“I’m alone,” says a blue sticky.

“No place to live after foster care,” says another.

“Split up,” says a green one.

“Lots of support until 18 and then none.”

They are the responses of former and current foster kids asked to write down the one thing they most want to change about the foster care system in Colorado. The young people who organized the activity call it the “Burning Wall,” and they spent months during the last year on a “listening tour” to group homes, youth homeless shelters and life skills programs to connect with other foster kids.

They are a group of teens and 20-somethings intent on improving Colorado law to help the thousands of children who enter the child welfare system each year.

“Whether we know it or not, our voice is powerful,” said Jayneanne Finch, lead organizer of Project Foster Power, which was initiated by “If we don’t continue to fight the good fight and show up for each other, change will never happen.”

In its first year, the group is focused on its “Youth Voice, Youth Choice” campaign, a plan to raise awareness that has included a rally on the state Capitol steps and the gathering of more than 100 letters written by current and former foster youths. The letters — which begin “Dear Adult” and address a time the author “was not heard” and “how that hurt” — will go on display at various public venues across Colorado, including public libraries, county buildings and art galleries.

In future years, Project Foster Power plans to choose one key issue and fight for policy change, using a model from the national  network. The front-runners, based on the hundreds of sticky notes collected over the past year, are improving the transition to adulthood for youths who age out of foster care without a family, making it easier for foster teens, like typical high-schoolers, to get their driver’s licenses and strengthening the rights of foster kids to keep in contact with their siblings.

A lost brother

For Dominique Mallard, one of Project Foster Power’s seven core organizers, the issue of sibling connection is what fuels her perseverance and, also, her pain.

She has written to every state senator and representative in Colorado in her personal fight to pass what she is calling the “Sibling Rights Act.” Only one out of the 100 lawmakers wrote her back, she said.

Dominique was 16 and her little brother, Rickey, was 4 the day they entered foster care, the result of growing up in a home of drug abuse and violence. She hasn’t seen him since he was 6 years old, or nearly 10 years.

Dominique, now 26, went through 22 foster placements until she emancipated at age 20 and moved into her own apartment. When she last saw Rickey, she was living in a group home and he was with a foster mother who would bring him to visit her. Then, one day,��Dominique called that foster mom and asked whether she could put her little brother on the phone.

“They didn’t tell you?” the woman asked Dominique, the words giving her a chill.

Rickey had moved to a new family that later adopted him, Dominique was told. The adoption was closed, meaning she has never been able to learn where he went. “The family didn’t want anything to do with any of us,” she said.

Dominique’s biggest fear is that Rickey has returned to the foster care system and that he is lonely. “Is he getting good grades? Is he still alive? Would they tell me if he was?” she asked. “The more I think about it, the more I think it kills me. It’s different than losing someone to a death; it’s like he was stolen.”

Dominique kept a bright-red Spider-Man blanket that Rickey wrote his name on soon after he learned how. She wraps herself in it most days and freaked out once when her roommate washed it — she was afraid Rickey’s handwriting would fade.

Each year on his birthday, April 23, she bakes him a cake and forces her friends to sing to a boy who isn’t there. This year, it was chocolate decorated with mini M&M’s.

Dominique, who has wild hair, an endearing gap between her front teeth and a face of freckles, keeps the birthday cards she made him in a box, beginning with the ones she wrote while she was still in foster care and passed along to her court-appointed guardian in the hopes they would reach him. They never did.

Sitting cross-legged on the grass of an Aurora park with Cheetos and a Big Gulp, she explains how she was crushed when Project Foster Power didn’t vote to tackle her “Sibling Rights Act” in its first year, although she understands why. The group first must learn to use its voice and teach other foster youths in Colorado “that if you don’t speak out, no one will ever know,” she said.

Dominique, who lives with a friend in Aurora and works at Big Lots, said she lost her “sense of belonging” the day her caseworker told her to pack her clothes and drove her away from her father and stepmother. “It’s instantly you against the world,” she said. But she’s finding her place in the world again, in part through Project Foster Power.

“Normal” teen experience

When they’re together, no one in the group has to worry about experiencing the uncomfortable moment that has happened to all of them at school or at work — the one where a new friend finds out they were a “foster kid.” The group has more than 100 members, ages 15 to 25, and each them is or was in the foster care system.

“It’s known. We don’t have to explain ourselves,” said Jayneanne, who spent a year and a half in foster care in Boulder County before she aged out at 18. “I feel like I always had to explain myself, even if I didn’t want to.”

It’s an unspoken rule that no one pries — when someone is ready to tell their story, they do. Each meeting begins with the voluntary sharing of personal “highs and lows” and ends with kudos directed at specific members.

A common theme at every place the core organizers visited on their listening tour was normalcy — in other words, finding ways those in foster care could have a typical teenage experience, said Betsy Fordyce, the youth-empowerment program director at Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center.

“Despite our best intentions to help, we can’t possibly know what it is like to be in foster care,” she said. “Project Foster Power isn’t about what the adults think should change; it’s about what those who have lived this system think needs to change. Change will happen when adults learn to listen.”

Among the most frustrating issues for foster teenagers is not being able to get a driver’s license. While it’s not outlawed, often there is no adult in a foster teen’s life willing to take on the liability, or the time and expense involved.

Lead organizer Jayneanne was 18 when she learned to drive, three years later than most of her friends. Her best friend took her driving through their neighborhood at night to help her pass the test.

David Wilson, another of the core organizers, also didn’t learn to drive until 18, when he could sign for himself. He was in foster care from age 1 to 5, when he was adopted by a family that home-schooled him and ended up adopting 12 children over the years. He knows surprisingly little about his background — including why he went into foster care, where his biological parents are and whether he has siblings.

“I didn’t have a voice when I was in the system,” said David, 21, who got his own apartment at 18 and now works at Subway. “Other people made all the choices for me.”

Another complaint that echoed throughout the listening tour was that some foster children have been unable to attend sleepovers or birthday parties without asking the hosts to undergo background checks. In Dominique’s experience, a childhood friendship ends abruptly when a foster mother calls to ask whether the party host will submit their birth date and other personal information.

Since 2014, federal law has required a “reasonable and prudent parent standard” when it comes to slumber parties and other invitations, although foster family and county policies have varied across Colorado.

Foster child bill of rights

For Brianna Lennon, who was in foster care as a toddler because of her mother’s drug use and now has a toddler in foster care for similar reasons, Project Foster Power’s most important role is to teach foster youths and parents about their rights.

The group is rewriting Colorado statute regarding the rights of foster children into “youth-friendly” language, and members want every caseworker in Colorado to receive a copy during training. Most foster children, Brianna said, don’t know their rights, making it difficult for them to advocate for themselves.

