New law boosts child welfare database

Los Angeles County’s child welfare officials won a key victory in Sacramento this week when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a bill expanding an important computer database used in child abuse investigations.

Assembly Bill 2322 improves the information available to county social workers in a computer database called the Family and Children’s Index (FCI), which provides child welfare workers with key medical, law enforcement and social services data as they launch investigations.

The bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Mike Feuer and speaker emeritus Karen Bass, allows L.A. County to include in the FCI database convictions for crimes against children by family members and others living with a child who have come to the attention of child welfare authorities.

Under the old system, social workers had to wait days or weeks to obtain information about convictions of family members and could learn nothing about convictions of non-family members.

The bill was sponsored by the county, and officials from the County Counsel and the Chief Executive Office were instrumental in crafting provisions to improve FCI.

The latest expansion follows news last week that the LAPD will become the first non-county agency to contribute data to FCI.

The new law takes effect immediately.

Post 9-30-10