Los Angeles County Children S Court

The Los Angeles County Children's Court and four of its commissioners were unfairly attacked last year for allegedly making decisions that endangered children, the county Bar Assn. concluded in a report released Thursday. The lawyers' group lashed out at the Los Angeles County counsel's office, saying that the office wrote a confidential memo last year "to mislead and inflame the reader" into believing the commissioners were careless about children's safety, when they were not.

For the 130 children who wriggled playfully inside Monterey Park's Edmund D. Edelman's Children's Court, Saturday morning was a long-sought day of permanence in their fractured young lives. And for the dozens of would-be parents with them, their signatures and a proclamation from a judge would finally cut the red tape that could have delayed their adoption of the children they had loved and cared for as foster parents.

The plight sounds familiar. The neglected teen-ager is bounced from one home to another, almost lost in a system chronically short of money and overwhelmed by demands. Sounding much like the story of one of the abused children it serves, the central character in this case is the 15-year-old Los Angeles County Dependency Court. And while the final chapter has yet to be written, county officials are hoping for a happy ending.

The Los Angeles County Children's Court and four of its commissioners were unfairly attacked last year for allegedly making decisions that endangered children, the county Bar Assn. concluded in a report released Thursday. The lawyers' group lashed out at the Los Angeles County counsel's office, saying that the office wrote a confidential memo last year "to mislead and inflame the reader" into believing the commissioners were careless about children's safety, when they were not.

For the 130 children who wriggled playfully inside Monterey Park's Edmund D. Edelman's Children's Court, Saturday morning was a long-sought day of permanence in their fractured young lives. And for the dozens of would-be parents with them, their signatures and a proclamation from a judge would finally cut the red tape that could have delayed their adoption of the children they had loved and cared for as foster parents.

The plight sounds familiar. The neglected teen-ager is bounced from one home to another, almost lost in a system chronically short of money and overwhelmed by demands. Sounding much like the story of one of the abused children it serves, the central character in this case is the 15-year-old Los Angeles County Dependency Court. And while the final chapter has yet to be written, county officials are hoping for a happy ending.