County launches ad campaign for disadvantaged kids

Stephen Curran

Thursday, May 5, 2005 | 9:29 a.m.

Clark County officials on Wednesday unveiled a media blitz to urge residents to adopt or take in the hundreds of abused, neglected or abandoned children they say are overwhelming its children's service programs.

The advertising campaign, part of a national series by the nonprofit Ad Council carrying the slogan "You don't have to be perfect to be a perfect parent," was unveiled Wednesday on time donated by local television stations and paid advertisements in area newspapers, county manager Thom Reilly said.

It's a plea Reilly and the seven county commissioners said would save the county thousands of dollars and provide a non-institutional environment for children.

Foster care typically costs the county $591 a month, compared with a cost of $3,750 to keep a child at Child Haven for a month, Susan Klein-Rothschild, director of the county Department of Family Services, said.

The county assumed responsibility for adoption, and foster care roughly seven months ago. Officials have increased the number of beds available for children by 13 percent, from 1,427 in February 2004 to 1,619 now.

Meanwhile the number of children needing shelter increased 29 percent last year, up from 3,513 the year before, a spike blamed in part on the state's need to remove children from methamphetamine-using parents. There are currently 1,900 children in foster care, 800 of whom are eligible for adoption, county officials said.

"We realized the problem was even larger than we knew," Klein-Rothschild said. "We needed to do something bigger."

By including casino giant MGM Mirage, which employs 72,000 people in the Las Vegas Valley, and area faith-based organizations, county officials hope to encourage 400 more eligible families to adopt or become foster parents by May 2006, they said. MGM Mirage president and CEO Jim Murren said the company would distribute fliers and other information about becoming adoptive or foster parents.

Rabbi Gary Goldbart of the county's Interfaith Council, who will sit on an interfaith rountable with other local religious leaders called the surge or children in the system a "crisis of our community."

Reilly estimated the advertising campaign will cost the county about $50,000 from its public information budget to pay for the print ads, the only space that was not donated. Normally, the television, billboard and print ads would have cost more than $500,000, he said. County officials have long said inadequate staffing ratios threaten the level of care provided at its child care facilities. The county also is facing a possible lawsuit over the overcrowding at Child Haven, the children's shelter used by the county's Family Services Department, Reilly said.

The department currently employs about 400 people, 85 of whom work at Child Haven, a figure that makes meeting staffing ratios -- usually broken down to one worker to eight school-age children and one worker to every two to four for younger children -- a challenge, Klein-Rothschild said.

The concerns have prompted lawyers to begin looking into the department's staffing ratios, Klein-Rothschild said.