SDM

The Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services and Sheriff’s Office must make immediate changes to the way that the county reports and investigates incidents of child abuse and neglect, according to the terms of a settlement with the California Attorney General that was released on Thursday.

Los Angeles County, home to the nation’s largest locally-run child welfare system, is grappling with how to measure and respond to the risk that a child will be abused. At the heart of this confounding, complicated issue are two hard-to-answer questions.

“When elephants fight,” the proverb goes, “the grass gets hurt.” As Los Angeles deals with the aftermath of another child abuse tragedy, the death of Yonatan Aguilar, the debate over how to fix the system is devolving into a fight between two of the field’s “elephants.”

Last month, in response to news reports about the tortured life and death of a little boy, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors waded into the thorny question of how to predict child abuse.

Child protection workers have a challenging job. They make vital decisions every day, often based on limited information gathered in difficult circumstances. Education, ongoing training, and experience are essential. However, a wealth of research has shown that intuition isn’t the best guide for complex decisions.

As recently reported in The Imprint, Los Angeles County and other jurisdictions have been developing a new tool to help assess the risk to children who have been referred to the child welfare system.

Lisa Mayrose knew Florida’s Department of Children & Families needed to overhaul how it investigated phone calls reporting beaten and neglected children. “We had a rash of child deaths,” Mayrose, the regional managing director of the department in Tampa, said in an interview with The Imprint.