Twice Shy - Olivia Sun - Visual Journalist

Kya, 10, plays with siblings at Sunburst Park in Aurora. Each of Michelle Schuldt’s adopted children have special needs like autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and attends therapy regularly. “I think there needs to be a branch in every agency for post-adoption — to help adoptive parents find support groups, therapy, or marriage counseling,” Schuldt said.

Failed twice: Colorado foster kids who are adopted often end up back in the child welfare system

In the past 10 years, 1,094 kids, 13% of total kids who were adopted from foster care in Colorado — have ended up back in the system, at times due to lack of resources or abuse and neglect by adoptive families. On average, children went back into foster care 8.5 years later. According to state child welfare officials, the primary reason is cited as “child’s behavior problems.”

Colorado has little training for parents who are adopting children with trauma. The only agency that has training contracts with the state, Raise the Future, isn’t available in all counties and has been affected by increasingly tightening budget cuts.

The percentage of children returned to foster care has dropped from 17% in 2012 to to 8% in 2021. The gradual improvement illustrates an initiative to keep more children with their own families instead of removing them from homes in the first place.

‘“There is just no question that it’s compounding trauma on trauma,” said Mary Boo, executive director of the North American Council on Adoptable Children, based in Minnesota. “We have a child that has already been taken from their birth family and then we’ve allowed that to happen to them again. There is real damage done.”

Instead of helping children recover, the system treats them as damaged, or unadoptable, she said. “It’s absolutely not the child’s fault. Even the way you say it can make you feel that it’s the child’s fault. It’s all been done to them. The entry into child welfare. The abuse. They are powerless in all of this.”’

D’Borah Israel went to live with her foster mother at age 2, rescued from neglect so severe that she became malnutritioned. Once she was adopted, her case was closed. But by age 13, Israel was back in the foster system, trying to escape her adoptive mother’s drug problems and abuse in the family.

Israel continued to live in dozens of foster homes until age 18. “When I look back at it, I think wow, nobody really cared or listened to me,” Israel said. “It changed me. I don’t trust people. I’m always asking people, ‘Are you listening?’ It made me an angry child. I’m not angry anymore, but I’m still making sure people are listening.” She hasn’t seen her adoptive mother in 10 years.

Israel has vague memories of going to a foster home in the mountains at age 9, where the family kept the bedroom doors locked from the outside and where the foster children ate pasta for dinner while the family ate steak and vegetables.

Israel, now 23, also lost any connection to most of her siblings. She found out at age 17 that she has four biological sisters and eight brothers, but has only found two of them.

Israel is currently on her third chosen name, this one coined after Deborah in the Old Testament — an empowered warrior and a leader. “She’s a leader, and I inspire to be like her because a leader esteems others greater than themselves. Being able to love and uplift somebody else when you feel down and you feel like you can’t keep going.” She left foster care with only a few belongings and no case file to explain why she went into foster care in the first place or whether her adoptive family ever had the adoption officially dissolved in court.

Israel’s goal after becoming a Certified Nursing Assistant is to get her driver’s license and save to buy a truck.

After her biological children graduated from high school, Michelle Schuldt adopted six children — but had to give up one girl to protect the others. Schuldt describes a lack of post-adoption support so severe she felt she didn’t have a choice. “I felt like a dirtbag,” Schuldt said. “Horrible. I spent hours crying.” Begging for help from Jefferson County child welfare caseworkers and private therapists proved to be no relief, she said.

When Schuldt and her six kids lived together, the family lived on constant high alert around the adopted girl. She had outbursts, hurt other children, damaged the house, tore a door off its hinges. Finding and keeping her in therapy was impossible. Three times, the child told school officials that her adoptive mother was beating her. The allegations were investigated and dismissed.

Dozens of mental health specialists rejected the child, citing they didn’t take Medicaid or didn’t take patients with such high levels of trauma. Schuldt started calling the police on the girl, to no avail.

“We couldn’t continue like this. I was going to have a heart attack or she is going to hurt me or one of the kids … I am screaming to anyone that will listen. Teachers. Therapists. Somebody help me. Somebody help my kid, my family. We need help,” Schuldt said.

