Denver needs stronger support for kinship caregivers

Denver needs stronger support for kinship caregivers

Published on March 16, 2023

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DENVER - While severely constrained by state and federal rules, the City of Denver is likely falling short in supporting family members and close family friends who take care of children after they have been removed from their homes due to suspected abuse or neglect, according to information in a new audit from Denver Auditor Timothy M. O'Brien, CPA. Our research found gaps in both city training for employees assisting these caregivers and access to resources for caregivers.

"Taking a child out of their home is scary and stressful for families," Auditor O'Brien said. "The city needs to provide consistent support for these caregivers to ensure essential financial assistance is accessible for the most urgent needs."

Keeping a child in their home is ideal. But when a child needs to be removed, Denver Human Services relocates the child to an "out-of-home placement," which temporarily cares for the child. This might be traditional foster care, a group home, or in the care of relatives or close family friends - known as "kinship care."

Our team looked at the effectiveness of Denver Human Services' kinship caregiver certification process and whether the agency's practices to support those kinship caregivers are working.

We found most kinship caregivers are not accessing monthly financial support that's available exclusively to certified caregivers either because they were not able to become certified according to state requirements or they chose not to get certified.

Considering the emphasis Denver Human Services and its state and federal partners have placed on certification payments as being the most significant and best available source of support for kinship caregivers, this limited use is significant.

"Local, state, and federal governments are all rightly prioritizing putting children in homes with relatives or close family friends," Auditor O'Brien said. "But that means our system should also be prioritizing the needs of those new kinship caregivers."

Although the city has no control over the kinship care certification, the audit includes several recommendations for how Denver Human Services can improve its role in the kinship caregiver certification process, such as by better training city staff to ensure more consistent and helpful guidance for kinship caregivers navigating certification.

Denver Human Services staff told us there is a lack of training for the individuals in charge of helping with kinship care certification. Without a formal and structured approach, managers of the Child Welfare Division cannot be assured their caseworkers and other staff have the necessary knowledge and resources to manage increasing workloads and that the division has adequately trained staff to effectively serve hundreds of Denver area families who need support.

"The kinship care certification process is clearly burdensome for the families who need financial aid the most," Auditor O'Brien said. "If we cannot fix the process, we should make sure our staff are fully trained and available to help families more easily navigate it."

If a caregiver would be a good candidate for certification but misses important deadlines, they could miss out on monthly financial support for rent or food for the child in their care. However, certification is not a good fit for every kinship caregiver or every situation, making clarity in the process and training for city staff even more important.

Child welfare services is an inherently difficult line of work - which brings added stress on caseworkers and increases the chance they may leave their positions. Inadequate training can add to the stress for city staff and increase the already high risk of turnover - which thereby increases the risk of inconsistent or delayed assistance for kinship caregivers. The Child Welfare Division estimates about 25% of its positions are vacant beyond routine levels of turnover.

The high turnover among caseworkers and staff compounds the Child Welfare Division's need for more structured training plans and documented policies.

Meanwhile, Denver Human Services is lacking appropriate policies and procedures for tracking and managing the dollars it uses to provide emergency support for various individuals it serves in the community, including families in need and kinship caregivers. The department calls the money it sets aside for this aid an "imprest fund," which is similar to a petty cash fund.

Several factors contribute to the agency's imprest fund procedures being insufficient. Foremost among them: The Controller's Office removed explicit references to imprest funds when it revised the fiscal rule for petty cash accounts.

The agency is at risk of spending money from its imprest fund on other purposes than the urgent needs it is intended for: food, housing, childcare, and other one-time emergency expenses.

Although our audit team's access to data was unnecessarily delayed and limited by Denver Human Services - and separately by obstacles at the state and federal level for additional data- our analysis found that between January 2018 and June 2022, the number of individual caregivers and children involved with certified kinship care has steadily increased, as has the amount of money the city pays out to certified kinship caregivers.

Our analysis shows most kinship caregivers are the child's grandparents, followed by aunts or uncles. But this data is not consistently recorded by the city.

The city also isn't doing a good job of tracking race and ethnicity for children who enter kinship care or tracking the race and ethnicity of those in a kinship caregiver's household. Due to the inaccurate data, the city cannot accurately assess the equity and community impacts of kinship care in Denver.

Because of our analysis, we can see the locations of children placed into kinship care, broken down by zip code. This map shows higher concentrations of children removed from their homes and placed in kinship in some portions of the city than others.

Denver Human Services agreed to all of our recommendations related to training staff, providing guidance on kinship care certification, formalizing its staff retention strategies, and managing the imprest fund. We have also learned the state legislature might consider changes to the kinship care certification process. Our analysis supports city caseworkers' concerns about the certification process, which is ultimately dependent upon action at the state and federal levels.

AUDITOR TIMOTHY O'BRIEN, CPA
Denver's Auditor

Denver Auditor's Office
201 W. Colfax Ave. #705 Denver, CO 80202
Email: [email protected]
Call: 720-913-5000
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