Westword July 29, 2010 : Page 16
Child Welfare continued from page 15 Clark. “If [an El Paso County] caseworker gets a name, they’ll know it. Ifsomeone in Denver gets that name, they won’t know it, and more kids will fall through the cracks.” The counties also criticized the rec-ommendation as last-minute and said the committee, which included county leaders, hadn’t vetted it properly or calculated its cost. “There was never any justifi cation that came out of the Child Welfare Action Committee as to why such a radical change…should oc-cur,” says Arapahoe County Commissioner Susan Beckman. Despite having called the plan “exactly the kinds of things weput this committee in place to do,” Ritter backed off. He promised to move forward with 27 of the recommen-dations, but to study that one, along with a similarly controversial idea for a centralized call center that would receive all reports of abuse and neglect throughout Colorado. He pledged to investigate the issues for a year, with county input. But for the next several months, Ritter focused instead on pushing for legislation related to other recommendations. This year, lawmakers created a statewide child protec-tion ombudsman offi ce and passed a law to speed up the transfer of child-welfare cases from county to county in cases in which a family moves. They also passed a law that requires social workers to provide feedback about a child’s abuse or neglect case to the person who originally reported it — often that child’s teacher, doctor or neighbor. (Last month, a subcommittee assigned to deal with the intersection of child abuse, mental health, domestic violence and substance abuse sub-mitted to the governor six more recommen-dations dealing with those topics. All six are reportedly moving forward.) While child advocates were happy with the new laws, many were left wondering if the recommendation to restructure the entire system was dead — a possibility that worried them. “It’s a political battle,” says Shari Shink, founder and president of the Denver-based Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center, who served on the committee and was also a strong proponent of the ombudsman office. “The fear it generated, the outrage it generated, was all based on this notion of ‘We like it the way it is; don’t interfere.’ And it’snot working the way it is. It’snot working for children. It’s not working for families.” In fact, more children died in 2009 than in 2007. While Ritter called the 2007 deaths “outrageous,” eleven more children died in 2008. In 2009, that number jumped to fifteen. Nonumbers are available yet for 2010. In May,Ritter appointed another twenty-member committee called the Governor’s Working Group on the Structure of Colorado’s Human Services System and the Centralized Call Center for Child Abuse and Neglect Referrals. Its goal is to determine the fate of the two controversial recommendations. Its deadline: September 30, 2010. The group was given just four months Shari Shink of the Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center. Track Stars! Our champs won the International Rail Team of the Year. These employees represent the best operators and mechanics in the RTD system. (L to R) Robert Dennis, George Sweeney, Randy Lovegrove Way To Go RTD-Denver.com • 303.299.6000 16 to vet the proposals, partly because Rit-ter’s term ends in January and he’s not running for reelection. “We want to give folks enough time to look and…to analyze and absorb the recommendations with acknowledgement to the fact that the ad-ministration will be leaving office,” says Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer. Though it was formed in May,the group, chaired byColorado Department of Human Services director Karen Beye,didn’t meet for the fi rst time until June 17. That day, the mem-bers decided to table the recommendation to overhaul the structure of the entire state system and to focus solely on determining the viability of a centralized call center. “It just felt like it was overwhelming,” says Skip Barber, the director of the Colorado As-sociation of Family and Children’s Agencies in Denver and a member of both committees. “We havea three-month turnaround. Wede-cided there was no way wecould deal with the administrative structure when we’d gotten that [negative] feedback from the counties.” Itwas the outcome the counties had been hoping for. “The worst thing that could hap-pen out of this group is, once again, you have recommendations that aren’t vetted,” says Beckman, a member of both committees and the chairwoman of the Health and Human Services Steering Committee of Colorado Counties Inc., a nonprofi t membership as-sociation for county leaders that weighs in on state policy. “Nosystem is perfect. But if you moveto another system with more problems, you’ve done harm.” Beye declined to comment, and DHS JULY29-AUGUST4, 2010 WESTWORD | BACKBEAT | CAFE | ART | THEATER | MOVIES | NIGHT+DAY | CITY LIMITS | OFF LIMITS | ¡ASK A MEXICAN! | LETTERS | CONTENTS | WORST-CASE SCENARIO | westword.com MARK MANGER
Publication List
