COUNTY GETS F FOR CHILDREN'S SERVICES.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

The Los Angeles County Grand Jury's annual report Friday cited the failure of county government on a number of fronts - including a backlog of investigations into staff allegedly abusing children at MacLaren Children's Center and inadequate conditions in the county jails and juvenile camps.

In another issue, the report also raised concerns about plans to switch to an electronic voting system, saying the system could be vulnerable to electronic fraud or sabotage.

The grand jury wrote that a backlog of investigations into staff members reportedly abusing children at the El Monte shelter for abused and emotionally troubled youths extends back to 1997 and has increased substantially in the last two years.

The report notes that the backlog of investigations rose from two in 1997 to 19 in 2000 to 49 as of October 2001, a total of 84 in the four-year period.

Department of Children and Family Services investigators told the grand jury the backlog is the result of insufficient staff in the nation's largest foster care system and the need to investigate an increase in the number of deaths of children elsewhere in the system.

The department noted that departmental investigations into the deaths of 88 children were required in 2000.

MacLaren and DCFS staff told grand jury that investigations into allegations of child abuse are ``at best perfunctory'' and are not given ``due diligence,'' according to the report.

``In addition, DCFS Internal Affairs staff report that an atmosphere of silence pervades many MacLaren staff ... and that an unwritten agreement seems to prevail, wherein staff understand that if they talk, they will not get the backing of their colleagues, should a major altercation with children take place,'' grand jurors wrote.

The report notes that reports of staff members abusing children rose from 22 in 1999 to 53 in 2001, while reports of children assaulting staff rose from 445 in 1999 to 796 in 2001. Reports of children assaulting other children rose from 446 in 1999 to 575 in 2001. There was an average of six serious assaults every day in 2001.

``Investigations of allegations of abuse by staff against children at MacLaren are not adequately addressed,'' grand jurors wrote. ``In addition to potentially causing great harm to children, this also could place the county at risk of lawsuits.''

Last summer, a class-action lawsuit was filed against MacLaren charging that staff members broke children's arms, slamming them into furniture and to the ground.

The grand jury report found that the population at MacLaren is increasingly older - and psychologically and emotionally troubled. A majority of the children are admitted from psychiatric hospitals, failed foster care placements, juvenile hall or probation, or after they run away from a facility. In 2001, nearly 50 percent of the average daily population of 144 was classified as ``medically fragile.''

Grand jurors wrote that MacLaren is the county's most expensive foster care facility, costing $757 a day, or $276,305 a year, to care for a child.

As a result of the August state licensure of the shelter, officials were required to conduct background checks on all employees and discovered 21 had criminal records, including robbery, burglary, felony bookmaking, trafficking in a controlled substance and felony drunken driving.

Grand jurors toured the county's jails, juvenile halls and facilities to review the conditions where 20,000 jail inmates and 4,000 juvenile offenders are detained.

Among findings at those facilities, the jurors noted:

--At the Challenger Memorial Youth Center in Lancaster, grand jurors said the facility was seriously understaffed and that they thought it inappropriate to allow adult probationers to mix with juveniles at a proposed electronic monitoring station in the lobby.

Jurors noted the swimming pool was unusable and that for more than two years 700 youths had been denied use of the pool despite the extremely hot environment.

--Jurors noted sewer problems at Camp Munz in Lake Hughes.

--At Camp Scudder in Saugus, jurors noted problems that had existed for two years, including a commercial clothes dryer that had not operated for months and routine electrical outages.

--At the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic, jurors noted that a new security camera system would assist in managing the 6,210-inmate facility and that the shower floors were in poor condition and should be replaced.

Grand jurors raised concerns about the county switching to an electronic voting system, saying someone could sabotage the machines.

They wrote that an individual near the voting area with a small container holding specialized electronic equipment could affect the operation of the voting machines.

``Using an electromagnetic pulse device, such people could cause a near instantaneous and totally disruptive effect on the operations of the voting machines, particularly on the tapes, the disks, adjacent circuits and the operations of the voting machines.''