CAFCA  BRIEF UPDATE

September 2004

In order to allow CAFCA members to attend the following special day of advocacy training, there will be NO General Membership meeting on Friday, October 15, 2004. We encourage every CAFCA member to send at least one person to this training. “Be a Champ for Children” is a full day (8 a.m. – 4 p.m.) of Legislative Advocacy Training for those wishing to stand up for children. This training is hosted by The Children’s Hospital and presented by grassroots advocacy expert Nancy Amidei of the Civic Engagement Project in Seattle, Washington. Participants will learn:

Ø       3 key elements of any good advocacy effort

Ø       The power of the 90-second speech

Ø       5 rules for effective advocacy

Ø       Easy ways to round up support for causes you care about

Ø       How to make your voice heard and make a difference for children

The training is FREE. A box lunch can be purchased for $10. For a brochure or to register, contact The Children’s Hospital Government Affairs office at: advocacy@tchden.or or call 303 861-6253.

CAFCA Member News

El Pueblo welcomed Dave Dillingham as its new Director of Clinical Marketing.  Dave has been involved in the child welfare system for a number of years and will work out of his Golden, Colorado office. Devereux Cleo Wallace welcomed its new Executive Director, Bentley Smith, who served as the organization’s Director of Finance for the past three years.

CAFCA Committee News

Nominations

Ann Robinson, Chair of the Nominations Committee and Immediate Past President of CAFCA, is working with Committee members to prepare a slate of officers and committee chairs for the 2005-06 term. Members will receive this information approximately 30 days prior to the CAFCA Annual meeting, scheduled for Friday, November 12, 2004.

Adoption

Kurt Olsson has been leading the stakeholder group that is working on developing a Parentage Registry. At its next meeting, the group will identify key elements of the bill.  Which Rep. Schultheis will likely sponsor. Virginia Appel, who served on the Lt. Governor’s Commission on Adoption, requested that committee members review the Commission’s 16 recommendations and identify how the Adoption Committee might help enact these. The group initially identified Recommendations #5 – Clarify the issue of when a child is legally free for adoption via the parentage registry and #8 – Improve the public perception of adoption by publishing/promoting the positive aspects of adoption via the media, as potential issues for future work. Members discussed the emotional issues from the birthparent and adoptive parent perspective, possibly publishing a document on what it means to be a good parent and changing the perception that it’s OK to adopt a child but not OK to give a child up for adoption. The Lt. Governor’s Report was sent electronically to all committee members who have been asked to review the recommendations and bring them to the October meeting for further discussion. Out-of-state facilitator issues continue to be a topic of discussion. Committee members may request that the statute be changed to specify that only agencies “licensed in Colorado” may facilitate adoptions and advertise in Colorado. Next Meeting Date: Thursday, October 14^th at Adoption Options, 2600 S. Parker Rd., Suite 2-320, Aurora, CO, 9:00  – 11:00 a.m. 

Foster Care

Members are encouraged to attend the CSFPA conference in October. Members are updating the original Foster Care White Paper published in November 2002. CAFCA will contact the CPA Network and CDHS for updated data and input. Committee members were urged to review the Report of the Lt. Governor’s Commission on Adoption,especially the section on recommendations. The CPA Network is working on a draft bill concerning the payment of foster care services during the transition to adoption.  Melissa Maile will represent CAFCA at these meetings.  If anyone else wishes to attend please contact Andi Leopoldis.  The next meeting is scheduled for October 12^th 1:00 p.m. at Synthesis. Recently two Family2Family RFPs were developed but have not been let due to budget issues.

