Child welfare advocate angry

At least three times before Las Vegas police intervened, Child Protective Services investigated the suspected abuse and neglect of Sabrina Smith's 3-year-old daughter.

Child welfare investigators deemed the reports unsubstantiated and closed the case each time.

At 1:30 p.m. on April 8, two police officers responding to reports of a bruised and injured toddler knocked on the door of Smith's southeast Las Vegas home. When they found the child in an upstairs bedroom, they looked at her and saw:

•Two black eyes, several days old.

•Long lacerations on the back of the child's legs, scabbed over.

•Signs of being malnourished.

While being examined by emergency medical responders, the girl, who weighs only 19 pounds, said "oweey" and pointed to her stomach, police said.

The girl was taken to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center. Three siblings were placed in protective custody and transported to Child Haven. Sabrina Smith and her boyfriend, Brian Amis, were arrested and charged with felony child abuse with substantial bodily harm.

It's yet another example of how Clark County Family Services front-line investigators are failing in their mission, said child welfare advocate Donna Coleman.

"The Department of Family Services is investigating these kids to death," Coleman said Friday. "It's just luck that this little girl's not dead."

Coleman's anger is rooted in her opinion that despite months of public study, debate and reports that detail the shortcomings and poor practices of Clark County's child welfare agency, change isn't happening fast enough to save children. Smith's daughter is all too reminiscent of Adacelli Snyder, Coleman said.

Adacelli was 2 years old and weighed 11 pounds when she starved to death in 2005. Child Protective Services closed its case on Adacelli's family about a year before she died.

Family Services spokeswoman Christine Skorupski said that an internal review is now being conducted of the earlier investigations involving the Smith family. Because of privacy laws, the findings may never be released.

"It's unclear at this point how much information would be made public," Skorupski said Friday.

That's why Coleman said it's vital for state legislators to pass proposed bills that would make child welfare agencies more transparent to the public and accountable for their actions. Coleman said she believes Family Services should be required to detail exactly what the investigations in this case entailed.

A sampling of welfare cases reviewed by outside consultant Ed Cotton at the behest of Clark County last year showed that investigative technique was severely lacking, Coleman said.

Cotton singled out 55 examples of cases where minors had been deemed safe in the face of insufficient information or investigation. Clark County Family Services has reviewed those cases, and the latest findings about the welfare of the children involved are now being evaluated by the state.

In some of the Cotton cases, the investigation performed consisted of a single interview with the alleged perpetrator, Coleman said.

"How did they come to the conclusion that this child was safe?" Coleman said. "Did they do a risk assessment? Did they just do a drive-by of the house? Given what we know about their sloppy investigations, I have no confidence in what they're telling us."

Police gathered testimony from those living in the Smith house and were told that the child's injuries appeared on April 4. One person told police that the mother, 39, became upset when the girl defecated in a bedroom and then threw the fecal matter around.