Children's Advocacy Alliance

     Here are the facts: More than 13,500 children in Nevada are reported abused or neglected each year. The number climbs annually. Fifteen hundred Nevada children linger in foster care on any given day. As you read this, there are more than 100,000 children waiting to be adopted in this country. More children die from child abuse and neglect than from gang violence, AIDS, polio, measles, drowning, falls, choking, suffocation, residential fires and car accidents.
      A new organization called Children's Advocacy Alliance enters the scene with a simple pledge: Change for the better this appalling set of facts.
      It plans to do that by acting as advocates for abused and neglected children and by improving their quality of life through education, public awareness and pushing for public policy change. The alliance has its work cut out for it. But it has a fighting chance primarily because the alliance plans to embark upon its mission without government funding. Financed by the Nevada Community Foundation and private donations, the Children's Advocacy Alliance plans to be one royal pain in the neck to adults in Nevada government who are part of a system that, to put it kindly, doesn't work very well.
      Government's standard answer is, of course, to throw more money at a problem. The Children's Advocacy Alliance will say that is not good enough.
      The Children's Advocacy Alliance doesn't just want better-funded government programs. It wants results. It wants the lives of children caught in the system to improve ... and improve today.
      Money is not primarily what ails the state's child welfare system. The state has plenty of money in fractured programs, each of which fails to hit on all cylinders. The system needs a good old-fashioned overhaul. The system also needs far better leadership, but unless Gov. Miller stops dreaming about how to get out of Nevada and starts exhibiting better last-term leadership, that will have to wait until after the next election.
      In the meanwhile, we wish the Children's Advocacy Alliance every chance at success. Readers interested in contacting the alliance may do so at (702) 228-1869.