The Closing of the America Care Mind: The Business of Child Abuse
Los Angeles County will not be renewing their contract with America Care foster family agency.
America Care was responsible for the care and treatment of over 200 abused and neglected children and has been in business for over a decade.
So why should we care?
Because while we do not completely know the reasoning of the county behind this, it appears to be a sign that business as usual in LA foster care is in for some type of change.
Previously, when the county wanted to get the attention of foster family agencies they would cite them for rule violations which were often overlooked. Title 22 regulations are so onerous, even the county knows it is impossible to completely abide by all of them at all times and instead (appropriately) the county will concentrate on child care issues and indulge in minor fines and warnings when harmless rule violations are broken.
However, these broken rules are very useful when officials want to get you for other things, such as the perceptions of financial malfeasance or other ethical violations which are too difficult or expensive to prove or pursue.
It’s sort of like how that got Al Capone for tax evasion if you get the drift.
The county doesn’t want to be on the losing end of lawsuits such as what occurred with El Camino foster family agency and the administrator George Guiterez. El Camino was a riduclous financial garbage dump and the county bungled the agencies termination so badly, that they ended up having to pay out millions of dollars.
To avoid this pathetic outcome, the county will use what things they can to serve its needs and desires. And therefore the partial fiction of rule and or child care violations are used to meet its ends.
However, this strategy often allows much of the money and or foster care real estate to remain in the hands of the evil doers despite limiting their ability to continue raking off excess profits from abused and neglected children.
And sometimes it doesn’t even do that.
It was reported to us that Disgraced CEO of United Care foster agency Craig Woods recently tried to open up a new agency in Ventura and almost succeeded. Joe Stienberg of Refugio Para Ninos has apparently opened up another agency in a different county after paying himself several hundred grand a year, co-mingling funds, participating in several ethically challenged financial schemes, and at one point even telling employees they could keep %10 of any donations they could raise for the agency as a sort of finders fee. Regugio Para Ninos spent almost a million dollars to raise perhaps a third of that but this guy is still around.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati