CAFCA Adoption Committee Minutes

July 13, 2006

Attendees: Melissa Maile-Catholic Charities, Megan Alldritt-Catholic Charities, Adrienne Elliott-Adoption Options, Carol Lawson-Adoption Options, Erin Jones-Lighthouse Adoptions, Cindy Sarai-Adoption Dreams Come True, Katie Mason-CAFCA, and Kurt Olsson-LDS Family Services.

FBI Results Timing: Kurt reported that Dana Andrews told him that the rules regarding the FBI background checks would be changed to reflect that the results would be required by finalization rather than prior to adoption study approval.

Rules for Licensing Bill (SB06-199): Kurt attended a meeting with Dana to assist in the creation of rules to implement the dual-licensing and cradle care portions of this bill. Dual-licensing will likely be set up as some type of a “supplemental” foster care certificate that a family can hold simultaneously with their child care license. This would give them the authority to accept a single foster care placement (that can exceed one child only in the case of a sibling group) that would be included in the number of children the home is licensed to care for under the child care side of it. In other words, the foster placements would not be in addition to the child care census of the home, but rather would be included in that number (so a child care provider would not be able to accept a foster placement if the placement would cause them to exceed their census limits). Communication channels would be established at the time of application for the foster care certificate. The CPA would be required to initiate contact (in the case where the family is already licensed for child care upon application) with the caseworker supervising the family’s child care license prior to home study approval and upon each substantive action (placement, removal, finalization, etc.). In addition, child care licensing would be required to contact the CPA that issued the family’s foster care certificate anytime negative licensing action took place.

Records Preservation Timeline and Fees: Carol expressed serious concern about the implementation of the records preservation rules. This is likely to be part of the same rule change to implement the rest of SB-199. There was no discussion of this part of the bill at the dual-licensing planning meeting. Kurt will contact Dana about how this will be implemented.

Public Relations: We can make another effort at a PR piece with birth fathers. Kurt will contact Maggie Spain at the Bawmann Group to get her in touch with Carol Lawson.

SAFE Update Rules:  A meeting is scheduled for August 10^th with Mary Griffin about the update protocol. There are a number of committee members from this and the foster care committee that have been identified to participate in the meeting.

Fees for International Accreditation Fees: We discussed the concerns of some members regarding the fees for accreditation. Erin Jones will find out more about how that fee structure is going to work and report back to the committee

Next Meeting Date:  The next committee meeting will be held on Thursday, September 7^th  9:30-11:30 at LDS Family Services, 3263 Fraser St., Suite 3 Aurora, CO 80011.

September 7, 2006

Kurt Olsson, LCSW

Adoption Committee Chair