A child protection caseworker in Colorado who gets caught falsifying records or lying about checking on children in one county can get a job in another county. And then another.
Under state regulations, if there is no criminal case, no one has to know about the past behavior — not the caseworker’s potential new employer or even the children and parents whose records were falsified.
It’s a gap in the system that has concerned child and family advocates for years. After a string of high-profile cases of child protection workers fabricating reports, state officials are now working to strengthen the law.
The process has been controversial, however, with some advocates accusing the state child welfare division of waiting years to take action, then rushing to pass new rules that won’t do enough to solve the problem. The proposed new rules do not yet include a universal process for decertification, or removing a caseworker’s credentials so they cannot continue to work in the field.
Colorado’s current regulations are so weak that it’s impossible to know even how often caseworkers falsify reports — counties aren’t even required to tell the state Division of Child Welfare. Criminal cases are rare, but a recent Larimer County case in which a child protection worker was accused of lying about interviewing at least 10 families has sparked some urgency.
In a recent six-month period, counties voluntarily reported 11 suspected incidents of falsification in nine counties to the state Division of Child Welfare. Reviews of the work uncovered additional suspected incidents, which were turned over to local law enforcement, according to a state document proposing new regulations.
“In isolation, this figure is extremely concerning,” stated a four-page memo from three advocacy groups critical of the state’s proposed new rules. “It does not, however, account for the instances not reported to (the Division of Child Welfare) or those that were not confirmed. A false record can shift the trajectory of a child’s life, a family, and a legal case — potentially resulting in a child remaining in a harmful situation or, conversely, resulting in a child being improperly removed from their parents’ care.”
Falsification is more likely to affect people who are Black, Indigenous, identify as LGBTQ or live in poverty because they are more likely to have child welfare cases opened against them, according to the joint memo from the Office of Respondent Parents’ Counsel, the Office of the Child’s Representative and Office of the Child Protection Ombudsman.
Cara Nord, an attorney at the Office of the Child’s Representative, which represents children in the child welfare system, criticized the proposed rules for not creating a uniform, statewide policy that counties would have to follow in order to notify families that their cases contained falsehoods or fabricated information.
“Would the child or youth receive notice?” she asked during a recent State Board of Human Services hearing. “Or is that going to be left up to the counties?
“Your zip code should not determine whether you simply get a phone call, or a text message or an email, or if you get a written letter, or if you get a face-to-face communication. This methodology of notice should be defined, and it should be consistent throughout the state.”
Child Protection Ombudsman Stephanie Villafuerte, whose office received more than 1,300 complaints last year about the child welfare system, including many from parents who alleged caseworker misconduct, said she was disappointed the state’s proposal did not include more specifics.
“My agency has raised concerns about caseworker misconduct and the caseworker decertification process since 2016, and yet we are here in 2024 finally addressing those issues,” she said.
The ombudsman’s office looked at four criminal cases involving child welfare workers accused of falsifying paperwork. In one case, the worker accused of fabricating abuse reports was hired by another county before criminal charges were filed, leading to questions about how often that occurs.
Draft legislation that called for caseworker reform was considered last summer by a legislative committee on child welfare, which included 11 lawmakers who studied child protection issues when the legislature was out of session. But the bill was not introduced this year.
Villafuerte urged the Board of Human Services to delay approval of the proposed rule changes in order to make them more robust and to allow time for the state to include children and families in the process.
“We are missing critical, important stakeholders, namely children and families,” she said. “Until you hear the anguish and fear in their voices, until you hear the fear that a child is not being protected or the fear that your child could be removed from your care, you can never create a rule package to effectively respond to their concerns. That work has not been done.”
The board gave the rule proposal the initial go-ahead, but asked child welfare officials to collect input from families and strengthen the proposal before seeking final approval.
Yolanda Arredondo, the division’s deputy director, said the agency is exploring how best to create a decertification process to prevent caseworkers who have fabricated reports from hopping to another county. Counties want more clarification on how to handle such situations, she said.
There is a caseworker shortage statewide, with one study showing the state needs more than 300 caseworkers. That means some counties are desperate to find candidates who are certified.
“And likely the county that they left, especially if they resigned, cannot say anything about the circumstances under which they left, other than maybe they are no longer eligible to be hired back,” Arredondo said. “Counties were feeling that these situations were happening where people were going from one county to another, potentially even to another.”
Caseworker misconduct is especially problematic because it has a compounding effect, she said. Previous instances of reported fraud revealed problems with multiple cases, involving multiple families.
“It has been more than one incident,” she said. “It has involved more than one family. It almost always affects more than one family.”
In Moffat County in 2020, for example, investigators found at least 50 child abuse reports written by one caseworker that contained fake details. An arrest warrant was obtained for Hester Renee Nelms but she has not been arrested, according to county officials.
Human services board vice chair Mychael Dave, a family law attorney, said that whatever new regulations the state eventually approves, they must include a requirement that courts are notified when a case contains falsified details.
“If we don’t make it mandatory that courts are notified, that it was a falsification … we miss the opportunity to help the court see the family in a different way,” he argued. “When I see this family say, ‘Hey, they’re lying about me,’ whoever they may be — a caseworker, the government, whoever — courts are struggling to hear that because typically, that family has challenges. They may have stumbled in their care of the child.
“These families have trauma because they were lied on.”