A Santa Barbara County child welfare social worker who was fired last year for using a false name in an attempt to spend an anonymous night as a homeless woman in a Lompoc shelter has won her job back.

Liann Noble, who was represented by the Service Employees International Union, said Tuesday the county Civil Service Commission notified her last week that it had ruled in her favor.

“I feel great about getting back to work,” said Noble, a county social worker for more than a decade. “All I've wanted to do is work with children and families in our community. It was very difficult to watch things happen in the town like gangs and the children dying from the drug using and abuse, and sit back and not be able to help my fellow co-workers and the police. I've just had to sit back and go, ‘There's nothing I can do.' That was really difficult.”

The Civil Service Commission agreed with Noble and the union that her termination was unfounded.

“The Commission felt that the termination was not given due process of any progressive discipline, which is the normal process, and that the termination was excessive,” said union representative Pamela Meadows.

“The department rushed to judgment without really doing a thorough investigation on their own and not listening to all the facts. They caved to local political pressure to terminate Liann, when in fact, any personal wrongdoing on her part did not warrant her losing her job and her being terminated,” Meadows said.

Noble said she doesn't know when she can return to work, or whether she'll be allowed to return to the same position.

“I assume I'm going back to my job as a social services abuse investigator unless I am told otherwise,” she said.

Noble said in her six years as a county employee, she has had an “outstanding record of exemplary employment with no disciplinary action in my file or history.”

Noble earlier said she wanted to spend a night at Bridgehouse anonymously to research child homelessness and to publish an article alerting the community, so she checked into the shelter on Saturday, Sept. 23, with her 10-year-old son.

A false name was necessary, she said, because residents would be reluctant to trust a child-welfare social worker. She said she brought her son to make it easier “to connect from one parent to another.”

Staff workers at the shelter quickly learned who she was and asked her to leave. They also called the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department.

Sue Ehrlich, head of the Lompoc Housing and Community Development Corp., which runs the shelter, sent a letter three days later to the District Attorney's Office, asking that Noble “be prosecuted for her actions to the full extent of the law.”

Social Services Deputy Director Ken Jensen said Tuesday he could not comment on personnel matters.

In a dismissal letter dated Oct. 11, 2006, and effective Oct. 27, 2006, Jensen told Noble that her actions could adversely affect the cases of her clients.

“The fact that you have lied in this instance has now called into question the veracity of information you have provided in court reports regarding your Child Welfare Services clients,” Jensen wrote.

On Tuesday, Ehrlich said she hopes that Noble is now able to “move on.”

“Quite frankly I had not given it the slightest thought about this for months,” Ehrlich said. “The only thing I feel is we moved on and we hope this allows her to move on.”

Neil Nisperos can be reached at 737-1059 or nnisperos@lompoc record.com.

April 25, 2007