Robin Morgan clasped his hands and nodded slowly as he watched himself talk about his painful memories of foster care.

Morgan was viewing the debut of "The Protectors," a documentary film about the child welfare system produced by a Lake Mathews area resident.

In the film, Morgan, now 20, recalls that his foster mother was nice at first. But she turned mean, he said, forcing him to call her "mom," and not changing the soiled clothes of his younger brother.

Rodrigo Pena/The Press-Enterprise Penny Styles McLean who directed and produced a documentary film which was critical of Child Protective Services, stands with her subjects Robin Morgan, 20, Melissa Schmidt, 19, and Ryan Schmidt, 18, from left, all siblings from Desert Hot Springs.

Morgan said he hopes the film will expose a broken child welfare system and the pain that it inflicts.

"I hope what we're doing ... actually opens the eyes of not only (social) workers, but the state, and the world to actually find out what's going on," said Morgan, now a student at the College of the Desert.

The hour-long documentary, a critical look into the foster care system, relies heavily on Riverside County sources.

The film was screened Wednesday at a juvenile court conference in Hollywood for former foster youths now living on their own.

Penny Styles McLean, owner of Small Potatoes Productions, said she was pleased at the positive reaction of former foster youths interviewed for the piece.

"The coolest thing was the kids told me, 'Yea, you told our story right'."

But Riverside County Child Protective Services officials who viewed the documentary Thursday night were not so enthusiastic.

"We wish it were more balanced," said CPS director Sharrell Blakeley. "We have outstanding social workers who almost commit their lives to this work, tough work with very few rewards, except that they make a difference for kids in the system."

McLean said requests for interviews were made to CPS managers through a now-retired social worker, Paul Legan. Blakeley said Friday that Dennis Boyle, director of social services, turned down Legan's request to participate.

McLean defended the fairness of the film and said she offered on Thursday to add CPS comments, but Blakeley declined.

"It's not pointing the finger, because I don't think that accomplishes a thing," McLean said. "It's, let's put the camera on them, and let people tell their stories. These people feel like they are drowning, and they are voiceless."

The documentary, which McLean hopes to sell to public television or HBO, combines heartfelt personal stories from foster parents and former foster children, with critical analysis of the system by social workers, a juvenile court judge and Dr. Bruce Perry, a child psychiatrist and trauma researcher at Baylor College of Medicine.

The film spends significant time addressing the pain and emotional consequences of foster care drift, a phenomenon in which a child bounces from home to home and fails to develop lasting, loving relationships.

Former foster youth James Vagts, 18, coldly discusses his life in a group home. He is one of seven youths interviewed. He is homeless but plans to enter a transitional home on Monday, he said.

"I don't feel like a person," Vagts said after the seeing the movie. "I feel like a caged animal."

Palm Springs resident and foster child advocate Madelene Hunter, a co-producer, said the documentary did not intend to attack child welfare officials, but it turned into an indictment of Riverside County's system.

In a segment called "presumed guilty," Legan alleges that a foster girl was yanked out of a good foster home based on a false report.

"In my estimation, there was a department out of control with little or no forethought in who they were hurting," he says on camera.

"There are often times two sides to a story, and we can't reveal facts that we have," Blakeley said about the film's specific accusations.

McLean, with a background in children's programs and infomercials, first laughed off the daunting idea of trying to document the complex and mostly secret world of child protection.

But her curiosity was piqued when a grandmother told her she should do a story about how social workers had "stolen" her grandchild.

She then met Hunter, who was a foster child in the 1950s. Hunter introduced McLean to her foster mother, Nina Coake, former present of the California Foster Parent Association from Fontana.

The contradictory stories McLean said she heard about the system compelled her to search out the truth.

"I just got pulled into it," she said. "I'm a filmmaker. I'm nosy."

Her partner, Rudy Vessup, also from the Lake Mathews area, helped produce the film.

The opening seconds of the film show an animated boy telling the audience that his needs get buried by the 45 people who receive a paycheck for his being in the system.

"It become a battle of giants," McLean said. "It's about the egos of the adults. The kid has to fit the system."