’s land and remove a fallen tree near the confluence of Burnett Creek and the Iowa River. Vajgrt removed both the tree, which he feared would serve as a dam and cause flooding on his land, and roughly 40 other live trees on Ernst’s property.

Vajgrt died in 2008, nearly five months before Ernst sued to recover damages for the diminished value of his property. A district court judge awarded $57.50 per tree but refused to grant punitive damages because Vajgrt had died….

Read the rest here.

Over the Weekend the LA Times editorial board ran a stellar essay that righteously slams the LA County Supervisors for their refusal to turn over reports to a state auditor examining the reasons behind the deaths of children in various counties who died while being overseen by the Department of Children and Family Services, their refusal couched in a preposterous claim of attorney/client privilege.

Here is a clip from the heart of the well-reasoned editorial:

The county’s in-house lawyers and outside law firm assert that child death files are protected by the attorney-client privilege. That absurd and outrageous justification for non-disclosure is laughable, or would be, were the consequences not so tragic.

First, many of the files are not privileged at all. The DCFS conducted internal reviews of child deaths, which were then forwarded for review and approval to the county counsel’s office. An after-the-fact sign-off by lawyers cannot and does not render a document privileged. Otherwise, the Board of Supervisors would be able to sit on every ostensibly public record in its possession simply by sending it to its lawyer’s office for a rubber-stamp.

Second, even files that arguably are privileged could and probably should be released. The privilege belongs not to the lawyers but to the client — Los Angeles County — which can waive its prerogative, and should do so, in the public interest. It is true that the county’s interests are articulated by the five elected supervisors, but those supervisors have increasingly focused on their own needs rather than those of the vulnerable children, grieving families, responsible taxpayers and hosts of others they are elected to represent. They too often ask their lawyers for advice on how to avoid outside critique and — surprise — are told that the matters they discuss with counsel are privileged and beyond disclosure. It’s a boot-strapping argument that locks the public and, in this case, the state out of their proper oversight role. It perpetuates the county’s continuing failure.

The actual rationale for stonewalling the state audit became apparent in a letter from the county’s outside counsel: “Further, your office’s demand that the county produce self-critical documents, and subject them to the bureau’s critique, threatens to destroy the very type of child protection — unfettered self-evaluation — that this audit seeks to promote.”

That says it all. The only evaluations of the county will be those it performs itself, and the results of those evaluations will remain known only to the county. Not since the days of Chief William H. Parker’s Los Angeles Police Department has this region seen an institution steeped in such arrogance, insularity and contempt for public accountability. None of the other counties being audited — not Fresno, not Sacramento, not Alameda — have objected to the state’s request for child death files.

Yet what was especially notable about the editorial is that it also subtly took to task its own coverage of these deaths with this surprising—and very accurate—paragraph:

Child deaths from abuse and neglect are fraught with emotion and can result in sensational headlines, in newspapers like this one, to which supervisors feel compelled to respond. One more study of fatalities, such as the state audit demanded after the killing of Seth Ireland, steeps policymakers in a swamp of exceptional failures and worst cases. It makes it easy to forget that data show overwhelmingly that outcomes are better for children who stay in their homes — even with families struggling with poverty, even in neighborhoods with inadequate schools — than for those removed by well-meaning or backside-covering county agencies. It makes it easy to forget that the county’s most effective and most economical response to children in trouble is to help their families with resources and programs to cope with their challenges….

This writing is especially appreciated by those of us who have long worried that the nature of the Times coverage of these terrible deaths of children would cause lawmakers to pressure DCFS to take more kids into foster care and to fail to help poor but essentially loving parents to strengthen themselves so that they and their children might thrive.

(It wasn’t too long ago that an LAT editor used the pages of the paper to attack me and journalist advocate Daniel Heimpel for making the very same point but in greater detail.)

In any case, this important editorial was badly needed. A large thank you to the LA Times editorial board for their forceful and intelligent writing.

NOTE TO SUPERVISORS: This just doesn’t look good:

Here’s the deal: It seems that the LA County Board of Supervisors have thumbed their collective noses at a subpoena demanding records pertaining to kids who died while under the supervision of LA’s long-troubled Department of Children and Family Services. Moreover, in doing so, they ignored a warning from the state auditor that they were committing a crime by refusing to turn over the records, which have been requested as part of a statewide investigation into whether systemic flaws are at the root of many of these deaths.

Monday’s LA Times has the story by Garrett Therolf and it’s mandatory reading for those concerned about the health and well-being of kids in the county’s care. Here’s a clip:

The inquiry was launched by the Legislature earlier this year after reports in The Times that more than 70 children had died since 2008 of abuse or neglect after coming to the attention of county social workers. Many of those deaths, county officials have confirmed, involved serious case management errors.

The audit is intended to be the most comprehensive probe in years seeking to identify whether systemic flaws contributed to fatalities in Los Angeles and other counties across the state. Lawmakers said it probably would result in legal reforms.

A lawyer at a special firm hired by the county to handle the matter said officials had provided dozens of boxes of records and allowed auditors to interview social workers but would not turn over documents that they believe are shielded by attorney-client privilege.

