ADOPTION ATTORNEYS CITE STRAIN : UP TO 375 CHILDREN AWAIT END TO BACKLOG.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

Joyce Graves has waited a year for the final judge's order making Tyrone, her 5-year-old foster child, her adopted son. She'll have to wait longer.

The 59-year-old Moreno Valley woman learned recently that the court-appointed attorney who was supposed to file the required paperwork in Dependency Court in Los Angeles County to speed the process apparently never did.

Now Graves has hired her own attorney to pursue the adoption of Tyrone, a 5-year-old hydrocephalic boy with cerebral palsy who first came to her as an infant.

Graves isn't alone in waiting.

Officials say as many as 375 children are in legal limbo as attorneys linked to L.A. County's vast child welfare system argue over inadequate fees, excessive caseloads and possible conflicts of interest.

The children are in the homes of the families that would adopt them. But activists charge that the delays are a painful thing to do to children who were abused and neglected by their birth parents and sometimes shuttled through several foster care settings before finding a family that wanted to keep them.

``Until an adoption is final, the children can't feel secure, they can't feel like they belong,'' said Carol Shauffer, executive director of the Youth Law Project. ``They always feel insecure until the adoption is final.''

Dependency Court Presiding Judge Michael Nash said he only recently learned of the backlog and promised to clear it up quickly.

``I don't know if it's true, but I'm going to send a letter to the Department (of Children and Family Services) asking them to name every single one of those cases,'' Nash said. ``If necessary, I'll check every one to see what's going on.''

The problems began in July when the court changed to a flat-fee system for paying court-appointed private attorneys who process the cases for needy families. Attorneys get $770 the first 13 months of a case, and $100 a year once a plan has been approved that lays out the child's permanent living situation.

But where the lawyers formerly were paid more to file the final adoption application, they now must make do with the flat fee - and many of them have stopped taking such cases, officials said.

The burden is falling to Dependency Court Legal Services, the quasi-independent group of three law firms that contract with the county to represent dependents in the child welfare system.

But DCLS attorneys, already handling heavy caseloads, have been puzzling over a possible conflict of interest if they file adoption paperwork on behalf of the new parents while also representing the child.

``When things blow up, we're in a very uncomfortable position,'' said Randy Pacheco, who heads one of the three DCLS firms.

Pacheco said his organization is processing adoption cases fairly efficiently and wasn't to blame for any backlogs.

``I don't believe we've been an impediment to getting adoptions processed,'' Pacheco said. ``Some of these cases in process are in process for a reason. Documents are missing, visits need to be done. It's like buying a home that's in escrow.''

To ease the load, Shauffer's organization and two other children's rights groups - Public Counsel and the Alliance for Children's Rights - are offering to find attorneys to file the paperwork for free.

``There's no group of attorneys who've agreed to represent adoptive parents,'' said Virginia Weisz, directing attorney for children's rights at Public Counsel. ``Circumstances are just working together and now we need to solve the problem.''

The Department of Children and Family Services is trying to dramatically increase the number of children adopted each year, from 1,200 last year to a goal of 2,000, said Director Peter Digre.

And new state laws will dramatically increase the number of very young children - who are most likely to be adopted - whose abusive parents will have their rights terminated quickly, Digre said.