Project Foster Power has helped Brianna get her life on track, improved her self-esteem and helped her work toward regaining custody of her 4-year-old girl, who lives with Brianna’s now drug-free mother. “I was really at a breaking point,” Brianna said. “I was about to lose it all. Everything I wanted was gone. I was able to learn a lot, and they really respected me.”

In March, she wrapped her long, black hair in a bun and stood on the Capitol steps with a sign that said “Pass the Mic.” Shoulder to shoulder, the Foster Power friends took turns at the microphone, a not-so-subtle warning to the policymakers inside that they will return, and when they do, they’ll ask for changes in law that could improve foster care for the kids who have entered the system after them.

“Hear me roar,” said one of their signs, “for those who whisper.”

• Serve a meal, teach a youth how to interview for a job, collect items for an apartment kit for a teen who has aged out of foster care: United Way of Metro Denver,
• Become a mentor for foster youth age 12-18 to help them transition to adulthood: The Adoption Exchange,��
• Tutor a foster youth trying for a GED, help with yard work or serve a meal:
• Become a CASA, a court-appointed special advocate for a foster child in your county:
• Help with job training or donate items to
• Become a or a respite foster parent to give full-time foster parents a break: County child welfare departments,
• Support a scholarship program for aged-out foster youths: ,��,  at the Daniels Fund
• Donate to in Boulder, a transitional living program for youths who have aged out, or the coming-soon
• Use the state child welfare division’s online search tool to figure out how best to help local organizations in any Colorado community,

Read The Denver Post’s special report, Aged Out, about foster care in Colorado

The next day, the girl was able to enroll in a Denver preschool and her foster mother received a suitcase filled with clean clothes, pajamas and shoes.

The quick action was thanks to Denver Public Schools’ foster care liaison program, which works to reduce the number of times foster kids have to switch schools — or works, at least, to make the transitions easier.

Of the 6,500 children in Colorado’s foster system last year, 55 percent changed schools at least once during the school year.

School districts are required to have child welfare education liaisons, a point-of-contact between schools and county child welfare departments. Liaisons join a “best interests determination” phone call for each foster child who might transfer into a local school, said Jackie Bell,��manager of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act foster care program at DPS.

Liaisons from the child’s original and current school are invited to the call, as are the biological parents and the child. They discuss attendance, grades, behavior and school activities to determine whether a school transfer makes sense or the youth — despite a new foster placement — should remain at the same school.

In another recent case, an 11th-grader was returning to Denver to live in a group home after spending months with relatives in Kansas in a “kinship” placement. The girl wanted to return to her original school in Denver, but the school’s 11th grade was full. After caseworkers and district liaisons determined that the original school — though 10 miles from her group home — was best for the girl, she was accepted.

Liaisons also can set up free lunch and find the child’s transcripts and proof of address for the school office. A private tab in the district’s computer system includes the child’s foster status but is seen only by staff who work in the district’s federal programs division.

Colorado law created child welfare education liaisons in 2008, years ahead of a similar federal requirement.

But no state policy exists to clarify whether teachers should know whether a child in their classroom is in foster care.

“The confidentiality piece is really something that is going to be interpreted by each district and school,” said Kristin Myers, the state’s  and who works at the Colorado Department of Education.

Typically, the only other school employees aside from the liaison who know a child is in foster care are the school’s social worker and counselor. Teachers find out only if a foster parent wants them to know, either for safety or academic reasons.

Teachers should know, for example, if a biological parent is not allowed to pick up the child from school. Or that the child has already moved twice this year and is behind academically. In some cases, teachers are informed that a child has been abused or neglected because it might affect how they handle behavior problems.

Federal law in 2015 also required states to of foster children as a separate category.

While some states are trying to accomplish that, Colorado was ahead of the pack thanks to a data-sharing agreement that allowed the University of Northern Colorado to track foster kids — tagged in the state data with identification numbers, not names — as the children entered the foster care system and changed placements.

���� that included 7,600 students in Colorado who entered foster care from 2008 to 2014 determined that they already are behind their peers when they are removed from their homes. Each time a student moves to a new foster placement and switches schools, test scores drop — on average, 3.7 percentage points of growth in reading, 3.5 in math and 3 in writing.

The cumulative effect of not making a year’s growth in a year’s time means poor academic outcomes don’t end when foster kids are returned to their parents or are adopted, researcher Elysia Clemens found.

awaiting the governor’s signature also aims to cut down school mobility. The proposal provides dedicated money to pay for transportation to a child’s “school of origin,” no matter if it’s miles away in another county. School districts and child welfare departments are supposed to work together to come up with a plan, whether it’s using an “Uber for kids” service, buying a van, or paying mileage for county employees or foster parents to make the drive.

The bill also requires school districts to accept credits from other schools for foster kids, even when course requirements are not the same. Similar to the intrastate compact for kids whose parents are in the military, it would allow a receiving school to make exceptions for students who don’t have the required years of a foreign language or math to graduate, for example.

And it requires that schools accept a foster kid instantly, instead of delaying admission for weeks while transcripts or other documents are gathered.

In some school districts, a foster child’s court-appointed special advocate, or , will drive the child to school to avoid a school move, said Nancy Stewart, executive director of Denver CASA.

“Staying in the same school,” she said, “helps kids establish trust with teachers, builds their self-esteem and sense of belonging — all important things as the child moves to adulthood and leaving the system.”

After Pennell asked a counselor at Ralston Valley High School what happened to the introverted and studious 16-year-old, he learned something about Emily Murray he hadn’t known all year.

She was a foster kid.

And Emily was headed to another foster placement, in another county, to another high school.

Emily and three other foster teens had just been yanked from the Arvada home of a woman accused of spending her foster stipend on her grandchildren instead of buying the teens enough to eat. The freezer was full of frozen food they weren’t allowed to touch. Emily had depleted her savings from her summer job at the YMCA buying meals, shampoo and other basics,��and she alerted officials about the problems.

No foster homes in Arvada wanted the troubled, depressed girl who had just caused enough of a ruckus to get four kids transferred out of a placement. Her next move would mean her third high school.

But her physics teacher went home and told his wife, an elementary school principal, that the girl needed a home.

“That just seemed like the silliest thing ever to us — why would you have a kiddo who has been through so much have to change schools?” said Jennifer Pennell, the principal at Dutch Creek Elementary in Jefferson County.

The Pennells weren’t certified foster parents, but within about two weeks, Emily was living with them and their 9-year-old daughter, although Emily had to split her time between their house in Golden and a Denver foster home until the Pennells were certified.

That kindness kept Emily at Ralston Valley High, the only place she had ever made friends. She graduated on time a year later, something fewer than one-quarter of foster kids in Colorado manage.

3-1/2 high school moves

The four-year graduation rate for foster kids in Colorado last year — 23 percent — was lower even than among kids who are homeless. And it’s getting worse. It’s now the lowest since 2013, which is as far back as researchers have studied.

