Protective disservices: SUN’s look at child protective services system shows shortcomings

Saturday, Nov. 29, 1997 | 3:59 a.m.

Every 15 minutes someone calls Clark County's child abuse and neglect hotline.

The caller may be your neighbor, your child's teacher or physician.

Your child can be taken from your home, without notice, simply on the basis of this anonymous tip.

Your child is placed temporarily in Child Haven, the county's overcrowded facility for abandoned, abused or neglected children.

If the complaint is substantiated, you and the child enter a system that is more powerful than the IRS and more secretive than the CIA.

It's designed that way to protect the child from abusive adults and from further harm, and provide a stable environment. Yet the child is likely to be passed off within that system like a baton in a relay race.

That's because the system can't keep pace with the increasing numbers of abused and neglected children.

Nevada ranks among the highest in the nation in the number of reported cases per 1,000 children. In 1995, 4,729 of the reported 12,716 cases were substantiated.

From 1986 to 1996, the number of child protective hearings rose 41 percent. Yet the number of individuals handling the hearings -- one juvenile judge and three referees -- hasn't changed.

At the same time Clark County is experiencing a "huge shortage of foster parents" to care for the children, according to Toni Isola Bayer, a former board member of the county's Court-Appointed Special Advocate program.

"We're running out of places to put these children," she says. "It's one size fits all."

Because of chronic shortages in personnel and resources, children often linger in protective custody much longer than necessary. On average, a child spends a little more than three years in the foster care system and likely will be placed in at least three different homes or other facilities.

This not only costs taxpayers more money, it adds to the children's trauma and confusion, and also increases their chances of becoming troubled adults, homeless or criminals.

Efforts to improve the system have been hampered by a lack of government and community attention. That may be due in part to a lack of visible outrage from system officials, caseworkers, foster parents and volunteers who work with children in protective custody.

It's not that they aren't dedicated or work hard. Their spirits have been dulled by a perpetual lack of money, resources and adequate staffing.

The anger -- and demand for change -- comes from parents whose rights have been terminated. They say losing a child to protective custody is akin to a civil "death penalty."

Add to the mix privacy laws, which are designed to protect children, their parents and guardians. The laws conversely work against the system because not a single aspect is open to public scrutiny. Case records and hearings are closed to the public.

Obtaining information on specific cases is like trying to squeeze information out of North Korea, one of the world's most isolated nations.

It's hard to get the public worked up over something it can't see.

"It's out of sight, out of mind," says Sandie Durgan of the Metro Police abuse/neglect detail. "All you have to do is look around and realize child issues are not a priority. Look at the government buildings and then look at (overcrowded) juvenile detention."

Others agree that more taxpayer money is spent on opulent government or library buildings than on "building humans."

"We don't have an educated public," says Las Vegas attorney James Guesman, who's considered an expert on the system. "The politicians are under pressure to solve perceived needs. It's much easier as a politician to address a problem by providing a new park, paving a street or being tough on crime. When you start looking at dysfunctional families there are no easy answers."

Adds Family Court Judge Gerald Hardcastle, "The state of Nevada hasn't made the commitment to children that it should."

He says the state Legislature made a mistake when it closed the Southern Nevada Children's Home in Boulder City on Sept. 30, placing 44 children elsewhere. The decision was made despite the fact that Clark County has a shortage of foster homes that cater to large sibling groups. The children's home, which had 12 sibling groups last summer, helped fill that niche.

"When they closed the children's home, they took away a service we needed," Hardcastle says. "Arguing that every child is better off in a foster home is not right, and it's not true."

As a result of the closure, the SUN began a two-month, in-depth examination of the child protective services system, focusing on foster care for abused and neglected children.

Among the SUN's findings:

* Child Haven, the county's temporary holding facility for children taken from their families, was at almost double its designed 80-bed capacity earlier this year. The campus hasn't grown in 10 years but its daily population has risen 93 percent. Numerous children are forced to sleep on couches in the cottage living rooms. Many bedrooms designed for two children house three.

* Even with recent staff increases, Clark County Family & Youth Services investigators handle at least 33 percent more new cases per month than the recommended national standard. That means they spend less time per child to come up with all the information they need to make reasoned decisions about the child's future.

* The county has only about half as many foster homes as it needs. Foster children often are not given the most appropriate placement because of the shortage of such homes. That can lead to incompatibility between the child and foster parents, a major reason they're bounced around the system.

