The State - News from Nov. 8, 1988

A staff shortage has left a health care service for children in Oakland with a seven-month backlog, its director says. “We have sick kids, and we’re blocking them from getting care when we have the money to pay for it,” said Twila Brown, director of California Children’s Services in Alameda County. “It’s incredible. I can’t believe it’s happening, and I’m in the middle of it.” County supervisors have called a closed meeting with county health administrators for this Thursday. David Kears, director of the county Health Care Services Agency, has been ordered to bring supervisors a corrective plan today. Supervisor Don Perata called the program’s problem a “classic bureaucratic snafu.” “I won’t argue even weakly that the state was at fault here,” Perata said. “I’m convinced it’s the county’s management failures that created this incredible backlog where children in dire need of medical services are being denied.”