A Colorado legislator wants to overhaul the child protection system by requiring the agencies involved to coordinate and consolidate resources.
Rep. Lauri Clapp, a Republican who chairs the House committee overseeing Colorado social services, has introduced legislation requiring agreements among county child protection, health, education, judicial and mental health agencies that protect abused children.
Her bill also would permit any savings achieved by coordinating services to be used to help additional children.
“I really believe child welfare in this state is in need of an overhaul,” Clapp said Friday, “and this bill brings more accountability and better outcomes for children.”
Clapp said she began working on the bill long before The Denver Post published a three-part series last week on child abuse fatalities.
But she said her bill would address one of the important issues raised by the stories: accountability.
“It will be much more difficult to be able to hide anything. You’ll have too many eyes looking at any child. That is the piece that brings accountability to the table,” she said.
The Post reported that at least 107 children died of abuse or neglect during the past decade despite prior calls to child welfare agencies, that a state review system had not disclosed many of these cases and that perpetrators often get short prison sentences or probation.
Clapp said her bill would improve services to abused children and accountability of government agencies by requiring local oversight groups. These groups would function like umbrella agencies and would be required to “eliminate duplication and fragmentation of services” to families in the child welfare system.
The bill would require the most populous Colorado counties to begin setting up a multi-agency approach to serving abused children by 2005, and other counties in 2006.
Clapp described the bill, which has 15 House and two Senate co-sponsors, as a bipartisan effort to protect Colorado children. Currently, “there is a lot of duplication that is really not in the best interest of the child,” she said.
Roxane White, the manager of Denver’s human services department, said her department is still analyzing the bill and has not decided whether to support or oppose it.
She said the proposal is drawing mixed reviews from agencies in other counties that investigate child abuse and neglect complaints and provide services to children at risk.
Coordinating services among judicial, school, mental health and child protection agencies is a good concept, “as long as our motivation is not about cutting costs,” she said. “Some counties feel this is a cost-cutting measure.”
