Saturday, June 15, 2013

Something Still Doesn't Seem Right At Child Haven

Earlier this week, 5 kids walked away from Child Haven, a Clark County run institution for abused and neglected kids who have been removed from their families.
From the LVRJ: Child Haven has released few details, citing case confidentiality, about how the brothers and sisters left. Staff at the Clark County Department of Family Services-run facility say they followed policy by not blocking the children from leaving the property. The staff promptly called police when the children left.
Police are trying to figure out where the siblings went and how they got there. Investigators had no new information Thursday, spokeswoman Laura Meltzer said.
Officer involvement with the family this time around has been “strictly from the missing persons standpoint” and not a criminal investigation, Meltzer said.  http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/crime-courts/parents-five-who-left-child-haven-have-earlier-child-neglect-convictions
From Channel 8 News: We had two staff members that saw them walk out the door," Sisolak said. "It's not that (they) were unnoticed, they were clearly noticed. I think that the system did work to that extent. They followed them out the building, they followed them down the street, one of the staff members went back, immediately called 911, Metro responded, the other staff member continued to follow them for a while and eventually turned back and came back to the facility."  http://www.8newsnow.com/story/22597601/child-haven-workers-followed-runaway-children
Steve Sisolak, maybe that's what they told you, but I say it's a lie or an exaggeration of the truth.
Child Haven is located next to the juvenile jail and Family Court.  Family Court has Marshalls and other security 24 hours a day.  The juvenile jail has numerous guards, with cops going in and out.  And this area of town, in which I am very familiar with, has cops all over the area because of the high crime rate.  There is no excuse for not having a police officer at Child Haven within a couple of minutes or less.
Further, why did the staff wait until the kids left child Haven before calling the police?  How about being pro-active and call them before they left the property?
When the kids left the building, especially with aged 7 and 9, why didn't anybody trail them and keep an eye on them while talking with the cops and staff back at Child Haven via a cell phone or radio.
If something bad happened to the kids, what would Clark County's response be?  We followed our rules so it is too bad that the kid ran out into the middle of the road and got hit by a car.  Or if a child was murdered or raped- Child Haven is not in a nice area and they didn't go to a nice area, what Clark County's excuse be?  Maybe they would use the Kathleen Sebelius excuse "Somebody lives, somebody dies".
Now that the kids know they can escape Child Haven without any problems, what is going to stop a teenager from leaving and going across the street to the apartments where there are numerous parties everyday.
There needs to be an investigation by the District Attorney or at least by the Clark County Commission to see what is going on there. 
Finally, whatever agency is responsible for licensing Child Haven needs to conduct their own investigation, and if needed, pull their license.
And finally, again from Channel 8 News, Sisolak leaves us with this bunch of crap: "This was an orchestrated effort -- planned effort -- to get out of there and to run and get with an older sister, I guess, older family member, so I don't know how you're going to prevent that," Sisolak said.
You don't know how you prevent this from happening again?  Are you ignorant or just plain stupid, Sisolak?  You better find a way to prevent a 7 year old from running away or you should not be in the child care business.  If this happened at a private day care or foster home, the cops would be throwing the adults in jail and closing down the child care business or foster home.
This kind of situation cannot be repeated, but hey, we're from the government and we are here to help.

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