Emergency Kinship Placement in Colorado: What Happens When a Relative's Child Is Removed

There is almost nothing that prepares you for the phone call. A county DHS worker is removing your grandchild, your niece, your nephew, or your cousin's child — and the question is whether the child will go to a licensed stranger's home or to you. The timeframe is hours, not weeks. The paperwork you thought you had months to figure out suddenly needs to happen immediately.

Emergency kinship placement in Colorado is the state's preferred response to exactly this situation. Understanding how it works before the phone call comes — or in the first days after it does — can be the difference between a child staying within the family and a child entering the general placement pool.

Colorado's "Kinship First" Policy

Colorado law and policy, shaped by amendments between 2022 and 2025 aligned with the federal Family First Prevention Services Act, explicitly prioritize placement with relatives or "fictive kin" when a child is removed. Senate Bill 24-008 and related legislation expanded this commitment, requiring that courts prioritize relative placement unless such placement is determined to not be in the child's best interest.

In practice, this means that when a child is removed, the county department is required to make active efforts to identify and contact relatives before or alongside the process of identifying a general foster placement. If you are a relative and you express willingness to care for the child, the county is obligated to assess you as a placement option on an expedited basis.

Provisional Certification: The Immediate Step

Colorado allows relatives to receive a child through provisional certification — sometimes called emergency kinship licensing — while the full certification process proceeds. This is specifically designed for the crisis scenario where there is no time for the standard three-to-six-month home study timeline.

Under provisional certification, a basic safety check is completed quickly: background checks are initiated, the home is assessed for basic safety requirements under 12 CCR 2509-8, and the family is approved to receive the specific child in question on a temporary basis. The full SAFE home study and pre-service training requirements then continue in the background while the child is already in your home.

The provisional certification does not mean the requirements go away — it means the order of operations changes. You are caring for the child while you complete the process, rather than completing the process before a child arrives.

What a Kinship Home Needs Right Away

Even under emergency circumstances, Colorado's 12 CCR 2509-8 regulations set baseline requirements that the home must meet before a provisional placement can proceed. These are the non-negotiable safety items that a county worker will assess, often within 24-48 hours of your contact:

• Functioning utilities (heat, water, electricity)
• Working smoke detectors on every level and near sleeping areas
• Working carbon monoxide detector
• A 5-pound fire extinguisher
• Medications, cleaning supplies, and any toxins locked away from children
• Firearms, if present, unloaded and locked; ammunition in a separate locked container
• Age-appropriate sleeping arrangement: the child must have their own bed, and bedroom sharing rules apply (children of opposite sex cannot share if one is over age four)
• Water heater temperature set to 120°F or below

The county worker conducting the initial home assessment is not looking for perfection — they are looking for safety. If you have items to address, you may be given a short window to correct them.

Background Checks Under Emergency Kinship Placement

The background check sequence still must occur, but it is initiated on an expedited basis. Every adult in the household aged 18 or older must undergo:

• CBI (Colorado Bureau of Investigation) fingerprint check
• FBI national fingerprint check
• TRAILS check (Colorado child abuse and neglect registry)
• Sex offender registry check
• Out-of-state registry checks if any adult has lived outside Colorado in the last five years

Under emergency kinship protocols, counties often begin with a name-based records check while waiting for fingerprint results, allowing the provisional placement to proceed while clearances are pending. The child cannot remain in the home if any adult's background check comes back with a disqualifying offense — this is a hard line.

The fees for fingerprinting run approximately $40-60 per person. Some counties cover these costs for kinship placements; it is worth asking directly whether your county has a fee waiver policy for relative caregivers.

Financial Support for Kinship Caregivers

Kinship caregivers who complete the certification process are eligible for the same daily board rates as non-relative foster parents. As of July 1, 2025, these range from $42.86 per day for children ages 0-8 to $66.44 per day for children 14 and older.

Colorado has also expanded financial supports specifically for kinship caregivers in recent years. Start-up funds — for purchasing a bed, car seat, or other immediate needs — are available through many counties for kinship families who receive an emergency placement. The clothing allowance provided semi-annually to foster families applies to kinship certified homes as well.

Children in kinship foster care, like all children in Colorado's foster care system, are enrolled in Health First Colorado (Medicaid), covering medical, dental, and behavioral health services.

The Full Certification Timeline for Kinship Homes

While provisional certification gets a child into your home quickly, the full process still needs to be completed. This means:

1. Pre-service training. Colorado requires 27 hours of pre-service training, typically delivered through TIPS-MAPP or the Colorado CORE curriculum. For kinship caregivers, some counties allow modified or accelerated training schedules given the emergency placement circumstances. Ask your county worker about options.

2. SAFE home study. The Structured Analysis Family Evaluation is a full psychosocial assessment including individual and joint interviews, document review, and a thorough home inspection. For kinship caregivers, the home study process is the same as for non-relative applicants — it is not abbreviated because you are family.

3. Ongoing training. Once licensed, you must complete 20 hours of ongoing training annually to maintain certification.

Navigating the Dual Role

One of the specific challenges of emergency kinship placement is that you are simultaneously navigating a family crisis and a bureaucratic process. Your attention is pulled between the child's immediate needs — who is likely frightened, grieving, and disoriented — and the paperwork, appointments, and phone calls the certification process requires.

Colorado's emphasis on kinship placement reflects an understanding that family continuity matters enormously to children's wellbeing. The system is designed to support you in getting certified, not to create barriers. If your caseworker is unresponsive or you feel the process has stalled, you can ask to speak with a supervisor. The state's policy goal and your goal — getting the child into a stable, certified home as quickly as possible — are aligned.

The Colorado Foster Care Licensing Guide includes a dedicated section on kinship certification, with a checklist of the immediate safety requirements, the document package you will need to assemble, and a tracker for the background check sequence — organized so you can work through it even in the middle of an emergency.

What to Do Right Now

If a relative's child has just been removed and you are reading this in the first hours or days, the most important thing you can do is contact your county DHS office today and identify yourself as a relative willing to care for the child. The sooner you make that contact, the sooner the county can begin the provisional assessment. Every day matters — not in a bureaucratic sense, but in the very real sense that a child is waiting for someone to say yes.

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