Each year, more than 200 foster kids in Colorado exit the system without a home, turned loose to begin life on their own at age 18. For those who do not finish high school, the likelihood of becoming homeless or ending up in jail is even higher — far more likely, in fact, than enrolling in college.

While 70 percent of foster kids in the country say they want to go to college, just 10 percent enroll, according to the . Only about 3 percent of foster youths who “age out” of the foster care system earn a college degree at any point in their lives, reports the

The Colorado Department of Higher Education does not track how many foster kids enter college. But a data-sharing partnership between the state child welfare division and the state education department resulted in so awful that they’re startling.

“When I first looked at it, I thought, ‘This can’t be right,’ ” said Elysia Clemens, the University of Northern Colorado researcher who used the data to track . “It was very disheartening and surprising to see how much we need to do in order to change the odds for these young people.”

Along with the bleak graduation rates, the research revealed:

• Colorado foster kids change high schools an average of 3.5 times over four years. The greatest number of school changes for a single kid was 18.
• Each school move is linked to an 8 percent drop in the likelihood of an on-time graduation.
• By the end of middle school, just 13 percent of students in foster care in Colorado are at grade level in math.

When the results were shared at a table of state child welfare officials and employees, the gathered people were sickened.

“Every single one of us had tears in our eyes,” said Jerene Petersen, then-director of Mile High United Way and now deputy director of community partnerships for the Colorado Department of Human Services. “We think it’s devastating. It’s through no fault of their own. They are not choosing to change schools. They are not choosing to change placements.”

“You pray to find out you are adopted”

This is the extent of what Marcus Pennell knew about Emily in his fourth-period physics class: She was “clean and didn’t swear and had good work habits.” It was more than most people know about foster children before taking them home.

“I remember meeting her, and she was determined to make it to college. She just needed people who have that knowledge base help her, to see her through that,” Jennifer Pennell said.

Emily, whose hair is straight and blond, tends toward serious rather than smiley. She’s the kind of girl, the Pennells learned, who needed time to “process” with them during heavy, late-night conversations after their young daughter had gone to bed. When they took her to buy new clothes to replace her hand-me-downs, Emily meticulously inspected the seams and the stitches.

Emily entered foster care at 14 after years of depression, the result of living in an abusive home, she said. Police, and sometimes child welfare workers, visited their house while she was growing up.

Emily’s older brother lived there, too, but her mother saved all of her rage for Emily. Most of the abuse was psychological, Emily said.

If she didn’t finish her dinner, for example, the same plate of food was returned to her for breakfast. Then for lunch. Then for dinner.

Emily said that the first time she thought about killing herself came at age 10. “You pray to find out you are adopted and your real parents are coming to save you,” she said.

At 14, child welfare caseworkers placed her at Tennyson Center, a Denver residential treatment facility for children who have been abused and have mental health issues. She stayed for six months, doing her high school work online by “sitting in front of a computer screen” for hours each day.

Emily was treated for severe depression, but “no amount of meds was going to fix me at that point,” she said.

At Christmastime that year, she spent a week with family friends interested in becoming her foster family. Emily returned to Tennyson for what she thought was one last night to pack her bags before they picked her up the next day. Instead, she was told they were no longer interested. She was “too distant,” she recalled them saying.

“That really hurt a lot,” Emily said, looking down at her hands.

By the time Emily moved in with the Pennells, she already had decided not “to get attached to anyone else.” It was her sixth placement in two years.

In little more than a year, she would age out of foster care.

“It’s like going to Mars”

At ,��the only Colorado-based organization solely focused on helping aged-out foster kids make it through college, the biggest challenge is finding them.

“The tragedy of the situation is that foster youth are invisible by design when they are in the system, to protect their privacy,” said Julia Goldstein, director of development. “When they leave the system, they become invisible not by design.”

No central agency keeps track of foster kids after they’ve aged out, so Forward Steps works with county child welfare departments and nonprofits to try to catch young people as they are heading out on their own. The organization helps a handful of students each year with $6,000 scholarships for living expenses not covered by federal grants for tuition or vouchers for housing.

This semester, there are seven scholars at schools around Colorado, including at the Community College of Denver. They attend a “college boot camp,” as well as workshops on budgeting and financial aid, and group get-togethers for moral support.

“Just giving them money and telling them to do it doesn’t work. They aren’t ready for that,” Goldstein said.

Even with the support, many drop out. Of the eight students in the program last fall, three did not enroll this semester. Forward Steps is expanding eligibility from age 21 to 26 in the hopes of reaching more students. The organization has plans to provide 20 scholarships next year — more than double its current level but still a tiny fraction of the hundreds of aged-out foster kids who could qualify.

The program’s dropout rates are similar to national statistics showing less than one-quarter of former foster youths who enter college make it to graduation. For many, it’s a matter of balancing their newfound independence with work and school.

“Young people in foster care often don’t grow up with the expectation that they are going to college. It’s like going to Mars,” said Amy Dworsky, who researches at the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall. “They can’t pick up the phone and call Mom or Dad and get advice. It’s probably very scary.”

“A normal family”

The Pennells took Emily in part because it was a commitment with a time limit — she had only one more year at Ralston Valley High and was intent on college.

As Marcus put it, he wouldn’t have “known how to help a kid with drug abuse problems,” but he knew how to help Emily fill out college applications and the financial aid forms that would give her maximum federal grant amounts because she was a foster kid. He also taught her how to drive.

Emily was up for it as soon as she knew it was a possibility, desperate to stay at her high school. After she was moved from her Arvada foster home to one in Denver, her caseworker told her that one of her teachers was considering becoming her foster parent.

She figured out it was Marcus, and the next time she walked out of physics class, she said, “My caseworker is planning to call you.” Awkward as it was, Emily did it to let him know she was good with it.

Marcus, though, was stunned.

“Now if we say no, we are basically saying no to her face,” he recalled, angry that child welfare workers would let such information slip. He blames the system’s constant state of “crisis mode” and overloaded caseworkers for what he termed a reckless way to handle a potential child placement.

The year they spent together “was an entirely worthwhile experience, helping another human being,” Jennifer said. It wasn’t easy, though, for any of them.

The Pennell home was the first one where Emily’s foster parents had a younger, biological child. Their girl, age 9 when Emily moved in, was ecstatic about getting an older sister. Emily, though, wasn’t ready to bond. She was annoyed that Amelia was so excited to hang out with her that she would open Emily’s bedroom door to let the family dogs jump on her bed and wake her up.

“That was a time for me to heal,” Emily said. “I couldn’t trust people. I couldn’t get close. I was prepared for it if they decided they didn’t want me.”

She also was resentful. When Amelia pushed her half-eaten dinner away and said she was finished, Emily was in awe. “I was for sure jealous,” she said.

