Colorado
COLORADO
Donna J. Pope, Ph.D.
Child Welfare Analyst
Office of Children, Youth and Family Programs
Colorado Department of Human Services
1575 Sherman Street
Denver, CO 80203-1714
(303) 866-5976
(303) 866-4191 Fax
donna.pope@state.co.us
General: These data reflect the States best efforts at combining data and databases that have fundamentally different structures. The data came from sources as varied as hand counts by county staff to phone reports from court representatives. To the extent possible, the automated data systems of the Child Welfare Eligibility and Services Tracking System (CWEST) and the Central Registry for Child Protection (CRCP) were used to produce the data. They differ in that CWEST maintains data on individual children and CRCP maintains data on incidents. One incident might include up to six child victims and as many as nine perpetrators. The only common link between these two data sets is the State child identifier, required in CWEST but not required in CRCP.
Item 2.1: Because the States automated case management system is not yet functional, these data are based on county-level hand counts of reports and investigations. The counts are submitted to the State administrative offices on a quarterly basis. No details are available on report source, and the ability to track to the disposition of investigations is limited. This count is not directly related to the number of children subject of an investigation in Item 3.2, which is from another data source.
Item 3.2: Data were based on cases opened in CWEST with abuse and/or neglect report dates entered that fell within the calendar year. A case in CWEST is child-based, not family-based. These counts reflect cases opened, not single child counts. Thus, if a child had two cases opened during the specified time period, the child would be counted twice in these data. Dispositions map to SDC requirements as follows: "Substantiated" includes founded abuse/neglect reports; "Unsubstantiated" includes inconclusive or unfounded abuse/neglect reports; "Other" includes reports with court-ordered services for child protection. "Unknown" includes other reports with abuse/neglect dates.
Items 3.3 and 3.4: Only paid core services or out of home placement services are tracked in CWEST. Caseworker-provided services are not specifically identifiable, although ongoing cases were counted because they would have received caseworker services.
Item 3.5: These data were developed by comparing records with an abuse/neglect report date to an out-of-home, start-of-service date. Out-of-home includes family foster care, specialized group care, receiving home, shelter care, residential child care facility, residential treatment center, transition program, home-based program, detention, or kin care. The service-begin date must have occurred subsequent to the abuse/neglect report but within 90 days of the report. Removal reasons of physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and abandonment were then used to select removals associated with abuse/neglect. These children were also counted in Item 3.3 because they received services other than investigation or assessment.
Items 4.14.5: The source of these data was the CRCP, which contains data only for those incidents of child abuse and/or neglect that are confirmed according to the requirements of State statutes. These data are duplicated. The number of child victims identified in these items does not match the number identified in Item 3.2.A because the data sources are different.
Item 4.5: A child can be entered in only one racial field.
Item 4.6: This is probably a slight undercount because a number of child victims on the CRCP do not have State identifiers that would allow a match to the services data.
Item 4.8: Court actions were tracked using the legal status field from the CWEST system.
Items 5.1-5.4: Data on child fatalities are for CY96. Because of the nature and length of the child fatality review process, Colorado data lag by 1 year.
Item 6.1: There is a legislatively mandated multi-step appeals process that must be followed prior to listing any individual as a perpetrator on the CRCP. Because of this, 80 percent of the perpetrators were listed as "Unknown." Previously, 80 percent were listed as "Parents."
