Board steps up foster care oversight

Supervisors want more frequent and coordinated scrutiny of agencies that place kids in foster and group homes.

Responding to a years-long string of allegations of impropriety within a foster family agency under contract to Los Angeles County, the Board of Supervisors this week moved to tighten oversight of such agencies and to fix communications breakdowns involving departments responsible for auditing them.

The board voted unanimously to approve a motion by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas calling on the Department of Children and Family Services to develop a plan to conduct annual audits of programs at the approximately 129 foster family agencies with county contracts. The board also approved an amendment by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky directing the department to include a staffing component it had previously proposed, for six or seven new employees to enable DCFS to undertake a more aggressive oversight approach.

Meanwhile, the county department of the Auditor-Controller, charged with conducting separate financial audits of the foster family agencies, came in for some criticism at the board’s meeting on Tuesday for its handling of a review of Teens Happy Home, the subject of a recent Los Angeles Times article that disclosed allegations of long-running financial irregularities at the agency.

Yaroslavsky said the department, which completed an audit of Teens Happy Home in 2003 and is currently finishing up a second audit started in 2010, failed to brief board staff when it discovered allegations of misappropriation of public funds by the agency.

“Where there are problem agencies out there…we’d like to know so that we don’t step in a pile of dung inadvertently,” Yaroslavsky said. “This is troubling to me.”

Auditor-Controller Wendy Watanabe, who said the Teens Happy Home audit is nearly complete, acknowledged the problem:  “We fell short on this one, I’ll admit to that. We did not do a very good job. And I think part of the reason is we wanted to keep the 20 allegations under wraps.”

The Times reported that Teens Happy Home, a private agency that places children in foster and group homes, has continued to receive county contracts even as “questionable financial practices proliferated in recent years” and children it placed in foster homes “suffered abuse and neglect repeatedly.”

Supervisors expressed concern that DCFS and the Auditor-Controller are not communicating well enough with each other—especially when issues of child welfare are concerned.

“There are things that the Auditor-Controller knows that the Department of Children and Family Services does not know and vice versa,” Ridley-Thomas said. “And because of the lack of communication and coordination, we are not holding the entities appropriately accountable.”

Added Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich: “The children can’t afford delays in having these corrections implemented…If a house is on fire, you can’t take two years to study it and make a recommendation in three years on how to put out the fire…This is a life-and-death issue at times that has to be resolved immediately.”

The supervisors directed staff to come back with an oversight plan in 30 days. Philip Browning, the head of DCFS, said his department is committed to making the necessary changes.

“We put safety as a priority for the children in these foster homes,” Browning said in a statement after the supervisors’ meeting. “We will be working more closely with the Auditor-Controller to ensure coordination of our efforts to improve safety of children at the direction of the board.”

Posted 5/1/13