For Jennifer and Marcus, it was a difficult balance, raising two girls with opposite upbringings. Their home is “far more loose and understanding” than any of Emily’s previous experiences, Jennifer said.

“Moving in with the Pennells was the first time I could see a normal family with normal interactions with a kid,” Emily said.

They devoted hours to college application deadlines, financial aid forms and campus tours. Emily ended up with options.

She chose the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she is now in her second year and majoring in psychology and Spanish. She sees the Pennells about every three weeks, and they have told her, “Regardless of the hour, we don’t care, just call us and we will be there.” She’s also reconnected with her brother, a recent CU graduate.

Emily, 20, and Amelia, now 12, are close; they call each other sisters. Two weeks after Emily left for college, Amelia burst through the front door after school and shouted, “Hi, Ems,” forgetting Emily no longer lived there, a scene that made her mom cry. The little girl told her parents that knowing Emily has made her a more “humble person,” that she hadn’t realized before “how everything I ever wanted was provided for me.”

Emily regrets now that she couldn’t “express the gratitude I feel for them” while she was living with the Pennells. Her edges were still too sharp. Similarly, she recognizes now, she initially judged her college classmates for partying instead of studying — the difference in their life experiences so vast.

Lately, she has felt herself soften. “Some people have different lives — and that’s OK. It’s OK for me to have the life I’ve had.”

The Pennells started telling Emily recently that they love her. She wants to say it back, but so far, the words haven’t come.

“I’m trying to open up, but not let myself feel too vulnerable,” Emily said. “I know I’ll continue to heal for many years, maybe the rest of my life.”

Each time Elizabeth Pate looked at the Adoption Exchange website — and she looked at it obsessively for seven years — she looked for Stephen.

He was usually there, smiling next to a write-up about how much he wanted a “forever family,” that he liked animals and “keeping his room clean.” When he wasn’t there, Elizabeth assumed he had been adopted and thought, “Good for him,” then swallowed her own disappointment.

Inevitably, however, Stephen’s online profile would reappear among Colorado’s other hard-to-place children and teens running out of time, the ones whose lists of foster placements grew longer each year. The ones with behavioral problems or disabilities or who simply were no longer angelic, adaptable babies. Every time, Elizabeth stopped at Stephen’s face, looked at his bright-blue eyes and sandy-blond hair.

She happened to catch him once on “Wednesday’s Child,” a local CBS segment that featured children awaiting adoption. In-line skating at a rink in a black T-shirt, as a “clean-cut, nice young man” with a gentle spirit. His dimples flashed when he smiled. “I was hoping a banker. Or get a humane society and run it myself,” he said when the news reporter asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. He loved animals, the reporter said.

Elizabeth had wished for this as long as she could remember, since she was a young girl and felt special, almost superior, because she was adopted. She had “been chosen,” her parents told her. Divorced and her twin boys grown, she hoped that after her move to Colorado in 2006, she would start the adoption process.

Except life got in her way.

Elizabeth vowed to call the adoption agency when her part-time job at the Denver Public Library turned into a full-time job, believing she would need more income to raise another child. But soon after she started working full-time, her mother, in poor health after years of alcoholism, moved in with her and stayed until she died three years later. And then there was a serious relationship with a boyfriend that spiraled into something toxic, again delaying her adoption plans.

It would take seven years for Elizabeth to make the call.

For any foster kid still in care at age 15 in Colorado, the odds of getting adopted are near zero.

Colorado adoption rates by age form a steadily unwavering line: The likelihood of being adopted plummets each year a child has another birthday.

About 55 percent of the babies and toddlers under age 3 who last year left foster-care placements were adopted, 524 children in all. Almost all of the rest went to relatives or back to their parents.

Just six teens 15 and older were adopted from foster care placements last year, less than 1 percent of the 948 children whose cases were closed in 2017. By contrast, about 200 aged out of the system without ever finding permanent homes, 83 went to juvenile detention and 68 ran away.

“You try and act good”

Stephen Morgan had no idea Elizabeth Pate was watching him grow up online. His childhood is a blur, and he has almost no memory of his life before age 12 — at least not many memories that he wants to talk about.

Stephen was 1 when he, along with his two sisters and a brother, was taken away from his biological parents in Texas. Stephen’s half-sister, as an infant, died before he was born, and Stephen was taken to the hospital at 2 months old because he hadn’t gained weight since birth. The four kids went into foster care and were adopted by a family that later moved to Colorado Springs.

Stephen can’t remember those parents, can’t picture what his siblings looked like and has to dig deep in his memory to recall their names.

He doesn’t remember whether they said goodbye when, after six years, his adoptive parents gave him back to the state of Colorado.

They kept his sisters and brother, but Stephen’s adoption was terminated when he was 7. “I only remember waking up somewhere else,” he said over a plate of sesame chicken at a Chinese restaurant in Arvada. In his file, it says Stephen’s behavioral problems were so severe, the family “feared for their lives” when they gave him away.

For the next 10 years, Stephen lived in residential treatment centers, group homes and, rarely, a regular home with foster parents. He remembers a short stint with a foster mother in Montrose who sent him away after he says he “got bored, went for a walk and got lost.” On his last car ride with her, Stephen remembers Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved” was on the radio. A few days earlier, she had given him a Terrell Davis football jersey, which became one of his most-prized possessions.

Another foster mother once brought home a box with a puppy inside, one of the few happy memories of his time in the system. That gift, too, came a few days before he moved again.

At 12, Stephen went to youth lockup for the first time for throwing a book at a staff member at a residential treatment center and breaking her finger. At another center, an employee told Stephen and a boy to fight, and when Stephen — in a flash of rage — leveled the kid, he was punished.

Stephen still thinks about an older couple looking to adopt who invited him to their mini-ranch, where he rode one of their horses. They never asked to see him again. He hasn’t stopped wondering why, and he guesses it was because he was too wild, ran the horse too fast and recklessly. “I scared the hell out of them,” he said.

He recalls feeling as if he were “up for auction” when took his photo for its website, although he hoped it would work.

Eventually, Stephen was taking 10 pills each day for his various behavioral problems, including a diagnosis of attention-deficit disorder. “They had me so drugged up, I didn’t know what to do,” he said. His homes included Gilliam Youth Services Center, a corrections facility in Denver, and the , which is for kids who’ve been traumatized.

His number of placements reached the 20s.

At some point, he stopped caring.

“For a little while, you try and act good,” he said. “You try and do what they say. But after a while, it����ap too much.”

“Stephen deserved a home”

It was 2013 when Elizabeth finally found herself alone in her three-bedroom home in Broomfield, ready to help the boy she had seen only in pictures.

“I was naive enough to think I could call up the county and ask for that kid,” Elizabeth said. Stephen was still in foster care, an El Paso County agency told her, and Elizabeth would have to become a certified foster parent — a process that would end up taking 10 months — before she could meet him.

