News & Articles
November 14, 2024
Bringing foster families together in the San Luis Valley
By Shari F. Shink, Esq., Alamosa Citizen
“Connecting foster families to other foster families makes finding friends, resources, and support easier. The result is good outcomes for everyone. Sadly, isolation is the norm. The agencies that oversee child welfare services don’t actively encourage foster families to connect, much less lean on each other, or learn from one another.
A foster mom might not know the person in line next to her in the grocery store is a foster mom, too, with similar concerns. Two teens who sit together in math class might never share that they’re each in foster care. Connections go missing, friendships unformed, foundations unbuilt.
Created as a partnership of Cobbled Streets and Foster Source, The Ambassador Project aims to be the tie that binds. The idea is to bring everyone out of the shadows and into each other’s lives. Foster families and kids can share information, speak about concerns, and have opportunities to relax. They have a support group who understands; they have people they can rely on; they don’t feel alone.”
October 3, 2024
Governor, We Can Do More on Foster Care
By Shari F. Shink, Esq., Colorado Politics
“For our meeting, I’d created a five-point action plan, which worked out to two minutes per point. Not much, but I believed Gov. Polis did, and does, want to do better by children in foster care and for the families taking them in, whether strangers or kin. He listened, he was open to learning, he assigned a fantastic policy person to work with me. But only a few months later, she went off to Washington, and things trailed off after that.
I’ve since lost all touch with the governor on the issue, which is disappointing for me but devastating for the children. They deserve better from all of us, and we deserve better outcomes for the hundreds of millions of dollars we spend on foster care in Colorado every year via local, state and federal funding. What seems to be missing is the will to do it. That sort of leadership has to come from the top and, like I said, I’m no longer in touch with the top.
I think the plan I shared with the governor is as relevant today as it was then, more so if we consider that children are still being moved from foster home to foster home, often with no notice or explanation that a kid can understand. I know of one baby who was moved seven times in a single year, and another child who had 28 placements during his time in foster care. You read that right: 28.”
September 17th, 2024
Colorado’s foster kids are still worth fighting for, all these decades later
By Shari Shink, Esq., The Colorado Sun
“In 1981, I left Pennsylvania for Colorado, where I’ve since worked with thousands of foster kids. I’ve launched prevention programs and partnerships, co-chaired national committees and mentored advocacy organizations, and the center I started has helped alter the course of at least 15,000 children’s lives. I’m also not pretending it has been close to enough.
That’s why I’m still in the fight five decades later to improve the lives of foster children. But I also realized I needed a new approach. I was tired of fighting with judges and lawyers and caseworkers. I was tired of asking permission to help instead of just helping.
As a result, I founded another non-profit organization, Cobbled Streets, to give kids some joy and a bit of what was missing in their lives. It could be a new bicycle, the stick and skates to play hockey on a high school team (and thus create a sense of belonging), or a camping trip involving multiple foster families that brings brothers and sisters together again. Now I get to listen to kids’ dreams and needs and, well, do something concrete and immediate for them.”
Read the full article at The Colorado Sun >
July 26, 2024
How We Keep Failing Foster Kids
By Shari F. Shink, Esq., Governing
“Imagine if the foster care system were set up along the lines of a children’s hospital anywhere in America: warm, welcoming, entirely centered on the comfort and well-being of its young charges. I’m not suggesting that child welfare agencies paint their offices in pastels and provide every “patient” with balloon animals and coloring books upon arrival, though it would be nice. I am saying that they need to start centering the children and stop pushing paperwork and policies that don’t benefit anyone. Twenty years of the same conversation is enough.
Part of the problem is that the kids in the system are invisible; unlike a Children’s Hospital, foster care can’t create ads showcasing adorable young people in distress. The public can’t know much, if anything, about them, because of privacy laws (that mostly benefit the institutions and adults, if you ask me). A secret system is an unaccountable one. When no one person is responsible for a child, no one can be blamed when things go bad. And they do.
Literally tens of thousands of children have gone missing in foster care, many of them repeat runaways, some of them never located again. Although most foster parents are good people doing God’s work under tough conditions, we’ve all read the horrifying stories of foster children found starved, tortured or murdered. One first-of-its-kind study also found that foster children are 42 percent more likely to die than children in the general population, irrespective of age or race, further underscoring their social and medical vulnerability.”
June 13, 2024
We are failing kids in Colorado foster care
By Shari F. Shink, Esq., The Aurora Sentinel
“The foster care system needs to offer children something better than what they’re getting. That may mean giving families the resources to stay together while ensuring their children are safe and protected. Other options should include moving a trusted adult into the home or moving an abusive parent out, rather than removing the child. We have not just a legal, but a moral obligation to ensure these children thrive whether they stay with their parents, move in with relatives, or end up with strangers who signed up to be foster families.
The statistics, and the heartbreaking and harrowing stories behind them, only underscore how severely the foster care system is failing children. I say that as someone who has been a part of that system for decades -- as a litigator for 33 years, and as an advocate, educator and, yes, agitator.
There isn’t a single, easy answer. But the system – and the people who are a part of it – need to look hard at addressing five areas that have made real, system-wide improvement almost impossible and caused the kids to suffer as a result.”
Read the full article at The Aurora Sentinel >
May 25, 2024
Cash Payments to Colorado Families Might Keep Kids Out of Foster Care
By Shari F. Shink, Esq., The Denver Post
“Of all the people in the child welfare system who get paid, the ones who might put the money to best use are the parents at risk of losing their children to foster care.
Attorneys, advocates, and kin families are all compensated for their roles, and rightly so. Yet most mothers and fathers deemed to be failing their children through poverty get no specific financial help to turn their family situations around and save their children from the system.
A growing body of research and small pilot programs hope to prove that even a few hundred dollars a month might make a huge difference in keeping kids out of the foster care system.”
Read the full article detailing this innovative approach at The Denver Post >
January 2024
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2023 Impact Report
We are happy to share our 2023 Impact Report! This report includes inspiring data about our programs and strategic plans for 2024. You can access the report by clicking below.
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November 14, 2023
Untapped Potential: Economic and Social Costs of Colorado’s Foster Youth
An eye-opening new study by the Common Sense Institute reveals the cost to Colorado’s economy when teens and young adults “age out” of foster care without achieving permanence. Data is scarce on the life outcomes of foster children. This is the first study of its kind attempting to capture the individual and social costs borne by a cohort of Colorado’s foster youth.
December 2022
Shari Shink Receives the Charles “Chaz” Tedesco Champion Award
Shari Shink was surprised and delighted to receive the Charles “Chaz” Tedesco Champion Award this December from Foster Source. The award recognizes someone who encompasses Foster Source’s three values: education, connection and nourishment.
November 10, 2022
Shari Shink Receives The Lifetime Achievement Award
On November 10th 2022, Shari received the Lifetime Achievement Award at an event, hosted by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, known to be one of the most inspiring events of the year. In addition to the almost 700 in attendance, Shari invited 40 special guests to join the celebration, which included family, friends, donors, colleagues and partners.