Worker blasts LA foster child practices

Los Angeles County is warehousing children in an office building with inadequate food and bedding, a social worker charges. "In some cases, the treatment that these children receive comes very close to the child abuse from which they are escaping," supervising social worker Lincoln Saul wrote in a recent complaint letter, the Los Angeles Times reports. Department of Children and Family Services staff have been ordered to notify their bosses every time a child must stay more than 8 hours at the night operations office. The county mandated the reports after finding more than 70 children had died of abuse despite coming to the attention of social workers. Saul says employees, trying to hide their placement backlogs, have been moving children to field offices just before the 8 hours expire, sometimes taking them to a McDonald's to restart the clock. Hard-to-place children, such as older teenagers kicked out of previous foster homes, have had to sleep in car seats or on the floor without sheets, shuffled around every 8 hours while social workers try to place them, Saul charges. Jennifer Lopez, acting deputy director of DCFS, denies Saul's allegations and says he is trying "to write a book and travel the talk show circuit."