It was a “match party” at a bowling alley put on by nonprofit adoption agency where Elizabeth and Stephen first met, on Dec. 6, 2013.

It was one month before his 18th birthday.

Stephen, living at a Colorado Springs group home with a few other foster teens, had been looking for an apartment and a job, counting the days until he would turn 18 and emancipate from the child welfare system. He had a semester left in high school and wasn’t sure whether he would finish.

Still, he was open to meeting Elizabeth. After they bowled — Elizabeth won — they met a few more times over the next couple of weeks. They both liked to talk and chatted easily. “He must have told me he was going to be 18 about 100 times in that first conversation,” Elizabeth said, with an eye roll and a laugh.

The first time Stephen walked into Elizabeth’s house, he was bombarded by her king-sized German shepherd, Apollo. It was love at first sight, for both of them. And hanging out with Elizabeth felt different than any other potential matchup, too. It was more relaxed, Stephen said. “She was the only one who felt like that.”

Stephen knew that was due, in part, to having mellowed out and having learned to control his anger — if not his depression — in his later teens.

For her part, Elizabeth, at least in a small way, felt she knew Stephen already. When she read his file and met with his child welfare workers, it didn’t scare her. It made her determined.

“Stephen deserved a home,” Elizabeth said. “More than anyone.”

Adopted at 19

Stephen moved into Elizabeth’s house within a month of their meeting, fast-tracked by the county so he could start Legacy High School in time for spring semester.

Their first real fight came after Stephen filled a backpack with alcohol — that Elizabeth intended to use for Christmas — and gave it to a friend at school. Another time, Stephen crawled through a window screen because he lost his house key, setting off a financial setback for Elizabeth after a neighbor called police to report a burglary. Elizabeth ended up with $2,000 in vet bills after her dogs tusseled with a police canine.

For a while, Stephen slept on a dog bed with Apollo, and he wore his clothes to bed, always ready to leave in a hurry, Elizabeth figured. He barricaded his door at night, with Apollo on the inside.

Stephen graduated that spring, squeaking through with a D- in a required computer course. Elizabeth gave him two choices: Get a job or enroll in college. Stephen eventually chose an 11-month residential Job Corps program and earned a certificate in culinary arts. Although he loves to cook at home, the idea of whipping out plates in a restaurant stresses him out. When he first moved in with Elizabeth, he cooked and ate only two things: boxed macaroni and cheese, and ramen noodles.

When Stephen arrived, his first instinct was to lie, about anything. He no longer does, Elizabeth said.

About a year and a half after they met, long enough to learn to trust each other, Elizabeth adopted Stephen. He was 19.

“Sometimes he’ll say, ‘I knew you were going to keep me. You weren’t going to give up on me,’ ” Elizabeth said. “But at the same time, he was terrified it wasn’t going to work.”

Now he calls her mom.

Stephen, 22, the fringe of his brown hair hanging over his light eyes, has been working the graveyard shift at a Walmart in Arvada, where he had moved in with a high school girlfriend. They recently broke up, and Stephen is back home with Elizabeth, hoping to transfer to a Walmart in Broomfield. He’s learning how to drive.

Although it took seven years for Elizabeth to meet him, Stephen says she came at just the right time. If she had tried to adopt him sooner, he said, it wouldn’t have lasted — he would have shattered that placement like the rest.

And if Elizabeth hadn’t come when she did? “I would be homeless,” he said. “I really appreciate her so much that I don’t know how to show it.”

Stephen says that when he’s older, he will adopt foster teens. He also hopes to someday find his siblings, which is why he kept their last name of Morgan instead of taking Elizabeth’s. They are Angela, Carrie and Brandon, according to his foster care documents.

He said he deals with depression “24/7,” but after seeing 19 therapists while in foster care, he’s “pretty much over” seeing another one.

Breach of trust

About two years after adopting Stephen, Elizabeth thought she had it in her to adopt another teenager.

The boy moved in just before his 14th birthday after about seven years in the system, removed from his biological parents because of abuse. He lasted at Elizabeth’s eight months,��blowing up their relationship in spectacular fashion.

The teen stole Elizabeth’s car and her credit card in the night, went joy-riding with two other boys — ages 12 and 14 — and crashed in Boulder, totaling the Nissan Versa Note. Elizabeth found out the next morning when Broomfield police knocked on her door to ask whether she knew where her car was. “In my driveway?” she asked.

The boy was charged with three felonies for the theft and crash, but he eventually was convicted of a misdemeanor. He was sent to Denver Children’s Home, where he repeatedly called Elizabeth and cried. “He called me mom and said he wanted to be adopted,” she said.

It broke her heart, Elizabeth said, but the car theft was the last thing she could handle — emotionally and financially — after he had stolen her credit card multiple times and set fires in her house.

“I still believe adopting teens is very important,” she said. “How many of us can imagine if the day we turned 18, we lost everyone in our family and it was just us from here on out? We can’t.”

She agonizes over that, about how much more she has left to give. “I tend to be very trusting of people until they give me reason not to be,” she said. The breach of trust made her feel like she lost part of herself.

Her foster care license was due for renewal last fall.

Elizabeth let it expire.

Among them is an 18-year-old boy with a mental health diagnosis who has lived in the system for nearly his entire life, through 15 placements. His parents’ rights were terminated when he was 2. Another 18-year-old boy has blown through 46 placements in the past 11 years.

One youth on the list — now 18 — ran away from her last of 24 placements in December 2016 and has not been found. The youngest child is 7 and has been in the system for more than five years.

The state Division of Child Welfare developed the list using an algorithm to predict which of the 308 foster children up for adoption in Colorado will have the hardest times finding homes. The point is to find out which kids are most in need of intensive recruitment, although funding isn’t available to help them all. They are part of a larger group of foster youths in Colorado who receive extra attention in order to find adoptive families.

“We brought them into child welfare. We took them from their families. These are our most vulnerable kids, and we owe it to them to find permanency,” said Korey Elger, the ongoing manager for the state Division of Child Welfare.

To develop the “predictive analytics,” state researchers studied the cases of 5,700 children who were available for adoption from 2008 to 2014.

The review revealed distinct factors that affect a child’s prospects. Children who are black are less likely to find adoptive families in Colorado, as are children who became available for adoption at an older age. Also, researchers found, the likelihood of emancipating — aging out without finding a permanent home — increases with the number of placements, especially in residential treatment centers rather than foster homes.

The algorithm so far has spit out 144 names of youths least likely to find a permanent home. It’s now used every three months on children who are legally free for adoption, adding new names and dropping those who have emancipated.

In the three years since the state developed the algorithm, two youths who had spent years in foster care have been adopted and five others are either living with potentially adoptive families or have identified potential families.

