Colorado is losing track of foster kids who run away, new report says
Colorado authorities have “no obligation” to find a foster child who has run away and the child welfare cases of missing kids are often closed due to a lack of funding, according to a new report requested by lawmakers.
The report from a task force named after Timothy Montoya, a 12-year-old boy who ran away from a residential center and was struck and killed in the night by a vehicle, found that Colorado lacks adequate data to keep track of how long kids are missing from the foster system and the reasons they ran away.
The task force was ordered by the state legislature after a joint investigation by The Colorado Sun and 9News in 2021 into the number of runaways from youth residential treatment centers. The investigation, which involved the news agencies suing the state over the failure to release abuse and neglect information, found that two boys, Timothy and 15-year-old Andrew Potter, died after leaving Denver-area centers and being hit by cars.
It also found, through public records of 911 calls, that police were summoned to residential centers numerous times each week to deal with runaways.
But the Colorado Department of Human Services, which includes the child welfare division, refused to release data to the news outlets regarding the number of calls coming from residential centers to the child abuse and neglect hotline. Staff in the centers are required to report any incidents of children leaving the center or of harm that results from altercations between young people, or between a child and a staff member.