Welfare Agencies

The Obama administration is expected today to unveil a council of religious and secular advisors that will guide decisions on faith-based programs for a broad range of domestic and foreign policy issues.

Los Angeles County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to launch an investigation into potential flaws in the child welfare system that might have played a role in the deaths of three children over the last month. Child welfare authorities had at one point investigated the care of the three children who died. Statistics show that in the last three years, a dozen children or more have died annually as a result of abuse or neglect despite the fact that their cases had come to the attention of social workers.

Community activists called Monday for a federal monitor to investigate Los Angeles County's Department of Children and Family Services. From January 2008 to early August 2009, at least 268 children who had passed through the child welfare system died -- many of them violently -- The Times reported Sunday. "The long-standing abuses within the agency have been well-documented and the proposed reform efforts of county officials have not stopped the abuses or deaths," the activists wrote in a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sebelius, who oversees the distribution of federal money to the county agency.

Seeking to fashion a more holistic response to problems of hunger, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday allocated $280,000 to launch a nonprofit group that will serve as a clearinghouse for all issues connected to food. The 18-member L.A. Food Security and Hunger Partnership will be appointed by the mayor, City Council president and general manager of the Community Development Department.

Bridge Focus, a nonprofit social service agency, will celebrate 25 years of community support at an open house today at the organization's new headquarters in Van Nuys. Bridge Focus formed when the Burbank-based teen counseling group Bridge--A Way Across merged with a Van Nuys-based family counseling agency called Focus.

Agencies that help children, families or the poor may be filled with good intentions, but shrinking sources of funding--both nationally and locally--has reinforced the imperative that they now prove their programs yield results. So how does a program that feeds people prove that the people it fed are better off? How does a teen pregnancy prevention program determine how much credit it gets if girls do not become pregnant or boys become fathers?

Ending months of investigation into allegations of sexual abuse at a Los Angeles agency that operates group homes for gay teenagers, the state Department of Social Services has requested that the organization's license be revoked.

The Orange County Grand Jury is investigating the practice of social workers helping some pregnant teenage girls under the county's protection marry the adult men who impregnated them, county officials and sources close to the panel confirmed Thursday. The panel's probe centers on whether the underage girls' interests are being protected and whether law enforcement officials are appropriately dealing with the adult men, who might otherwise be prosecuted on statutory rape or child abuse charges.

The Orange County Grand Jury is investigating the practice of social workers helping some pregnant teenage girls under the county's protection marry the adult men who impregnated them, county officials and sources close to the panel confirmed Thursday.