Study sought on children in foster families

Monday, Jan. 31, 2005 | 10:47 a.m.

The Clark County Family Services will ask the County Commission Tuesday for a study on how children fare in the department's foster-family program.

Susan Klein-Rothschild, family services director, said the $52,000 state-funded study is crucial for determining how well her department does in managing about 1,800 cases where children are taken out of potentially dangerous households and relocated to other family or foster homes.

The problem, she said, is that the county acquired the cases from the state government last year, the end result of legislation that said more needed to be done for children and families facing abuse and neglect. Unfortunately, the state records are spotty for tracking how children did in the old system.

"The Legislature didn't do this just to remove bureaucracies," Klein-Rothschild said. "They wanted us to do better. But how do we know we're doing better without a baseline? Historically, the state has not had good data. We're working to change that."

The data is crucial to learning how children move, and how quickly they move, through the foster-care system, she said.

"What are the barriers to getting this child into safe, permanent care?"

With data from the study, "then we can look over time to see if we're getting better at it," she said. "You don't know if you're doing better unless you know where you start."

The study would take several months and be paid for with state child welfare funding. Klein-Rothschild said a local nonprofit would do the work.