Metropolitan Police Department Capt. Terry Lesney of the Crimes Against Youth & Family bureau discusses the death of 15-month-old Joshua Sharp, who died at Child Haven, on Tuesday. The federal government sent a letter earlier this month to the state for failing to improve conditions at Child Haven among other concerns. Photo by Jeff Scheid.

Less than a week before a 15-month-old boy died at the county's shelter for neglected and abused children, the federal government sent a strongly worded letter to the state for failing to improve conditions at Child Haven and other county-run foster care services.

Conditions for foster children in Clark County have "worsened" since federal officials examined the county's child welfare system in February 2004, stated the letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families. Federal officials also noted that the Clark County Department of Family Services violates its own policies by frequently keeping children at Child Haven for longer than a month.

The letter, dated Aug. 11 and signed by Sharon Fujii, regional administrator for the Administration for Children and Families, was sent to Michael Willden, director of the state's Department of Health and Human Services. The federal government sent the letter to state officials because the state oversees the county's child welfare department.

The way the county manages child welfare services "should be a grave concern to the State and should be addressed by the State in its administration and supervision of the program," Fujii wrote in the letter.

Annie Uccelli, spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, confirmed that the state had received the letter and was drafting a response.

The letter was sent amid a string of deaths in Clark County involving children who had contact with the child welfare system. Since Aug. 4, four children who had contact with the child welfare system or were in foster care died.

The most recent was Joshua Sharp, a 15-month-old boy who stopped breathing at Child Haven on Tuesday and was later declared dead at North Vista Hospital.

The Metropolitan Police Department is investigating Joshua's death and interviewing staff at Child Haven, according to Lisa Teele, supervisor of Las Vegas police's abuse and neglect unit.

A key inconsistency surrounding Joshua's death has surfaced since officials disclosed it Tuesday.

The county said Tuesday that staff noticed the child wasn't breathing about 2 p.m. at a Child Haven cottage and immediately called 911.

However, on Wednesday, the Las Vegas Fire Department said it was not dispatched to Child Haven until 2:52 p.m., almost an hour after the county said it had called paramedics.

Clark County spokeswoman Gina Olivares said officials had incorrectly listed in a press release the time that Child Haven staff noticed that Joshua was not responsive. She said the correct time was 2:50 p.m.

"At the time of the information's release, the information was very preliminary and very approximate," Olivares said.

The discrepancy surfaced Wednesday when Family Services began an internal review of what took place before and after staff reported that the boy was in distress. Olivares said the purpose of the review was to gauge whether policies and protocol were followed.

Police said they were looking into when emergency services were dispatched. "We are researching different facets of the child deaths, including procedures and protocols in place for notifying law enforcement," Teele said Wednesday.

Assemblywoman Susan Gerhardt, D-Henderson, who serves on the state panel reviewing child-death reporting in Clark County, learned of the boy's death on Tuesday.

"It seems like this is happening every time I turn around," Gerhardt said. "It's tragic and it's very troubling."

As a legislator, Gerhardt is pushing for more transparency in the investigation of the deaths of children under government care. She's also advocating tighter supervision of ongoing cases to prevent any mismanagement that could endanger the welfare of a foster child.

Gerhardt said she's pushing for the creation of the position of advocate, who would be responsible for conducting random reviews of open Family Services files to ensure that cases are being handled properly.

"I'm getting call after call, e-mail after e-mail from people who are concerned about what's happening in Family Services," she said. "They expect us to be able to do something about it, and I intend to."

Uccelli said any investigation the state might conduct into the death at Child Haven would not occur until after police concluded their probe.

The federal Health and Human Services officials sent their letter to state officials because the federal government wants to renegotiate its "Program Improvement Plan" with Nevada. The plan, approved in February 2005, requires that Nevada set certain goals to improve the child welfare system.

According to the letter, the state might not meet some of the requirements under the plan. Federal officials are requesting that the state supply them with "action steps and benchmarks" by Aug. 31.

If the state and federal government can't agree to the program improvement plan, the state faces "possible penalties for noncompliance," the letter stated.

The letter didn't specify what those penalties could be. Calls to Health and Human Services officials were not returned Wednesday.

Thomas Morton, director of the county's Department of Family Services, issued a statement Wednesday saying that he will meet with Willden and Fernando Serrano, director of the state's Division of Children and Family Services, on Aug. 21 to discuss responding to the letter and making sure federal regulations are met.

"Many of the observations and recommendations made in the letter ... are already addressed in the 'safe futures' plan that I am currently developing for future presentation to the Clark County Commission," Morton said in the statement.

Carole Shauffer, executive director for the Youth Law Center, a nonprofit law office in San Francisco that works with abused and at-risk children, said she has discussed problems with Clark County's child welfare system with state and county officials and is considering filing a lawsuit against the state and county if the issues are not resolved.

"These children are in danger because the conditions are bad right now and the basic policies of the child welfare system are not supportive of the developmental needs of the children," Shauffer said Wednesday.

She said the overcrowding at Child Haven and the county's "poor job" of recruiting foster parents are top concerns. She also said that at-risk children are too often removed from their parents' home and that services to the families could, in some situations, be better for the children.

These complaints are largely mirrored in the federal government's letter. For example, Child Haven is designed to hold 84 children and 20 infants, but on June 30, there were 205 children at the facility and 105 of them were age 4 or younger, the letter said.

As of Wednesday, the Child Haven population was 146, including 40 infants.

The letter also stated that the Department of Family Service's policy is that children shouldn't stay at Child Haven longer than two weeks, but that the average length of stay there is 45 days.

"From the data we received, children remained in the facility for three to six months, and in some instances a year or longer," the letter stated. "One child with whom we met has been in Child Haven for over two years."

The letter also said that, during a recent visit to Clark County, federal officials found that children were "unnecessarily" removed from their homes and put into Child Haven because there isn't any after-hours child protection service.