A nonprofit law office has sent two letters to Clark County officials raising concerns about overcrowding at Child Haven and other child welfare services.

The Youth Law Center, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, also gave the county a series of deadlines to reform the child welfare system in Southern Nevada. The groups threatened a lawsuit if the deadlines and reforms are not made.

"We are extremely concerned, not only about the current deplorable overcrowding at Child Haven, but also about the harmful practice of housing babies and toddlers in an institutional setting," Carole Shauffer, executive director of the Youth Law Center, based in San Francisco, wrote on July 19.

The letters were sent weeks before Tuesday's death of 17-month-old Joshua Sharp at Child Haven, the county's emergency shelter for abused and neglected children.

Shauffer said the ACLU of Nevada and the Youth Law Center are negotiating with the county to change the child welfare system. Some of those changes include not placing children younger than 6 at Child Haven, stopping police from removing children in emergency situations without social worker involvement and stepped up efforts to keep children and families together.

"If we cannot reach an agreement, we will move quickly to take other action," Shauffer said.

Gary Peck, executive director for the ACLU of Nevada, said there is an immediate need to reform the child welfare system considering recent deaths of children who had contact with the child welfare system.

"The point of the letters is to express our sense of urgency about problems that exist and the need to begin to correct those problems," he said. "The system is badly broken, and every single day that it remains broken, children are being seriously hurt."

County officials said they have met with the groups and are talking with them about the issues.

"Clark County, the Youth Law Center, and the ACLU are currently discussing alternatives to potential legal action with an outcome of child welfare reform in Southern Nevada," Gina Olivares, spokeswoman for the county, said via e-mail. "As agreements are reached, additional information will be released."

The child welfare system in Clark County also has been criticized by the federal government. In a letter dated Aug. 11, sent to the state, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services's Administration for Children and Families said conditions at Child Haven have worsened since federal officials examined it in 2004.

In late June, Child Haven had 205 children, 105 of them age 4 or under, even though the facility is designed to hold 84 children and 20 infants, the federal agency's letter said.

This week, Child Haven had 146 children and 40 infants.

Susan Orr, associate commissioner of the children's bureau at the Administration for Children and Families, said the state could be fined $369,000 if it doesn't adequately reform Child Haven. The state has oversight over the county's child welfare system.

"We want them (the state) to understand in very clear terms that this is unacceptable," Orr said.

Four children who had contact with the county's child welfare system have died since Aug. 4, including Joshua and a 7-month-old who sustained a head injury earlier this month while living with a foster parent.

County officials have remained mostly silent on the deaths, citing either state laws that restrict information about the children from being released or the ongoing police investigations into the deaths.

On Wednesday, Thomas Morton, director of the Department of Family Services, went before the Clark County Commission and asked commissioners to support loosening state rules keeping the information on child deaths private.