Kya, 10, and Wesley, 7, gather currant berries in Aurora.

Without a lifeline, Schuldt allowed the girl at 12 years old to go live with her biological mother, signing over guardianship in 2021. Schuldt continues to try and remedy her household dynamic after five years of struggling with the child.

LEFT: Colorado began contracting with Raise the Future in 2018 to provide post-adoption support and training to families. Colorado has invested more than $4.5 million in the agency in the past five years to fund free training, support groups, and more. RTF uses a “Trust-Based Relational Intervention” support model — or TBRI — to help families accommodate children who have experienced trauma like institutionalization, multiple foster placements or neglect. During three to four-day-long ‘camps’ through RTF, families and children are given individual trainings on sensory processing techniques, child psychology and trust-building.

RIGHT: Bourdeon demonstrates picking up water beads with plastic tweezers during a class on sensory processing techniques. Children with sensory processing disorders don't have the brain capacity to prioritize their physical senses, Bourdeon said, and can become easily overwhelmed by daily stimuli.

Julie Bates and her husband, Keith, had raised four biological children when they turned to the foster care system with a desire to connect to their religious faith through helping the community.

However, foster care classes and years of parenting experience didn’t prepare them to handle the children’s spiraling behaviors, spurred by previous trauma.

Julie Bates had once called the police after her adopted son ran away from home. Days earlier, the young boy had tried to take his life. His siblings searched the neighborhood for days until Bates saw him in the distance. “He would not have come back had I not seen him,” Bates said. “This was our lowest point. We were very broken as a family, very disjointed and very hopeless.”

“There’s kind of silence in the adoptive community about, ‘Do your kids draw pictures of shooting you? Do you have alarms on all of your doors? Do your kids hide weapons under their bed?’ No one ever talks about that,” Julie Bates said. “And so when that was happening in our home, I felt like we were all alone.”

Bates attended one of Raise the Future’s three-day camps with her husband and three of their children in Durango, and have since utilized more resources from RTF’s support model to better integrate their children into the household.

Carrie O'Toole, a certified life coach and attachment-based intervention specialist, has organized days-long retreats for parents and adoptive families struggling with traumatized children for the past 10 years, usually held twice a year from her home.

O’Toole has two adopted children, and in 2009 placed one of them with a new family after eight years. “It’s hard to understand how a parent could get to a place where they're looking for long-term treatment for their child or even a new family,” O’Toole said. “Parents have been so judged. They have been so criticized. They're scared to death to speak about it because of the shame. … People say all the time, ‘You would never do this if it was a biological child.’ But if your child was [like that]… Yes, you would. You would have to.”

Mike Arnett and his wife adopted their son in 2009 when he was eight months old. The infant had suffered abuse that left him with permanent brain damage. Arnett received about $400 a month from the county to care for him.

Arnett, an engineer, took a 50% pay cut so he would have enough flexibility to drive the child to medical appointments. Arnett and his wife divorced, in part from the stress of raising the child. Their son is sensitive to loud noises and crowds, and has caused family members to end up in the emergency room from hurting them by accident.

After divorcing, Arnett asked Mesa County if the subsidy could be increased due to raising the child on a single income, instead of having to pay out-of-pocket or relying on credit card expenses. “They told me under no uncertain terms,” Arnett recalled, “the maximum we can give you is $5 (more) a day.”

Arnett eventually discovered an adoption assistance tool from the state, which doubled his subsidy rate to a little over $1,000.

Now 13 years old, Arnett’s son loves music, dancing and swimming. He is incontinent and has seizures, with a tendency to destroy clothing and household items. At home, Arnett and his son are inseparable.

Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Brian Boatright announces the ceremony of Denver’s 17th annual Adoption Day celebration in November 2022, where 18 families formally adopted 20 children.

Sharon Saiz, left, holds one-year-old Madison after her daughter, Deanna, right, formally adopts her in November 2022, National Adoption Day, in Denver.