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.

American Humane’s Donna L. Parrish Honored

Donna L. Parrish, director of the Colorado Disparities Resource Center, received an award from the Colorado Association of Family and Children’s Agencies for her important work addressing the disproportion of minorities in Colorado’s child welfare system.

Find out more.

Hot Off the Press

Now Available!
Innovations in Child Welfare: Protecting Children, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2010

This issue of Protecting Children is dedicated to innovations in child welfare, with the intent of advancing knowledge about cutting-edge practices, policy and research in child welfare and related fields. Articles provide findings and case studies on successful innovative practices in elevating family and parent voice, addressing poverty, using evidence-based practice, and impacting disproportionate representation of African American children. The article entitled, “Bridging the Cultural Divide: Innovative Supervision Practices to Impact Disproportionality With African American Clients in Child Welfare” was co-written by CDRC Director Donna Parrish.

To order a copy, please download and complete the order form.

FGDM: A Culturally Responsive Approach 

FGDM has been widely identified as a promising practice for remediating racial disproportionality and disparities in child welfare since its inception. As a culturally responsive approach, FGDM has been shown to improve outcomes for all children and families. In fact, equity for children and families of color in the child welfare system is a primary motivator for U.S. jurisdictions implementing FGDM today.

Read more about FGDM’s promising impact on disproportionality and disparities.

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.