Report on Clark County child welfare system innovative but unworkable

Imagine a M*A*S*H unit that never folds its tent, and you have an idea of what Child Haven has been like in recent years.

All areas of Southern Nevada life have been overwhelmed by growth, but perhaps Clark County’s system of child and family social service has been hit hardest. The Department of Family Services has been battered by criticism that it hasn’t done enough to investigate and protect the children under its supervision.

With daunting worker caseloads and far more children than beds, the department and Child Haven have played the patsy for a broken system. The death of a 17-month-old at Child Haven and the disappearance of a 2-year-old placed in foster care provided fodder for critics but also point to the very real potential for tragedy when a system is overwhelmed and under-managed.

Is closing Child Haven and redistributing its budget the answer?

UNLV School of Social Work professor Leroy Pelton thinks so. Pelton identifies the dire problems at DFS in a report released Tuesday, "An Examination of the Reasons for Child Removal in Clark County, Nevada." It’s a report every citizen should read.

His conclusions are sure to upset some of those who have devoted their lives to keeping children safe in a boomtown addled by drugs and alcohol. Although it will be difficult, and perhaps impossible, for Child Haven’s dedicated staffers not to take Pelton’s report personally, he assured me Tuesday he understood that those on the front lines of the war on the young aren’t to blame for the system’s failure.

"Of course, I’m not criticizing any people," he said. "It’s systems problems that we’re talking about here. The system, I think, works in the wrong direction."

Instead of hiring more caseworkers and developing more foster homes, he suggests alternatives that focus on prevention. He suggests hiring "specialists to help match available housing with families who need it to stay together." He also advocates recruiting volunteer parents as mentors, and hiring relocation specialists to quickly find safe places for children to stay within an extended family.

It all makes sense, and Pelton said similar models appear to work in other communities. He considers Child Haven part of the problem, not the solution. Closing the facility could save up to 35 percent of the department’s budget, dollars that could be used to pay for housing and other services.

"It’s not necessary," Pelton said. "It’s not needed. There are many places around the country that get along just fine without one."

But there aren’t many places as inundated with need, and I think this is where Pelton’s philosophy figures to run smack into a terrible reality. His thought-provoking report, with its heart-wrenching anecdotes of children taken from homes ruined by drug and alcohol addiction, surely will defeat its own argument for change by relating some of the complex cases.

Finding enough parent volunteers alone won’t be a simple matter. It’s not that dysfunctional parents don’t understand the right way to care for children. They’re too caught up in their addiction to be good parents.

Finding housing specialists to help poor families transition into affordable housing is a fine idea. But I know no one who believes there will be enough affordable housing available in Southern Nevada in the foreseeable future.

As for matching children with acceptable extended family members, that’s another laudable thought. Pelton said he believes suitable family placements can be made in a day or two, but I suspect there will still be too many children and not enough open arms.

Maybe I’ve grown too cynical after so many years spent watching Clark County perform meatball surgery on its most vulnerable citizens. Pelton is right on when he calls for change, but given the tradition of societal neglect I’m not convinced his report fully supports his conclusion that Child Haven should be shuttered.

On page after page he reports incident after incident of children caught up in homes ruined by meth-abusing parents. In a transient community, good luck finding relatives willing to take in those desperate kids.

The problems are great and complex, and a Child Haven of twice the size would be ill-equipped to serve the overwhelming need in Clark County.

While the officers map their strategies, the war on Southern Nevada’s children continues.

John L. Smith’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.