Columnist Sandra Thompson: Nevada’s foster care system faces challenges

Sandra Thompson

Sunday, Sept. 12, 1999 | 9:50 a.m.

Sandra Thompson is vice president/associate editor of the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at 259-4025 or through e-mail at thompson@lasvegassun.com.

THE FEDERAL Adoption and Safe Families Act wants to cut the time children are in the foster care system to 12 months.

After that, a permanent placement plan should be in place -- reunification with parents; termination of parental rights, which would make the children eligible for adoption, or another arrangement.

The 1999 Nevada Legislature approved Assembly Bill 158 to help bring the state into compliance with ASFA. Much of the bill goes into effect Oct. 1.

But there is concern over whether Nevada has the resources to comply. Now the average time in foster care is 37 months.

"We can't achieve the goal of placing children within 12 months," Family Court Judge Bob Gaston says. "We must change the system."

Clark and Washoe counties are the only political jurisdictions in the country that have a bifurcated system where the state and county governments run separate portions of child protective services and foster care. This causes delays, Gaston says.

Steve Shaw, administrator of the Nevada Department of Child and Family Services, agrees that the bifurcated system is a problem. But he's optimistic that the state can comply with the 12-month time frame.

"We have a stab at it," he says.

A conference is scheduled later this week in Reno to discuss ways of streamlining the process to better serve children in foster care.

Having an efficient system in place is only part of the solution, though. There is no universal agreement on what the system's overall role and goal should be.

"Society hasn't figured out what it wants," Shaw says. "There is the sanctity and privacy of the family. Then there's the protection of children. They are two conflicting views."

Locally, there are varying opinions on how intrusive and aggressive child protective services and the foster care system should be. It boils down to parents' vs. children's rights.

Liz Glennen, a certified legal assistant, considers the foster care system a large cottage industry. She has taken on several cases of parents whose children, she says, were wrongfully taken from their homes.

One recent case involved a woman who has multiple sclerosis. Her two young children were removed from the home because her older daughter spanked one of them. The daughter does not live with the mother. The children were kept in the foster care system for more than a year before being returned home. Glennen believes it was because of the mother's MS, not the one spanking incident.

There are other instances where children have been placed in foster care despite pleas from grandparents who want to care for them.

At the other end of the spectrum, though, are even more disturbing cases where children are returned to parents who had severely neglected or abused them.

Two of the most recent cases were profiled here last week.

Despite the parents' failed drug tests and lack of a place to live or job, and over the objections of caseworkers and a relative, Judge Gaston ordered the children to be reunified with their parents.

Gaston, who can't discuss specific cases, says he bases his decisions on evidence presented to him in hearings. Persons familiar with the two cases say the attorney general's office, which handles parental rights termination issues, did not do a good job of presenting solid evidence to Gaston. Part of the reason, they say, is the attorneys' inexperience and lack of training.

A conference sponsored last week by the Children's Advocacy Alliance identified those shortcomings as one of the stumbling blocks to achieving a good foster care system.

Participants also cited the bifurcated system, communication between agencies and the public, lack of foster care and adoptive homes, lack of training of foster parents, not enough monitoring of cases, overworked caseworkers and lack of funding.

No system is perfect. Unfortunately, there will be extreme cases where children are wrongfully taken from their homes. It's better to err on the side of caution to protect an innocent child. However, it shouldn't take a year to determine that the children should be returned home.

As Shaw said, we can't wait for society to settle the parents' vs. children's rights debate. But it doesn't take a high-priced consultant or expensive research report to tell us we should put the children first.