2013 Legislation Impacting Colorado’s At-risk, Abused and Neglected Children
During the 2012/2013 legislative session TCC Office of Strategic Initiatives monitored 66 bills and supporting 15 bills during the 2013 legislative session because these policy improvements help strengthen families and support child well-being in Colorado, particularly at-risk, abused and neglected children. Thankfully, all 15 prioritity bills passed and have been signed into law by Governor Hickenlooper.
Below are a few important improvements for Colorado's most vulnerable children, click on the links below to read news coverage on the issues, bill summaries, and see how your elected officials voted!
The Federal Foster Care Program is authorized by title IV-E of the Social Security Act Title IV-E and funds are available to states to support primarily out of home foster care placements. The Child Welfare Waiver Demonstration authority provides states with an opportunity to use federal funds more flexibly in order to test innovative approaches to child welfare service delivery and financing. Using this option, states can design and demonstrate a wide range of approaches to reforming child welfare and improving outcomes in the areas of safety, permanency, and well-being. In September 2011, President Obama signed into law new federal legislation, H.R. 2883, the "Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act." Among other changes, H.R. 2883 authorized the Secretary of Health and Human Services to approve up to ten new child welfare demonstration projects per year, for Federal Fiscal Years 2012-2014, not to last more than five years. In October 2012, Colorado was among the ten states awarded a Title IV-E Demonstration Waiver.
This bill creates the Title IV-E waiver demonstration project in CHDS, authorizes the department to enter into performance agreements with individual counties or groups of counties for the purpose of the project, and creates the Title IV-E waiver demonstration project cash fund for allocation to counties to help defray the costs of performing functions as defined in the performance agreements. The state board of human services is authorized to promulgate rules for the implementation of the project and is required to submit a report on the outcomes of the project annually.
Goals of the Colorado Title IV-E Waiver are:
- Increased permanency for infants, children and youth by:
- reducing time in foster placements, and
- promoting successful transition to adulthood for older youth
- Increase positive outcomes for infants, children, youth, and families in their homes and communities, including tribal communities, and improve the safety and well-being of infants, children and youth
- Prevent child abuse and neglect and the re-entry of infants, children and youth into foster care
Through evidence-based interventions and fidelity to the models, the Title IV-E Waiver seeks to:
- Decrease lengths of stay for:
- children and youth in care twelve months or longer and
- youth 16 years and older (initially) with a permanency goal of Other Planned Permanent Living Arrangement (OPPLA)
- Decrease the use of congregate care
- Increase the appropriate use of trauma-informed assessments and trauma-informed treatment throughout Colorado
- Decrease over-reliance on psychotropic medications for children and youth in out-of-home care
- Decrease the large number of short-term placements with front-end loading of services and supports
- Increase stability in out-of-home care, thereby reducing the number of moves while in care
- Reduce the number of entries and re-entries into out-of-home care
Regular updates regarding the IV- E Waiver will appear on the CDHS webpage.
In 2012, authorities received 81,734 referrals or "reports" of suspected abuse or neglect in Colorado, 57.8% of referrals were screened out, while social services assessed the safety of 70,225 children in Colorado. This bill authorized the creation of a child abuse reporting hotline system in Colorado that provides a uniform method of contact to report a possible child abuse or neglect. The hotline system will be developed through a statewide child abuse hotline steering committee that includes state, county, and comprehensive and appropriate stakeholder representation. The steering committee will develop an implementation plan for the hotline system to be advertised to the public and to make recommendations for rules relating to the hotline system and providing consistent practices in response to reports and inquiries. The steering committee shall submit a report no later than July 1, 2014 and the hotline system shall be operational and publicized to the public statewide no later than January 1, 2015.
In 2011, The United States Government Accountability Office issued a report on child abuse and neglect deaths estimating child abuse and neglect related fatalities were undercounted by 55 to 76 percent. Colorado is proactively addressing this issue by significantly strengthening the state review process of all child fatalities and requiring local public health agencies to establish or designate a local child fatality a prevention review team no later than January 1, 2015 to help develop prevention strategies. Subject to adequate funding, the local review teams, under the supervision of the Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), are required to review fatalities of children up to the age of 17.
The bill tasks the CDPHE state-level child fatality prevention review team with the following duties:
- To conduct an individual case-specific review of every child abuse or neglect fatality in Colorado, if a local or regional review team has not conducted such a review;
- To conduct a review of systemic child welfare issues;
- To utilize a child fatalities data-collection system;
- To collaborate with the Colorado department of human services child fatality review team (CDHS review team) to make joint recommendations for the prevention of child abuse and neglect fatalities;
- To work directly with professionals who have information regarding the cause or circumstances leading to a child's fatality;
- To administer moneys to county and district public health agencies to support local and regional review teams;
- To provide training and technical assistance to local and regional review teams regarding the facilitation of a child fatality review process, data collection, evidence-based prevention strategies, and the development of prevention recommendations, as well as strategies for convening a local or regional review team, establishing methods of notification after a child fatality, and strategies to address conflicts of interest; and
- To provide an annual data report to local and regional review teams.