The numbers are small, but state officials consider it a success. “Prior to our engagement, none were connected to any type of permanency,” said Paige Rosemond, who recently resigned as associate director of programs for the state Division of Child Welfare.

Almost half — 37 of the 81 kids on the current list that The Denver Post obtained under public records laws — have not chosen “adoption” as their current plan for exiting foster care. Instead, their plan is “other planned permanent living arrangement,” a federal term meaning they intend to stay in foster care until they become adults. It’s the plan of last resort — the one least preferred by federal child welfare authorities, below reunification with parents, adoption, placement with relatives and guardianship.

“When we see kids emancipate from child welfare, that’s really not a success for us,” Elger said.

Funding requested

The term emancipation was created in 1997 to replace “long-term foster care,” which many considered not a valid option. In 2015, federal rules banned a plan of “emancipation” for any youth who wasn’t at least 15. Before that, Colorado had children in the foster system as young as 12 who were not seeking adoption but planning to remain in the system until they aged out at 18.

The Colorado Department of Human Services, which includes the state’s child welfare division, has worked intensively with just 20 of the 144 children who have been on the list. Of the current 81, 10 are receiving extra services from a specialist whose job is to find youths a permanent home.

The state also funds two “Wendy’s Wonderful Kids” recruiters, who are trained by the Dave Thomas Foundation. (Dave Thomas founded the fast-food chain Wendy’s.) The recruiters are looking for adoptive homes for the 10 children selected by the state, plus other hard-to-place kids referred by county child welfare departments.

The state has approved additional funding in next year’s budget to hire two more specialists to work on the hardest cases and two more Wendy’s adoption recruiters.

Besides the 81 kids on the predictive analytics list, state law says that any foster child available for adoption who hasn’t had a potential family identified within six months must receive extra recruitment. The “intensive recruiting” happens at the , which is funded by the state and county child welfare departments.

At the exchange, the success rate of matching hard-to-place kids with adoptive families is about 50 percent. The other half end up aging out of foster care.

Seven intensive recruiters pore over case files searching for adults — relatives, teachers, mentors, coaches — who might offer a home. The exchange also posts , who normally are shielded from media, on its public “heart gallery” website in the hopes that potential parents will ask to meet them.

A child’s caseworker has to sign off on the online post, which is first-name only. Some kids refuse. “A reason why a kid would not want to be adopted is a million reasons, and they are all valid,” said Lyndsey Womack, an intensive recruiter.

Some fear setting themselves up for another disappointment. Others are loyal to their biological families, and some are mentally done with the system and are holding on for age 18, when they can live on their own, Womack said.

She still hears from youths who aged out, including one now at risk of losing her apartment because she can’t pay the rent. “It’s not a job that ends at 5 or ends when they age out or ends with adoption even,” Womack said.

The median age of youths referred to the exchange is 13, and most of them are 9 and up. This is progress from the 1980s, when photos of adoptable children lining the walls in the exchange’s office were of much younger children, including toddlers, preschoolers and kids in elementary school.

In those days, the newly created exchange was battling the notion that foster children, considered damaged, were unadoptable.

Intensive recruitment

Today, a 2-year-old in foster care whose biological parents’ rights have been terminated almost always finds an adoptive family, said Lauren Arnold, the Adoption Exchange’s CEO, so the organization is focused on helping older children and teens, as well as children with mental or physical disabilities.

Each of the exchange’s seven intensive recruiters in Colorado has a caseload of 12 to 15 children. It intends to expand to 20 recruiters within four years.

The agency continues to work with families after adoption, offering them referrals to child therapy and parenting services, because most parents are not equipped to handle the “front-line psychotherapy” required for children who have lived through severe trauma, Arnold said. And because the financial help offered by the state to parents willing to adopt those children is inadequate, she said.

The exchange also runs , a program that links foster teens with adult mentors — more commitment than Big Brothers and Big Sisters but less than fostering or adoption. “It’s a softer ask,” said Arnold, noting that in California, researchers found 40 percent of mentor relationships led to adoption.

It’s up to foster kids whether they want mentors. They also get to decide whether they want their photos posted online, and their county caseworkers must give permission.

“These are kids who have become adoption-resistant and are probably our most traumatized kids or really have suffered through the system quite a bit,” Arnold said. “You take a kid who has been in care for 18 years and 30 different placements. They’ve never had a birthday in a single place two years in a row. They’ve never been in the same school for a full year.

“It’s unbelievably heartbreaking because you know they can’t possibly function. Those that do, you’re almost like ‘Hallelujah, how did that happen?’ Because the system didn’t help them do that. It’s incredibly tragic.”

From her mother’s suicide and her father’s death from a “broken heart.” From the foster mothers who tried to give her religion and manners. From the child welfare system she couldn’t wait to escape. And from the terrifying months afterward, when she bounced from couches to motels to boyfriends she used only so she would have a place to sleep.

“They couldn’t keep me in a cage,” said the tiny blond with perfect eyeliner, a can of Coke in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “Exhale the past, inhale the future,” says another tattoo.

Sarah’s life as a self-described wild child began soon after age 12, when her mother killed herself by swallowing seven bottles of her bipolar medication. Not long after, as Sarah’s dad was drowning in sadness and mental illness, child welfare caseworkers showed up at their door in Lakewood. Sarah had hardly been going to school, was instead swiping her dad’s car keys and hanging with friends.

By her own account, she was out of control.

Her first foster placement in what would become a six-year stretch of six homes and multiple stints in juvenile lock-up was a group home where she had to ask permission to use the bathroom. After a month, Sarah’s caseworker sent her briefly back to her dad, but he had disengaged from life and Sarah couldn’t stand living in the house where she had helped drag her dying mother out of her bedroom.

She ran away. At 13, Sarah was living on Denver streets — until she hitched a ride to North Dakota with a man who hired her to sell magazine subscriptions door-to-door.

In all, Sarah can count 12 times she ran away, often jumping out the window of foster homes and group homes. She went to eight middle and high schools, although she managed to graduate from an online program. She lost count of how many times she was locked up in juvenile detention centers or jail. She was homeless three times. She had a baby at 16, and the system took her daughter away.

The time Sarah spent on the streets — months sleeping under an alleyway garbage bin near a Taco Bell along Denver’s tourist-packed 16th Street Mall or a cardboard “fort” near Broncos’ stadium — was the most free she would feel until age 18, she said. That’s when, in 2015, she signed her name on the paperwork that ended her status as a ward of the state.

Sarah was emancipated, officially done with foster care. “I cried, I was so happy. I felt like a feather flying away.”

No safety net

Emancipation is the worst way to exit foster care, aside from running away or dying.

It means a child wasn’t reunified with parents, wasn’t adopted and wasn’t set up with a legal guardian. Kids who emancipate are turned loose to figure out life on their own, often after years as wards of the state.

Over the past five years, 1,513 young people ages 17-21 have emancipated from Colorado’s foster care system.

