Boulder County is moving forward with plans to wind down its 360 Foster Care Program, which has provided foster placements and case management for local children for decades.
The program will officially phase out by Sept. 2, although the county has already stopped certifying new foster parents. After that, the county will no longer manage day-to-day supervision of foster cases. Instead, newly placed children will be matched with foster families through one of 18 private nonprofit child placement agencies and one for-profit agency (collectively known as CPAs), while the county retains legal and oversight responsibilities.
The change marks the end of Boulder County’s in-house foster care operations — and the beginning of a fee-for-service model that county officials say will save money, increase access to specialized services and better align with national foster care trends.
“The intent is to provide the exact same experience for the child, while providing financial stability,” said Mollie Warren, Boulder County’s director of Family and Children’s Services. “The agencies provide foster homes just like we have done. We make the decision about which home the child goes into” at the agency selected.
To ease the shift, the county recently held a “meet and greet” for its dozen foster families to connect with several private nonprofit child placement agencies. The goal, officials said, was to enable foster families to learn more about the differing strengths, philosophies and services offered by the CPAs.
”Boulder is contracting to support the agencies,” Warren said. “We will maintain responsibility for the child’s case, just as we have always done. We are as involved as ever” in oversight.
Warren said not much will change from the children’s perspective — they will continue living in family settings, and some agencies may offer specialized behavioral or mental health support the county doesn’t provide.
Some foster families, however, are worried about what the changes will mean for them and the children in their care, saying the county made the decision without their input.
Why the county is ending its program
Warren said the current program is closing because national policy shifts in recent years have so reduced the number of foster homes needed that it is no longer financially feasible to operate. A key driver was the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA), passed federally in 2018 and adopted by Colorado in 2021, which emphasizes supporting children at home and placing them with relatives or close family friends whenever possible.
Warren supports the shift, noting that “children do best when they can safely stay home with their families.” If that can’t be done, “kinship care is next best” for the child.
However, the efforts resulted in a 47% overall decline in the number of children placed in out-of-home care since 2021. Kinship care increased by 14% — while foster home placements plummeted 70%.
Today, there are just 15 children in 12 homes in the county’s 360 Foster Care Program, while a few years ago there were approximately 50.
This drop in placements has made the county’s fixed-cost foster care model increasingly difficult to sustain. Under this model, ongoing administration and supervision costs stay the same no matter how many children are served. The new system is fee-for-service, where the county pays only for the actual services it provides to each child.
As a result, the county will need six fewer employees to run the revamped system. The planned changes should save Boulder County about $700,000 a year, Warren said.
“The fixed-cost model is no longer a responsible use of our dollars, and the per-child cost is so much higher,” she noted.
She emphasized that the changes won’t apply to current foster families, as long as the child remains in their home.
”We will not move any children currently placed in Boulder County foster homes and will continue to support families with children now placed in them,” she stated in an email sent to the foster families. “However, we will not continue to do work to recruit, certify or place children in new foster homes.”
Foster care is funded under federal child welfare funds. The federal money passes through the state, which allocates it to Colorado counties, Warren explained. Boulder County’s annual share is $18 million.
The stream, she said, remains the same regardless of how a county chooses to place a child. Spending increased with inflation, but the state allocation stayed the same. Warren said that program savings will be used to increase wages for remaining staff and boost program supports.
What changes — and what doesn’t
The changes won’t affect children in kinship care. That part of the program should grow in staffing, number of children and families served, she said.
But for children newly in the system and for those needing to switch foster homes, CPAs are the future.
When children need a foster home, Warren’s staff will meet with several placement agencies, discussing the needs and personality of the children to match them with a particular foster parent. The county makes the final decision, she emphasized.
Heather Morris, executive director of the CPA Clarvida, said agencies can provide advantages for foster children because they have “greater bandwidth to focus day to day on the needs of the family and the children we are caring for,” while the county oversaw the child’s entire case.
Specialized Alternatives for Families and Youth of Colorado (SAFY) makes a similar point, saying it can work with traditional, therapeutic and treatment foster home situations in a way the county sometimes can’t.
