Editorial: Unconscionable actions

Thursday, Feb. 1, 2007 | 7:07 a.m.

It is simply unconscionable that eight pages of a consultant's report examining Clark County's Family Services Department, which detail gross incompetence, were intentionally excluded when the report was released in December.

The eight pages, which were released this week, paint a damning picture of child welfare workers here, showing how they failed to remove children from dangerous situations, did not follow up on cases for months and, in some cases, couldn't do the jobs they were assigned.

The pages - censored at the request of the district attorney's office, which said it feared violating confidential provisions - include 56 specific examples. For instance:

These findings are simply sickening, and it is troubling that much of this apparently could have been avoided. Ed Cotton, the consultant who wrote the report, told KLAS Channel 8 that he thought "workers didn't know what to do."

In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun last summer, Tom Morton, the new head of the Family Services Department who was brought in to clean up the mess, said his department was vulnerable because of insufficient training, noting that the training budget had been used to try to address other deficiencies outlined in a federally mandated improvement plan.

While the child welfare system is in a horrific state, the county censors the bad news and sends out untrained workers to protect society's most vulnerable. This must stop. The county needs to be open and honest about the situation, and the Legislature must help by providing adequate funding for training.

Otherwise, there will be many more tragic reports to come, as more children are left unprotected by a system that has failed them.