Colorado task force’s solution to stop children from running from residential treatment: Fence ‘em in & lock ‘em up!

 

When NCCPR released a comprehensive report on Colorado “child welfare” in September 2023, we included a section called “Tapeworm in the System.”  It’s about Colorado’s love affair with the worst form of “care” for children – group homes and institutions.  At the time, we noted that, as of 2021, Colorado was using them at a rate 33% above the national average.  By 2022, use of group homes had fallen, but Colorado was using the worst of the worst, institutions at a rate 40% above the national average.

We wrote this about a “task force” the legislature created, overseen by the state's child welfare "ombudsman," to spend two years

determining “the root causes of why children run away from out-of-home placements” and figure out how to stop them from running.

Allow us to save the state a little money and a lot of time: Children run away from out-of-home placements because they are in out-of-home placements. You stop children from running away from awful places by not putting them in awful places.

Alas, the “task force” did not take us up on this offer.

Ignoring lived experience

They did, however, meet with adults who, as children, had run away from placements.  According to the task force report:

All the panelists … recalled their desire to return to their home of origin and/or parents, regardless of circumstances

They also commissioned a study which found that

Youth stated that they feel disconnected from family, friends and experiences while they are in residential care. They stated a strong desire to remain connected to family and friends and to remain connected to familiar environments or places. This desire to feel connected is often a reason for running away from care.

But these young people were ignored. The task force report says nothing – nothing – about reducing the “need” for residential treatment, shortening time in care or even increasing “connectedness” for the inmates residents.

Instead, recommendations include this:

[M]embers agreed that residential facilities should not resemble jails or prisons and should remain inviting for children or youth. … However, the task force also noted that perimeter security is essential for keeping dangers out. There was unanimous agreement that fencing could be an effective method for preventing children and youth from running away from care.

Presumably, they mean inviting fences – painted in pretty colors perhaps?

If you’re wondering why fencing also might be “needed” to “keep dangers out” – it illustrates another reason why residential treatment is so harmful.  When you bring a lot of troubled, vulnerable children into one institution it becomes a magnet for predators – because predators go where the prey is.

The task force also called for a study of

the use of delayed locks, fencing and alarms. Funding should also be provided for the implementation of these mechanisms, if the study finds their use to be appropriate.

The alarms they have in mind include “motion sensing alarms” for when children leave their rooms at night.  According to the report: “This was also presented as a way to support facilities working with minimal staff.”

The report notes that these recommendations are not meant to apply to family foster homes – not because the idea of fencing a foster home necessarily appalled them, but because of

the diverse needs of children and youth in foster home placements and the large volume of foster homes located throughout the state.

The false premise at the heart of it all

Part of the problem is that the task force started with a fundamentally false premise. The report claims that

Colorado’s state-licensed residential treatment facilities provide critically important services to some of the state’s most high needs children and youth, including those with severe behavioral health needs.

That is not true. 

On the contrary, as a U.S. Senate Committee report points out:

[Residential treatment facilities] are costly, not as effective as community-based behavioral health treatment options, and often harmful to youth in their care.

The report added:

The risk of harm to children in RTFs is endemic to the operating model.

There is much more documentation concerning why residential treatment is worthless, how there are alternatives that are far better and far less costly, and why the usual excuses for using group homes and institutions don’t hold up to scrutiny in the Colorado report excerpt below.

Stacking the deck from the start

The reason the task force ignored all this evidence – and the young people whose time they wasted – is clear when you look at the makeup of the task force; who was on it, and who wasn’t. That, too, is discussed below. Suffice it to say that Colorado’s residential treatment task force was like a task force to study climate change that included no environmentalists but lots of representatives of the fossil fuel industry.

Worst of all, the task force exploited two of the members, parents of two children who died after
running away from such places. Of course, a parent whose child ran from an institution and died would want a fence. But surely even more they would want the kind of help that would have made it unnecessary for their children ever to be institutionalized in the first place.*

And on that score, if anything, NCCPR’s 2023 prediction about the task force was too optimistic. We wrote:

The residential treatment industry will make sure that when the task force issues its report it will include claims that the industry is all for Wraparound and they love foster families and they really, truly want to keep children in their own homes “whenever possible.” They’ll say they just want a “full continuum of care.”

