12-year-old Timothy Montoya was hit and killed by a car shortly after running away from out-of-home care in June 2020. In response to this tragic death – and to the dangerous circumstances experienced by many other youths who have run from out-of-home care – the Colorado legislature established the Timothy Montoya Task Force to Prevent Youth from Running from Out-of-Home Placement.
The Task Force is charged with analyzing the state’s laws, regulations and practices regarding youth running from-out-of-home care. It has considered how efforts to both prevent runs before they happen and intervene after they have occurred can improve conditions and safety for youth and their families. A large part of this analysis has been learning about national best practices and the policies in use in other states throughout the country.
This task force was placed in the Office of the Child Protection Ombudsman (CPO). The CPO created many resources to help both task force members and the public understand how other states have sought to address these issues in state policies. As the Timothy Montoya Task Force begins to finish up its work ahead of its final report – which will be released by October 1, 2024 – the CPO has created this blog post to highlight and provide a quick recap of those resources.
The CPO is proud of the work it has done with the Timothy Montoya Task Force to Prevent Youth from Running from Out-of-Home Placement and is thrilled to make these resources available not only to those working on issues in Colorado, but also to policymakers, stakeholders, researchers, and the public wherever they may be located. These resources were created by the CPO’s Public Policy Analyst Bryan Kelley, who can be contacted by email.
Resources Created by the CPO for the Timothy Montoya Task Force to Prevent Youth from Running from Out-of-Home Placement
- State Policies Preventing Children from Running from Care
- This policy scan highlights other states’ approaches to preventing youth from running from out-of-home care. This scan highlighted Kansas, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming, and addressed topics including the use of seclusion and restraint, locked facilities, and runaway prevention education.
- State Policies Regarding Hardware Use to Prevent Children from Running from Care
- This policy scan summarizes approaches in some other states allowing for the use hardware – such as secured perimeters and delayed locks – to prevent youth from running from out-of-home care. This scan highlighted California, Kansas, Washington and Wyoming.
- State Policy Snapshot: Assessing Why Youth Run, and Creating Prevention Plans
- This resource presents information on how three states – Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin – have regulations requiring an assessment of why a youth ran from care, often informing the creation of prevention plans. Information is also provided from a Residential Runaway Risk Assessment User Guide developed by the University of Illinois at Chicago.
- Standardized Statewide Policies: Varying Response Categories and Specified Response Protocols
- This resource provides a policy scan of other states’ approaches to creating varying run response categories based on youth characteristics – such as accelerated timelines regarding missing youth if they are pregnant – as well as cross-agency response protocols when a youth runs from care. Examples are provided from Arizona, DC, Michigan, North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington.
- State Intervention Policies When Children Run from Care
- This policy scan presents examples of other states’ approaches to creating specialized investigation staff for when a youth runs from out-of-home care. This scan highlighted regulations and practices in DC, Tennessee and Texas.
The CPO has also been supporting the work of the Mandatory Reporting Task Force, which will be submitting its final report by January 1, 2025. A similar guide to the resources the CPO has created for that task force can be found here.