In September, the Children's Attorney Project took on representation of more than 60 infants and toddlers in need of foster homes.

The agency's goal was to have Clark County Family Services expedite placement of abused and neglected children into familylike settings, which is required by state and federal law.

Emergency group care -- such as that provided to minors at Child Haven, the county shelter -- is not appropriate long-term care, said Children's Attorney Project lead attorney Stephanie Charter, especially for those who are under the age of 2.

Over a four-month period, the project's client list of 60 infants and toddlers has been reduced to just two children.

Charter, a vocal critic of the county's slow pace in matching needy children with foster parents, takes that as a sign that the situation is improving, though officials acknowledged much work remains to be done.

The two children represented by Charter in the courtroom of District Judge Gerald Hardcastle earlier this month were: a 2-year-old girl who has called Child Haven home for more than 78 days and a newborn boy who went from the hospital directly to Child Haven because his parents disappeared.

"There shouldn't be a child moving from the hospital to Child Haven," Hardcastle said during the Dec. 15 hearing, frowning after the case worker explained that Family Services has no information on the infant's family. "They should be going into" foster care.

Providing speedy foster home placements for the very young is still the goal, Charter said. The constant influx of new children into the system makes that a moving target, but the past four months have shown it is possible, she said.

"There was no regular court calendar for these kids when we started, so this is great," Charter said. "I think having attorneys for each child has made a huge difference. Certainly, when we started appointing attorneys for every child, things started moving faster."

The Children's Attorney Project, part of the nonprofit Clark County Legal Services, and the local lawyers who volunteer with it have made weekly appearances in Family Court on behalf of their clients. They stepped into the fray just as the number of children in need of emergency shelter nearly brought Family Services to the breaking point.

May and June saw record numbers of minors brought into Child Haven, where a makeshift dormitory was set up in the gym to handle the overflow.

The crisis also led county officials to stop taking referrals from local hospitals, which then became the de facto caretakers of drug-exposed newborns an overloaded system couldn't place. The situation was -- and still is -- aggravated by a shortage of foster parents.

Tom Morton, who became director of Clark County Family Services in July, said that demands for increased accountability from groups such as the Children's Attorney Project have seemed to speed change.

In addition to the Children's Attorney Project, the ACLU of Nevada has pressured the county to pick up the pace on foster home placements.

The issue also goes to the heart of a federal court lawsuit filed against Clark County by the National Center for Youth Law.

With those external calls for action, internal efforts have been made to speed placements. Morton said that bureaucratic bottlenecks that slowed foster placements have been eliminated. And because the intake of children into county custody has been declining after the summer spike, workers have had more time to devote to finding placements for minors in care.

"We continue to experience shortages, but we're moving toward an improved situation," Morton said.

He said he was pleased with the reduction in the number of children age 2 and under at Child Haven, which had an overall population of 111 earlier this month.

"We still have a disproportionately high population of toddlers," Morton said. "The whole preschool age population is a challenge for us."

State lawmakers will take up the issue of what's best for such children in government care when they consider a bill draft that seeks to prohibit the placement of minors 6 and under in group shelters such as Child Haven.

The bill draft was generated by a legislative subcommittee led by Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno.

Leslie said she was thrilled by the reduction in the 2-and-under population at Child Haven and believes that is an indication that it can be achieved on a broader scale.

"What this shows me is that when we put our minds together, we can protect kids," Leslie said. "We need to keep the momentum going. We haven't fixed the problem. We still have kids in shelter care."