CLOSED-DOOR CHILD-WELFARE EDICTS EXAMINED : SECRECY COVER FOR INCOMPETENCE?

Byline: Lee Condon Daily News Staff Writer

When judges decide whether children should be put in foster care, the hearings are closed to the public and press. On Friday a state legislative committee heard testimony about whether such blanket confidentiality allows bureaucrats to hide their mistakes.

The Select Committee on Juvenile Justice held a daylong hearing at Burbank City Hall on ``Confidentiality in the Dependency Court: Protecting Children or Hiding Malfeasance.'' The meeting was hosted by Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, chairman of the committee.

Linda Wallace-Pate, a lawyer who has represented foster children who have sued the county for negligence, said the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services uses the confidentiality rule as a way to hide information from the very children they are trying to protect.

The county, Wallace-Pate said, has to act in its own interest when it becomes a defendant in a lawsuit, and it holds back information from records.

``Children have a terribly difficult time getting their own records,'' Wallace-Pate said. ``The intent of confidentiality was to encourage parents to be forthcoming. We feel the entire statute has been distorted.''

Esther G. Boynton, a lawyer who also has represented clients in Dependency Court, said that under the state's welfare code, the decision on confidentiality should be up to parents and children, not government agencies.

``It is difficult not to become angry when one talks about how hard it is for parents and children to get access to their records,'' Boynton said. ``If parents and children want to open up that proceeding, the press should come on in. The agency should not keep the press out. The misuse we see now is the agency has control.''

James W. Ewert, a lawyer for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, said the blanket confidentiality prevents children's agencies from being accountable to the public. He said some agencies and courts have even refused to release records after children have died in the state's care, citing the child's right to confidentiality. He advocated that some proceedings and records should be open.

``It provides for better accountability overall,'' Ewert said. ``We believe it makes these institutions function better when more accountability is put into place.''

County officials argued that blanket confidentiality is essential.

Guy Trimarchi, an administrator with Children and Family Services, said confidentiality is a ``cardinal principle of social work policy.''

``These are private matters that are best kept that way,'' Trimarchi said. ``To have outside people there who don't need to be there is not fair.''

However, he said laws should be changed to allow the department to share information with the family law courts in which parents are fighting for custody of children. Frequently, child-abuse allegations are made in family court by parents, but lawyers in those cases are denied access to information compiled in Children and Family Services investigations.

``We are hamstrung in not being able to share information with them,'' Trimarchi said.