Los Angeles Not Trained For Transparency

County withheld files on foster-child deaths

Los Angeles County has repeatedly failed to release documents related to the deaths of dozens of children in its foster system, violating a state law passed two years ago to promote public debate and disclosure, an independent investigator found.

There is a reason for nondisclosure. 

County officials, including Patricia Ploehn, director of the Department of Children and Family Services, largely agreed that at least 60 child deaths over the past two years should have been made public but were not.
"We are now reviewing all of those cases, and will be making a new determination," Ploehn said Tuesday under terse questioning by the county Board of Supervisors. "There is no excuse for this to happen." 

 There is a bevy of excuses why this happened.

Gennaco also found that law enforcement played a significant role in quashing release of documents that were legally public. District attorneys and police made "blanket" denials to requests for documents, though they often weren't given enough information by child welfare workers to make an accurate assessment of what to withhold, he said. 

If you robbed a bank, had the money, your signed confession to the robbery, including video of you doing it, would you turn it over to law enforcement?  The answer is no.  Self-incrimination is not an action most people will engage.

There are more children who are and have been harmed under the care of the state, unfortunately, that concern has taken a back seat to the possibility of being found a non-compliant grant recipient.  There is a fight to disclose the files because major crimes have been committed. Criminal actions go far and above the abuse and neglect, and even surpass the act of murder, the crimes are that these children were allowed to suffer while the County financially gained from their tears.

These child placing agencies, knowingly and willingly neglected their responsibilities to care and protect these children while they pilfered the public treasury.  

In many instances, these children should never have been placed in foster care.


These child welfare workers were never properly trained to know how to identify and report wrong doing as no such training exists. 

The child placing agencies have incompletely and falsely constructed case management reports and Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky was responsible for the oversight of the County operations.  To turn over the files would reveal serious allegations of mismanagement, false claims and the loss funding, of jobs, including Yaroslavsky's job.  

Unfortunately, no one was trained for transparency, a national issue within child welfare.