A failed system

Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009 | 2:07 a.m.

Just a few days shy of her 2nd birthday, Chrissa Matthews drowned in a back yard pool. Her mother, Sheri Badosky, was inside while Chrissa and her 5-year-old brother, Andrew, who is blind and developmentally disabled, were outside.

As David McGrath Schwartz reported in Friday’s Las Vegas Sun, Badosky told police she had been in the bathroom for no more than two minutes. A doctor said Chrissa had been under water for 10 minutes or more.

Badosky was arrested last month on charges of child abuse and neglect with bodily harm. Before Chrissa’s death, Clark County’s Family Services Department had investigated Badosky 10 times for abuse and neglect since 2005.

In 2008 the Family Services Department recommended that Chrissa and her brother be put in the joint guardianship of their grandparents and be released from the foster care system — and the department’s oversight. A family court hearing officer agreed.

The arrangement, however, left open the possibility that Sheri Badosky would watch the children while her mother was at work, as she was the day Chrissa died.

The case has added fuel to a debate between the Clark County district attorney’s office and the Family Services Department over the representation of children in the foster care system.

Prosecutors have argued against the department when they disagree with social workers’ recommendations in child welfare cases. Lawmakers and the department want District Attorney David Roger to stop that practice and solely represent the department. They say it is a conflict and that disagreements can be resolved in other ways.

Roger says his office objected to the arrangement in Chrissa’s case. Tom Morton, the director of Family Services, says the prosecutor’s office never raised a concern about Sheri Badosky watching the children.

The back-and-forth misses the point. The system failed and a child died. No one, from the caseworker to the judge, saw the obvious problem: The woman charged with neglect was still watching the children.

The bottom line is simple: Whether it’s Roger’s office or not, someone needs to give the children a stronger voice.