Good foster fit elusive

Friday, June 23, 2006 | 7:15 a.m.

Hundreds of beds in foster homes across the Las Vegas Valley sit empty every night, just waiting for a foster child.

Meanwhile, the county's shelter for abused, neglected and abandoned children is nearly overflowing, with some foster children sleeping in gymnasiums or offices of county staff. The shelter is home to more than 200 kids, double the number it is designed to accommodate.

The disconnect is a result of a county program that allows foster parents to become licensed with the understanding that they would receive only children considered to be of low legal risk.

The program is intended to attract parents interested in adopting a child by guaranteeing that they can host a child under the age of 3 whose biological parents are not likely to retain legal rights to the child.

The problem is, that option has become too popular.

While a county push to recruit foster parents in May last year stirred interest among potential foster parents, about 50 percent of newly licensed foster parents have entered the system through the "legal risk" program.

However, only about 5 percent of children in the county's foster care system meet the criteria, said Larry Horne, an assistant manager of caregiver services with Clark County's Department of Family Services who is responsible for recruiting foster parents and placing children in their care.

"It's frustrating," Horne said.

The legal risk designation keeps children like 5-year-old Joshua - not his real name - out of homes and in Child Haven, a collection of eight cottages located near Pecos and Bonanza roads.

The shelter was originally designed to provide a temporary stay of no more than 72 hours after children are removed from their homes for safety reasons under emergency conditions. After an initial court date, the children are supposed to be placed with a foster family.

But because of a lack of foster families and a dramatic increase in the number of children entering the foster system, some children are forced to stay for months.

On Wednesday, Joshua's brush with death was not apparent except for the scar on his cheek, a visual reminder of an accident last year in which he was burned, resulting in authorities removing him from his home.

Joshua stood in one of the shelter's kitchens after lunch Wednesday, eager to help staff wash dishes. He blew his latex gloves into a balloon before snapping them over his hands.

"That's the thing about being a helper," said John Geran, a child development technician. "Do I get gloves?"

Because of his age, Joshua does not qualify for placement in any of the roughly 300 unused foster home beds in the county licensed under the legal risk program.

Child Haven Manager Lou Palma said such cases are heartbreaking.

"There's no place for them to go," he said of the 202 children at Child Haven.

That number would be higher if the county had not recently requested that hospitals hold off on sending babies to the shelter, which is $2 million over budget this year.

After seeing too many instances in which he has sent foster children away only to have them return to his shelter again, Palma said he understands that foster parents and foster children need to be a good fit for one another.

"It breaks my heart on one level," he said. "But I've been around long enough to know it's a delicate balance."

The county put a moratorium on issuing new legal risk program licenses last week.

"If they say they only want low-risk kids, we aren't licensing them," County Manager Thom Reilly said. "I think we should have done that months ago."

The hope is that foster parents who would otherwise apply through the legal risk program will accept other foster children instead.

"We have made phone calls to all the legal risk homes asking if they could take regular foster care kids," Horne said. "We are really saying, 'We hope you reconsider.' "

Not all legal risk families are happy about the phone calls, he said.

"We should be interested in, 'What are the needs of the kids?' Not, 'What are the needs of the family?' " he said.

Laurie Richardson, an education advocate with Clark County Legal Services who has hosted more than 30 foster children, said potential foster parents need to be willing to let go for the child's sake.

"Their job is to love and nurture and be there for that child while their parents work through their issues," she said. "It is essential for the foster children to believe the foster parents believe in them and in their parents."

Horne said it's too early to tell whether the moratorium will result in more families accepting general foster care children.

While waiting to assess the moratorium's impact, county commissioners are planning to request proposals next month from outside agencies to help recruit foster families.