But what stands in the way of a full continuum of care is – the residential treatment industry. 

We were wrong. Apparently, the residential treatment industry is so confident that Colorado lawmakers and media will buy anything they sell that they don’t even have to pretend to support alternatives. The word “wraparound” does not appear in the task force report even once.

Two bills

So far, the Colorado Legislature has not gone as far as the Task Force. But there is a bill “sailing through the legislature” to build a fence around a new residential treatment facility scheduled to open in Denver next year. In other words, a plan to make a facility the state doesn’t need in the first place even worse. It requires legislation because under current law you can’t force youth to be institutionalized behind a fence if they haven’t committed a crime.

Another bill, (also "sailing through the legislature) based on another task force recommendation, calls for creation of a standard pre-admission “risk assessment tool” to predict how likely it is that a given child will run. 

And then what?  The task force says a consultant should draw up the tool and determine “how the information obtained from the tools may be used to adjust a treatment plan for the child or youth while they are in out-of-home care.” 

And what, exactly, does that mean? Even more restrictions, more onerous “treatment” for any child the assessment tool thinks might run away?

The report makes no mention of the fact that, in other child welfare contexts, such tools have an ugly history of bias.  According to the report “several members cautioned” that objective criteria are necessary and that the assessment of risk can vary “depending on the professional performing the assessment” but there was no mention here of racial bias – something that might have come up had the task force itself been a bit more diverse.

And, what happens if, despite the assessment tool, and the alarms, and the fencing, children still run away? The task force has an answer: Create a whole new type of institution just for them! Or at least a whole new name: “Short-term stabilization units.”

In short, the Task Force did exactly what we thought it would do: pander to the residential treatment industry at the expense of the children. They’re feeding the tapeworm in the system  Because, remember …

 *-The institutions serve two populations, foster children taken from their own parents by force of law, and children placed voluntarily by desperate parents unable to cope, and who have no other option. 

Colorado shows how to get a task force on mandatory child abuse reporting – less wrong

The Colorado State Capitol

 In a surprising interim report, the task force says step one is narrowing definitions of abuse and neglect so they’re not conflated with poverty.

 

 The Task Force has agreed that it must first address Colorado’s current definition of child abuse and neglect. … Colorado’s current definition of abuse and neglect is too broad and conflates several circumstances – such as poverty – with child abuse. Without first addressing the definition of abuse and neglect, the Task Force cannot meaningfully recommend changes to the current mandatory reporting system or law.

--Interim Report of the Colorado Mandatory Reporting Task Force

 All over the country, there’s a knee-jerk response to a horror story that in any way may have involved a failure by someone to report child abuse: The state legislature rushes to expand which professionals are forced to report any suspicion of “child abuse” or “neglect.” (Except, of course, in the 18 states where these laws already apply to everyone.  In those states all lawmakers can do is further expand what must be reported.) 

As the research summarized in NCCPR’s new Issue Paper makes clear, this has backfired – creating a massive child welfare surveillance state that scares families away from seeking help, overloads the system with false reports, trivial cases and poverty cases, and leaves workers even less time to find the few children in real danger.  In other words, mandatory reporting makes all children less safe. 

When legislatures don’t actually expand mandatory reporting themselves, they create a committee/task force/commission or maybe even a blue ribbon commission to tell them how to do it.  The committee/task force/commission spends a year or two on a report that does just that. 

That was the original plan in Massachusetts.  The state’s most fanatical advocate for a take-the-child-and-run approach, state “Child Advocate” Maria Mossaides, was named to chair a commission on mandatory reporting.  She led the commission by the nose, let them hear only what she wanted them to hear, until, finally, she had to hold a public hearing.  Almost every witness told the Commission it was on the wrong track, and should recommend curbing or abolishing mandatory reporting instead of expanding it.  Having finally heard what Mossaides didn’t want them to hear, Commission members said they were “shocked” “surprised” and “taken aback.”  They wound up recommending nothing. 

Then it was Colorado’s turn.  It seems everyone in Colorado learned from Massachusetts’ mistakes – but no one learned quite enough. 

