State closes Pueblo center

A mental health and substance abuse treatment center for children was shut down by state authorities this week following complaints that children were abused and underfed.

El Pueblo Boys & Girls Ranch, with 12 cottages on 56 acres in Pueblo, was ordered to “immediately desist” caring for children by the Colorado Department of Human Services. The ranch, which treated children with severe behavioral or psychiatric needs, could lose its child care license permanently.

All 37 children living at the ranch had been moved by Tuesday night, some returning home to parents and others going to foster homes, group homes or other residential treatment centers, human services officials said.

A child who ran away from El Pueblo last month and boarded a train alone later told authorities children bullied each other and stole each other’s food because they were hungry, according to the state’s suspension order. The child said they lacked medical attention and that staff did not intervene when children fought with each other.

This month, child welfare authorities received complaints that a “high-needs child” did not receive prescribed medications while at the ranch and left with burns. And in another complaint, a staff member was accused of pulling a child’s hair, scratching the child and hitting the child with an elbow and a knee, according to the suspension order. The child also was punched in the mouth, the document said.

Also this month, a mentally low-functioning child escaped out of a bedroom window, was missing for more than hour and crossed two streets, according to another complaint.

Other allegations involved a child who suffered severe weight loss after 10 months at the center and an administrator refusing to intervene for 25 minutes as a child pulled off their own skin “and was chewing and eating it.”