Concerns from foster families: ‘We are done’
Some foster families, however, feel trepidation about the coming changes. They are concerned about the county springing the changes on them without their involvement, the possibility that a child may be placed outside Boulder County, and the potential for children to enter group homes where they can’t get as much personal attention.
Warren responded that the county tries hard to keep children in the community near family, school and friends, but occasionally that isn’t possible. She said neither the county nor the local CPAs have group homes.
While the county says changes won’t affect current placements, foster families also are upset that when the child eventually leaves their home, families will need to be recertified by whichever CPA they go with next.
Many of the basic requirements would be the same, but each agency has its own procedures. Some foster parents, such as Christie Veitch, are concerned about the time involved, since many foster parents also have outside jobs. “Typically the CPAs won’t require massive retraining,” she said, “but it is work.”
Veitch also fears losing the “collaborative, holistic” relationship she feels with the county to a CPA that may have a more straightforward business model. “I don’t think the county considered the families, the children and the care they receive” in making the decision, she said.
For some, like Veitch, it is all too much. “We are done. We are leaving the system,” she said.
Warren thinks, though, that foster parent concerns will settle down as they learn more about the new system.
”We hope our long-time foster parents can continue to be fosters,” she said, but ultimately it will be through CPAs. “Change is always hard. We know that.”
Sounds good to me, more efficient with a fees-for-service model. Kinship care had a naturally positive outcome. It appears to have outgrown the bureaucracy imposed on the county, probably wrongly towards foster care from the start. Unless I’m being sold a bill of goods.
Why the plummeting figures in foster care? As an adoptive parent, this sound disruptive and counterproductive to me.
I was a child of foster services back from 1992 to 2004. They put me into abusive relative home and even though multiple unrelated people who didn’t know each other saw and reported the evidence of abuse… turns out that the social worker became a close friend of my aunt and kept me there for years and I was attempting suicide by 13 due to it. A black eye at 16 had a classmate reporting it and after all the other times I was terrified of anyone knowing and it getting back to my aunts family and being accused of betraying the family again with stuff getting worse. I couldn’t tell the counselor that day I got pulled in but over the weekend I got beat again and had bruises… I caved and told the counselor and she brought in the social worker and pushed them to take photo evidence. It was actually a cop more than a social worker that pushed that it was enough to remove me from the house and I’m grateful. The same social worker assigned to my case brought me a small box, about the length of my arm and about the height of my torso, filled with really random things from that house like a few pants and shirts, hairdryer and a handful of other stuff. I asked the social worker will I be getting the rest and she said no with the nuance of not budging, an absolute no. I accepted that first and only no just fine because I had the most valuable thing.. getting out of that house. The social worker assigned after her though took me from a group home to a single woman foster home where I ended up around the influences of drugs and other instances of trouble I had never been familiar with or knew how to handle and cope with. When I was supposed to get therapy for CPTSD… they left it to my real family that came out and took me to another state without any more real involvement or continued follow up. I ended up in a mental ward not even a year later. I was in Aurora when I was taken at 5. Honestly I truly needed a stable environment with support that wasn’t being provided. I needed to have a life beyond family. Instead I am all but disabled and useless to society now. I have a clean record and never hurt anyone. I’ve always had a peaceful mode of operating, not talking back, yelling, and I wasn’t even allowed to close doors in that house so I couldn’t and didn’t slam any, never damaged any property. What I went through was purely abuse from a series of homes ranging from total neglect to extremely controlling and invasive abuse where even taking a breath with breathing problems and allergies and the exhale release would be considered attitude or looking to the side was considered attitude and would earn me a smack. The system now even while I seek help from SummitStone has left me in such a state of failing that I don’t believe in help being a real thing. I did better in group homes that kept up on attendance and did regular outings.. even being able to walk to a library and get books to come back to a less distracting environment where I could have space to better myself without influences dragging me into trouble. I can’t even imagine what the current generations are experiencing. I fear the network of those that can reach in and save a life from abuse, being dismantled. Of funds being misappropriated and no one there to catch the falling. I hope this is handled with sincerity and serious diligence with dedication in saving people. Please don’t abandon us, please don’t leave us in those places. Not all homes were good but some were and it was enough of an influence that let me know there were different ways to live and different options on how to handle anger and other things. It’s too important.