Just to be clear: the “clients” in the “attorney-client privilege” cited by the Supervisors are….them.

In other words, if I understand the situation correctly the Sups are not holding on to the records to protect families or minors, but to protect their own legal backsides. They’re afraid if too many people have access to the facts, the Sups are likely to be sued.

Here’s another clip:

County attorneys have privately told supervisors that a judge is not likely to agree that the documents can be withheld, according to two sources familiar with the deliberations. A majority of the board nevertheless urged lawyers to fight the disclosure because of fears that the material could be used in lawsuits accusing the county of failing to provide proper child welfare services.

Perception of the Sups choice to stonewall is not helped by the fact that the Board has recently decided to take over supervision of the agency, which has over the years seemed depressingly resistant to reform.

It’s late at night as I write this thus, admittedly, I still have a list of unanswered questions on the issue. But based on what I’ve gathered from Therolf’s story, the Supervisors do not appear to be on the righteous—or winning— side of this legal tug-of-war.

On Wednesday, LA County’s Chief Executive Office (CEO), Bill Fujioka released a report reviewing the deaths of children in LA county whose families were under the supervision of or had been investigated by the Department of Children and Family Services—DCFS. Fujioka compliled the report in response to a motion authored by Supervisors Mark Ridley Thomas and Mike Antonovich, who asked for 10 years of figures on kid deaths, so that the causes might be better assessed and future deaths might be prevented.

[The full report may be found here, helpfully posted by Richard Wexler of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. Wexler's commentary on the report is here.]

The motion was, in part, a response to some articles in the LA Times (like this one) that suggested more kids were dying while left with their families after being investigated by DCFS. The Times implied that the increase in deaths could be due to a change in foster care policy called the Title IV-E waiver, that meant an effort to keep more kids with their families and provide support for those families, rather than removing them to the foster care system.

Many foster care watchers, myself included, questioned the Times’ conclusions and worried that a bad diagnosis might have the unintended consequence of more kids being damaged by being unnecessarily yanked from their families.

The CEO’s report helps to clarify matters by teasing out more details on those awful yearly deaths.

This is from Ridley-Thomas’s office’s statement regarding the new report:

It is particularly important to resist the temptation to exploit child deaths to push ideological agendas, the Supervisor said: “The CEO’s report shows we cannot honestly link child deaths to specific policies or the performance of particular government departments or individuals.”

In 2010, the total number of child deaths for children with DCFS histories was 175, in line with the annual average since 2000 of 166. “It would be negligent to be satisfied with any total more than zero; but it is also reckless to suggest there are quick fixes,” he said.

“We must shun policy gimmicks that produce sound bites for news conferences but yield no true solutions. We must not trivialize the enormity of the challenge, and we expect that all in society understand this is a problem for all of us to solve.”

It is particularly important to resist the temptation to exploit child deaths to push ideological agendas, the Supervisor said: “The CEO’s report shows we cannot honestly link child deaths to specific policies or the performance of particular government departments or individuals.”

In 2010, the total number of child deaths for children with DCFS histories was 175, in line with the annual average since 2000 of 166. “It would be negligent to be satisfied with any total more than zero; but it is also reckless to suggest there are quick fixes,” he said.

“We must shun policy gimmicks that produce sound bites for news conferences but yield no true solutions. We must not trivialize the enormity of the challenge, and we expect that all in society understand this is a problem for all of us to solve.”

Yep.

And to demonstrate the complexity of the problem there was this saddest of facts in the report: Nearly one-in-five (17%) of the children who died in LA County in 2010 had a parent who had themselves been referred to DCFS as a child.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear a case that basically asks whether fourth amendment requirements apply to social workers who wish to interview children about being possible victims of sexual abuse.

If the lower court ruling (made by the 9th Circuit) is upheld, the case, Greene v. Camreta, will set a significant precedent regarding the rights of children and the conditions under which they may be questioned when sexual abuse is suspected. Thus it has attracted an unusually high number of amicus briefs, supporting one side or the other—each side claiming that they are protecting the safety of children.

The majority of the amicus briefs, however, were on the side of protecting children from search and seizure.

Here are the bare bones of Greene v. Camreta as laid out by Education Week last fall when the Supremes first agreed to hear the case:

The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to take up a case involving the questioning of an elementary school student at school by a deputy sheriff and a state child-protective services caseworker about possible sexual abuse at home.

The justices accepted appeals from the two Oregon investigators of a federal appeals court ruling that they violated the student’s Fourth Amendment rights to be free of unreasonable search and seizure when they interviewed her at school without a warrant, court order, parental consent, or exigent circumstances.

The case has implications for school searches of students and cooperation between school officials and law-enforcement authorities, although claims against the school district in this case were dismissed at an early stage.

The case involves events in February 2003 when the caseworker and deputy sheriff went to an elementary school (unidentified in court papers) to interview a nine-year-old girl whom they suspected might be a victim of sexual abuse by her father, who had been arrested a week before in the alleged abuse of a seven-year-old boy.

