2001: LOS ANGELES COUNTY MACLAREN ON THE MEND SUIT SPURS CHANGES AT COUNTY HOME FOR TROUBLED CHILDREN.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Last summer, conditions at MacLaren Children's Center had reached rock bottom when children filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that staff members slammed them into furniture, caused broken bones and had them arrested to purge the facility of difficult youths.

But with a management shake-up, new training requirements for all on the staff and the removal of nearly 24 employees with criminal records, the interim director, Bryce Yokomizo, said conditions are improving and that no other children have been seriously hurt.

As a result of steps taken by the Board of Supervisors, all on the staff are now required to take extensive training in the proper use of physical restraints, each child is assigned a full-time advocate, and 24-hour hotline phones have been installed in each cottage for youths to alert authorities to problems.

``A major part of the training focuses on de-escalating volatile situations without physically restraining the children,'' Yokomizo said. ``The staff are trained now, but what we need is more consistency in the manner that staff work together to ensure that our kids are not injured and to minimize injury to both staff and kids.''

Physical force was used an average of 125 times a month at the El Monte facility, which takes in abused children from throughout the county. This included the staff's use of force on children and children's use of it on staff members and each other.

About five or six youths are arrested each month. And union officials say more than 30 MacLaren staff members are on workers' compensation leave because of job-related injuries.

``The question is, why did it take a lawsuit to push the county to do what it knew was right in the first place?'' asked Andrew Bridge, executive director of The Alliance for Children's Rights, who grew up in foster care at MacLaren.

County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said that, while significant progress has been made, he favors privatizing the facility. He said he is concerned about MacLaren's future when Yokomizo leaves next month to become director of the Department of Public Social Services. County officials are conducting a nationwide search for a permanent director of MacLaren.

``I've been very critical of a department that gave incompetent employees responsibility over these young people's lives,'' Antonovich said. ``The horror stories continue and, as Bryce found out, the previous director had a complete lack of communication with staff.''

The 600 employees at the facility are in charge of caring for about 1,700 children each year. The facility spends $923 a day per child, more than in any other foster-care facility in the county.

Since the state Department of Social Services licensed MacLaren in August, most of the shelter's employees have undergone computerized fingerprinting and background checks. Those turned up 26 employees with criminal records, including at least four with felonies. Two of those employees were named in the lawsuit.

In November, county officials said only three of 26 employees with criminal records would be allowed to return to work at the facility. The rest were transferred to desk jobs where they will have no contact with children.

Under state guidelines, all the employees were eligible to return to work at MacLaren, but county supervisors decided to set higher standards for those who work at the shelter. They now intend to have background checks made on all county employees in sensitive positions.

The supervisors said they do not want employees with criminal pasts working with the children.

Problems at the shelter have persisted for decades. A series of studies ordered by the supervisors at a cost of more than $350,000 revealed that children stay at the shelter for months and, occasionally, more than a year, even though placement in a foster or a group home is required within 30 days of their arrival.

Violent and potentially dangerous children are kept in the same halls as others, such as abuse victims.

Before Yokomizo replaced the former director, John Robbins, in September, at least 11 children had filed lawsuits in the past couple of years, alleging that their arms had been broken or strained or that they had been slammed into furniture and onto the floor or the ground.

Originally designed as a juvenile hall for delinquent youths more than 40 years ago, the campus of brick and cinder-block buildings reopened in 1975 as a temporary holding facility for young children taken from their families before more permanent placements could be found with relatives, foster families and group homes.

In the mid-1980s, a handful of MacLaren staff members were criminally prosecuted and fired for dealing drugs and abusing children. In 1985, the supervisors ordered a reorganization that resulted in the resignation of the director of what was then the Department of Children's Services.

After Jason Pokrzywinski, an unsupervised mentally troubled 12-year-old, died Oct. 19, 1997, after inhaling fumes from a can of hair mousse, county supervisors ordered another reorganization and placed the facility under the Interagency Children's Services Consortium.

But in recent months, the supervisors have given the director more authority in overseeing how MacLaren is run.

Antonovich said he plans to push for privatizing the facility in 2002, following the example of Boys Republic, a nonprofit agency that operates six facilities in California for disadvantaged, at-risk youths.

``There is a perfect plan that is in operation today at those public-private partnerships, and I will aggressively work to enact that type of facility for MacLaren,'' Antonovich said.