A dependency court cure

Secrecy in California’s dependency courts, where cases of child abuse and neglect are heard, has protected negligent parents, foster parents and social workers from serious scrutiny of their actions. And it has failed children.

Elsewhere in the nation, these once-secret hearings have been opened, to positive results. Transparency has led to improved care and greater public confidence in Oregon and Minnesota and more than a dozen other states. California, however, has continued to conduct most dependency proceedings in closed courtrooms, shielded not only from the media but also from advocates for children and other interested observers. Elected leaders like to boast of their commitment to transparency and accountability, but in this case they have opted instead for closure and secrecy.

Thankfully, Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) has introduced a bill to remedy that. Details of the ultimate proposal will emerge from hearings next month to take testimony from experts on all sides of the debate. But Feuer’s underlying goal is laudable: to insist that dependency proceedings be presumptively open rather than routinely closed. Though that’s monumentally important, it’s also notably modest. Feuer is not suggesting that all hearings in all dependency courts would henceforth be open to the public. In cases in which judges conclude that a child’s welfare would be best served by closing a hearing, they could do so. But that decision would be made against a backdrop assumption that public accountability is desirable.

Opening the state’s dependency courts is an idea that has been gaining momentum in recent years. Michael Nash, the presiding judge of Los Angeles County Juvenile Court, is a stalwart supporter, and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, which once opposed it, now favors it as well. Public employee unions, whose members might be subjected to greater scrutiny, remain wary, but they should come to see that public proceedings will help instill public confidence. Witness the case of police officers who once flinched at putting cameras in patrol cars: Today, those cameras are widely regarded as protecting good officers from false accusations. So too would open proceedings protect those social workers who deserve it.

Feuer has devoted himself to finding solutions to problems that can be addressed without new spending; the state’s finances make that imperative. He’s succeeded with this bill, which involves no cost to taxpayers. “Opening these proceedings to public scrutiny,” he said this week, “will promote needed reforms and help safeguard children by making everyone in the system more accountable.” That is true and overdue.