These poor children have a choice: Home or family

Los Angeles: Sonny Okereke combs the crime-plagued streets of Skid Row, but the Los Angeles County social worker is not seeking criminals.

He's looking for children. In a push to reduce homelessness downtown, the county's Board of Supervisors has declared zero tolerance for families living on Skid Row and is concentrating efforts on finding homes for children, even if that means children are removed from their parents.

The rationale for the initiative is simple: Skid Row - with its rat-infested homeless camps, drug bazaars and prostitution - is no place for a child. But the role of children's protection workers, who assess youngsters for signs of neglect and abuse, has drawn opposition from advocates for the homeless and skepticism from even some county supervisors.

While Okereke and his colleagues offer families help with welfare benefits, mental health services and housing, critics say the effort unfairly targets the poor and deters some from accepting assistance for fear of losing their children.

Very uncomfortable

Nowhere else, they note, do county social workers go looking for abused children. "I just am very uncomfortable about going through a community, whether it's Skid Row or Watts, and just saying, this child is out here," said Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, whose district includes part of Skid Row.

"There should never be an assumption that because you're poor, you should be taken from your parents and placed in foster care."

But programme advocates say homelessness often is a result of more serious problems, including drug addiction and mental illness, that can endanger children. In at least one case, the failure to adequately assess a child on Skid Row contributed to his death, said supervisor Gloria Molina, who has spearheaded the effort. "It's a terrible, terrible environment, an environment of derelicts and others," she said.

The county's Department of Children and Family Services is working to shed its image as an agency bent on breaking up families, also since it is prohibited under state law from removing a child solely because a parent is homeless.

Social workers say their priority is to keep families intact. The best way, they said, is to learn why families are homeless and extend psychological treatment, drug counselling, etc.

Members of the Skid Row team do not have the authority to remove children. If they suspect abuse or neglect, they must call the department's child abuse hotline. Another social worker is dispatched to investigate and decide if removal is necessary.

The team has roamed the area offering such services for two years, and other social workers work out of shelters.

The county says the removal of children is rare. From December through February, social workers saw 57 new families and made 20 calls to the hotline. Two resulted in the removal of children.

"Most parents tend to view us as the bad guys. 'Are you going to take our kids away,' they ask" said Okereke, who has worked on Skid Row for more than 16 months. "We try to make them see what services we're providing."

Pinched between rising rents and declining public assistance benefits, more and more families dependent on welfare cannot find affordable places to live.