According to court papers, the investigators arrived at the school and explained they were there to interview the student and asked for a private room. A school counselor pulled the student, identified as S.G., from class. The investigators talked to her for some two hours. Later, the caseworker pursued the investigation and the father was indicted on sexual-abuse charges involving S.G., although the charges were later dismissed. (The father did plead guilty to charges stemming from the abuse of the seven-year-old boy.)

The girl’s mother sued the caseworker and deputy sheriff over the interview that took place at school, as well as over later state actions in which her children were removed from her custody temporarily. The suit also named the Bend-La Pine school district in Oregon and the school counselor as defendants, but those claims were dismissed by a federal district court and were not challenged on appeal.

Yet, in reading the 9th Circuit’s decision, you get a much better idea of why this is an emotion-fraught and complicated case. For instance, in the two hours that the caseworker spent interviewing the girl (who is referred to as S.G., ) according to the girl’s own statements made much later, he would not accept her original answers and kept pressing her to repeatedly say something else that would implicate her father, until finally, exhausted and scared, she said whatever the interviewer wanted, according to S.G.

The interview so disturbed S.G. that she repeatedly threw up when she got home.

Also, the girl was subject to an unusually invasive and traumatic medical examination, including having her genitals photographed—without her mother or anyone else she knew present to comfort her.

Although no real evidence of the purported abuse was ever found, S.G and her sister were removed from their parent’s home and placed in foster care for three weeks.

(The girls were eventually returned to their family.)

SCOTUSBLOG has a good legal rundown of what to expect.

Richard Wexler over at the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform has the the children’s advocate’s perspective: He writes:

Had S.G. herself been suspected of committing a crime, the caseworker and the deputy sheriff could not have conducted this interrogation without a warrant,” Wexler said. “Surely it is not too much to ask that, under the Constitution of the United States an innocent child receive the same measure of protection as a suspected criminal.”

Although those opposing Fourth Amendment protection for children have concocted a variety of scare scenarios, none of them holds up to scrutiny.

The 9th Circuit decision does not ban caseworkers or sheriff’s deputies from schools. Nor does it bar them from questioning children without parental consent. It requires only that they obtain a court order before doing so, something that can be done in a matter of hours. And in cases where that really would pose a risk to the child, they don’t even have to do that.

This will be an important case to watch.

AND IN OTHER SCOTUS BIZ, THE SUPREMES RULE THAT JURY CAN HEAR DYING MAN’S WORDS

Adam Liptak explains the ruling in Tuesday’s New York Times.

The case is tricky because those who opposed the ruling said it threatens to wreak havoc with the Confrontation Clause.

Just read it.

ALSO, KEVIN RODERICK SOUNDS OFF ON MEASURE L AND LIBRARIES

Roderick comes down on the side of libraries—and explains why. Listen to his podcast and then make sure you vote for Measure L.

A hearing is scheduled Tuesday for California State Assembly Bill 73, which would change state law to allow Children’s dependency hearings to be open to the public—unless the court determines that in a specific instance, that opening the hearing would be injurious to the child.

This is a long needed and important piece of legislation. Only by letting the sunshine into children’s court will we cure some of its ills. Let us hope that the state legislature has the good sense to pass it.

The San Jose Mercury News explained the issue very well earlier this month:

Marking a dramatic shift in the scrutiny of how California protects its most vulnerable children, the courts overseeing the state’s vast foster care system would be open to the public for the first time since 1961, under legislation now working its way through the Assembly.

Proponents, including the state’s most influential juvenile court judges, say the exposure will improve performance by allowing outsiders to view and evaluate the state’s dependency courts, which last year decided the fate of more than 58,000 children in foster care who were removed from their homes following allegations of abuse and neglect. The change would bring California in line with a growing number of states nationwide that have opened those courts.

“In the 17 states that have prior experience in the open courts, there has been no determination of harm to kids,” said the bill’s author, Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-West Hollywood. “There has, however, been even closer scrutiny, more accountability and more attention paid to the system.”

The bill comes more than three years after the Mercury News coaxed Northern California judges to allow a reporter into closed dependency hearings. The result, a 2008 series of stories following a yearlong examination, revealed widespread dysfunction in the dependency courts — including overwhelmed judges, and court-appointed lawyers who failed to meet even basic standards of adequate representation. In some dependency courts,

judges rule on more than 100 children’s cases in a single day, and lawyers for parents and children are so harried they have only minutes to confer with clients in the hallway before life-altering hearings.

The stakes are high: Accused parents face a permanent loss of their children, while kids taken from their homes are often consigned to a revolving series of temporary homes and shelters.

Feuer said in light of the newspaper’s findings, his bill would improve the quality of justice for children and parents, whose cases typically involve neglect due to poverty and substance abuse. “All the participants in the system, from judges to clerks to social workers to advocates will be more accountable,” Feuer said.

Read the rest.

In 2000 and 2004 similar bills were introduced, but they never made it out of committee.

This one needs to pass. No failures permitted.