Editorial: It took a village to kill this child

Sunday, Oct. 8, 2006 | 7:42 a.m.

"B aby Boy Charles" was 7 months old when he died in August.

He was a ward of the state. His foster mother was arrested Thursday by Metro Police, accused of murder.

Complicit in the boy's death are all of the lawmakers and administrators and others who ignored the woefully inadequate child welfare system as it has limped along over the years.

While Clark County boomed and the number of children who needed help grew along with it, budgets remained flat, social workers saw case loads skyrocket, often tripling the national average, and children were put wherever they could fit.

In an interview with the Sun earlier this year, Tom Morton, the national expert hired by Clark County to clean up the mess, wouldn't call the system broken.

"Broken means it was working well at some point," he said, choosing his words carefully. "It's not designed for the need that exists."

Children are at risk because the social workers can't get around to see them often enough, children don't get treatment they need quickly enough, and foster parents aren't screened or supervised closely enough, which leaves an opening for problems - runaways, abuse or worse.

The Clark County Commission on Tuesday approved hiring 55 new social workers, which should help ease the burden, but that's only the first step of Morton's $30 million plan to revamp the system.

The real problem will be making this push a sustained effort. The child welfare system fell into disrepair because no one wanted to spend the money. The children were out of sight and out of mind.

That's not a surprise in a state where some of the loudest voices bemoan nearly any type of government spending, which is all fine and good in theory, at least until children start dying.

Like Baby Boy Charles.

He deserved so much better. We can't let the system become complicit again.