VOLUME 119 ISSUE

BY BELEN WARD BWARD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

A national effort to get orphans or other kids in trouble out of group homes and into foster care has local providers scrambling.

Local foster parent recruiter Michelle Champagne said the Adams County Foster Care program is having a foster care shortage thanks to the changes.

“The federal government decided that group homes weren’t good for children and people in child welfare also agree,” Champagne said. “No matter what their age they should not be raised in a group home environment.”

The Family First Family First act was signed into law in December of 2017 but was finally implemented this past October, requiring all group homes be phased out.

“There would be up to 8 to 12 kids raised in a group home, it’s not an ideal home environment. Group homes over the last couple of years have been phasing those out and putting more kids with foster families,” Champagne said.

Not all group homes have closed and there are a few open, especially residential care facilities. It’s for the more difficult kids that are significantly developmentally delayed children and kids who have run in with the law with some offenses. They cannot be placed in foster homes, she said.

“With that process, we have an outside independent assessment done to see if they qualify for these specific levels of homes,” said Champagne.

Champagne said she has worked in child welfare since 1999. As a recruiter, her job is to find foster parents to place the kids. They receive referrals from different places in the community, so social worker goes out to the home and investigate for any kind of abuse or neglect.

“It’s a long process so after the professionals deem there is a need to remove children from their families to keep them safe temporarily it then go through the courts. The courts have final jurisdiction over everything and place all the decisions we make on recommendations, and then the judges make decisions,” said Michelle Champagne, Adams County Foster Parent Recruiter, Human Services.

Family first

When a judge finally decides to remove these children, the recruiter starts a process to look for family first.

“We start by trying to find an aunt, uncle or a cousin, or even somebody like a psychological family member, maybe a neighbor, teacher, or best friends of parents, then we try to place those kids in a more natural environment, “said Champagne. “If we can’t find relatives then we place children into foster care.”

Champagne, said the younger kids, such as are infants up to age six, are easy to place. Most people that become foster parents want to parent the little ones. They call their younger charges the “littles”.

“A lot of foster parents are intimidated to foster, middle or older kids,” said Champagne.

When the kids are placed in foster and if things go great, the parent is doing everything they need to do, then they could bring the child back home.

“That is the best outcome,” Champagne said. “The older kids are a little bit more challenging because we don’t have enough foster homes for our older kids.”

The family first act is very detailed with the goal of prevention, so now before they remove children lots of money is going to be spent on prevention, services and to prevent having to remove children.

Far from home

Unfortunately, some kids don’t have family or friends to care for them.

Champagne said, “This group of kids we end up placing far away from their communities because we just don’t have enough foster homes that are willing and able to take our teenagers or middle school and high school kids.”

This situation is not ideal to send them out of state because they are in high school, have friends, might have a job or after school or other social activities, such as marching band or playing on the football team. Being ripped away is hard for them.

“Every time kids move, they lose some piece of their education such as credits, then they get behind, and then they don’t graduate. It could be awful outcomes if we can’t stabilize them and have some permanency,” said Champagne. “We need more foster parents in the area.”

Champagne currently has a 16-year-old to place and there is not a foster home to place them in Colorado.

“We have started looking at other metro counties for an open foster home for this child. We keep moving farther out of metro area south to Colorado Springs, and Grand Junction,” said Champagne. “We have kids placed in every corner of our state, and sometimes out of state. We just don’t have the places here.”

Colorado’s foster care program is in the process of developing a therapeutic program to identify working professionals with specialized skills to serve as therapeutic foster parents. That could include teachers, law enforcement, therapists and social workers.

“They will have more trauma training, and the ability to understand the harder kids. But we still need people for your average teenager as well,” she said. “We need people to step up in our community.”

Champagne said the new program will allow social workers to do some digging to find family members they might have overlooked initially. That could involve taking a look at their parents again, and see if they’re in a better space to be able to safely have their children returned home -which would be ideal, she said.

