DCFS

Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) social workers visit children declared dependent court wards (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 300) in the children’s placement while the children remain court wards. DCFS regulations generally require assigned social workers to visit each ward monthly. However, the regulations permit DCFS supervisors to approve less frequent social worker visits under specified circumstances, such as when the child’s placement is positive and of long duration. (For convenience, we adopt the parties’ nomenclature and refer to DCFS decisions to permit such visits less frequently than monthly as “waivers” or “variances.”) The regulations permit DCFS to determine when variances are appropriate.

The Alliance for Children’s Rights (Alliance), an advocacy group, believed DCFS routinely approved variances for budgetary rather than case-appropriate reasons, to accommodate high social worker caseloads. Alliance originally sought a blanket order prohibiting DCFS from using waivers in any case, essentially mandating monthly visits in all cases. The trial court refused to issue such a broad order. However, over DCFS’s opposition, the trial…