CAFCA’s Foster Care Committee has been meeting bimonthly with counties for the past 15 months to discuss cooperation between the two groups. On September 21st they held the last of these collaborative meetings and discussed training, progress towards developing professional parenting, recruitment and retention of foster parents--KOSI radio spots have been the most successful for JeffCo, but all agreed nothing beats word-of-mouth. The next meeting of Cheryl Jacobson’s CPA workgroup to promote recruitment and retention will be at the Boulder Social Services building, October 22^nd 10:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.  Please contact Cheryl at Cheryl.Jacobson@state.co.us for more information.  The CDHS website for recruiting foster parents as well as adoptive parents is:  www.changealifeforever.org   Based on a recommendation in the Lt. Governor’s Report, CDHS is working to make this site more user friendly, including listing all CPAs as well as county contacts.  Cheryl is working on the 2005 calendar and is open to recommendations for available children to feature. Her total annual budget is $200K, with one-half earmarked for mini-grants to counties.  However, grants are available to counties partnering with private CPAs as well.  Grant distribution this year is 25% to faith based initiatives and 25% to Hispanic recruitment & retention programs.   The deadline for applications is October 7^th.    Currently there are approximately 700 children waiting for adoption in Colorado.  Over 50% are over the age of 10 years of age.  November is National Adoption Month, and there will again be a  ‘shout out’ to call attention to each of the 700. There are more children than ever in kinship care.  Concerns are that if kinship placement fails and the child is placed in a regular foster home the child will not be eligible for 4-E dollars.  If anyone has more information on this please contact CAFCA. Next Meeting of the Foster Care Committee: TBD.

CTS

Committee members hosted special guests John Grace, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Association of Family and Children’s Agencies (WAFCA), and Linda Davis, Chair of the Milwaukee Philanthropy Group, which supports a number of child welfare research projects in Wisconsin. John shared information about WAFCA and the many similarities between Wisconsin and Colorado. Both are state-supervised, county-administered child welfare systems (WI has 72 counties and CO has 64) and have a population of about 4 million. John talked about the pros and cons of having had a free market system for establishing residential treatment rates for the past 20 years and then opened the floor for questions and discussion.  Wisconsin is modifying its state Medicaid Plan to allow it to draw down Medicaid funds for residential treatment, and CAFCA RTC members shared their experiences with this system.  Wisconsin voters will be asked to adopt a TABOR amendment similar to Colorado’s this November, and CAFCA members shared their views on this initiative as well. Next Meeting Date: TBD.

Public Policy

Arnie Goldstein, Dave Eisner, Sister Amy Wolcott, Peg and Fofi met with Carolyn Kampman, JBC analyst, to obtain more information about the federal and state funding processes for child welfare. As a follow-up, CAFCA will provide some data to Carolyn to assist with her analysis.

Fofi reviewed the citizen initiatives that we will see on the November ballot. These include a tobacco tax initiative for funding human services programs; FasTracks, a sales tax to fund expansion of various modes of transportation, including light rail and bus service; and extension of the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District sales tax. Annmarie Jensen reviewed all the hotly contested House and Senate races. Although CAFCA member organizations cannot support political candidates, individuals may support candidates in a variety of ways: by making a campaign donation, walking the district with or on behalf of the candidate, passing out candidate literature in the community, distributing and displaying yard signs, and carrying candidate signs and get-out-the-vote signs in designated areas.

As reported above under the Adoption Committee, Kurt Olsson has been leading a group of stakeholders to develop a Parentage Registry and will be working with Rep. Schultheis and a bill drafter to develop a draft for review by the group. Fofi suggested that the group obtain an opinion as to any fiscal note so it could be addressed by amendments. The date for the 2005 Legislative Luncheon has been set for Tuesday, February 22^nd. The Public Policy Committee members will be asked to take responsibility for encouraging CAFCA members to attend and to invite their legislators personally. CAFCA will likely be asked to support the CPA Network’s bill to continue Foster care payments once the foster parents file a petition to adopt. Current county practice discontinues foster care payments after the adoption is initiated but before it is finalized.

On 9/10/04 the Human Services Board heard proposed rules regarding changes to the CPA foster care audit process. CAFCA and several other entities worked closely with CDHS to develop clear and fair rules regarding CPA audits based on recommendations that came out of the Foster Care Audit Report in June 2002. Peg submitted written testimony in favor of the rules due to a conflict that prevented her from personally testifying. CDHS plans to bring a bill to regulate out-of-state Adoption Facilitators and is currently conducting its 5-year review of adoption rules. The drafting of rules for HB 1271/Dedicated Family Homes Pilot is proceeding very slowly due to the challenge of operationalizing the concept of having specially trained foster parents hold space for children who have a high likelihood of being returned to foster care.  Volume VIII RTC rules changes may go to the Medical Services Board in October. CAFCA still has concerns about the fairness of recovering a full per diem for a single undocumented service with no precedent for this with other providers. RTCs will be asked to testify against this provision when the rules go to the Medical Services Board. Workgroups are also drafting receiving home and group home rules, which will likely go to the Human Services board before the end of this year.

