Supervisors Order Probe of Child Protective System : Abuse: Investigation of dependency court comes after death of 2-year-old who was placed in father’s home despite warnings.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday ordered an inquiry into whether breakdowns in the county’s child protective system led to the death of a 2-year-old boy who was placed in his father’s care by a dependency court judge despite allegations that the boy was being abused in the home.

“When we’re talking about the safety of children, no amount of second-guessing is enough,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who introduced a motion calling for increased training of dependency court judges and attorneys.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke called for more training of all professionals in the dependency court system and asked that a set of recommendations be brought back to the board to make the court process more responsive to the safety needs of children. The motions will be considered at next Tuesday’s board meeting.

Also at that meeting, the supervisors gave notice that they intend to hold a closed session to review confidential records of the case to determine whether the boy’s court-appointed attorney adequately represented his client.

“We pay those attorneys, and we are going to have to get to the bottom of this,” Burke said.

The inquiry follows a Times report last week that detailed the death of Lance Helms, who was found beaten to death April 6 in the North Hollywood home where he lived with his father, David Helms, 30, and his father’s girlfriend, Eve Wingfield, 22.

Prosecutors say Wingfield was the only adult with the child when the death occurred and have charged her with murder and two counts of child abuse. She has pleaded not guilty. Helms has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The county’s child welfare system, however, has come under intense scrutiny over accusations that dependency court judges and lawyers did not heed warnings that could have prevented the death.

County social workers and several of the boy’s relatives say they repeatedly warned court officials that Lance faced a substantial risk of harm if he were allowed to remain in the home.

The child’s aunt, Ayn Helms, addressed the board Tuesday and demanded reforms in the dependency court system.

“It’s fine to say that judges need more training,” Helms said. “But if people knew how it worked down there on a day-to-day basis, they would be appalled. No one can go in (because of privacy rules), and they can do whatever they want in those courtrooms.”

Michael Nash, the supervising judge of the dependency court, said judges and commissioners are already required to attend an annual training session that covers a wide variety of child safety and protective issues.

Nash said that at the most recent session, in April, the judges spent three days at a judicial training conference in Costa Mesa. Nash said Juvenile Court officials are planning a major conference in September at Cal State L.A. that will include workshops covering many of the issues raised in the Lance Helms case.

But Nash said he and other court officials welcome any suggestions the board can make on ways to improve the system.

“As a general rule, we’re not above scrutiny,” he said. “If someone has suggestions about ways we can do our jobs better, we are bound to listen to that.”

Meanwhile, the administrator of the county’s dependency court in Monterey Park said that a proposal has already been offered to the supervisors that would create a special panel of attorneys to represent children in the system.

The panel would be drawn from an organization called Dependency Court Legal Services, consisting of three law firms that already represent children at the court, but also draw about half their clients from parents and guardians.

“You would have more continuity of training and supervision and case management within these (law) offices,” said Charlene Saunders, the dependency court administrator. “They would also have social service investigators and paralegals--all to focus on proposals to help the children.”