First, the good news 

The learning curve begins with the Colorado Legislature, which included in its charge to the Colorado Mandated Reporter Task Force a requirement to examine how implicit bias in mandatory reporting disproportionately affects families of color, people with disabilities and under-resourced communities. 

It continued with the chair of the Colorado Task Force, Mossaides’ Colorado counterpart, Stephane Villafuerte, the state’s “Child Protection Ombudsman.”  I’ve been quite critical of Villafuerte in the past, both concerning a different task force she chairs, on residential treatment, and her office’s previous work concerning mandatory reporting.  But this time, to her credit, she exposed the commission members to a full range of viewpoints. 

Yes, they heard from the usual suspects, such as Casey Family Programs and Colorado’s own Kempe Center.  But they also heard from Jerry Milner, once the federal government’s highest-ranking official overseeing child welfare, now co-founder of the Family Justice Group, and someone who has emerged as a leading opponent of the vast overreach of the current system.  They also heard from Prof. Kelley Fong, whose landmark book Investigating Families has quickly emerged as the gold standard for research in this field. 

Given that the Task Force heard from the full range of viewpoints, it shouldn’t have been a shock when
the Task Force concluded it would be a terrible idea to expand who must report and when they must report it until the Legislature first narrows down what it is they should report.  So the Task Force is actually going to put the horse before the cart and first address how to do that.  As the interim report explains: 

Colorado’s current definition of abuse and neglect is too broad and conflates several circumstances – such as poverty – with child abuse. This effectively requires mandatory reporters to report circumstances that may not involve the safety or well-being of children.

The Task Force also will be looking into two other areas that have the potential to lead to constructive recommendations: 

The development of warmlines and alternative reporting methods. 

This could be useful if these alternatives lead to places in no way connected with family police agencies, and if any mandated reporter who takes advantage of these alternatives is immune from any penalty for “failure to report.” (In other words, if these alternatives provide an off-ramp from the mandatory reporting expressway.) 

Consideration of possible exemptions for professionals working with legal representation teams and/or victims of domestic violence or sexual violence. 

Survivors of domestic violence are among those most adversely affected by mandatory reporting. Some survivors, usually mothers, are scared away from leaving their abusers for fear that their children will be taken away because they “failed to protect” the children from seeing them being beaten.  Yes, that really happens. 

And, obviously, the effectiveness of a social worker working with a family defense attorney to, say, craft an alternative to the cookie-cutter “service plans” typically issued by family police agencies is limited if they are, themselves, mandatory reporters. 

Now the bad news 

When it comes to mandatory reporting nibbling around the edges isn’t going to accomplish much.  Narrowing definitions is a good idea, but mandatory reporters are still going to be afraid not to report.  Exempting some professionals will still leave most professionals required to report and afraid to do anything else. 

When it comes to mandatory reporting, the most meaningful solution, by far, is to abolish it.  Abolishing mandatory reporting does not mean abolishing reporting; it would simply free professionals to exercise their professional judgment – and send a vital message that every family problem is not a family policing problem.  

Although the Colorado Legislature clearly didn’t contemplate this, the Task Force is free to give lawmakers whatever advice it pleases.  But, while not nearly as bad as Mossaides, Villafuerte appears to have foreclosed this option. 

The Legislature also appeared obsessed with promoting the least helpful solution of all – that all-purpose family policing establishment cop-out: more “training.”  But even if a few hours of “training” could magically cure a lifetime of biases, it still wouldn’t solve the problem of mandated reporters being afraid not to report.  

But at least the Colorado Task Force might get some people to think twice about mandatory reporting.  In most states, they’re not even thinking once.

For more on mandatory reporting in general, and the Colorado Task Force in particular, see this excellent story.

NCCPR releases report on Colorado “child welfare”

Read the report here.

          Colorado takes children from their parents at a rate 30% above the national average – and some counties have rates of child removal that are even worse, according to a report released today by a national child advocacy organization.

Colorado also uses what experts consider the worst form of substitute care – group homes and institutions – at a rate 33% above the national average, while using the least harmful form of foster care, kinship foster care, at a rate 30% below the national average, according to the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

NCCPR found that Colorado counties take away Hispanic children at a rate 20% above their rate in the state child population.  They take Native American children at a rate 50% above their rate in the general population (a figure that can vary from year to year due to the relatively low number of Native American children in Colorado.) And they take away Black children at a rate nearly triple their rate in the state child population.

