About Us

The Children’s Division of American Humane, in partnership with the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) Division of Child Welfare, recently launched the Colorado Disparities Resource Center (CDRC) to address longstanding issues of service disparities in child welfare based on race and ethnicity.

The CDRC’s overall focus is developing solutions that respond to the complex causes of inequities in the child welfare system. The CDRC will increase awareness among county department managers of the actual levels of disparities in child protection services. CDRC staff will achieve this by monitoring the development of state and county plans, and by obtaining and using data from Colorado Trails, an automated system that tracks all child protection cases in the state.

The center will then provide an accurate account of the disproportion of families and children of color in Colorado’s system, as well as disparities in the state’s child welfare services over the funding period of May 2009 through June 2010.

CDRC Goals and Methods

The basic goal of the CDRC is to reduce disparities in the provision of child welfare services to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)-eligible families of color throughout Colorado. Of course, the CDRC can only partly contribute to the realization of this goal since it depends upon the successful implementation of culturally responsive practices.

The CDRC will evaluate the achievement of this goal by:

• Assessing awareness of actual levels of disparities among county child welfare agency managers.
• Monitoring the development of state and county plans to implement recommendations to reduce or eliminate inequitable outcomes.
• Using data from Colorado Trails to establish baseline state and county disparities and then monitor disparity levels over the funding period.