I’m so sorry you had to go through so much.
Do you think or feeling like many foster homes are only doing it for the money?
Just sounds awful! So very sorry for that. The family that fostered two kids we adopted were exactly the opposite–stellar, stand up folks. Previous to that, they’d had horrible experiences in 25 foster homes that they could remember I wish you’d had them and a MUCH better experience. Good luck for future peace of mind and continuing recovery.
If this is funded federally, Boulder County should use the federal funds the way they were intended. Also does this mean family’s no longer get paid for fostering?
As a current foster parent, it concerns me that kinship placement is put in to such a priority in the county’s eyes. Often times, kinship placements do not have the same training and understanding of trauma that foster certified families have. My partner and I have over 60hrs of trauma informed care training and have seen two children go to kinship placements with 0 hours of trauma based training. It is worrisome that the county is relying on kinship placements. Additionally, kinship placements receive a smaller reimbursement for placement and thus “save” the county more money while possibly putting the child at more risk.
So it looks like a monetary issue. Shouldn’t be.
I am named in this article and have significant concerns. I spoke to Sally for over 30 minutes to detail them. Here are a few that didn’t make it into the article. My foster home started with a Certified placement agency (CPA) and moved to Boulder County so we could join a better team. I am uniquely positioned to share concerns about outsourcing to placement agencies.
I understand and support the push to support more kinship placements, and, none of our placements had kinship options. What that signals to me, is that these children come into care with the least safety nets. They are most in need of the broadest, most resilient nets of support that the county can provide.
I am deeply concerned that outsourcing foster placements to CPAs creates a divided system where we imagine that placement supervision comes from Boulder county caseworkers and their team and care comes from CPAs supporting foster families. Given our experience taking placement through a CPA my concerns are:
1. CPAs have no real accountability to families or children. They run like a business and when their management or policies change, families licensed through them experience whiplash and instability for their training, placements, and the support they receive. We often waited days to hear back from our CPA when our foster placement had major emergencies. We had a support worker disappear and offer us no contact for over eight months. We received no opportunities to train with events or workshops with our CPA for over nine months in one year.
We received sub-par guidance and support from our previous CPA team with regards to a high needs placement.
When we expressed disappointment and concern about the lack of support we were receiving and paying for, we were offered a three step grievance process. We calmly escalated through all stages of that process and at the end received a letter that offered no attempts to make us whole, no offers of increased support or guidance, and did not even offer an apology.
The lack of accountability that CPAs can operate with is disturbing to me, especially considering the placements Boulder is proposing to make through CPA outsourcing. Again, if a child has no kinship options, they are the most vulnerable. Often this correlates to children who have the most needs. These are placements that need to be maintained and supported with the utmost resources and efforts, but instead what we experienced through a CPA was neglectful, absent, and damaging.
2. Different systems can create different motivations and incentives and become dysfunctional. This proposal suggests that Boulder County will have oversight of foster placements made to CPAs. But this means that Boulder County caseworkers will have one set of goals, incentives and motivations, while workers from the CPA supporting a foster home will have another set of goals, incentives and motivations. It is not hard for me to imagine that a foster family could easily be caught in the middle, white trying diligently to provide for a foster child who needs critical services in order to stabilize. Today, if a Boulder foster child needs a medical procedure, evaluation, IEP for school, specialized therapy, etc. there is one team coordinating meetings with one another and treating the Boulder foster family like collaborators. In this new system, there could easily be three or four points of view (CPA, Boulder caseworkers, family, and child) to coordinate. This change feels cultural but is actually also operational. I foresee that having multiple “teams” policies, ways of working, processes, and styles of collaboration will easily create inconsistent standards of care for the kids who most need stability, reliable care, and ease of access to getting their needs met.
