DCFS retraining social workers after death of Anthony Avalos

(FOX 11) - The Department of Children and Family Services has been under attack. The criticism comes after two young boys were killed by family in their own homes.

But the agency is looking to keep these sad stories from repeating themselves in LA county.

Invited into a classroom on the 8th floor of a Downtown LA County building, we watched as new DCFS director Bobby Cagle talked to a packed room of newly hired social workers. He talked of a new vision for the department.

When Cagle arrived here on the job from Georgia he had to deal with one of the most horrendous cases in recent LA County history. The death of 10-year-old Anthony Avalos who died from suspected abuse.

There were many visits to the boy's home by DCFS social workers. In fact, Cagle describes it as, "...many many visits. It was a dozen or more social workers. There were private agencies that worked in that home. There was court intervention in that case and all those things did not culminate in a good ending."

Cagle says there were systemic issues on how services were provided quoting here, "...especially in the Antelope Valley which is a more remote area which is a more difficult area to get services in. It is around caseloads. It is around supervision. These things are all very important because they make it easier or more difficult for a case worker to do their job."

The new agency head says there are about 4500 social workers in LA County and, 35,000 cases. So, he's trying to change how much time workers like these get to spend with families rather than just filling out reports.

He says he's changing things. Again, quoting Cagle here, "I'm implementing what I'm calling an enhanced operations plan. We're doing about 1000 random case reviews to make sure that throughout the county we're doing what we need to be doing.

We're also doing focus groups with a frontline staff.. ask the what of anything do they need that they don't have. We're looking at multi disciplinary teams so not just looking at a social work perspective but from a broader perspective using our partners in other agencies and partnering better in ways."

Cagle says they need to do better interviewing of children "... to get to kind of truth that we need to have in order to work and protect children."

And, doing a better job of recognizing injuries and how they happened.

What Bobby Cagle says he's trying to do is reduce risk as much as he possibly can, but he says there's one factor he can't deal with... and that's human nature and when people commit crimes.