A program that helps place Colorado foster children struggling to find adoptive homes looks like it’s losing funding — or at least it doesn’t currently have any funding in the state’s new draft budget. Reporter Jennifer Brown with The Colorado Sun joined KUNC’s Nikole Robinson Carroll to talk about the fate of the Wendy’s Wonderful Kids program in the state.
Brown told KUNC that Colorado has been investing hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past six years in this public-private program that’s affiliated with the Wendy’s restaurant chain. State and municipal agencies pool funds with the Dave Thomas Foundation to finance the program and hire special caseworkers who act like recruiters, trying to find permanent homes for kids who face challenges in getting adopted.
“Think of them (the caseworkers) like private investigators,” Brown said. “They look at the kids who have the most trouble getting adopted. And they go through their school files, their child welfare records, anything they could find — they spend hundreds of hours, maybe on each kid, looking for any past coach, teacher, family friend, long-lost relative, anybody they can find who had a connection with this child and might consider adopting them.”
Currently, there are 367 kids in foster care whose biological parents’ rights have been terminated. Some of them have been waiting for seven years or more for an adoptive home.
"The toughest ones to find adoptive homes for are typically teenagers. They've been in the system for a long time, they've been through a lot of trauma,” Brown said. “Some of them have even had prior adoptions that have failed.”
Many also have physical or mental disabilities, which can intimidate prospective adoptive families.
Brown said Colorado has been contributing about $340,000 a year to the Wendy’s Wonderful Kids initiative.
“As budget line items go, it's not a huge one, but I think the Joint Budget Committee at the legislature was surprised when the Colorado Department of Human Services showed up with their budget request, and this was no longer on there,” she said.
The state agency is pointing to a study that suggests children in the program are not statistically any more likely to get adopted as other difficult-to-place kids in the system.
It is worth noting that the study the state is referring to was done during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Caseworkers at the time said they couldn't even get into some public buildings to get records, and they were trying to interview kids on Zoom,” Brown said. “It wasn't the best scientific study on how the program works but that's why the state says they're pulling funding.”
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