Hardest to place
The list of Colorado foster kids predicted to have the toughest time getting adopted has 81 names.
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 “longterm 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 Adoption Exchange, 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 Of the current 308 Colorado foster children now available for adoption, there are 81 considered the hardest to place. Many have spent more than a decade in out-of-home care, and others have had more than 20 placements while in the system. 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 photos and short bios of foster children, 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 Choice, 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.”