Founders of children’s group resign

By Timothy Pratt

Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2005 | 11:23 a.m.

The founders of a leading local nonprofit organization, the Children's Advocacy Alliance, have resigned, saying they intend to pursue a lawsuit against the county because of flaws they see in the child welfare system.

Donna Coleman and Toni Isola-Bayer, who founded the organization in 1998, announced they would be working with a Washington-based group called Demanding Justice for America's Children, local attorney Jeffrey R. Sylvester and the National Center for Youth Law in mounting a lawsuit in the coming months.

"We feel there's not going to be a change in the system unless there's litigation," Coleman said.

The Children's Advocacy Alliance is perhaps best-known for its biannual "report cards" on Nevada's treatment of children, with grades for such categories as education and teen suicide rates.

The move came on the heels of an exchange of letters between the district attorney and Children's Advocacy Alliance in recent weeks, in which the county said future requests for information would have to go through the district attorney unless the organization pledged not to sue.

Coleman said she was "offended by the letter," adding that the county shouldn't have expressed itself that way "to a group that only finds solutions."

Calls to the district attorney were not returned.

But Gard Jameson, president of the Children's Advocacy Alliance, said he needed to set the record straight with the county and responded by indicating that his group wasn't interested in litigation in the first place, and that he saw legal maneuvering as "the last measure in a situation that seems untenable."

"We don't think we've reached that point yet."

Coleman said her intention to sue is based on child deaths in the foster care system, overcrowding in the county's youth shelter, Child Haven, and a lack of access to information about youths who have died while in the child welfare system.

The last issue has been debated in the public arena of late, after 2-year-old Adacelli Snyder died in June under horrible living conditions that had been earlier investigated by Child Protective Services.

CPS refused to release the records surrounding their investigation of the child's care.

That case, Coleman said, "put me over the top."

"The county's continued secrecy and refusal to participate in meaningful discussions to avoid ... litigation has left us with no other choice," she said.

Susan Klein-Rothschild, director of the Department of Family Services -- parent agency for CPS and other agencies of the child welfare system -- disagrees.

"I want to improve the system and make it better for children," she said. "I just do not agree that spending the money on a lawsuit is the most efficient means to that end.

"Spending it on services and intervention will more efficiently improve outcomes for children."

Jameson said that in the end, "it's not about Donna Coleman or Children's Advocacy Alliance. It's about the children."

"There's no doubt and everybody agrees -- there is a crisis."