Apparently it takes almost 63 days or nine weeks! That’s right!

Several weeks ago, I made an unannounced visit to the Harbor/UCLA Medical Center HUB. As usual there was quite a bit of traffic so I arrived after 6 in the evening and in the dark. I followed the directions provided by the LA County Department Health Services (DHS) to a bungalow identified on the website as “N26”. Imagine my surprised to find the bungalow dark and locked up tight, but wait there’s a paper note on the door detailing that the HUB has been relocated to the “Professional Building” in Torrance.

The note provides an address and with a little help from Google Maps I found the “Professional Building” just behind the hospital. I parked my car and walked up the steps to the building, which of course was closed because – it is after all a professional building, not a clinic or hospital. However, I found myself in luck as a county employee kindly lets me in and escorts me to the HUB, which is closed without a soul in sight because it is after all 6:15 pm and the HUB closes at 6:00 pm.

I chatted with the employee who shares what she knows about the building and the HUB, which she estimates, has been there for about six weeks now. So for at least nine weeks no change has been made to the Harbor/UCLA Medical Center website. The week following my visit, I informed the Board of Supervisors during the weekly meeting, I even provided photographs to illustrate the issue – still no change is made. It takes nearly another two weeks for the people at DHS to make the change, at least now providing the correct address. Unfortunately, the link to the campus map that is provided on the HUBs website takes you to; if you guessed it’s a map showing the HUB is located at N26, and not at the “Professional Building” you would be correct.

These HUBs provide a critical function when there is suspected child abuse. It’s bad enough that the HUBs aren’t opened on the weekends or late in the evening, but DHS Head, Dr. Christina Ghaly seems to only think that children are at risk only during business hours Monday through Friday; even after Ms. Hamai with permission from the Board of Supervisors has allocated additional financial resources to expand services, hire staff and what not. Not to mention that the Grand Jury made the recommendation that the HUBS should be opened 24/7 including weekends and holidays.

It angers me to see Dr. Ghaly spending taxpayer resources to allow a DHS employee to commute from Orange County to LA County using an Uber-like services, and to remodel an office including the purchase of new furnishings for said office. All the while Dr. Ghaly gives short shrift to our County HUBS and LA County children who are at the greatest risk, many of whom are children of color. I wonder how many more children must die before Dr. Ghaly’s failure to expand the HUBs is addressed by the LA County Board of Supervisors?

Now to answer my original question, not only did it take almost nine weeks, and numerous telephone calls from the folks at Hahn Hall of Administration to DHS to fix the problem. But after all of that: what the folks at DHS did in response was to remove the mismarked campus map – I guess correcting the mismarked campus map was beyond their ability, so they just took the map out.