The California Newspaper Publishers Association may sponsor revisions to current law requiring disclosure of children’s deaths to address the growing trend among state and county child welfare agencies to withhold information. -db
California Newspaper Publishers Association
February 22, 2010
There is a growing trend among the state and at least one county child welfare agency to withhold information about kids who die on their watch, despite a new law requiring this information to be provided to the public. CNPA staff is exploring the possibility of resolving the problem legislatively.
The law, enacted in 2007 with CNPA’s support, requires agencies to provide certain basic information about a child’s death within five days of its occurrence. If, after an investigation, abuse or neglect of the child is substantiated, the agency must reveal additional information about the circumstances of the death. The law recognizes that a district attorney may redact certain pieces of information if disclosure would harm the D.A.’s investigation.
As the Times’ Garrett Therolf reports, 31 children in the care of Los Angeles County’s child welfare system were killed by abuse or neglect over the last two years. But when Therolf sought information about the deaths pursuant to the new law, the agency’s director refused to release any records in the 12 most recent occurrences. She asserted the law allows blanket withholding of some files rather than redacting, on a case-by-case basis, the facts that would impede the investigation of each death. Moreover, she justified a blanket withholding of several other files on the basis of a request by law enforcement, which the law does not permit.
Despite the clear intention of the new law to provide greater public understanding of the problem, the state Department of Social Services has taken the position that the new law actually requires state and county agencies to redact the name of a deceased child from any file it is required to produce.
The Times’ Tim Ruttan, in his recent column on the LA County situation, said it best, “Of all the manifestations of ineffectual government to which we Angelenos have inured ourselves over the years, none is more insidious than Los Angeles County’s continuing failure to protect the most vulnerable children entrusted to its care.”
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