Families in Montezuma County and two Ute Indian tribes are included in a new program to keep children out of the child protective services system.<\/p>\n
The program was announced Monday, Sept. 30, by Reggie Bicha, executive director of the Colorado Department of Human Services.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrevention of future problems is the goal,\u201d said Julie Krow, director of the department\u2019s Office of Children, Youth and Families.<\/p>\n
Fifteen mainly rural counties, including Montezuma, Dolores, La Plata and San Juan, and the Southern Ute Indian and Ute Mountain Ute tribes, were selected for the SafeGuard Colorado program.<\/p>\n
The goal is to counsel 600 families a year for three years. The state is putting up $1.9 million for first-year costs.<\/p>\n
The program involves home visitations to families with newborn to 5-year-old children who have shown indications \u2014 but not reportable incidents \u2014 of possible neglect or abuse.<\/p>\n
Once-a-week sessions of 90 minutes will be given for 15 to 20 weeks. Behavioral training sessions will concentrate on child health, parenting and home safety.<\/p>\n
Participation will be voluntary on the part of target families.<\/p>\n
The Department of Human Services is partnering with the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect at Children\u2019s Hospital, counties, referral agencies and providers.<\/p>\n
Kempe Center trainers will prepare those making home visitations. SafeCare originated at Georgia State University in 1979,<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the program shows the results we expect, we\u2019d like to keep it going,\u201d Krow said. \u201cWe hope it would become a best-practices program.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Montezuma County among limited venues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-57015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57015"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=57015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}