To better help kids at risk, Denver child welfare caseworkers go back to school

Leah Anderson is about as tall as an average middle schooler at Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy. On days she’s there, the Denver child welfare caseworker avoids the hallways between periods so as not to get swallowed up by the swarm of students on their way to class.

Most of them will never need her help. But for those who do, she hopes her new assignment to spend time at Kunsmiller will make them safer, healthier and ultimately happier.

It’s a goal shared by Denver Public Schools, which is paying increasing attention to how non-academic factors, including students’ home lives, impact their learning.

A pilot program that began in October places city caseworkers part-time in three high-poverty Denver schools: Barnum Elementary, Munroe Elementary and Kunsmiller, an arts-based school that serves upwards of 1,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade in the southwest part of the city. More than 80 percent are from low-income families.

The pilot is similar to a pioneering Arapahoe County program that started more than 20 years ago and works with four schools in the Aurora, Sheridan and Cherry Creek districts.

The idea to start a program in Denver came from a response team formed in July after the death of a 23-month-old boy whose family had been the subject of calls to the Denver child welfare division. The team was tasked with recommending improvements to Denver’s system.

Next year, Denver’s pilot program is set to expand to eight schools. The aim is to improve communication between the division and the public schools to better serve at-risk kids.

The two systems hadn’t had a formal partnership even though they’re closely linked.

“DPS is focusing more on the ‘whole child,’” said Ellen Kelty, the manager of the DPS department of social work and psychological services. “This totally fits into that.”

Kelty oversees more than 200 school social workers and psychologists. Those workers — along with teachers, principals and other school employees — are required by law to report suspected child abuse. Last year, more than a quarter of referrals to the Denver child welfare division came from school staff. That’s more than from police officers, doctors or neighbors.

But not every referral results in a city investigation, which can be frustrating and confusing for school staff. One goal of the pilot program is to help them better understand the type of information Denver Human Services needs to open a case, city officials said.

“Mandated reporters have a mandate to report but oftentimes feel ill-prepared to do that,” said Jeff Holliday, the deputy executive director for protection and prevention. “So if we can provide a trained and skilled investigator to do a drop-in with a teacher to say, ‘This is what I’m seeing. What do you think?’ that adds great value to the process.”

Anderson said she’s advising the staff at Kunsmiller how to communicate their concerns to human services. For example, she said, reporting that a child says she didn’t have dinner last night probably isn’t enough. A report about a child who says her parents withheld dinner as punishment, if that’s the case, is likely to raise more red flags, she said.

Desiree Sanchez, the social worker at Kunsmiller, said Anderson also has been a helpful conduit for follow-up information when referrals lead to investigations.

“Historically, we would have to call the main number or if we knew the family’s caseworker, we’d reach out to them,” Sanchez said. “A lot of times it would be phone tag or trying to track down information. What has been helpful with Leah is we can use her as our one point of contact.”

The intention is for Anderson to focus her efforts within Kunsmiller’s zip code of 80219, though she still has cases this year in different parts of the city. While she has a small, sparsely decorated office at the school, she also reports to the Denver Human Services office.

At most, Anderson and the other caseworkers would spend half a week at the schools to which they’re assigned, said Joe Homlar, the child welfare division director. Their role would not be to break up fights or do bus duty but to continue to investigate suspected child abuse, he said.

City officials hope the caseworkers’ presence will soften the perception of Denver Human Services among parents who think the agency’s only role is to take children away.

That’s been the case in Arapahoe County, according to Michelle Dossey, the child protection intake administrator with the county’s human services department. “We are more often seen as a community partner rather than an external agency,” she wrote in an email.

Denver Human Services is considering ways to track the success of its pilot program, including looking at the number and quality of referrals it receives from the three schools, examining how many times families from those schools are re-referred after getting help and surveying school staff about whether having an assigned caseworker is making a difference.

Anecdotally, Anderson says it is. In the past several months, she said she’s been able to collaborate with the school system in ways that weren’t possible before the pilot program.

For instance, she said there was a family with multiple children at Kunsmiller that was referred to child welfare services. Anderson was assigned to the case and upon investigation, discovered one of the children could benefit from individual therapy.

In the past, Anderson would have referred the child to Denver Health, which she said has a long waiting list and can be difficult to navigate for families such as this one whose primary language isn’t English. But after consulting with Kunsmiller staff, she learned the school has an on-site Denver Health clinic and a therapist who’s available to see students right away.

The child, who was teetering on the edge of self-harm, was able to get therapy at school.

“I’d like to think we caught it before anything major happened,” Anderson said.