The state of Colorado has “no obligation” to find young people who run away from foster care, and authorities often lose track of them. That's according to a new report requested by Colorado lawmakers following investigative work by The Colorado Sun and 9News.
The news outlets sought public records to find out how many foster kids are running away and ultimately sued the state when officials wouldn't turn over records.
Get top headlines and KUNC reporting directly to your mailbox each week when you subscribe to In The NoCo.
Reporter Jennifer Brown with The Colorado Sun told KUNC she and 9News’ Jeremy Jojola decided to work together after discovering they were covering different stories about “eerily similar” circumstances.
“Each of these boys had run away from a residential treatment center and had been struck and killed by a vehicle in the night,” Brown said. “When Jeremy and I realized that we were both working on the same kind of story about different kids, we decided to join forces and really try to figure out: how often is this happening, that these foster kids are running away from care?”
Brown and Jojola’s research found that, on average, it happens two or three times a month. Sometimes, these runaways, typically teenagers, are never officially found. Often, it comes down to a lack of state funding for a prolonged pursuit.
“Their cases are just closed,” Brown said. “Maybe they became homeless. I mean, who knows where these kids ended up. Maybe they ran back to a relative. But they're gone from the system.”
Most often, these cases involve young people running away from residential facilities, which, as Brown said, “are often a kind of a 'last stop' for kids who've been through multiple foster family placements.”
Brown said Colorado's child protection ombudsman was looking into some of these issues at the same time as she and Jojola were.
“I think our reporting added to that, and this was brought to lawmakers, who ordered this task force to look into the problems at these facilities,” she told KUNC.
The task force lays out recommendations in the report to address the problems causing foster kids to fall through the cracks.
“In the state of Colorado, there's not a legal obligation for child welfare authorities to track down a foster child who has run away. Of course, they do make efforts - they try to call relatives,” Brown said. “I think primarily, the task force is asking for clearer data and a look at the laws.”
