Facts, not furor

Facts, not furor
Evidence, not emotion, must dictate how L.A. County handles the most vulnerable children under its care.
October 22, 2010
By Mark Ridley-Thomas and Michael D. Antonovich
Los Angles Times

Few tragedies compare to the death of a child, and in Los Angeles County, too many children die at the hands of parents or caregivers.

But in Los Angeles there is an additional disgrace: the fueling of panic over child fatalities by government officials and the news media, who continue to operate in an environment clouded by incomplete and misunderstood facts.

Are child deaths related to the Department of Children and Family Services rising precipitously? What data do we have, and what is the context? What does the data really show about the policies of the DCFS? Answers to these questions are getting lost in the furor surrounding reports of child deaths in the news media and at Board of Supervisors meetings.

News reports and officials have done little so far to put the current level of fatalities in perspective. As we see it, these are some of the fundamental sources of confusion:

The term "child death" can mean too many things.

Last year, according to the DCFS, 55 children who had department case histories were homicide victims. That fact alone evokes for many an image of an infant or toddler killed in an abusive home, when the DCFS should have spotted danger.

But "children" includes those up to 18 years old. A closer look at the 55 homicides shows that 35 were of teenagers shot or stabbed to death in assaults, many in gang-related incidents. Three youths were shot by police officers.

The label "DCFS history" applies to any child who has been the subject of an abuse complaint; the history remains with the child even if the complaint was found to be false. These children in most cases were not young children, and few were still under the care of the DCFS.

The number of children killed by parents, foster parents or relatives acting as guardians have been effectively constant since the 1990s. These figures have been overlooked.

In 1998, 20 children with DCFS histories were killed by parents, foster parents or relatives acting as guardians. In 2008, there were 14 such fatalities. The number varied from 11 to 20 in the years between. These figures are published in a widely circulated report by the county's Inter-Agency Council on Abuse and Neglect Child Death Review team, but have been forgotten amid the frenzy surrounding the DCFS.  FULL STORY