EDITORIAL FOSTER SCARE COUNTY ABUSES INTIMIDATE WOULD-BE PARENTS.

FOR years, we have heard repeated horror stories about the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services.

We have learned of abuses at the MacLaren's Children's Center in El Monte. We have learned that the DCFS can't account for hundreds of the children in its care. We have learned that adoptions take exceedingly long to process in L.A. County, keeping needy children needlessly separate from families who want to love and care for them.

And now we have learned that, at times, the DCFS can be every bit as awful for foster parents as it has been for foster children.

In 1999, the DCFS asked Rosa and Ignacio Soto, two respected foster parents, to take in an infant boy named Harry, who was suffering from prenatal drug exposure. Later, the department suggested that the Sotos adopt the boy, and they gladly agreed.

But when a grandmother turned up to claim custody, DCFS officials realized they had failed to search for blood relatives. To cover up their mistakes, they turned on the Sotos, and after a lengthy legal battle, they took the boy, crying, from the couple's home in June.

The victims of this outrage extend beyond Harry and the Sotos. They also include every child who might never find foster or adoptive parents at all because the DCFS' abuses scare them away.

Every day that the DCFS remains unreformed, more children in L.A. County will suffer - and that is simply unacceptable.