Providing Care and Custody With Dignity and Respect Within Colorado Division of Youth Services

In December of each year, at the main administration building for the Colorado Department of Human Services, a Christmas tree is placed in the entryway. The tree is decorated with ornaments listing the age, gender, and gift preference for a child in need. CDHS employees pick an ornament from the tree and purchase a gift for a young child that they will likely never meet. While this may seem like a standard giving tree, the unique feature of this tree is that the gifts are given to the children of youth within the Colorado Division of Youth Services (DYS). This small, yet poignant act of giving raises larger questions: “How are these teens learning to be parents? How many more holidays will they miss with their children? Who are their children spending their days with if not their parents?” Parenting is an everyday activity, and time missed cannot be recaptured. How, then, can the Department hope to rehabilitate young parents too? How can the Department set these teens on a path of appreciation for their children, and imbue within them an understanding of their responsibilities as a parent?

For more than 300 Colorado teens, home is a place they are not allowed to leave, and where they are under 24-hour supervision by the state. The average young person served within DYS is placed in state custody for a little over 27 months. These youthful offenders are typically placed within DYS for offenses ranging from drug sales, robbery, and gang activity, to aggravated assault and murder. During their commitment with the state, these young people are provided education, training, and mental health treatment to help prepare them for a successful transition back to the community and to hopefully prevent future negative interactions with the law. While DYS provides support and housing for the youth in its care, no organization can replace a parent. CDHS, which oversees DYS, is working to maintain parent-child connections and relationships among committed youth and their parents, as well as between parenting youth and their own children. CDHS has acted upon a series of recommendations, outlined below, that include parenting curricula, home visiting and other benefits connections, and facilities upgrades to help address the destabilizing toll of incarceration on youth and their children.

Fifty-five percent of youth return home to their parents after their commitment, and numerous committed youth are parents themselves and are unable to fully participate in their children’s lives. In order to ensure these crucial relationships are preserved, the Department has focused upon designing approaches that impact parents of committed youth, committed youth themselves, and the children of committed, parenting youth.

DYS is working to transform the family experience by taking a two-generation (2Gen) approach to the services it provides. Adopting a 2Gen approach to developing positive outcomes for the entire family is a key component to strengthening the economic health and well-being of the family. Through this approach, CDHS is working to ensure commitment and incarceration do not become family legacies. Working with Ascend at the Aspen Institute, state human services staff, community members, youth within DYS and their parents, the Department is committed to creating an environment of “Care and Custody with Dignity and Respect.”