Colorado is losing track of foster kids who run away, new report says – By Jennifer Brown (Colorado Sun) / Nov 3, 2023
The Colorado Sun and 9News won on appeal to force the state to turn over child abuse data on residential treatment centers, though the case isn’t over
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.
