To the editor:

I read the Feb. 4 editorial, "Caseworker training," and just boiled. It is clear that the writer has no idea what child welfare caseworkers do or just how difficult the job is.

These workers are seeing families at their worst and dealing with heartbreaking situations many times a day, every day they work. I agree these workers need to be highly trained. However, no college course prepares them to hit the ground running because college courses for the most part are generic, like interviewing skills. They don't teach college students how to interview a sexually abused 3-year-old.

When you graduate with a degree that would qualify you for a job in the child welfare arena, you have general knowledge, like a degree in social work or psychology, that provides you with some background but not the specific knowledge that would equip one to immediately assume the responsibilities.

Many college students don't know when they first start college what they want to do for a career and often change their direction many times. By the time they decide they want to become a child welfare worker, they might not have taken courses that would have helped them do the job, but they might have a degree that would qualify them to get the job. Most jobs in today's world require some degree of training -- child welfare work is so specialized it requires intensive training.

Many industries are hurting for good employees primarily because of the mass exodus of baby-boomers who are retiring in droves and taking all their experience with them. Therefore, many new workers are right out of college and have little experience. Today's work force is highly competitive, and businesses spend big bucks to train workers, as that is one of the ways of attracting and keeping good employees. You are proposing that the cost of training child welfare workers should be covered in part by the workers themselves because they are earning good money and have good benefits.

Wake up. Child Welfare work is demanding and demoralizing and leads to burnout. These caseworkers need to be highly trained to protect children and to make life-and-death decisions. They do some of the hardest work in society and should be equipped to do so -- but not at their own expense.

My suggestion is that you shadow a worker for a week and see what they do. I am sure you won't want to make it your career and will have a greater respect for their work and training needs.

The Department of Family Services is poised to fill many new positions, and they are going to be hard-pressed to find highly qualified people. The shortage of qualified caseworkers is similar to the shortage of nurses and teachers. This is an even greater reason to support child welfare worker training and urge the Legislature to fund it.

Ruth Urban

LAS VEGAS

Sad case

To the editor:

So attorney Steve Caruso thinks Las Vegas police officers erred when they did not remove Sherri Love's two young children from her home when they responded to a domestic disturbance call earlier in the day ("Difficult decision looming," Thursday Review-Journal). Of course, had they done so, he would be the attorney representing the family in their lawsuit against the department for unlawfully ripping two young children away from their loving mother.

What happened in that home -- a child stabbed to death, her mother hospitalized after overdosing on anti-depressants -- is an unspeakable tragedy, and everybody involved will carry the scars forever, including the officers who earlier responded. However, even the grandmother of Arabella Moreno and mother of Ms. Love stated without hesitation that nobody could have foreseen this. The family knew there were problems, but they had absolutely no idea that anything like this could ever happen.

Certainly, Mr. Caruso would never say that they should have done something differently. It sure is easy to step in after the fact and kick somebody when they are down.

MELANIE ANDRESS TOBIASSON

LAS VEGAS

Bomb blast

To the editor:

Recently, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman -- a Republican -- declared he was headed to Washington to lobby against Divine Strake, a 700-ton fertilizer and fuel oil explosion planned for the Nevada Test Site. Other Utah leaders -- including the mayor of Salt Lake City, officials in four Utah counties and the entire Utah Legislature -- all oppose the blast that will re-suspend, in the atmosphere, radioactive particles from historic atomic tests.

"Because of the potential threat to life, health and safety [we] oppose the Divine Strake test," reads one resolution.

Additionally, the congressional delegations of Idaho and Utah have been proactively informing the public or even opposing the test.

And in Nevada? The silence is deafening.

Instead of aggressively lobbying for public safety, Gov. Jim Gibbons reacted to a recent protest with the vacuous statement: "Weapons testing is critical ... however, we [must] ensure ... the [government] is taking all necessary precautions to ensure the safety of Nevadans."

So, what do you plan to do, governor? Anything? What about you, Sens. John Ensign and Harry Reid? Or you, Reps. Shelley Berkley, Dean Heller and Jon Porter?

As one letter writer in Utah asks: "I don't want these radioactive elements blown 10,000 feet into the atmosphere above my house. Do you?"

BOB TREGILUS

RENO