Alameda County's office of Child and Family Services has come under the criticism of the State Auditor Elaine Howle and her staff after conducting an audit of child protective services in 4 counties (Alameda, Sacramento, Fresno, and Los Angeles).
The audit, requested by state Assemblyman Henry Perea, D-Fresno, at left, after the death of a 10-year-old boy in his district, has found that agencies failed to review cases where children have died; such a review may have enabled policy and procedural changes that could have prevented further deaths.The story was reported by Angela Woodall for the Mercury News.
According to the auditors, Alameda County failed to conduct formal internal reviews into the deaths of four children who had contact with social workers between 2008 and 2010 and later died from neglect or abuse.
Fresno County formally reviewed four out of five incidents and Sacramento County nine out of 15 cases. Los Angeles refused to hand over records, delaying that audit's release until February 2012.
In the case of 2 year old Kamilah Russell, in Alameda County, who was suffocated by her mother, a social worker closed an emotional abuse case involving the family, despite misgivings, less than a week before her death.
If Alameda County had formally reviewed Kamilah Russell's death, social workers could have been trained to handle the referral of other cases like it, the auditors said in the report. If the review showed a systemic problem, policies could be changed, auditors continued.
Kamilah's death was not an isolated incident in Alameda:
In 2005, a schizophrenic woman, LaShuan Harris, threw her three children off a San Francisco fishing pier into the bay. Child protective services said at the time mental illness was not grounds for removing children from their parents... Harris' mother warned a social worker that the children were in danger on the day they died, but the social worker did not believe her.
Even the counties that did complete a formal child death review failed to implement recommendations for changes in policy, according to Perea. Last week, he introduced the Safe Homes for Foster Children Act, which would require counties to complete a death review for every child who dies from abuse.
“Children die from abuse and neglect every day. They are abandoned, beaten, starved to death and drowned. This is unacceptable and needs to be addressed. This bill would require the county child welfare agencies to learn from mistakes that were made along the way and ensure that our most vulnerable children are protected.” wrote Perea on his website.
The audit also found registered sex offenders living or working in child care facilities and foster homes. Officials shut down two foster homes and a family day-care home in Fresno and Visalia as a result of the audit's findings regarding sex offenders.( Read here for previous story.)
Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.
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