To learn about the foster care program and to participate visit: https://www.adcogov.org/fostercare

HOSPITAL

Currently, Seeley says they still see a large population of unvaccinated people as well as delayed care patients.

“Our nurses go in to make an impact and we still feel like we are behind the eight ball,” said Seeley.

Seeley plans for staff shortages, burnout, and retaining staff for 2022.

“We’ve kicked off our campaign of “one team, one goal, no excuses,” said Seeley.

“We are going to focus on our people in 2022. It’s recruitment, retention, and recognition. We are not going to get ahead of it.”

People who went to nursing school before the pandemic started and a lot of them have left.

Seeley said, “They say this is not what I signed up for. I can’t imagine a new grad starting in this situation.”

The plan for Seeley is to focus on the team and do whatever they can to help them be successful.

They going to launch a wellness program and mental health resources that are free for staff.

“We have a lot of fun things coming. We are highly encouraging people to do that and anything we can do to keep them,” said Seeley.

Plans for the future going forwardroots and culture.

“I’m a native, my grandma lived down the street across from Water world, so I spent time in this neighborhood. I have family that went to Thornton High School. Northern Denver is important to me.

The hospital plans are to add a new bed tower, private inpatients beds, shell another floor and a new cardiac cath lab.

“To give you a perspective, 85% of the people that get admitted to North Suburban come through our ER,” said Seeley. “Having good emergency services- especially in the cardiac- it’s important.”

Also, they are partnering with Swedish Medical Center which is one of the premier destinations for stroke in the region.

“We initiate care here, and if it’s appropriate get them to Swedish very fast and but also provide emergency services,” said Seeley.

Another goal of Seeleys, coming from emergency room experience she would like North Suburban to become a destination where people choose to come for their elective procedures as well.

Seeley said “If it’s any minor procedures they can come here. We have a wonderful woman’s unit it’s a model where the family comes in, and they stay in one beautiful room with a view of the mountains for the entire stay. “

“I would like the community to perceive us as a place to come when they’re choosing versus when coming when they need us during emergency care.”

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A gentle answer turns away wrath

For every minute of anger, you give up 60 seconds of peace of mind.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The title of this column comes from an old proverb. And it seemed such an appropriate reminder for the current state of the world we are living in today, that I wanted to share it with you. I also wanted to share something else with you. I believe in the awesome power of hope. I believe that there is more goodness in the world than bad. And I believe there are more people doing good things than bad people doing bad things. And I believe that there are far more kind and gentle people in the world than there are angry people.

Yet what seems to make the news and fi nd its way to our social media feed and stories are the angry, violent, and hateful events that are taking place. So, it could easily make us all wonder if what I said I believe in, in the paragraph above, is true.

I was fascinated by an article I read last week about a young woman who decided to go back to a phone that can only make and receive calls and send and receive text messages. Her reasons resonated with me and mirrored some of what I wrote about in a previous column last month. The need to stop scrolling and being so preoccupied with what’s happening on our phones and being more involved with the people right in front of us.

Although I agree with her reasons about being more present in the moment and involved in life, I also think that we are being fed so much negative information that we can’t help but fall into the trap of becoming angry, lashing out at others and saying things we normally wouldn’t say. Or we spend hours being angry and depriving ourselves of hours of fi nding peace of mind.

I started using this made-up word to describe what I see as the problem, attackusation. When I do watch the news or read online stories it is no longer about someone just attacking someone else physically or verbally, they feel compelled to attack their opinion, decision, or action and then go after them on a personal level making accusations that are most often false. And they aren’t satisfi ed with attacking or accusing just that person, they attack and accuse their family and friends.

Is this really what has become of our society? Let’s go back to what I said earlier that there is more goodness in the world than bad. Andrew Carnegie said, “You expect to move tons of dirt to fi nd an ounce of gold, but you don’t go into the mine looking for the dirt, you go in looking for the gold.” If we want to fi nd the bad, we can fi nd it for sure. The question is do we want to? And if we do, why? I mean some people go around looking for the bad like there is some kind of prize or reward for fi nding the bad.

