LA County Probation Chief Notes Improvements in the Safety and State Compliance of Department’s Juvenile Facilities

LOS ANGELES — In a presentation to the LA County Board of Supervisors last week, Chief Probation Officer Guillermo Viera Rosa said the Department has gone from “a place where we essentially lost public trust” to an agency that is now in compliance with state standards and eager to work more closely with county partners to rehabilitate youth.

Viera Rosa said the Probation Department will be reaching out to county partners — the Office of Education, and the Department of Youth Development, Mental Health, Public Health, and Health Services — to form interdisciplinary teams to care for youth at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall or LPJH and the Barry J. Nidorf Secure Youth Treatment Facility or BJN.

“We’re all there and while there is corroboration, there are different departments with different budgets making different decisions” at the facilities, Viera Rosa said. “What you’ll see in the coming months is an invitation to the other County partners to physically be there with us and make decisions with us.”

Viera Rosa said the reason the department is now ready to focus more on county team building is because it has spent the last year addressing safety issues and staffing shortages that have been plaguing juvenile operations.

One key to the Department’s progress, he said, has been the ability to train officers to interact with youth up to modern standards. “It’s a game-changer,” he said.

Viera Rosa also noted there is less contraband going into LPJH and BJN. “The number of people found under the influence in our facilities is different today than a year ago,” he said.

While Viera Rosa acknowledged that callouts at LPJH and BJN are “still at a level that is unacceptable,” he noted “there is improvement.”

Viera Rosa’s remarks came during a hearing in which he and Chief Deputies Kimberly Epps and Sheila Williams briefed the Supervisors on the steps that the probation department took to come into compliance with California Board of State and Community Corrections or BSCC standards on April 11.

Their presentation enumerated the steps, including temporarily reassigning 202 probation officers from field offices to LPJH and BJN, forming a BSCC leadership task force to meet with state regulators, and conducting internal audits to verify that juvenile operations remain in compliance during continuing BSCC reviews.

Meanwhile, Viera Rosa laid out his long-term vision for the department based on three core values and concepts. The first is the “joint ownership” with county partners who would share responsibility and accountability for the mental health, physical well-being, programmatic and educational needs of youth.

The other two core values are interrelated, he said.

They include the concept of adopting an interdisciplinary approach within the department that would help probation officers deal with the increasingly sophisticated needs of youth in county care. Viera Rosa said current probation officer training is wholly insufficient and there is a need to provide officers better education in such matters as family dynamics, substance use disorders and other cultural issues that affect the youth in the county’s care.

The other value involves making significant investments in the capabilities and wellness of probation officers.

“The world has changed and we’re asking our employees to do something significantly different than the day we hired them,” he said, adding: “We are asking them to do things that are extraordinarily difficult and over time have an effect on their health.”

Viera Rosa told Supervisors that he will be announcing additional initiatives soon to further implement his vision for the department.