A dependency court cure

A bill that calls for California's dependency courts to conduct open proceedings would benefit children.
February 12, 2011
LA Times Editorial

Secrecy in California's dependency courts, where cases of child abuse and neglect are heard, has protected negligent parents, foster parents and social workers from serious scrutiny of their actions. And it has failed children.

Elsewhere in the nation, these once-secret hearings have been opened, to positive results. Transparency has led to improved care and greater public confidence in Oregon and Minnesota and more than a dozen other states. California, however, has continued to conduct most dependency proceedings in closed courtrooms, shielded not only from the media but also from advocates for children and other interested observers. Elected leaders like to boast of their commitment to transparency and accountability, but in this case they have opted instead for closure and secrecy.

Thankfully, Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) has introduced a bill to remedy that. Details of the ultimate proposal will emerge from hearings next month to take testimony from experts on all sides of the debate. But Feuer's underlying goal is laudable: to insist that dependency proceedings be presumptively open rather than routinely closed. Though that's monumentally important, it's also notably modest. Feuer is not suggesting that all hearings in all dependency courts would henceforth be open to the public. In cases in which judges conclude that a child's welfare would be best served by closing a hearing, they could do so. But that decision would be made against a backdrop assumption that public accountability is desirable.

Opening the state's dependency courts is an idea that has been gaining momentum in recent years. Michael Nash, the presiding judge of Los Angeles County Juvenile Court, is a stalwart supporter, and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, which once opposed it, now favors it as well. Public employee unions, whose members might be subjected to greater scrutiny, remain wary... FULL STORY

There is a good case these people are working hand-in-hand to bring us into Satan's New World Order.