Many call it “aging out,” a term the state child welfare division is loath to use because Colorado is among the states that allow foster youths to stay in the system until age 21.

But only a fraction of foster teens are choosing to remain in the system past 18. Among the 246 youths who aged out last year, the majority — 154 — were 18 years old, data received by The Denver Post under public records laws shows. Twenty were just 17, allowed to emancipate by getting married or joining the military.

“It’s a developmental task of young people in this age group to separate from authority figures and to go out on their own and take risks,” said Kristin Melton, youth services manager for the Colorado Department of Human Services. “What’s different is that this is a group of young people that doesn’t have family support to fall back on. They don’t have that safety net.”

In its most recent review, federal authorities found Colorado’s child welfare division had failed to meet national standards in efforts to find foster kids permanent homes.

The state received a score of 55 percent with a target of 90 percent in “concerted efforts” to return children to their biological families or find adoptive families rather than allow them to emancipate from the system, according to the Child and Family Services Review from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Half dead inside”

The day Sarah left foster care — with her belongings in two trash bags and two suitcases — she moved in with a girlfriend who had her own apartment. She had no savings account and no job, although she found one soon after at a dog day care.

That living arrangement lasted about a month, until the landlord found out Sarah was living there without permission.

So she moved in with a guy she didn’t like because she had nowhere else to go. “I used the hell out of him,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “He was gross, but he gave me what I needed at the time.”

When they broke up, she couch-hopped for months. She moved in with another guy until he was evicted from his apartment because “his roommate spent all his money on cocaine,” Sarah said. The two of them lived in motels or slept on friends’ couches for a while — until they broke up and Sarah was on her own again.

When she had money, she got a room at the Best Western or the Comfort Suites in Lakewood. “It was kinda terrifying,” she said of being alone, without parents to call. “It feels like you are half dead inside. It’s hard when I can’t just pick up the phone and text my mom. I don’t have my mom to call for advice. I don’t have my dad to beat up stupid boys like he was supposed to. It’s lonely.”

Next was a house with a girlfriend and her family, until a boyfriend took Sarah to North Dakota and Montana, where he was working in oil fields. When they broke up, another friend took her in, for a time.

And so on.

No lifeline to adulthood

For those who age out, there is no lifeline to adulthood — save for a patchwork of nonprofits with limited funds and an inability to connect with every kid at the moment they’re ready to accept it.

The state child welfare division and nonprofits, including and , have ramped up housing, education and job skills programs for former foster youths in recent years after noting how many emancipated teens were showing up at homeless shelters. Even so, the odds of an easy path to adult life are low.

Foster youths in Colorado are more likely to end up incarcerated than graduating from high school on time.

The state’s four-year in 2017 was 23 percent. Compare that to the 53 percent of former foster youths surveyed by the who reported they had been incarcerated at least once.

Nearly one in five former foster youths in Colorado have been homeless, according to the survey. At Urban Peak, which provides emergency shelter and apartments for homeless youths, 34 percent of the 350 who sought help last year had been in foster care.

On the night in January when volunteers attempted to count every person in Denver who is homeless, they found 24 people in Denver County alone who told them the reason they were homeless was that they recently exited the foster care system.

“When somebody becomes homeless on the day they turn 18, what does that look like in 20 years or 30 years?” said Urban Peak CEO Christina Carlson. “Homeless youth who don’t have intervention can become chronically homeless adults.”

“I’m getting there”

Sarah met Anthony at the Grizzly Rose country-western dance club about a year and a half ago. She caught him staring while she danced. They have lived together ever since.

They have three roommates, an air hockey table, a pool table and a dirt-grass backyard that on weekends fills up with friends for barbecues, beer and weed. It’s a party spot, where the fridge at times has not much other than grape juice and frozen burritos. Last summer, they tarped the bed of a pickup truck and filled it with water to make a swimming pool.

Sarah is proud of their three-bedroom home with a basement in suburban Aurora, a neighborhood where kids ride their bikes down the streets and people plant tulips, and where her 1995 Jeep Cherokee without doors is parked in the driveway.

Sarah, 21, is petite, about 100 pounds, and fierce. Her knuckles are tattooed with “kiss” on one hand and “kill” on the other, and she will throw a punch when provoked, like the time at a car show last year when she slugged a guy who drove over her boyfriend’s foot. But she’s generous, too, and recently invited a former foster sister, who is pregnant, to move into their house.

Sarah has worked at Subway and Cold Stone Creamery, a car dealership and, now, a printing company where she posts social media ads. She recently received a camera through , a Make-a-Wish-type organization for kids aging out of foster care, and hopes to become a professional photographer. She’s also planning to get a license to operate heavy machinery in construction or the oil industry.

“It took a long damn time to figure out what I’m doing,” she said, sitting in her backyard surrounded by her three dogs, a tiny one named Tank, a mutt named Bubba and pitbull mix named Marley. “I’m getting there.”

She’s aware of the bleak statistics about foster kids ending up in jail or homeless. “It pisses me off,” she said. “It’s not our fault. We don’t know what we’re doing. We’re not like birds — you don’t push us out of the nest and we fly automatically.”

“They are our kids”

Youths emancipating from foster care enter adulthood often with less support than a recently released prison inmate, who is more likely to have relatives to help with housing and a job search.

“Once we take them from their families, they are our kids, in a sense. They are our responsibility,” said Amy Dworsky, a research fellow at the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall. “When young people turn 18 or 21, parents don’t typically kick them out the door and say, ‘Goodbye, you’re on your own.’ It����ap really ironic that the state, society, does that to foster youth. We treat them like they’re disposable.”

The key government funding dedicated to youths aging out of foster care comes from the , approved by Congress in 1999. It gives states flexible spending to help foster kids ages 14-21 who are likely to age out of the system or already have. It also provides Medicaid government health insurance until age 26 for aged-out youths.

The problem is that the program isn’t available for everyone who could use it. Creating a Chafee program is voluntary, and within Colorado’s county-run child welfare system, only 32 of 64 counties had Chafee programs last fiscal year, sharing $1.5 million.

The program helped 819 youths statewide, but that’s out of twice as many who were eligible.

“The number of kids who need our help hasn’t changed, but every year, funding for the Colorado Chafee program is cut,” said Derek Blake, the Chafee program coordinator for Colorado. “Even without the annual reductions, Chafee doesn’t have the capacity to serve all the eligible youth in Colorado.”

For youths ages 14-16, Chafee workers teach communication and organization skills. After 16, “that����ap where you have your big push” to prepare a youth for adulthood, including budgeting, job skills, tutoring and help with financial aid forms for college or technical school, Blake said.

For young people who have aged out of the system, Chafee can fund housing deposits and apartment applications, even microwaves and vacuum cleaners.