Unfortunately children in out of home care are at a higher risk of being a victim of identity theft. Confidential information such as Social Security Numbers, Dates of Birth, and other private information can be easily accessed by multiple agencies and staff within those agencies. Youth in out of home care are also at risk of having their identity stolen by friends, family members, and other adults in their lives, even caregivers. In order to protect our nation's most vulnerable youth, Congress passed the Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act of 2011, which–in part–provides for all youth in foster care age 16 or older to receive a copy of their credit report annually, and requires that Departments of Social Services help these youth to interpret and resolve any inaccuracies in their report. Colorado had already taken a proactive approach to this growing national problem by enacting the Protections for Youth in Foster Care Act enacted in 2011 (Senate Bill 120), a bill that provided children in foster care in Colorado with the necessary tools to prevent identity theft. This bill codified the federal law at the state level, amending Protections for Youth in Foster Care Act by
- Removing the exclusion of youth who are in the custody of the division of youth corrections or a state mental hospital;
- Expanding the ages of the youth covered to any youth who is 16 years of age or older and in foster care; and
- Requiring the department of human services to obtain annual credit reports rather than a single report.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation recently issued a new guide on “Protecting the Credit of Youth in Foster Care” for young people, social service agencies, foster families, and anyone else serving or mentoring foster youth as they transition to adulthood.
The bill adds directors, coaches, assistant coaches, and athletic program personnel for private sports programs or organizations to the list of persons required to report suspected child abuse or neglect (also known as mandatory reporters) to the county or district department of social services or local law enforcement agency.
The bill adds emergency medical service providers to the list of persons who are required to report possible instances of child abuse or neglect.
This bill moved and aligned services and programs of early childhood programs in Colorado under the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) in an effort to advance and improve early childhood supports and services, particularly for Colorado’s at-risk children and their families. This past December, Colorado was awarded a $29.9 million Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Fund grant. The grant will fund work to ensure more Colorado children, especially those most at-risk, are ready for school. Last Fall more than 65,000 Colorado children started their first day of kindergarten, at least 16,000 children arrived in classrooms unprepared to keep pace with their peers. Alignment of early childhood programs will promote collaboration and coordination between the state-level early childhood system and local delivery systems. Additionally, the bill reauthorized and moves the Early Childhood Leadership Commission from the Lt. Governor’s Office to CDHS. Lastly, this bill aligns primary child abuse prevention services and programs with family intervention and child protective services by moving the following programs from the Department of Public Health and Environment to CDHS:
- Tony Grampsas Youth Services;
- The Nurse Home Visitor Program;
- Family Resource Center Program;
- Colorado Children's Trust Fund and its Board; and
- Maternal Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting Program.
The Early Childhood Colorado Framework represents Colorado's vision for a system of partners and efforts that will lead to all Colorado children being valued, healthy, and thriving. You can learn more about early childhood programs and read the Early Childhood Leadership Commission 2013 Annual Report on the Early Childhood Colorado Information Clearinghouse at earlychildhoodcolorado.org
The Tony Grampsas youth services program was established in 1994 to provide statewide funding forcommunity-based programs that target youth and their families to reduce incidents of youth crime and violence, as well as reduce the occurrence and reoccurrence of child abuse and neglect andto reduce the need for state intervention in those cases. This bill directs the State Department, in collaboration with the Tony Grampsas youth services board, to convene a group of interested parties to create a statewide youth development plan and a baseline measurement of youth activities, based on available data and resources. More information can be found at www.tgys.org or the partner collaboration site VIPrevention Network: Colorado's Violence and Injury Prevention Network.
The bill creates the "Breakfast After the Bell Nutrition Program" that requires every school with 70% or more students eligible for free or reduced-cost lunch to offer a free breakfast to each student in the school. More than 360 Colorado schools fall into this category, giving more than 80,000 additional children access to a daily breakfast. The federal government will reimburse schools for the cost of the program, bringing an estimated $22.9 million in additional revenue into the state.
Prior to enactment of this law, a child was only eligible for children's basic health plan (CHP+) benefits if he or she had not been on a comparable health plan with an employer paying at least 50% of the cost for at least 3 months. This bill eliminated this waiting period, allowing parents to access health care coverage for a child immediately.
The Colorado Children’s Caucus began in 2012 to provide a forum for all members of the Colorado General Assembly to discuss the challenges facing Colorado youth and to work together to develop policy recommendations to strengthen families and improve the lives of children. The Children’s Caucus intends to make children a nonpartisan priority by discussing issues impacting every child in the state of Colorado in the hopes of strengthening families and supporting healthy communities. The Tennyson Center for Children Office of Strategic Initiatives is proud to staff the work of the Colorado Children's Caucus. View all 106 bills introduced during the 2012/2013 legislative session that affected all Colorado children and families in Colorado on the Colorado Children's Caucus webpage.