Politics & Government

REPORT: Private Foster Care a Danger to Children it Claims to Protect

Cases of abuse are scattered through the files of California's privatized foster care system, according to a City News Service report.

California's private foster family system, which was developed beginning 27 years ago in the belief that it would be superior to foster care overseen by officialdom, has become more expensive and more dangerous than the government-run homes it has largely replaced, it was reported today

Cases of abuse are scattered through the files of California's privatized foster care system, the biggest in the nation -- children whipped with belts, burned with a car cigarette lighter and traumatized by beatings and threats, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Today, those living in homes run by private agencies are about a third more likely to be the victims of serious physical, emotional or sexual abuse than children in state-supervised foster family homes, according to a Times analysis of more than 1 million hotline investigations over a recent three-year period.

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In Los Angeles County, at least four children died as a result of abuse or neglect over the last five years in homes overseen by private agencies, according to county officials. No children died in government-run homes during that period.

The flow of money to private foster care -- now about $400 million a year -- introduced a powerful incentive for some to spend as little as possible and pack homes with as many children as they could.

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Those agencies are so short of homes that they accept convicted criminals as foster parents, and the state has granted waivers to at least 5,300 people convicted of crimes, according to The Times. In the most egregious cases, people with waivers later maimed or killed children.

The system is so poorly monitored that foster care agencies with a history of abuse can continue caring for children for years. Substantiated cases of wrongdoing can bring little punishment from regulators.

Private agencies now care for 15,000 children statewide, The Times reported. The care comes at greater cost -- an additional $327 million between 2001 and 2010, the state auditor found.

Los Angeles County has come to heavily rely on this system; five out of six foster children who are not placed with relatives go to private homes, The Times reported.

It is "as bottom of the barrel as you can imagine," Jill Duerr Berrick, co-director of the Center for Child and Youth Policy at UC Berkeley, said in remarks reported by The Times. "They are clearly not keeping track of quality issues. It's really quite surprising we don't have more tragedies."

-- City News Service


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