SURVENT

This is just crazy. I cannot believe that something like this happened, oh wait, it was in LA? Well, anything can happen there - but this is still ridiculous!

Excerpt from the full story:

A teenage girl reunited with her father last year after a decade in foster care is suing Los Angeles County for taking so long to bring them together.

Smith's whereabouts were listed as unknown in court documents on the case, although records show that Melinda's caseworker knew Smith was paying child support and his address was on file with the agency that collected the payments.

Father and daughter were reunited in July 2005 after Melinda got help from a social worker assigned to find permanent placement for teens in foster care.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from the county, the social workers who handled the case and a private agency that provides attorneys for children in foster care.

I do not care that this occurred in LA where they screw things up all the time - the fact of the matter is that this never should have happened. I cannot imagine how hard this girl's life may have been if she moved from foster home to foster home, and then to learn that it was all due to negligence on the part of the county - not cool. This is the problem with bureaucracy and how our governmental agencies fail to work with each other. If our country had a central data system that all agencies could utilize and update information in, things like this would not happen and perhaps they could even be more effective with handling their workloads.