The agency responsible for monitoring Colorado’s child protection system opened a record number of cases in the last year.
The Office of Colorado’s Child Protection Ombudsman was established in 2010 in response to the maltreatment deaths of 12 children in Colorado in 2007. The office is independent from state and county agencies, listening to the public about their experience with and concerns about child protection from every county.
The ombudsman’s office released an annual report detailing case activity, legislative efforts, community engagement and program updates last week.
During the 2021-2022 Fiscal Year, the agency opened 982 cases, a 15% year-over-year increase of cases and a 70% increase since the 2016-2017 fiscal year. About 68% of the questions and concerns came from family members, according to the agency, along with foster and adoptive parents, youth, state legislators and professionals that serve youth and families.
The biggest portion of cases, 28%, were related to behavioral health, while 18% were related to specific child welfare practices like family visitation, kinship placements, father engagement, the use of safety and risk tools and records access. Another 15% related to child custody issues, 10% to domestic violence issues and 8% to sexual abuse issues.
The report said there were also several cases about the care and treatment of youth within the Division of Youth Services centers, and other cases raised the question about whether Colorado’s child protection system is designed to adequately serve under-resourced families, families of color and children with disabilities.
“Regardless of whether we hear about an issue once or multiple times, we review each of our cases with care and an eye toward systemic improvement,” the report said. “We extensively analyze our cases to identify issues and create change.”
The agency also helped create two new statewide task forces this year. The Mandatory Reporting Task Force will spend the next two years analyzing the effectiveness of and issues with the law requiring people in specific professions to report suspected child abuse, and the Timothy Montoya Task Force will study runaway behaviors to develop a prompt and effective response for youth who run away from foster care and facilities.
“To address these significant problems, the CPO worked with 90 different stakeholders,” Colorado’s Child Protection Ombudsman Stephanie Villafuerte said. “These task forces will center on the experience and voices of family and youth to ensure those who experience these systems have direct input on how these systems can work better.”
During the past year, the office also worked to fulfill the requirements of a recent law to review and monitor the care of unaccompanied immigrant children who are residing in state-licensed facilities but in the custody of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. The Child Protection Ombudsman attended two scheduled and supervised site visits, but attempts to access the youth and programming during unscheduled visits have been denied, according to the report.
“Unfortunately, we have encountered administrative and bureaucratic challenges in effectively accessing the facility that currently houses this population,” the report said. “As a result, we have not been able to fully execute the duties outlined in state law. We remain committed to serving this population and are actively working with our legal counsel — the Colorado Attorney General’s Office — to resolve these barriers.”
The ombudsman’s office did ask that the hotline number be programmed into phones at the facility to help ensure youth can call the office confidentially at any time along with providing posters about the resources the office provides in four languages. Because the CPO cannot access the facility, it has not been able to confirm that the phone number has been programmed or that the posters have been hung.