In addition to the report, NCCPR released a Colorado Rate-of-Removal Index comparing the propensity of Colorado’s largest counties to take away children.

“The name Colorado uses for its child welfare database is sadly appropriate for the system itself,” said NCCPR Executive Director Richard Wexler.  “When it comes to child welfare, Colorado trails.”

Wexler was joined by Maleeka Jihad, founder of Colorado’s leading family advocacy organization, the MJCF Coalition.

Read the full report, executive summary, press release, Ms. Jihad’s statement, and the Rate-of-Removal Index here.

Two almost identical “child welfare” cases. Same state. One mother’s treatment is “respectful and understanding” the other is arrested, hogtied and jailed. You’ll never guess the difference. (OK, you probably will.)

Geographically, Castle Rock and Aurora are less than 30 miles away.
But when it comes to what happens to those investigated for "child neglect"
they can be worlds apart.

All over the country, there are efforts to pass what should be called “right to childhood laws” – that is, very good laws specifying that, no, it is not “neglect” if you use your common sense to decide when your child is old enough play by himself in a playground, or walk to or from school by herself, or watch younger siblings while you work late on evening, etc. – in other words, all the things children did routinely before the days of fearmongering, helicopter parenting and endless messages to call child protective services about anything and everything. 

In Colorado, news accounts have focused on the story of Brinley Sheffield, who took a solo run around her neighborhood in the affluent community of Castle Rock when she was seven years old.  She’d previously run the same route with her mother, Christa. Brinley did have a scary experience -- she thought she was being followed.  And she was.  But not by a kidnapper.  She was being tailed by a local busybody who was apparently horrified by the sight of a child getting some exercise in the neighborhood, and then walking into her own home – by herself!!! 

But that was only the first scare for Brinley.  The busybody, no doubt proud to be performing her civic duty, called the police.  That, of course, was even scarier.  The prospect of being under police investigation is enough to scare any seven-year-old – and to make any parent second-guess her or his every move.   Both are inherently harmful to children.  As Brinley said: “I started to cry because I was scared. I thought I was going to get in big trouble.” 

But that is as bad as it got. 

Christa Sheffield said the police officer was “respectful and understanding.”  So the case was closed – in fact, no case was ever even opened. 

Meanwhile, in Aurora… 

Now, let's go less than 30 miles north of Castle Rock, to Aurora.  Vanessa Peoples was at a family gathering in a park when her two-year-old son wandered away.  He was gone for all of a minute, but by then another woman and found him – and called the police. 

One month later, police entered Peoples’ home – guns drawn – along with child protective services caseworkers.  As family defense attorney Diane Redleaf writes in Reason magazine, (I’ll link to it below) by the time they were done 

police had hauled Peoples out of her home and hog-tied her: wrists handcuffed behind her back and tied to her legs, which were in shackles.  “You know how you tie a pig upside down and his feet are hanging from the stick?” Peoples tells Reason. “That’s how they carried me.” 

But you don’t have to take Ms. Peoples’ word for it.  Watch the bodycam footage – but don’t watch it quite yet, since it might prompt you to jump to a conclusion that some of America’s leading child welfare “scholars” want you to know couldn’t possibly correct. 

It concerns what could possibly account for why these two families, living in towns less than 30 miles apart in the same state facing remarkably similar allegations, were treated so differently. 

Because, you see, if you do look at the photo of Brinley Sheffield and her mother in one of the news stories, and then if you watch the bodycam footage in the Reason story about Ms. Peoples, (OK, you can look now) you might be tempted to conclude that there is racial bias in child welfare. 

But of course, that can’t possibly be.  Notwithstanding cases such as these, and notwithstanding a wealth of data, we have been assured by everyone from Emily Putnam-Hornstein, America’s foremost evangelist for using “predictive analytics” – or, as it should be called, computerized racial profiling -- in child welfare, to Dean Richard Barth of the University of Maryland School of Social Work, that child welfare practitioners are so vastly superior to their counterparts in every other walk of life that they have eradicated racial bias in their field. 

So I guess we’ll never know why Christa Sheffield and Vanessa Peoples were treated so differently.