Stephanie Villafuerte

Letter from the Child Protection Ombudsman: Reflecting on a Decade of Service with the Office of Colorado’s Child Protection Ombudsman Dear Colleagues, Partners and Friends, As I prepare to leave my position with the Office of the Colorado Child Protection Ombudsman, I feel deeply thankful and proud of all we’ve achieved together during the past […]

Youth in our state’s residential treatment facilities are running away in record numbers. This is not news. Rather, it is a three-decades-old problem that is long overdue for a solution. In May 2021, The Colorado Sun and 9News did a three-part series on the seriousness of the situation in Colorado. The series highlighted a broken

The CPO highlights needed improvements for laws that provide protections to youth in foster care. May is Foster Care Awareness Month. The purpose of this month is to bring awareness to the plight of youth in the foster care system. We not only recognize the efforts of all those who successfully care for our foster

The phone call came in around 12 p.m. I answered, “Office of Colorado’s Child Protection Ombudsman, how can I help you?” The static on the cell phone call was distracting. Yet her words were raw and brutally clear. She cried hard, from the depths of her soul. Grief stricken. Helpless. Desperate. “I need your help.

As the United States and other countries around the world race to delay the spread of the COVID-19 virus, Coloradans, like millions of others around the globe, have been required to engage in a relatively new practice called “social distancing.” One must look no further than social media — where the hashtag, #StayAtHome, has been

County human service departments respond to 40,000 reports of possible child abuse or neglect throughout Colorado each year. Roughly 100 times a day, child protection workers serve as first responders to these reports, typically by entering families’ homes at their own risk. As the spread of COVID-19 has overwhelmed Colorado, the reports of abuse and

Thank you for coming to work today. Like many of us, you woke up this week and saw a tragedy unfolding. The world as we know it altered – off course – leaving thousands of people without basic food, shelter, and health care. Like many of us you were scared. But you showed up anyway

As an independent state agency, the CPO is charged with studying and improving the systems tasked with protecting Colorado’s children and with helping citizens navigate these systems. In order to respond to the questions and feedback we’ve received from citizens and continue improving our work and the impact it has, the CPO is dedicated to