Roundup: Los Angeles' children welfare donation unit grilled by audit for mismanagement

The Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) of Los Angeles county confirmed to Xinhua Tuesday that they were considering to disband a subordinate children welfare donation unit since an audit disclosed quite a mismanagement scandal.

Children's Trust Fund Unit (CTFU), an arm of DCFS, is responsible for soliciting the donation and raising money to pay for the special needs of the foster children in their care that are not funded by other sources, such as clothing and enrichment activities.

Early this year, the county's Department of Auditor-Controller conducted an audit of the trust fund unit at the request of the department management.

"We had internal questions about whether the revenue generated from the Children's Trust Fund Unit justified the staffing costs. Then Director Browning requested the Auditor-Controller to review the CTFU" , Amara Suarez, an officer of DCFS told Xinhua.

Then the audit findings, released last Monday, showed that thousands of welfare products, including toys and clothes worth at least 70,000 U.S. dollars were not given out to churches, schools and other legitimate nonprofit organizations, meanwhile toys worth 122,000 U.S. dollars were contributed to ineligible organizations.

It also revealed that funds had been inappropriately used and fundraising efforts were largely ineffective.

The audit report stated: "we identified significant issues involving every aspect of CTFU's operations, including unaccounted for donations and funding. Many of these issues cause by a lack of management oversight, staff negligence and complete disregard for internal controls."

For example, the auditors found that the organization paid the summer camp fee for 66 children, but 28 of them did not attend at all with the 9,900 U.S. dollars payment identified. They also noticed that in some cases the camp fees had been paid twice for one child.

The ineligible circumstances were found during the review as well, 46 of 70 children who were not eligible for the camps had been paid for summer camps, with a payment of 15,800 U.S. dollars. Some of those children were no longer in the care of DCFS by that time, and some even did not have any record in the system.

CTFU even did not account any ticket income from a celebrity basketball game in 2013, the audit noticed, a crowd of people joined the event and donated about 222,000 U.S. dollars but the unit only recorded totally 200 U.S. dollars as donations.

"As a County manager and as a member of the community, I am saddened and upset by the results of this audit. I personally participate in sponsoring needy families and dropping gifts in collection barrels every year", said Brandon Nichols, the acting director of DCFS in a statement.

Katie Ling, who made donations every year for the foster children, told Xinhua, "I am so upset to hear it, I donate money, clothing and toys every year with my kids, just want to help the children in need, but never think our donations would be used in such inappropriate ways. I am disappointed."

Amara Suarez told Xinhua the local government tried to resolve the scandal immediately.

"During the review, some concerns came to our attention, so we moved as quickly as possible to address them. For example, the CTFU manger left County service, and a new manager was hired in June, 2015. The other CTFU staff member was transferred to a division where the employee no longer handles cash, donations, revenue or other fiscal duties," she said.

With significant issues noted by the auditors, they also listed several recommendations to solve the existing problem for management department, including a consideration of disbanding the Trust Fund Unit, according to the audit report.

In a letter to the Department of Auditor-Controller, Brendon Nichols said: "We generally agree with the recommendations contained in the report, and have already implemented corrective action on a number of issues that were brought to our attention during the review process."

Nevertheless, according to Los Angeles Time, one of the County's Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, "directs the county' s chief executive office to study other county departments and come up with options to fix the unit, rather than immediately dissolve it." Endit