Judge Calls For Case Reviews Of 30,000 Foster Children 
Most Urgent Need For 8,000 Teens Close To Being Released From System
POSTED: 1:05 PM PST December 10, 2003
UPDATED: 1:16 PM PST December 10, 2003
NBC4.TV

LOS ANGELES -- A judge wants an unprecedented review of the cases of half of the 30,000 children in Los Angeles County foster homes to determine if they could be safely returned to their own families or relatives, it was reported Wednesday.

Juvenile Court presiding Judge Michael Nash, responding to a weekend article in the Los Angeles Daily News, said Tuesday the most urgent need is for judges, attorneys and social workers to review the cases of about 8,000 foster children -- mostly teenagers -- who have been in foster care for years and are about to turn 18, after which they will be released from the system.

"We need to closely review each of these cases as they come up and determine what is the most appropriate long-range plan for these kids," Nash said in remarks reported by the Daily News. 

"For many of those kids, it will require us to go back and look at their family situations. Are there responsible adults they can rely upon once they leave the system?" Nash said.

The Daily News reported Sunday that up to half of the 75,000 children in the system and adoptive homes were needlessly placed in a system that is often more dangerous than their own homes because the county receives $30,000 to $150,000 in state and federal revenues for each placement.

The $1.4 billion Department of Children and Family Services budget currently pays to support a total of 75,000 children, but Nash pointed out that the number of children in foster homes has dropped from 52,000 in 1998 to 30,000 now, according to the Daily News. He said about half of those children are placed with relatives.

Andrew Bridges, managing director of child welfare reform programs at the private Broad Foundation, told the Daily News that since the mid-1990s, the county's child welfare system has been based on an aggressive policy of detaining children because of the financial incentives