TODDLER'S DEATH MIGHT CHANGE LAW : CHILD-PROTECTION BILL TAKES EMPHASIS OFF REUNITING TROUBLED FAMILIES.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

Seventeen months after the beating death of 2-year-old Lance Helms of North Hollywood by his father's girlfriend, the most sweeping changes in California's child protection system in 14 years are awaiting signature by Gov. Pete Wilson.

The most significant of the bills clarify the child's safety as a higher priority than the sometimes competing goal of family reunification, said Peter Digre, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.

``It was truly a revolutionary year in reshaping Dependency Court,'' said Digre. ``This is the most radical change in Dependency Court law since 1982. This is huge.''

Other measures require more judge training, improve the lot of foster children who are leaving the system at age 18, and ease the adoption process for children taken from dangerous homes.

The governor's deputy press secretary, Jesus Arredondo, said the bills are among 838 passed by the Legislature in the waning days of its session and are not expected to officially reach the governor's desk for another week or two.

Children's services officials said one of the most important of the bills is SB 1516, authored by Sen. Hilda Solis, D-El Monte.

Solis wrote the bill at the prompting of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, after the Dependency Court system failed to head off the death of Lance Helms in April 1995.

Eve Wingfield, the girlfriend of the boy's father, pleaded no contest in November to child abuse charges in Lance Helms' death and was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

Both Wingfield and father David Helms had histories of drug abuse, and the boy repeatedly had shown signs of abuse during visits with his deceased mother's family.

Despite eight hearings over the father's competency as a parent, the boy repeatedly was returned to the household where he eventually died from blunt force trauma to his abdomen.

Senate Bill 1516 was designed to change the legal framework that repeatedly led officials to send the boy back to his father, officials said.

``Had it been in place, most of us would feel much better about the decisions the judge made. It does go a long way toward doing what we can to protect children,'' said county Supervisor Gloria Molina, who backed the measure on the Board of Supervisors.

``We're advocating for the safety and protection of the child,'' Solis said. ``An attorney or advocate has to be very cautious and clear about returning a child to an environment that wasn't safe in the first place. There should be a good examination of the home environment,'' she said.

The bill says the Legislature's first intent is to protect children, and that an attorney representing a child in Dependency Court must be an advocate for the child's health and well-being, Digre and legislators said.

It also requires that attorneys advocate return of a child to the parents only if the return doesn't conflict with the child's health and safety, and adds a provision saying the child has a right to live in a drug-free environment.

Frequently, in the past, attorneys interpreted their duty to represent their child clients as doing what the child wanted, even if it frequently meant returning to an abusive but familiar home, Digre said.

``It changes the attitude with regard to dependency proceedings so the interests of the child are placed first,'' said Assemblyman Jan Goldsmith, R-Poway, who carried the bill in the Assembly.

``Probably the most critical issue in dependency proceedings is reunification,'' Goldsmith said. ``The child's health, safety and freedom to live in a home free of substance abuse should be paramount.''

Goldsmith said many of his fellow Republican colleagues initially fought the bill because of their antipathy toward government involvement in families.

``The concern was that parents will lose their children because they spanked the child,'' said Goldsmith. ``But that's not what this is about. We're talking about the family where the mom or dad's a wino, there's drugs laying around the house and the kid's being beaten up every other day and living in fear.''

Another bill, AB 2679 by Assemblyman Louis Caldera, D-Los Angeles, adds several circumstances under which the reunification process can be short-circuited because of the parents' abusive or neglectful history.

The new circumstances include a parent's conviction for a violent felony, history of extensive drug or alcohol abuse and resistance to treatment, and ``willful abandonment'' of the child.

The bill also would allow the reunification process to be bypassed if the parent had previously had other children permanently removed and put in long-term care after failed reunification efforts.

That provision would address bad parents who contribute a number of children to the system, said Digre.

Last spring, the Daily News reported that 15 percent of the mothers with children in the Los Angeles County children's services system had contributed four or more children each to the system, representing more than a third of the 75,000 children under Digre's department's watch.

