DENVER—Gov. Bill Ritter signed an executive order Wednesday creating a committee to recommend changes in the child welfare system, calling the deaths of 13 children last year who had been involved in the system “an outrage.”
Ritter also said money from youth corrections programs would be shifted beginning next month to provide training for current and new social workers.
The announcement followed an investigation that determined training for social workers was inadequate and communications problems occur between county social workers and the state human services department.
“Thirteen deaths, in our minds, is an outrage,” Ritter said, flanked by lawmakers and state officials at a news conference.
The child deaths that were the focus of the state investigation were among 41 who died in suspected child abuse cases in 2007. The 13 deaths were singled out for additional study because their families had previous contact with social workers in the last five years; the others had not.
Ritter said Coloradans should be “upset and angry” that social workers haven’t received the necessary training, that warning signs were missed that might have saved lives and that previous audits haven’t improved the system.
Still, he said he could not point to one person to blame for the lapses and formed the committee to recommend changes in the overall system. One option would be to dismantle the county-based welfare system and assign more authority to the state department. Only 12 other states use a system similar to the one in Colorado.
The 25-member committee is expected to make initial recommendations by Oct. 31, which lawmakers could act on during the next session if they require statute changes. Final recommendations are due by Dec. 31, 2009. The committee will include the heads of the human services, public health and health care policy departments as well as county commissioners and social service representatives, educators and families who have been involved in the system.
Its work will cost about $550,000 over two fiscal years, and will make its first round of recommendations by the fall which the Legislature could act on next session.
Ritter said the committee would be focused on concrete changes, not just studying the problem, and emphasized that the state is making some immediate changes, like the added training.
Starting in the new fiscal year in July, he also said the state will spend $475,000 to hire six more workers to oversee children living with foster parents or with relatives after being taken from their homes by social workers. Currently there is only one person assigned to that work. The decision to add that to the budget was made before the study.
Ritter asked the committee to look whether government should require social workers and supervisors to be certified and the possibility of establishing a state training academy.
Funding is one factor in changing the system, and Ritter acknowledged that budget cuts have slowed previous reform efforts.
The administration of his predecessor, Gov. Bill Owens, had begun to make recommendations to change the system but that ended because of budget cuts required following the 2001 recession.
State funding for training was cut about a third during that downturn and hasn’t been restored, state human services executive director Karen Beye said.
Rep. Debbie Stafford, D-Aurora, said she will introduce a bill to provide funding for the committee, which will look at how other states handle child welfare. The state will also seek an extra $400,000 from charities to fund the committee.
It is not clear how many county workers will be included in the new round of training because counties do not have to tell the state who has been trained and who may need training, Beye said.
Fifty-eight of the 64 counties have plans to hire a total of 67 new workers who would receive training at a cost of about $200,000, with half expected from the federal government.
