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Los Angeles:
Stop the Blame Game

July-August 2001

by Richard Bermack

“If something isn’t done soon, a child is going to die, and they are going to pin the blame on a worker.” Los Angeles emergency worker, quoted in the Dragon, October 1997

Workers have warned that they are past the limit of their ability to provide quality services or to fulfill their mission of protecting children and helping families. In Los Angeles, the dam has begun to break. In the last year at least nine children died of abuse or neglect and about half of them were in the public or private foster care system. To what degree these deaths could have been prevented is unclear. But the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services has decided to scapegoat the workers.

One of the cases involved a foster parent who suffered from mental illness and beat to death a child under the parent’s care. The head of the department, Anita Bock, told the Los Angeles Times that she intended to discipline eight workers. According to union field representative John Garfield, Bock made her statement to the Times before the department had finished its investigation. “Bock had determined that at least eight heads would roll before investigators from Internal Affairs had interviewed the employees in question,” Garfield stated.

The director’s actions were in disregard of department procedure. The department of internal affairs is required to investigate, then make a report to the department. The department reviews the report, and then sends a letter of intent to discipline to the workers, who can then ask for a hearing, he explained.

Eight workers eventually received discipline ranging from 30-day suspensions to demotions. The union is challenging the department’s findings and taking the matter to the civil service board.
However, the issues go far beyond the fate of those involved in this case. The Department of Children and Family Services is in crisis because of a lack of resources. Social workers cannot provide the quality of services that families and children deserve. Will management work together with the workers and the union to find a solution, or is it going to run the department based on what sounds good in the Los Angeles Times?

Studies have documented that the department is severely understaffed. Yet the department has refused to make use of all the money available from the state to hire more workers. It is time to stop the blame game, and work together to solve the scarcity problems affecting workers and the families the department serves.