Overwhelmed with hundreds of children needing foster and adoptive parents, local leaders said they have a crisis on their hands and called upon the community to help at a news conference on May 4. Since then, the Department of Family Services has received more than 650 inquiries from potential foster and adoptive parents.

Clark County commissioners, legendary entertainer Gladys Knight and prominent leaders representing gaming, business, labor and faith-based groups announced a major public outreach and media campaign aimed at enrolling 400 foster and adoptive families by next May.

"The need for foster and adoptive parents is acute, and it’s getting worse every day," said Commission Chairman Rory Reid. "This is a problem that local government and child welfare agencies can’t solve by themselves. If ever there was a time to get the community involved, that time is now."

Knight, a Grammy-winning singer, entertainment icon and Southern Nevada resident, agreed: "These kids represent the future of our community. We have a moral obligation to take care of these children if we ever expect them to grow up to be healthy, upstanding adults who contribute to this community."

The campaign is one of media and public outreach. The media portion includes television public service announcements (PSAs), newspaper and magazine advertisements and billboards. The campaign highlights the problem in this ad statement: "Hundreds of our kids in Clark County are in crisis and need a home." It urges citizens to learn how to become a foster parent or to adopt by calling 1-888-423-2659 or by visiting the county website at www.accessclarkcounty.com.

The PSAs, humorous and amusing, were produced nationally by the U.S. Ad Council and were localized with a message from Knight. In the first, a young girl is dressed and roaring like a lion while her mother adjusts her costume approvingly. Her father walks in and asks, "How’s my little horse?" After an awkward pause, the mother responds, "She’s not a horse. She’s a lion." Then the announcer says, "You don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent."

In the second PSA, a boy plays a steady beat on a drum when his father chimes in on a saxophone. The resulting sound is jarring. Then the announcer chimes in, "You don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent."

The public outreach campaign compliments the media campaign and uses well-known pillars of the community in the fields of gaming, business, labor, faith-based groups and government. Those who took part in the news conference agreed to reach out to their employees and constituents and share information about foster care and adoption with them.

These leaders also challenged others in their field to join the community-wide effort. Information about how businesses and community groups can help is available online. For instance, there is a sample flier online ready for printing for employers and others who wish to disseminate the information to their own employees, customers and others.

"With more than 70,000 employees, we have a large, captive audience that we intend to share this important information with," said Jim Murren, president and chief financial officer of the MGM Mirage, the world’s largest gaming company. "If just a fraction of our employees respond, we could do a lot by ourselves to help these children out."

So on May 25, the MGM MIRAGE sponsored a Foster and Adoptive Parent Orientation event at the Mandalay Bay convention center. More than 250 prospective parents attended the successful event. County officials provided information, answered questions and conducted the orientation session that all prospective foster and adoptive parents must attend before fostering or adopting a child.

At the May 4 news conference, D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of Culinary Union Local 226, also committed the 50,000-member union to participating in the campaign because of the organization’s long history of working to improve the quality of life for working families. "This effort is all about improving our community’s quality of life," he said. " Las Vegas’s kids deserve the very best and our members can help by being part of the solution."

The business community is poised to respond as well said news conference participant representing the local business community, Kara J. Kelley, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. "The Chamber is encouraging our business members to help spread the word throughout our city to employees and to customers about the critical need for more foster and adoptive parents to take care of these children in need," she said. "Our community must come together to address this crisis that affects our most vulnerable citizens: our children."

"This crisis means that we are having to institutionalize kids," said County Manager Thom Reilly, a child welfare expert. "For the younger ones, they don’t adjust as well as they would if they were in loving homes instead. There is also a very pressing need to get kids adopted into safe, loving homes."

More than 2,100 kids are in out-of-home placement because they are not safe at home. When a child is not safe at home, alternative housing is sought for that child. There are now more children than there are available homes – and the number grows every day. Today, 1,900 children are in foster care and about 800 of those have a goal of being adopted.

A large number of children have brothers and sisters. Some 27 sibling groups are now available for adoption. Commissioner Myrna Williams and Judge Nancy Saitta will soon launch an initiative to increase sibling placements.

"We want to keep siblings together whenever possible but sometimes that’s very difficult, often because prospective parents don’t want more than one child," said Williams. "It’ s bad enough for a child to lose a parent, but to lose a brother or sister at the same time only compounds the problem."

Other jurisdictions have successfully improved their foster care and adoption rates by seeking assistance from churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious institutions. This effort seeks to encourage greater diligence in this area. An interfaith roundtable discussion involving county and local religious leaders will be scheduled soon to help develop solutions.

"People of faith are an integral part of this community and should play an important role in helping resolve this crisis, " said Rabbi Gary M. Goldbart, a representative of the Interfaith Council of Southern Nevada. "Each place of worship should work within their own congregations to spread the word about the needs of Southern Nevada children and ask that their members consider being foster or adoptive parents."

Commissioners Yvonne Atkinson Gates, Chip Maxfield and Lynette Boggs McDonald along with representatives of the Interfaith Council, the Ministerial Alliance and local religious institutions will come together at the roundtable to develop ways to boost foster and adoptive parent numbers.

The county announced the campaign just seven months after assuming responsibility for about 2,000 children in foster care. Additionally, there are more than 800 children in foster care having a goal of adoption.

Since being assigned responsibility for foster care and adoption, the county has taken some steps to improve conditions for children. Here’s what it has done:

• Increased foster parent training classes to four per month from two per month before. In the last year, the number of foster care beds was increased 13 percent from 1,427 in February 2004 to 1,619 in February 2005. More needs to be done because of increased needs.
  

• Developed systematic improvements for moving children more quickly into permanent homes. For instance, officials have expedited licensing for the relatives of children taken out of their homes so that the children may be placed with them.
  

• Added critical positions, including a grant-funded special needs adoption recruiter and 22 others. Some 34 more state-funded positions have been requested for the 2005-6 biennium and some temporary positions already have been created for Child Haven.