For Sarah Janeczko, the closest thing she has to a parent is her Chafee worker. The woman initially was her caseworker and for nine years sat through court hearings and guided Sarah’s out-of-home placements.

Sarah called her the day her dad died. Called her to beg her to rescue her from the foster home where food was restricted and she wasn’t allowed to come up from the basement. Called her after she had aged out when she lost a job and couldn’t make rent.

Called her because she had no mom or dad to call.

“The reason why I still try”

Sarah’s child welfare and youth detention records are stuffed in a black, plastic file box that makes her angry. “All these pieces of paper, that’s what I was to the foster care system,” she said. “They read me like a piece of paper.”

Among her jail booking documents and foster placement records, though, is something else that cuts deeper: Sarah’s visitation rights to her daughter, Aubrella, who will turn 5 this month.

She was born when Sarah was 16. It was a year before her dad died, although Sarah already had been a ward of the state for three years.

The baby’s father was a high school boyfriend who is in prison now on drug charges. The child welfare system removed the little girl from Sarah’s care when she was an infant, after Sarah left her with a friend and didn’t return when promised. Caseworkers said the baby was malnourished, but Sarah disagrees.

The child was placed in foster care for three days before going to her paternal grandparents in what the child welfare system calls a “kinship placement.” They are now her legal guardians.

Sarah is determined to regain custody, an inch at a time, as she tries to prove to her daughter’s grandparents that she is trustworthy. She is allowed to pick up Aubrella and take her out for the day, but the little girl hasn’t been to Sarah’s house.

“I got her taken away. I want my daughter back,” Sarah said, her green eyes steely. “She’s honestly the reason why I still try.”

As much as it hurts her that the system took her baby, that the cycle was repeated, Sarah knows now that she wasn’t ready at 16 to take care of Aubrella the way she deserved. “I think it’s because I was just pissed in life. It wasn’t fair to me,” she said. “Then her getting taken from me just topped it off.”

She’s thinking about getting another tattoo: “I am not what I’ve been through. I am what I choose to become.”

It’s the one day of the month that young people in Colorado who spent time in the foster system after they were 16 can apply for housing vouchers. Thirty-six people are here to add their names to the wait list.

“This is youth homelessness. This is a snapshot,” says Erin Medina, the manager of program, which helps foster youths transition to life on their own. “People don’t like to think about it or talk about it.”

More than 80 former foster youths, ages 18-24, are using the federal vouchers to pay for apartments throughout the metro area. An additional 14 have received the voucher and are searching for an apartment that will accept it.

The current wait list is 105 names long, and it takes about a year to reach the top.

Bridging the Gap began in 2005 as a program to help current and former foster youths ages 14 and older create savings accounts so they wouldn’t walk out of the system with no money. By 2010,��Denver’s nonprofit community realized savings accounts weren’t enough and asked the federal government to dedicate housing vouchers for former foster youths.

Mile High United Way, which manages the voucher program, also hired four independent living coaches to counsel aged-out youths about education, transportation, child care and other issues kids normally would learn about from their parents.

“A typical young adult is often very reliant on parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles for life questions. How do I apply for college? How do I make a résumé? How do I tie a tie?” Medina said.

Many who exit foster care have fewer life skills than they would otherwise because the main goal at group homes and residential centers is safety, achieved through rules about everything from curfew to cooking. “If you have had your whole life planned out, you might not be very good at planning,” Medina said.

Child welfare caseworkers are required to create an “independent living plan” for foster kids 14 and older. If a youth hasn’t found a permanent home, the last “Hail Mary” is a legally required “emancipation transition plan” at least 90 days ahead of a youth’s emancipation date, said Derek Blake, who is with the state division of child welfare. It����ap a last-ditch effort to connect the youth with nonprofits and other agencies that can assist with housing.

“It depends drastically not only on the county but also on the caseworker,” Blake said. “I’ve seen some amazing transition plans and ones that need some work.”

The federal government in recent years has pushed states to reduce the number of children emancipating from foster care, and Colorado has improved. In 2013, for example, 329 youths emancipated, compared with 246 last year.

Once kids have aged out, the child welfare system doesn’t keep track of them.

Data showing how many foster youths age 17 or 18 are reunified with their parents or relatives but end up homeless within weeks is unavailable, for example. Yet, workers at Urban Peak and United Way say it happens regularly.

“(Some) get out on their own and they discover that they are not as ready as they thought they were,” said Kristin Melton, the youth services manager for the Colorado Department of Human Services.

While other states are considering allowing youths to re-enter foster care after they’ve emancipated, Colorado hasn’t gone that far. Instead, would let county human services departments offer extra help to young people who recently aged out.

“Our counties and our county staff are working really hard; they have invested their lives and their careers in serving these young people,” Melton said. Yet, she added, too many kids are slipping through.

“I don’t think it����ap enough,” she said, “because our outcomes are not good.”

Listen: Reporter Jennifer Brown talks about foster care and the Aged Out series on Colorado Public Radio’s program.

Watch at noon Thursday, May 24: Jennifer will be featured in . Use the hashtag #co4kids to ask questions on Twitter.

This project began years ago with a phone call from a reader who knew an 18-year-old I had written about, a young man who had grown up in foster care.

The reader wondered if I could help him find a bed, or even just a mattress, to save him from sleeping on the hard floor of his rented bedroom every night after work and school.

I had interviewed the young man for a Denver Post series about the overmedication of foster kids, describing how teenagers lined up in group homes and treatment centers for their daily doses of psychotropic drugs. Several of the young adults I talked to had recently left the foster care system after turning 18, no longer wards of the state and free to talk to a newspaper reporter.

What has stuck with me for years was how alone in the world they were. We had spent years writing about the child welfare system, including a 2012 series called Failed to Death, but we had not looked into what happened to kids who never returned home and were not adopted.

For this new series, Aged Out, I started my reporting by visiting Mile High United Way and Urban Peak, organizations that help former foster youths who have emancipated from the system. Fat snowflakes were falling when I went to United Way on the one day a month aged-out foster kids can put their names on a list for federal housing vouchers.

That’s where I met Sarah Janeczko. She had gotten a ride from a county worker whose job is to help aged-out foster youths with housing, education and life in general. We talked briefly that day, and then many more times, usually in her back yard or at her kitchen table, over the course of several months.

Through contacts at Urban Peak, where more than one-third of homeless youth come from foster care, the state Division of Child Welfare, and Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center, I met dozens of former foster kids who recently emancipated from the system.

They shared their stories because they want the system to change. To a number, they spoke of standing up for the foster kids who are coming after them, the ones who will age out without finding permanent homes.

All of them, too, spoke of not feeling heard, of spending their childhoods wishing someone would listen.

During one interview, I told Sarah that her words were powerful, that they could make a difference. “That’s cool to hear,” she said. “My whole life it has felt like they don’t.”