Scott Folsom, blogger at 4LAKids: Some of the News That Doesn't Fit, tipped us off to the LA Times editorial on Saturday --"Leaks Don't Kill Kids" -- regarding the LA County Board of Supervisors' reaction to a series of stories on the deaths of children "in the system," published in the Times over the past two years. The unsigned editorial in the Times reads:
Faced with a series of administrative lapses that have contributed to the deaths of children in the care of Los Angeles County, the county Board of Supervisors has responded with stern and authoritative action — against the worker or workers who may have brought the tragedies to light.
It is depressingly unsurprising that the board would see these deaths as a publicity problem, not a failure of the county's most basic obligation. As Department of Children and Family Services Director Trish Ploehn (at left) described it to the supervisors, the leaks of information regarding child deaths have created a morale issue for her colleagues. Boohoo.
The response to a crisis in child protection might involve overhauling the county's systems for safeguarding children's welfare; it might require firing some inattentive social workers; it might suggest upgrading technology to allow records from the field to be more readily available. But the response to a PR problem suggests a different course: This week, the board authorized a leak investigation.
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, the lone dissenter, aptly noted that "the obsession with leaks … exceeds the obsession with child deaths." He's right, and his colleagues are wrong as they continue to frame the problems of their troubled department as bad press rather than bad management. Moreover, the county's insistence on hushing up these matters has led it to break the law: In contravention of the state law that requires board members to hold their meetings in public, the supervisors initially discussed the leak investigation in closed session. They tried to remedy that this week by at least debating in public, but secrecy is corroding this issue at every step.
On June 8, 11-year-old Jorge Tarin hung himself with a jump-rope hours after a county social worker interviewed him at home and then left him there; this, even though Jorge that same day had told a school counselor and a county worker that he was considering suicide. As the county board considers that tragedy, it should ask itself this question: Who did Jorge more harm? The worker who left him in a home where he complained of being beaten and where his stepfather was residing in defiance of a court order, or the county worker who may have brought details of Jorge's death to light?
The median base salary for a social worker in Los Angeles County is $73,980, adjusted to reflect the following benefits: 401K contribution, disability insurance, health care, pension, and paid vacations. These salaries and benefits are paid for with public money. The public, through a responsible, objecdtive media, has the right to know how the people receiving those monies are performing.
An investigation of leaks? There should be an investigation as to why everyone who is paid well above the average income of the children and families they are serving wasn't "leaking."
What I want to know is, why is Trish Ploehm still being paid the same salary that she was being paid when she wasn't doing her job now that she is no longer in that position but yet just an assistant and no longer over seeing anything to do with the department she once held and how do these so called social workers that don't have credentials to even suggest that they made it through high school get paid this ridiculous salary???
Posted by: K Vail | 01/17/2012 at 03:46 PM