About 58 households registered for the event, according to Holly Kelsven, assistant manager for recruitment and training at the county's Department of Family Services. Staff walked families through the online application, helped them upload required documents and offered free physicals and tuberculosis tests — requirements for every foster parent and for anyone over 18 living in the home.

Representatives from across Family Services were on hand, including placement workers who call foster parents when a child needs a bed, and nurse case managers who support children with medical or developmental needs.

The need is substantial. Kelsven said roughly 3,600 babies, children and teenagers are in foster care in Clark County on any given day. Many arrive in sibling groups, and many have intellectual and developmental disabilities. At Child Haven, the county's emergency shelter, an average of 50 to 60 children are living there at any time while they wait for a supportive foster home.

The county hopes the open house will help fill the next eight-week training cohort. Additional open houses are planned if the pilot effort proves successful. Residents interested in fostering can begin by signing up for an information session at clarkcountyfostercare.com.

The push comes as child welfare systems nationally continue to grapple with persistent placement shortages, and as local agencies increasingly look to streamline the licensing process — long a source of frustration for would-be foster families — to recruit more homes.