* Despite a 20 percent rate increase per child this year, reimbursement for foster parents in Nevada remains far below U.S. Department of Agriculture recommendations. This makes it hard to recruit foster parents.

* Caseworkers for the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services monitor nearly twice as many foster children in the county as recommended by national standards. Sometimes a foster child won't see his/her caseworker for several months. The division also has to rush through licensing inspections of foster homes because of a lack of investigators.

* Foster parent licensing is slowed because it takes at least three months to clear an FBI fingerprint check. In many cases, there's no way of knowing whether a foster parent applicant was found liable in civil court for abuse or neglect in another state because no national registry exists. Nevada often has to rely on the truthfulness of the applicant because many states, guarded by their own privacy laws, are reluctant to share such information if no criminal charge was filed.

* Clark and Washoe counties are the only political jurisdictions in the United States where county and state governments run separate portions of the child protective system. In all other parts of Nevada and in 36 other states, the state runs the entire system.

No one interviewed by the SUN thinks the local bifurcated system is a good idea. Critics say there are communication gaps from the time the county passes a child to the state. As a result, children aren't getting the continuity of attention they might receive if one level of government ran the entire system.

* At least 70 percent of all children taken from local homes have at least one parent who abuses drugs or alcohol. Yet there's a severe shortage of affordable substance abuse treatment programs in the county. There's only one treatment facility for mothers who wish to remain with their children. The Healthy Families Project has room for eight adults, but has a waiting list triple its capacity. No such center exists for single-parent fathers.

* Most parents fighting to regain their children in Clark County Family Court aren't represented by attorneys. Conversely, there are few attorneys in the county who understand the child protective system. Some parents argue that the case plans they're expected to follow to get their children back are too expensive. They also complain that visitation with their children is too infrequent and inflexible.

* Relatives who want to become guardians often are stymied because they cannot afford the legal fees, which can cost $1,000. The Clark County Bar Association offers guardianship services at little or no cost but needs more attorneys to participate.

* There is insufficient medical history on many foster care children, including inoculation records. Foster parents sometimes can't tell physicians whether the child is allergic to certain anesthesia. Foster parents also say they receive children with behavioral problems that weren't previously diagnosed.

* Though foster children can receive dental coverage through Medicaid, few dentists in the county participate in the government-funded program. Many children have gone several years without dental services while in foster care. Dentists say the state has been slow to increase Medicaid reimbursement rates, and that the paperwork is a nightmare. Foster parents also don't have a list of dentists who accept Medicaid patients.

* Foster children have to wait as long as six months to visit state-funded mental health therapists. Foster parents say they're sometimes kept in the dark about therapists' recommendations.

* Less than one-third of children in state custody are represented by a court-appointed special advocate in the county. More people are willing to become volunteer advocates, helping children fulfill needs not met by their caseworkers. But the county doesn't have enough paid staff to oversee many more volunteers.

* While Nevada has one of the highest rates of adoption in the nation, the state still has problems placing children over age 2, especially minorities and kids with behavioral problems. The older a child gets the less likely he will be adopted.

Sgt. Ralph Hemmington, head of Metro's sexual abuse unit, says a primary reason caseloads have risen is increased awareness of abuse and neglect.

"It's not being pushed in the background anymore," he said. "It's becoming more acceptable to report it. Before it was whatever happened on the farm stayed on the farm."

But because of a lack of personnel and resources, child welfare agencies are narrowing their definitions of abuse and neglect, says Sandie Durgan.

"We have to give more support to the front-line worker," she says. "In a lot of these cases it's a no-win situation."

Hemmington adds that police investigators and their caseworker counterparts are under tremendous pressure and make mistakes because of their heavy caseloads.

"You often have to act without sufficient information to make the best judgment," he says. "It's errors based on pressure. It's not errors of the heart. Hopefully if I err, I'll err on the side of the child."

Social workers fear caseloads could increase depending on the outcome of the state's ongoing welfare reform efforts.

"If they (parents) lose their welfare and are on the streets, will that propel children into foster care?" asks Mary Heine, a Clark County Family & Youth Services supervisor.

It's something to worry about, adds Stuart Fredlund, Las Vegas district office manager for the state Division of Child and Family Services.

"It could hit child protective services and foster care potentially very hard," he says.

archive