3. Placement of children outside their community.
I think this is simply a reality, not a forecast. Our first and second foster placement endured eight placements before ever coming to our home, and during her time connected to our family was with us twice, and also was hospitalized, in a temporary facility, and a long term (PRTF) facility. That means that before she turned 12 she had endured thirteen placements. These spanned six counties in Colorado.
I want to highlight her case because she represents the kinds of children who often are in care in their pre-teens and teens—kids with complex, high-level needs that both stem from and contribute to frequent placement disruptions. Children like her often don’t have kinship placement options, not because their families don’t care, but because their needs are simply too great for relatives or friends to manage. In some cases, kinship placements have already been attempted and disrupted, causing additional trauma and loss.
It’s easy to imagine a Boulder foster child with high needs who cannot be placed with kin. Right now, that child can still be cared for in a skilled, experienced Boulder foster home—allowing them to remain in their school, neighborhood, and broader community. But when placements are outsourced through Child Placement Agencies (CPAs), there’s no guarantee the child will stay in their community. CPAs often operate across wide geographic areas, increasing the risk that a child will be removed from everything familiar—friends, teachers, places of worship, and meaningful activities—compounding their sense of instability and loss.
4. Draining Colorado of skilled foster caregivers. Not all Boulder foster families are willing to accept this change by moving their license. It is not a small ask to relicense (I can tell you this from experience since we just did it in our home!) It’s a real effort. Also, some of us are opposed to this plan on principle and do not want to support it.
I believe this plan will result in draining Colorado of some very skilled foster families. We are all qualified, but how many families have experience with how to navigate the police being called because a child has acted out so severely, or handle regular elopement or self-harm? If families like ours do not relicense, Colorado stands to lose families that take older children, kids with medical needs, and kids with high magnitude behaviors from its foster care corps in the state overall.
Finally, I want to mention that the way this decision was reached seems flawed from the start. As a Boulder foster parent, neither myself, nor any other foster caregiver was consulted about how this change would affect us or impact the care we offer. I also am not aware that any Boulder 360 care team members were consulted. This means that none of the people who are “in the field” offering care and support to Boulder’s most vulnerable children had an opportunity to participate in roadmapping any downstream outcomes of this significant change. As a working product manager, I’ve learned that any decision I make about a product or service I may release or alter needs to take into account at least two of the following three groups:
– Those who do the work to create the product or service (in this case, the 360 team)
– Those who operate the product or service on a day to day basis (in this case, Boulder foster parents)
– Those who consume the product or receive the service (in this case, Boulder’s foster children)
Failing to have deeper consultations with these groups means that decisions made about a product or service have downstream effects that weren’t predicted by the leaders who made them in isolation.
It’s easy to make decisions on the basis of business outcomes, and costs. What’s hard to do is to make those same decisions when you care about more than business objectives, spreadsheets, and costs. I am not naive: I know budget pressures and costs cannot be ignored. And, I cannot abide by a decision that so clearly considers costs above people. Foster care has to be about healing families, and when that isn’t possible, healing the children that were further hurt when their family could not be reunited. I also deeply believe that foster care, at its best, can be seen as preventative care. It can prevent further hurt, and keep vulnerable children from becoming homeless, dangerous adults. At its worst, foster care simply moves children to warehouse them to later become those very same homeless, dangerous adults.
I deeply worry that by outsourcing foster care to private agencies, Boulder will look only to leading indicators of success for this plan. It will be easy to see money saved, some foster families moved to agencies, and short term wins for some children. But will you look quite as closely when a placement fails? Or when a high needs child or adolescent is moved so many times that permanency slips away? Will you follow these children into their 20s and 30s and see how many have achieved stability vs. those who haven’t?
Thank you, Christie! Your voice REALLY needs to be heard. How can you get your message out to a wide audience?
Christie, sounds like your expertise needs to be integrated to the decision network. It’s comprehensive.