Ploehn out as county DFCS chief

In the bureaucratic sense, this could be seen as a mercy killing. Trish Ploehn was removed Monday as director of Los Angeles County's Department of Children and Family Services, after months of turmoil and increasingly critical reports. Antonia Jimenez, a top aide to county Chief Executive William T Fujioka, recently wrote a report that said the agency was in crisis and is expected to get the job on an interim basis. "The county now has a unique opportunity—and heavy responsibility—to bring in an executive team skilled enough to remake an agency in crisis," Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a Ploehn critic, blogged late today. But Leslie Heimov, director of the Children's Law Center of Los Angeles, was less confident that anything will get better: "It seems unlikely that replacing the director, for the fifth time in 20 years, will solve the overwhelming problems faced by an overburdened and under-resourced system in an environment of increasing child poverty and record unemployment."

Activist Daniel Heimpel: "Under her watch the number of children in care was dramatically reduced, sparing thousands of children from the trauma of removal. She was the architect of a culture shift that compelled social workers to toe the scary line between the safety of foster care versus the value of leaving that child in a family home."