Veteran County Aide to Head Troubled MacLaren Center

The acting head of the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services put an experienced county child welfare administrator in charge of troubled MacLaren Children’s Center on Friday in an effort to deal with what he said were continuing concerns about leadership there.

The new director of the El Monte center for abused and neglected children is 48-year-old Albert J. May, who has spent more than 19 years in county service and served in administrative positions at MacLaren when it was under the Department of Public Social Services. The Department of Children’s Services was formed last year.

Robert L. Chaffee, interim director of the department since the firing last week of the controversial Lola Hobbs, also named an assistant director at MacLaren’s. She is Helen Maxwell, 40, district director of El Nido Services, a United Way organization set up to aid low-income families.

Seeks ‘Fresh Ideas’

Chaffee said he created the assistant’s post because the job of director “is almost overwhelming for any one single person.” He observed that Maxwell will be responsible for the development of programs, bringing “some fresh ideas, some new ideas from the private sector.”

May called many of the allegations about mistreatment of children at MacLaren “unfounded” and said he plans to cooperate fully with any legitimate investigative body. He said he will not object to surprise visits by such a group.

Part of the furor that surrounded Hobbs during her brief time as county children’s services director involved her contention that surprise visits by members of the Children’s Services Commission-- an advisory panel appointed by county supervisors--were “disruptive” and created “a great deal of anxiety” among staff members.

Last Tuesday, supervisors asked the county grand jury to probe possible criminal activity by the center’s staff.

‘There Are Problems’

May insisted that the staff is dedicated but that the center is not being operated improperly. “Naturally, there are problems,” he conceded, and he promised to do his best to solve them.

He said he plans to stress training for staff members and work as hard as possible to secure more foster care and group homes to eliminate overcrowding.

Former director Mike Collins, the fourth head of MacLaren in eight years, quit last December soon after responsibility for the facility was transferred from the social services unit to the new department. With fewer than nine months in the position, he left to become employment services division chief for the social services department, where he had worked for 18 years.

He denied at the time that he had been pressured to leave, but said he was “personally disturbed” at being called a liar by several members of the new Children’s Services Commission last fall when he denied allegations about inadequate care at MacLaren.

He admitted that his decision was influenced to some degree by the unfavorable publicity about problems at MacLaren.

With the facility’s population of children growing, five employees were accused of selling drugs, rape and assault. Six were discharged for “inappropriate behavior.”

Only last month an oversight committee headed by Children’s Services Commissioner Sandra Serrano-Sewell reported that surprise visits to the center had resulted in the discovery of several incidents of improper behavior by employees.

Those purported incidents included the breaking of a child’s arm by a faculty member (which Hobbs said was accidental), the forcing of an 8-year-old child to mop the floor with an industrial-size mop and pail and the calling of another child “nigger.”