``I think this will be a big step forward in terms of safety for kids, in terms of preventing harebrained reunifications, in terms of keeping kids from languishing in the system while we try to determine a permanent placement for them,'' Digre said.

Digre said in the years since family reunification programs were written into state law, it had become increasingly unclear whether those efforts or child safety should be top priority. Often, it varied from judge to judge, or attorney to attorney.

``Family reunification almost caught on like a religion,'' Digre said. ``It was almost being practiced in a mindless fashion.''

A recent state study found that more than three-quarters of family reunifications were successful, with no subsequent abuse and neglect problems, Digre said.

But ``22 percent of the time it didn't work out fine,'' meaning children ended up back in the system after another abuse or neglect incident that may have been preventable, Digre said.

``The safety of kids needs to be our first priority,'' said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who called the legislation ``important steps in that direction in improving quality of life for children. It's a human rights issue. A kid has a right to be raised in a safe environment where they're not teetering on the brink of disaster every waking hour.''

Molina said she had initially thought that SB 1516 and the other bills involved ``fairly innocuous changes'' in state law.

``But to see the battles that went on tells you that they are going to have a significant impact,'' Molina said.

The state Judicial Council fought SB 1516 and some other measures because of concerns that they excessively restricted judges' discretion in deciding the best way to handle often complex cases.

And Norine Boehmer, a longtime member of the county Commission on Children and Family Services, said the Legislature may have ``overreacted'' in the wake of the Helms death.

``They've gone from the ridiculous to the ridiculous,'' making reunification too difficult at the expense of many children whose families might otherwise be turned around, Boehmer said.

``I personally think they should give judges more space to make decisions instead of trying to control the decisions,'' Boehmer said. ``Safety is the primary focus, but how good is it for a child to be safe and have no life? I've been a foster parent and I know foster parents I wouldn't put my children with.''

Digre said ``about 90 percent'' of bills his department and the county Board of Supervisors had sought were approved by the Legislature. Other legislation that passed includes:

SB 1974 by Sen. Diane Watson, D-Los Angeles. Creates a ``foster youth bill of rights,'' encourages counties to hire qualified foster children parents and provide all foster children older than age 16 with independent living programs and a life plan for when they turn 18 and leave the system.

AB 2165 by Goldsmith. It reduces barriers to adoption by creating a pre-certification process for prospective parents so that a permanent adoption can be completed more quickly. It also reduces from four years to one the time it takes for a foster child's guardians or relatives to adopt.

``There's a window in a kid's life where it's easier to get them adopted,'' Goldsmith said. ``If they get older, it gets very tough to adopt them.''

AB 2463 by Assemblyman Louis Caldera, D-Los Angeles. The bill's numerous provisions also deal with foster children who are ``emancipating'' or leaving the system because they've turned 18.

It adds a series of responsibilities to the state's community colleges and the California State University system to help emancipating youth with such changes as keeping dorms open during vacation breaks, so the foster children are not left homeless.

The biggest casualties were four bills sponsored by Sen. Richard Polanco that, among other provisions, would have opened up Dependency Court proceedings to more public scrutiny.

``When a child is seriously hurt or killed, I'd much rather have the record opened'' to public scrutiny, Digre said. ``I would rather just get the record out.''

The four bills were heavily amended, fought stoutly by the state judicial counsel and eventually only one, SB 1811, survived in a badly whittled down fashion, requiring the creation of special training for judges, commissioners and referees.

Another measure that would have reopened the state Department of Justice's abuse registry to child welfare officials also failed, which Digre called ``unfortunate.''

The registry keeps track of people around the state who have been investigated for complaints of abuse or neglect that don't lead to a criminal prosecution, Digre said.

Digre's department and others around the state have used the registry to check on people, such as a problem mother's new live-in boyfriend, to ensure they haven't had previous complaints.

But the Department of Justice has closed down access to the registry because of a lawsuit that says the list has no process for removing names, Digre said.