Gov. Jim Gibbons' failure to recommend funding for additional training of child welfare caseworkers and their supervisors needs to be rectified, child welfare consultants, state-appointed panels and Clark County Family Services administrators say.

They plan to push for lawmakers to fund training for the state's first line of defense for Nevada's youngest victims of abuse and neglect.

The state's Division of Child and Family Services had asked for $798,000 to fund specialized child welfare training, which would have included a new worker academy. Gibbons rejected that request.

Independent consultant Ed Cotton, who last year conducted a case review of 1,352 open cases for the Clark County Department of Family Services, said additional training is critical to the effort to protect children, and "there is a need for a massive amount of training."

During interviews with caseworkers, Cotton said, it became clear that many were confused about their roles and what actions to take in situations where the safety of children was in question. That was borne out in Cotton's overall report, in which reviewers said they were doubtful about the safety of one in every three children involved in the 1,352 open cases.

"We found over and over that a lot of people (caseworkers and their supervisors) out there didn't have a clue," Cotton said.

For example, some caseworkers were interviewing victims of abuse in front of the persons they were accusing, which Cotton said should never happen. Other caseworkers took the denials of the accused at face value and closed cases without interviewing the victims or those who had made abuse and neglect reports.

Additional training in Clark County is especially important, Cotton said, since Family Services doesn't require caseworkers to be licensed social workers.

"If you don't require people to be social workers, or at least have a degree in a related field, the only way to make that up is with training," Cotton said.

Steve George, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, said the training is not in Gibbons' proposed budget because it was the second priority for the department.

"Every department was asked to list special items for consideration," said Steve George, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, which includes child and family services. "It's a kind of wish list. Our number one priority was an increase in funding for foster families."

That was included in Gibbons' budget proposal.

Funding for training was second on the wish list, George said.

Melissa Subbotin, Gibbons' press secretary, said the fact that the governor didn't propose spending money on the training "doesn't mean it's any less of a priority. But we are faced with a limited amount of funding for an innumerable amount of projects."

Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, who is chairwoman of the Assembly Committee on Health and Human Services, said the training issue isn't going to be ignored. It's a vital issue at a time when Clark County is looking at significantly increasing its child welfare staffing, she said.

Leslie said she has talked with the state Health and Human Services director, Michael Wilden, "and I think we'll find a budgetary solution."

"It's true we have to prioritize across the budget, but it doesn't make any sense not to fund caseworker training," Leslie said.

Inadequate training of caseworkers also has become a legal issue for Nevada and Clark County. A lawsuit filed in federal court by the California-based National Center for Youth Law cites poor training as one of the factors contributing to the endangerment of children in government custody.

Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said lawmakers need to give full attention to not only additional worker training but also a complete reform of the state's child welfare system.

"This is not a discretionary matter," Peck said. "Children's rights have been violated in a system that's badly broken."

In Clark County, the ACLU has been pushing for child welfare reform against a backdrop of tragedies that has included the disappearance of a foster child; the deaths of children at Child Haven, the county's emergency shelter for abused and neglected juveniles; and failure to investigate deaths of children that may have been related to abuse or neglect.

Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the ACLU of Nevada, said government officials already have expressed their shock and surprise at the tragedies that have emerged from the child welfare system. Without action, those tragedies are likely to repeat themselves, he said.

"Then the public officials who neglected the problems all the way around will be held accountable," he said.