State clears child protection agency in Washington County of ‘systemic bias,’ but concerns remain
While substantiating many complaints from six families who claimed Washington County’s child protective workers unfairly targeted them and separated them from their children, an audit by the Colorado Department of Human Services has concluded the county agency did not engage in systemic bias.
A state child protection watchdog, who in June called for the audit, believes Human Services officials still need to probe more deeply and review much more child protective case work in the county.
Allegations of bias include a mother who received a warning from the county that the former director of the county’s human services department may have been overheard calling her “ugly.” In another case, parents received a warning from the county that the former director may have unfairly stymied without cause their more than three-year effort to have their son returned to them from foster care.
Stephanie Villafuerte, Colorado’s child-protection ombudsman, outlined her issues with the adequacy and thoroughness of the six-month state audit last week in a letter she sent to Michelle Barnes, executive director of the state Department of Human Services.
Villafuerte wrote she remains concerned “about possible systemic bias against parents” by the Washington County Department of Human Services, as well as a lack of “due diligence in following up on these concerns” by the state department.
Barnes on Monday sent correspondence back to Villafuerte, rejecting Villafuerte’s push for a wider state probe and suggesting that Villafuerte instead have her staff do site visits.
State Human Services officials already have conducted spot checks that “yielded evidence that Washington County has significantly improved their compliance with rule and law pertaining to family contacts and engagement,” Barnes told Villafuerte in a letter.
“Additional review of all assessments and cases at this time would likely both interfere with Washington County’s ability to deliver services and would require a level of client outreach that would place on undue burden on the Washington County community,” Barnes wrote.
The Gazette obtained the correspondence between Villafuerte and Barnes through the state’s open records laws.
The Department of Human Services audit is the second the state has conducted on a county’s child-protective agency in the past year that has exonerated county workers of systemic issues following controversy and outcries from parents contending they were unfairly targeted and separated from their children.
In July, another state audit noted that two Arapahoe County child-protective workers engaged in fraudulent practices so severe that prosecutors charged them criminally and obtained criminal convictions, but consultants hired by state Human Services still reported they had detected “no evidence of systemic concerns of falsification of contacts.”
In Colorado, county officials staff and administer local child-protective agencies, which are overseen by state Human Services. That state agency sets policy and provides most of the funding for casework. Colorado’s system is one of only nine states in the nation relying on counties to administer child-protection operations as opposed to fully state operated programs.
“I cannot say whether having a strict state run system versus a state-supervised, county-administered program results in things that are different,” Villafuerte said in an interview. “I don’t know that. But what I can tell you very specific to Washington County is that the state was not aware that these problems existed and even after we brought it to their attention, state officials chose to take a very narrow look at the problems that we suggested. In this particular case, I don’t believe the state department did a proper review.”
Washington County, located on the eastern plains of Colorado, isn’t the only county Villafuerte has criticized for deficient child-protective practice. In 2020, her office released the results of a nine-month investigation that found Montezuma County violated dozens of state regulations and laws, including delayed responses to reports of abuse and neglect and inadequate supervision of child-protective cases. Villafuerte’s office in 2020 also reviewed more than 250 cases of alleged abuse or neglect of children or adults with disabilities in Moffat County and found multiple case where a child protection worker appeared to have fabricated details.
The more recent clash between the state’s child protection ombudsman and state Human Services also occurs at a time when criticism is mounting over how child custody cases are handled by Colorado’s courts, with parents alleging court-appointed parental evaluators have engaged in bias and fraud without adequate repercussions.
Villafuerte’s office in June called for state Human Services to conduct a casework audit in Washington County after Villafuerte’s office found 64 potential violations of state regulations and laws in six child-protective cases. The child protection ombudsman had received eight complaints involving six families and 10 children in Washington County.
The problems Villafuerte’s office identified ranged from failure to assess child safety to failure to communicate adequately with parents and failure to keep children with their families when possible.
Villafuerte noted that state Human Services’ subsequent audit of the six cases, completed last week, affirmed about 70% of the violations of regulations and laws Villafuerte’s office had previously identified in the cases. But she wrote in her letter to Barnes that state Human Services officials still discounted accusations of systemic bias while failing to adequately investigate more cases in the county and neglecting to reach out adequately to families impacted. She added that families also had not been interviewed, while child-protective staffers were.
“It is disheartening that the CDHS did not take the opportunity while in Washington County to contact those most impacted by WCDHS practices — namely children, family and community stakeholders,” Villafuerte wrote in her letter.
Villafuerte asked Barnes to have the state agency she heads reconsider its decision to not do a historical audit of all child welfare assessments and cases opened between 2018 and 2022, when Grant Smith was the director of the Washington County Department of Human Services.
“That audit should assess whether decisions and outcomes have been made objectively, fairly and in accordance with state law and regulations,” Villafuerte wrote. “That audit should include the perspectives and experiences of the children, youth, parents, caregivers and legal professionals involved in the case.”
Smith took the helm of the county agency in September 2018 and resigned in December 2022, days after an internal investigation by the county into the county’s own Department of Human Services. The county’s investigation into the county’s department of human services remains withheld from public view. Smith declined comment.
Multiple families reported receiving letters from the Washington County commissioners’ legal counsel detailing alleged misconduct by Smith, the former director of the county agency.
A mother and a father, who had battled for nearly 3½ years to have their son returned from foster care even though they had overcome their addiction to methamphetamines, received one of those letters. Their concerns were previously reported on by 9News and a reporter for ProPublica.
The letter, sent to the parents’ lawyer, said witnesses alleged that “a department employee made statements which evidence animus against the subject child’s father and that the employee may have promised the foster parents’ permanent custody of the subject child.” The child has since been returned to the parents.
A mother received a letter and learned that “the former director of the Washington County Department of Human Services made an offhand comment that he believes the mother in this case was ugly.” The mother said the statement demonstrated bias that went on to influence how her child-protective case was handled.
Another mother had submitted a complaint to the Colorado Child Protection Ombudsman’s Office that Washington County initiated a child-protective case against her “without cause” solely because of the county staff’s “personal relationship with the father.”