None of us has all the answers, but I do know that I can pass along a few simple suggestions. First, turn off the sources where we are being fed the negative fuel that drives our anger. Second, focus on the good, the goodness, and the good people that are all around us. And lastly, change our vocabulary to avoid words of anger and hate to words of love, gentleness, kindness, compassion, and forgiveness. Will these three little suggestions work? They will work if you apply them.

How about you? Is it time to change your input so you can change your output? Are you searching for the bad or are you looking for the good? And is it time to change your vocabulary and focus on words of hope and encouragement? I would love to hear your story at mnorton@tramazing.com, and when we can turn away the wrath and anger for the good and kind, it really will be a better than good year.

WINNING WORDS

Michael Norton

Michael Norton is the grateful CEO of Tramazing.com, a personal and professional coach, and a consultant, trainer, encourager, and motivator to businesses of all sizes.

In defense of truth and ethics in politics

Have you noticed how offkilter our political moral compass is? There are fact-check organizations to catch public falsehoods and untruths, but I’m wondering about our internal ethical checkpoints. If what’s happening publicly is a reflection of what’s occurring privately, it appears we’re in a moral crisis together.

Federally, we’ve recently seen examples of both honor and shame of elected officials (from all sides of the aisle). On the floor of the U.S. Senate last week, we saw senators explicitly lie and obstruct the reauthorization of a voting rights bill foundational to our Constitution. Their false justification? An arcane rule they claim must not be broken (although it’s been changed over 150 times throughout history for other legislation far less important).

In Colorado, we’re not immune to unethical antics either. Currently, a county clerk is under a grand jury investigation and faces ethics complaints over allegations of abusing her official privileges to steal election information and distribute it to her partisan colleagues. In our Colorado state legislature last week, several legislators attempted to support the false allegations of our elections being stolen and also support the unlawful 2021 insurrection at our nation’s Capitol. Honorably, only one legislator broke from his party to defend the truth and the Constitution. That’s a person with integrity.

Politically, some of this is not new, unfortunately. When I ran for my second term in the state Senate, there were outright lies about me that were published in a fake online newspaper crafted by the opposition party leaders. Gratefully, I was the victor of that election in spite of that. But afterward, our relationships were strained for quite some time.

Although now it seems we’re at a precipice as a society. How do we demand honesty and truth with each other? We’re dealing with a plethora of perceived realities that don’t align with the truth — the facts of our history, or Constitution, or science, for example. These are not limited to only public servants. These untruths are among all of us. I acknowledge that some people may misspeak unknowingly. They may just be misinformed. I’ve been there and have had to correct myself for sure. But to purposely, divisively, steer people away from the truth is a different story. Why do certain people speak and vote with integrity and others lie? (That’s actually a loaded question for a whole other article.)

I’m not claiming to be a purist. I still sometimes feel guilty about lying to my kids about Santa. But I do believe that every time we lie we not only harm others but ourselves as well. Our bodies keep the score and those large or small infractions etch away at our physical or emotional health. So, if that’s true, what are we doing collectively to the body of our community, our state, our nation? No wonder we’re hanging onto our democracy by a thread.

So, where is our moral compass leading us? As our elected officials are a mirror of the population they serve, what does that say about all of us whom they represent? I intimately understand the political pressures of serving as an elected official, and I’m sure I was not always perfect while in office. But I do believe it’s incumbent on each of our public servants (and constituents) to at least tell the truth and vote based on that truth. As all of us feel these moral dilemmas crowding around us, may they inspire us to live ethical lives personally and publicly. May we call each other in and hold each other to account for telling the truth and upholding our elemental integrity.

GUEST COLUMN

Linda Newell

Former Colorado state senator, now with a master’s in social justice and ethics from Iliff School of Theology, Linda Newell is a writer, instructor, facilitator and conflict coach. Senlindanewell@gmail. com, www.lindanewell.org, www. senlindanewell.com, @sennewell on Twitter, Senator Linda Newell on Facebook.

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