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Los Angeles County social worker managers accused of illegal child housing

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LOS ANGELES, CALIF.–A Los Angeles County social worker has accused his managers of routinely housing children in an office building without sufficient meals and bedding and then trying to keep the news from their bosses, it was reported today.

The problem stems from a chronic shortage of foster homes. But Supervising Social Worker Lincoln Saul, who made the accusation in a pair of recent complaint letters, said county officials have grown defensive about their inability to cope with the problem and have used various tactics to hide it, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“In some cases, the treatment that these children receive comes very close to the child abuse from which they are escaping,” he said, according to The Times.

In December, Department of Children and Family Services officials ordered workers to notify them every time a child had to stay more than eight hours at the agency’s night operations office on Wilshire Boulevard near MacArthur Park.

The reports were then forwarded to the Board of Supervisors, which has been keeping a close eye on the agency since learning more than 70 children had died of maltreatment in recent years despite having come to the attention of social workers, The Times reported.

But agency employees feared sending that news up the chain of command.

Saul alleges the agency started shifting children under government care to field offices shortly before the eight-hour mark. Sometimes they would move them to a McDonald’s to restart the clock, Saul said.

As a result, Saul alleged, according to The Times, the most difficult-to-place children churned through an unkempt office space night after night, often sleeping in car seats or on the floor without sheets, almost never staying more than eight hours before leaving to spend the day in a field office while social workers tried to find them a foster home.

Acting DCFS Deputy Director Jennifer Lopez has rejected Saul’s allegations, saying he was motivated in part by a dispute over the department’s decision to deny him overtime.

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