L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, responding to the deaths of children who passed through the county’s child welfare system, on Monday renewed his call to update the computer system designed to provide child abuse investigators with information about a child’s jeopardy.
The Times reported Sunday that county’s system for sharing information about suspicious injuries, domestic violence and other key risk factors was among the unfinished reform efforts. The system has been repeatedly cited over the years as insufficient, and its shortcomings have played a critical role in numerous child deaths and abuse cases.
“Technology may not be a cure, but it is part of the treatment,” Ridley-Thomas said in a statement that also acknowledged the role of deep poverty, high social worker caseloads and multigenerational patterns of abuse.
“We must give the protectors of minors in the county’s custody or care [the] adequate tools for their mission to safeguard children,” he said. “We wouldn’t think of sending soldiers to war carrying jammed rifles; we can’t go on asking social workers to use an incomplete children’s data network just because it’s what we now have.”
County supervisors approved a plan last year to revamp the computer system, known as the Family and Children’s Index, but nearly a year later, key portions of the order are behind schedule or are unfulfilled entirely.
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has argued for modest improvements to FCI and has led the opposition against Ridley-Thomas’ proposal to scrap it in favor of more user friendly technology with an “early warning” mechanism for families who accumulate numerous risk factors.
“This tends to be a knee-jerk reaction every time there is a case, that it could be a technological issue, or if we only would have had a $100-million computer system it might have solved it,” Yaroslavsky said at last week’s board meeting.
— Garrett Therolf
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