Social workers get LAPD backup

Attention, county child social workers: the LAPD is riding with you now.

The city police department just became the first non-L.A. County agency to supply case information to a computer database called the Family and Children’s Index that aids social workers launching emergency child-welfare investigations.

“This is groundbreaking,” said Carlos Pineda, principal analyst in the Chief Executive Office’s service integration branch, who is directing an expansion and improvement of FCI that began last year in the wake of several highly-publicized children’s deaths.

The LAPD deal was finalized as the Board of Supervisors approved a memorandum of agreement this week between County CEO William T Fujioka and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck that enables the department to begin entering data on thousands of cases into the FCI database.

The database provides emergency child social workers from the Department of Children and Family Services with a quick overview of how a family stands with legal, mental health and other government entities as they launch emergency investigations into allegations of child neglect or abuse. It uses a “pointer” system that lists the existence of relevant contacts or cases for family members, and provides a contact at each department for social workers to call for more information.

Until now, the system’s law-enforcement data has come solely from the Sheriff’s Department, covering county unincorporated areas and contract cities such as West Hollywood and Malibu. (The District Attorney also inputs information from prosecutions.) The infusion of data from the LAPD, covering the city’s 4 million residents, should more than double the number of law enforcement cases flagged in FCI, said Garrison Smith, the CEO’s chief point man on FCI.

The one-year agreement will cost the county $37,500 in operating costs. County officials hope that if the program is successful, it can be renewed—and expanded to other police agencies.

“If the LAPD agreement becomes a template, there are another 45 police agencies that potentially could participate,” including those in Long Beach, Santa Monica, Burbank and Glendale, Pineda said.

The LAPD agreement is the latest in an ongoing reform effort to step up the quality and utility of FCI. Despite being in place since the mid-1990s, the system was consistently underused because key agencies were not entering relevant data regularly.

Last year, supervisors directed that participating county agencies re-train workers in the use of FCI to improve the entry of key information, and to ensure that DCFS social workers tapped into the system before launching investigations. In addition, agencies have made staff available to field social workers’ inquiries around the clock. And the county’s Department of Health Services is now taking part in the data entry program.

The efforts seem to be boosting usage of the system. Over the past year, the number of queries doubled, from 13,700 last summer to 27,500 in August.

FCI may get another expansion soon if, as expected, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs Assembly Bill 2322 into law. The bill would broaden FCI to include data about child-welfare convictions by any member of a child’s household, not just family members. The additional data is important because emergency cases can involve potential abuse or neglect by, say, a mother’s live-in boyfriend.

Despite the improvements, the system still experiences lag times.

“I know from personal experience that responses are seldom immediate,” Mike Ross, a supervising children’s social worker at DCFS, told supervisors at Tuesday’s meeting. “FCI is only as good as information in the social worker’s hand when he is making life or death decisions about the child.”

Posted 9-22-10