Several CAFCA RTCs have joined with other RTCs to file an administrative appeal of their SFY 2004-05 treatment rates. It is hoped that this action will help to address issues with the current rate setting process. CAFCA is represented by one or more members on each of these workgroups.

CAFCA participates in the System of Care Workgroup, which is working on implementation of HB 04-1451. Activities include reviewing a draft model Memorandum of Understanding for use by counties and their partnering governmental agencies (MH, DYC, school district, DD, etc.), meeting with the Governor’s office, hosting a November Conference on developing systems of care, and creating strategies for working with policymakers to implement a system of care for families and children with complex needs who use multiple systems.

After six years of enjoying quality representation by Mendez Steadman, the CAFCA board decided to conduct a contract review and seek bids, similar to what it has done with its auditing contract. Three firms have responded to CAFCA’s RFP and will be interviewed by a panel consisting of Cyndi Dodds, Public Policy Chair, Arnie Goldstein, Ruth Ann Russell, Jim Becker and Peg. Next meeting: October 5^th, noon-2:00 p.m.

Membership/Communications

The Committee has completed its thorough review of all surveys and input regarding membership types and an ethics statement. They will be unveiling recommendations and suggested changes to the bylaws at least 30 days prior to the CAFCA Annual Membership meeting. Committee Chair Jim Worthen of Namaqua Center and members Dane Russell, Gayle Collins, and Mary Simons are to be commended for their work with past year. Next Meeting: October 21^st Noon – 2:00 p.m. at the CAFCA office.

Upcoming Trainings & Events of Note

The Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute/Colorado Center on Law & Policy will hold its monthly meeting on September 30^th, 2004, 12:00-1:15 p.m. at 1490 Lafayette, first floor conference room #108. The agenda includes a discussion of the lawsuit against the state regarding failure of the new public benefits computer system, the September 20^th revenue forecast and JBC meeting of 9/20, and the anticipated SFY 2004-05 budget cuts needed to comply with the TABOR revenue limits. The report “State of Working Colorado” is now available from the Center’s web page: www.cclponline.org.

October 1, 2004 (9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.) Colorado Child Welfare Fatherhood Initiative Stakeholder’s Summit, sponsored by CDHS. Location: Warren Tech Center, Founders Room, 2^nd Floor, 13300 W. 2^nd Place, Lakewood, CO (across from Red Reds Community College). The focus will be on building partnerships to support and utilize fathers as a family resource, e.g., making your organizations more father friendly. For more information contact: Diane Skufca, Program Administrator for Promoting Safe and Stable Families, 303 866-4129. For information about the Fatherhood Practitioner Certification, email: hartcraig@msn.com or call 303 694-0247.

October 15, 2004 (4:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. & 16, 2004, (8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.),Working with Sexually Abused Children in Foster Care. Presented by the Institute for Families at DU. Location: Hampton Inn, 3777 N. Main Avenue, Durango, CO 81301. Cost: Free for county foster parents, $25.00 for foster parents with CPAs and others. Register online at: www.cocwtraining.com. Call Melissa Thompson, 303 871-3796.

The Colorado Coalition of Adoptive Families (COCAF) lists many training opportunities and information for professionals in the field on its website: www.cocaf.org.  These include: Child Abuse in Asian Countries: Cultural Considerations (10/1), 9-11, presented by Carey Ann Tanaka, Ph.D., Director of Clinical Services and Victim Assistance at the Asian Pacific Development Center. Location: St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Boulder, Cost: $15; Discipline and Control as Nurture, 10/8, 8:30-4,  presented by Ray Curtis, former Social Services Director at Forest Heights Lodge, Cost: $50, location: Holiday Inn West, Golden; A Training on Attachment and Bonding for Professionals and Parents (10/12) 8-4, presented by Bryan Post, Ph.D., LCSW, Cost: $FREE, location: Jefferson County Human Services, Golden; Foster/Kin/Adoptive Parent Conference (10/23) with Dr. David Brodzinsky, Professor at Rutgers University and Director of the Foster Care Counseling Project, Cost: $FREE, location: Grand Junction; Prosecuting Child Abuse Cases (11/5), 9-11 a.m., presented by Rob Shapiro, Boulder County District Attorney’s Office, location: Boulder.