L.A. County Child Welfare Chief, Trish Ploehn, Removed From Post
L.A. County DCFS failed to report some 60 child abuse deaths.
 Trish Ploehn in 2009 (Los Angeles Times) |
LOS ANGELES -- The heavily criticized Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services is undergoing a leadership change.
Chief Executive William T. Fujioka has removed Trish Ploehn from her post as director of the department that actively supervises more than 30,000 children, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The department has been under scrutiny for mistakes that kept children in homes where they died, even after allegations of abuse or neglect.
Fujioka's spokesman Ryan Alsop tells the Times that Ploehn is being transferred to a position in the chief executive's office that handles administrative work unrelated to child welfare.
The Times says Ploehn sent a message to her staff saying her journey with the department has come to a close.
The move comes just months after an independent auditor reported that the deaths of some 60 children in Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services have gone under-reported in what could be violation of state law.
The chief attorney for the Office of Independent Review, Michael Gennaco, presented those findings to L.A. County supervisors back in August.
They requested the inquiry after questioning why L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services officials had not listed the suicide of an 11-year-old Montebello boy with a long history of abuse and neglect.
Though social workers wrote his death was the result of abuse or neglect, his case was not made public.
Gennaco also noted that less information was being released by the department in response to public records requests, with disclosure in only four of 18 cases last year.
Department of Children and Family Services Director Trish Ploehn told that until last week she was unaware of the problem, which she attributed at least in part to a disconnect between two parts of her department.
If the 60 cases are verified to be inappropriately sealed, they would more than double the known number of children who, since 2008, have died of abuse and neglect after their families came under the scrutiny of the Department of Children and Family Services
To date, the department had acknowledged only 38 such deaths since state law requiring disclosure went into effect more than two years ago.
"Even 15 would be a lot. Twenty would be a lot. Sixty would be an awful lot," said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.
Ploehn said her department will soon release records for each abuse or neglect fatality as required by the state public disclosure law.
More than 13,000 children are the subjects of abuse investigations that have been open two months or longer.
Ploehn promised to reduce the backlog of child abuse investigations in June, after the death of a 2-year-old whose family was under investigation by her department.
Continued ...
ReplyDeleteWe are turning neighbor against neighbor, family against teachers, doctors, police officers, politicians and our country by allowing the criminal element in child protection to continue on this course. It has to end.
I encourage every American to join together to:
1. Call for an immediate nationwide moratorium on all child abuse investigations that do not use forensic evidence;
2. Call for the immediate transfer of power from child protective services to a division of law enforcement specializing in investigations of violent crime. These investigations must include the use of forensic evidence, and must be conducted independently of anyone working within child protection or in the promotion of child protection, with no financial incentives for taking children whatsoever;
3. Call for immediate state and federal investigations of every organization affiliated with child protection and family court across the nation for the crimes of Medicaid fraud, racketeering and all other crimes, including crimes against humanity;
4. Call for the return of children to families who were accused of crimes and denied due process in criminal court keeping in mind that some children may never be going home.
5. Call for a repeal of CAPTA to end mandated reporting and the child abuse hotline and end the practice of central registries for all cases not proven in a criminal court of law.