They showed up in a censored consultant's report as children left in potentially dangerous situations by Clark County Family Services.

On Thursday, after an intensive review of 55 cases singled out by child welfare consultant Ed Cotton in 2006, Clark County released its findings and announced that all the minors involved were "accounted for and safe."

Child advocates and Family Services critics don't believe it.

The Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, which on Feb. 2 joined Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid in demanding proof of action in the 55 cases, plans to convene a team to validate that conclusion.

"As a follow-up, we're pulling together a team to review and verify the findings," said Frank Serrano, an administrator with the state Department of Child and Family Services. "That's consistent with our oversight role."

Bill Grimm, senior attorney for a child advocacy group suing Clark County and alleging failure to secure the safety of minors in government care, questioned how anyone can trust data provided by an agency that has repeatedly been shown to keep incomplete records.

"Nowhere in this report do they say what information they're relying on," Grimm said. "That's a glaring deficiency. How do we know this alleged documentation even exists?"

The level of skepticism that greeted the Family Services report follows one of the worst years on record for the child welfare agency:

• Foster children died or disappeared while in custody.

• The county's emergency shelter was routinely over-capacity during the summer.

• Overloaded caseworkers failed to regularly visit the minors in their care.

The revelation of the 55 cases of concern cited by Cotton and then excised from the final report at the request of Clark County legal counsel was only the latest event to send shock waves through state and local entities. One of the reasons Reid said he wanted a public report on the 55 cases was to renew a shaken public's confidence in the system.

"I wanted to give the public some assurances that these kids had been accounted for," Reid said.

The 15-page report released by Family Services deals with each case cited in the censored pages of the Cotton report. In some instances, Family Services found the concern to be the result of inaccurate information in Cotton's case descriptions. In others, allegations of neglect or abuse were unsubstantiated by investigations on the part of Child Protective Services or police.

In one case involving a blind child reported to have been placed with an abusive mother, Cotton's report said the caseworker felt the child was at risk and did not know why the child had been returned to the mother. The county review contradicts that.

"Permanency worker indicates she never told this to reviewer," the county report said. "Mother successfully completed her case plan and completed drug treatment. Child was assessed to be safe with mother."

That was just one of many of the review items that prompted a stunned response from Cotton, who said he stands by the veracity of his review team and the report.

"I just don't know what to say to that," Cotton said Thursday when contacted in Florida. "My reviewers didn't make things up. They had no reason to. We weren't paid by the mistake."

Cotton also questioned why Family Services has chosen to make these points now. They've been in possession of the reports for three months, Cotton said. It's only now, under intense scrutiny from the public and the media, that Family Services has begun to question the findings, Cotton said.

"The point needs to be made that we didn't just look at the case files. We interviewed the caseworkers," Cotton said. "We also asked to interview the families involved, but our request was denied because of concerns about confidentiality."

Tom Morton, director of Family Services, said he is concerned that stories have changed between the time of Cotton's report and the county's own review but it's not productive to dwell on that.

"In the end, we determined that all of the children are currently safe," Morton said.

Morton said he's also aware of inconsistencies in the county report singled out by critics.

One of the main concerns is that not all the cases lay out a timeline for caseworker visitation. Some cases have detailed documentation showing when a child was seen by a caseworker. Others among the 55 cases have only the last, most-recent visit documented, which makes it difficult to determine whether caseworkers performed a monthly visit to ensure child safety, as is required by law.

"Part of that relates to the fact that numerous people were taking part in this process," Morton said of those assembling the report.

Some staff members provided timelines and others didn't. Morton said he decided to release the report as is in the interest of timeliness. State officials asked for the report to be provided as soon as possible.

That doesn't mean there aren't situations in which visitation just didn't happen.

"There are cases in here where contacts were not consistent," Morton said. "Cotton's report did find that 23 percent of cases hadn't had child contact within 60 days."

The disarray that appears throughout the report on the part of Family Services illustrates many of the problems faced by the agency:

• Caseworkers carrying 39 or more cases are dealing with the most urgent cases while others wait for their attention.

• Poorly trained caseworkers are making bad decisions in the field.

• Record keeping is poor.

• Investigations into abuse and neglect are incomplete.

According to the agency's own internal review, 45 percent of overdue investigations into abuse and neglect cases, those that have been open longer than 45 days, lack documentation showing that alleged perpetrators and victims have been interviewed. When asked how many cases that represents, Morton said it was about 2,000 cases, dating back to July.

"I just have no confidence in the system," said Donna Coleman, a child advocate who's one of Family Services' most vocal critics. "I think they have no credibility at all."

Cotton, Morton, Coleman and Grimm do appear to agree on one thing: Independent reviews of cases within Family Services should continue in some form. Grimm said he hopes the Legislature will act on a bill draft that would create a position at the state level to review randomly open child welfare cases throughout the state.

Reid said he is optimistic it's the beginning of better times for the county's beleaguered child welfare agency.

Gov. Jim Gibbons has made a $1.3 million request of the Legislature to fund caseworker training. The county has declared child welfare to be a top priority and has approved 119 new positions for Family Services, and other reviews of the child welfare system are ongoing.

"We've made tremendous strides in the last few months," Reid said, citing the hiring of Morton in July and the creation of the Safe Futures improvement plan to remake the troubled agency.

"But when you shine a white hot light on a system that needs improvement, you're bound to see other flaws in the system," Reid said.