On a typical day in Colorado, there are about 600 homeless children and 262 homeless young adults ages 18 to 24
Colorado Department of Human Services
Posted inSun Investigation
Colorado funds only one agency to help families and adopted kids with their trauma-filled past. And its budget just got slashed.
No family who has received trauma-informed coaching by Raise the Future has reported a disrupted adoption, according to the agency and the state.
Posted inSun Investigation
Failed twice: Colorado foster kids who are adopted often end up back in the child welfare system
More than 1,000 children who were adopted from foster care in Colorado in the past decade ended up back in the system.
Posted inNews
To keep people from returning to jail, Mesa County follows other communities’ reentry roadmap
Many people transitioning from jail or prison struggle to reenter society without support. Mesa County’s new program helps with housing, jobs, transportation and mental health services.
Posted inSocial Services
How do you stop foster kids from running away? A Colorado panel is trying to find out.
The panel created and funded by the state legislature has two years to find ways to decrease the large number of troubled kids who run away from foster care and treatment centers
Posted inSocial Services
Most young teens in Colorado’s foster care system don’t know about birth control, new study finds
About 65% of eighth and ninth graders interviewed in the Denver area said they were not educated about birth control
Posted inBusiness, Equity, Health, News
Failed 2014 overhaul shows how lobbyists, politics have maintained status quo of Colorado’s mental health care
A schizophrenic man had opened fire on a packed movie theater in Aurora, killing 12 and injuring dozens more. Something had to be done. The Aurora theater shooter had tried to get mental health treatment before the killings. That provided a possible opening for then-Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper to search for preventive solutions. He turned […]
Posted inHealth, News, Politics and Government
Colorado’s governor funds new programs to add more youth psychiatric beds amid mental health crisis
Colorado’s youth mental health crisis has reached worst-yet status, as evidenced by recent outcries from the health care, child welfare and juvenile corrections systems. A recap of the just the past few months: Nearly every district attorney in the state signed a letter saying there are no beds for kids in distress who’ve been arrested […]
Posted inCrime and Courts, Equity, Health, News
Colorado begins to reckon with racial bias in child welfare, where Black kids are way overrepresented
Black children are involved in Colorado’s child welfare system at rates far higher than all other kids, a disparity that has state officials reexamining decades-old policies that have contributed to racial bias. The overrepresentation exists in all levels of the child protection system — from the number of calls to the statewide child abuse hotline […]
Posted inCrime and Courts, Health, News
Charges against 2 Colorado women accused of killing their newborns point to need for more awareness of Safe Haven law
The recent arrest of a young Highlands Ranch woman whose dead newborn baby was found hidden in her home — the second newborn murder case in Colorado in the past four months — underscores the reasons behind Colorado’s rarely used “Safe Haven” law. The law, passed in 2000 after similar cases involving young mothers, allows […]