Boulder County is supporting a new state bill that would allow its social services department to treat mild and moderate child welfare cases differently than more severe cases, with the goal of collaborating with families to solve problems.
The bill, which passed the Senate earlier this week and was introduced to the House on Thursday, would expand an existing pilot program in the state that is allowing five counties to use an approach known as “differential response” in low-risk child welfare cases.
Currently, Boulder County is required to do an investigation in every child welfare case and to identify a “victim” and a “perpetrator.” In low-risk situations, a differential response protocol would allow the county to not make those designations and, instead, work with the family to come up with solutions.
“It’s a different approach to not have to make a finding of abuse or neglect or to determine a perpetrator or a victim,” said Kit Thompson, director of the Boulder County Housing and Human Services’ Family and Children Services Division. “It allows us to work with the family to determine what they need and get them the services that they need in order to stabilize the family.”
If the bill becomes law, Boulder County would ask to be included in the pilot, Thompson said.
Differential response — which already is being used in other places across the country — would allow county child welfare workers to be much more engaging with families, Thompson said.
“Nationally, this is the new trend in child welfare,” Thompson said. “There is a number of research studies going on in other states that are piloting this and the results are really wonderful.”
Differential response dovetails with the county’s other child welfare strategies, Thompson said, which rely heavily on early intervention and collaboration with families. The result of the push, which was outlined in the department’s 2008 strategic plan, has been a drop in out-of-home child placement rate of 53 percent in more than four years.
Part of the county’s strategy has included setting up an early intervention program, which can work with families that don’t meet the threshold of a child welfare case but that are in danger of becoming more unstable.
For example, the program, which is a couple of months old, recently helped a Longmont family on the verge of becoming homeless, said Jim Williams, a spokesman for Housing and Human Services. The father in the family, which includes three young children, is disabled, Williams said, and the mother stays home to care for him.
“Fairly recently, they found themselves in a situation where they weren’t going to afford the place in which they were living,” Williams said. “They were basically facing homelessness. … When a family becomes homeless, those kids are at risk of being placed in a foster family.”
The new early intervention program was able to help secure housing for the family before the kids were in a situation that would trigger a child welfare case.
Contact Camera Staff Writer Laura Snider at 303-473-1327 or sniderl@dailycamera.com.
