Neglected kids in shelters too long, audit says

Wednesday, April 21, 1999 | 4:53 a.m.

Legislative auditors say the delay harms the children and it costs taxpayers.

If children had been moved within 10 days from shelters to foster care, the division would have saved more than $1 million, the auditors said. Instead, children spent an average of 33 days in state custody, costing Nevada $870,000 in 1998.

Nevada has 800 foster homes and 1,400 children who need foster homes.

An additional $300,000 could have been saved if the division had been more cautious about placing children in transitional care, which costs $25 per day. Regular foster care costs $12 or $14.40 per day, depending on a child's age. Transitional care rates were paid longer than intended, the audit found, because of poor monitoring by the division.

Division Administrator Steve Shaw, who has been head of Child and Family Services since October 1997, said some of the audit recommendations are helpful, some of the problems identified already are being fixed and some of the problems are beyond the state's control.

He said he has been working to keep the budget under control and improve monitoring of foster services - but the auditors' recommendation that children be turned over to foster care within 10 days is not going to happen.

In response to the audit, division officials said that when a unified computer system is online in January, many of the monitoring problems for the level of care should be resolved.

Auditors found two foster parents providing therapeutic foster care were underpaid for several years - $8,200 in one case and $6,600 in the other.

Shaw couldn't explain why a previous 1993 audit, which raised similar concerns about foster care payments, hadn't been addressed. He said that audit was conducted before he was hired.

The 1998 audit said division officials told the audit subcommittee in 1994 that a senior auditor had been hired to work on the internal controls, but the division used the auditor to perform other duties.

Shaw's boss, Charlotte Crawford, director of the Human Resources Department, praised Shaw's work and said he was doing an excellent job.

She cited the relative youth of the division - it was created in 1991, drawing together different services for children into one division - as one reason it didn't correct the 1993 audit's suggestion that internal controls and spending controls over payments to foster care providers be improved.

"Auditors tend to look at numbers and when you're warehousing, moving and delivering canned goods, that works pretty good," Crawford said. "But the division "is in the position of working with and protecting human lives."

She said there are extenuating circumstances for not moving children more rapidly into foster care, adding, "I don't think we'll ever be an accountant's dream of placement."