Los Angeles County DCFS (yep, yet another acronym for failed "protection")...immense outlays of cash prove futile.

As with almost every other government boondoggle, the Los Angeles County (CA) "Department of Child and Family Services" (DCFS) spends an amazing amount of money on, apparently, not much at all in terms of taxpayer benefit. The "benefit" to children and families seems to be even less. Still, one of the most liberal areas in the country has bureaucrats and other begging for "more resources."

The ludicrous issues with Southern California extend well beyond "child and family services," of course. Los Angeles County is quickly becoming the equivalent of a foreign enclave within the United States, where, given another few years, the majority of people will not even speak English at home, where local taxes and real estate prices are driving people into two categories--overpaid, high-living liberal zealots, and the homeless and tent city dwellers, with the middle class being largely squeezed out of existence. Los Angeles is overdue for another real estate correction (as the prices there bare almost NO similarity to reality for the rest of the nation,) and when that hits, the entire local economy is going to implode, making it impossible to fund DCFS at their current levels of fraud and abuse.

Here is another article about the results of a bureaucratic morass gone haywire that has led to the death of another little boy, despite the enormous resources thrown at the problem by taxpayers:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/death-anthony-avalos-has-parallels-another-child-abuse-case-l-n888991

The story of little Anthony Avalos is sad on so many levels. But, some of the factors that stand out the most are that he was a regular footnote in DCFS paperwork for seven years before he was found severely beaten and unconscious at the age of ten this past June. The story portends that a big part of the motivation for his abuse was that he claimed he was "gay" and that his caregivers were "homophobic," which is a separate issue, but yet still a sign of the times.

But the real story here is the amount of resources available within Los Angeles County for preventing situations exactly like this one. Let me give you a brief excerpt from the link above:

"Agency records show that they opened 12 different referrals on Anthony's case, finding evidence for some of the claims but not others — until 2016, when the calls stopped and the agency closed his final referral... Anthony’s death has left family members and local officials horrified by the alleged abuse and angry that the Department of Children and Family Services appears to have missed opportunities to stop it. The agency’s approximately 4,800 social workers provide services to nearly 34,000 children every day. The budget is expanding, but children still slip through the cracks."

(Anthony Avalos, during one of his better life moments.)

Four Thousand Eight Hundred workers responsible for 34,000 children... Those are the facts. The average worker, even if they put in no overtime, works 2000 hours per year. That many workers working that many hours means there are about 10 million man hours available each year at current staffing levels. With just 34,000 children in the referrals to look out for, each child could be seen for 280 hours per year, which works out to more than an hour per child per day, Monday through Friday.

I find it hard to believe that if you see a child an hour per day, that you could be so ill-trained, or insensitive, or too stupid to be able to tell which children may be in actual need of real action, and which aren't. You get to know people really, really well if you are spending that kind of time with them. You also get to know an awful lot about their surroundings and the people that would be interacting with them.

Now, of course, not every hour of a social worker's day is going to be available for actual time with their "clients"...but even if you cut the time in half, and spend the other half doing paperwork, playing video games, and taking liquid lunches on the taxpayer dime, taxpayers should at least expect that NONE of these children are KILLED as a result of abuse, given the amazing resources now available.

What does this all suggest? To me it says we have a SYSTEMS and BELIEFS problem, not a manpower, funding or resources problem. What we are doing does not work, because what drives the department is not really a desire to help children, but it is what it always is when government becomes all powerful and has unlimited power to take children and resources from communities with little or no oversight...self-absorbed and ill-focused.

What would probably help is if TAXPAYER ORGANIZATIONS were given power to SUPERVISE DCFS personnel on an ongoing and thorough basis. Like that is going to ever happen...

As always, the article claims that the death was some sort of catalyst, and goes on to cite a litany of areas and reasons for why things are so rosy and Nirvana-like in Southern California now. The answer was more money, of course...it always is...

Until the next time another little Anthony Avalos dies, and we found a whole series of new excuses for why the department is "under funded, undermanned" and subject to too much scrutiny, etc..... and around, and around the merry go 'round goes.

It's getting time for the taxpayers to just all grab the rails and stop that sucker dead in its tracks.

Oh...and maybe it's time to STOP having our public schools involved in having children "questioning their sexuality" in second and third grade...??