Insight Radio Program: Melissa Gutierrez, Mesa County Passages

Insight is a public affairs program with a focus on issues important to the Western Slope of Colorado.

This edition of Insight features a profile of Mesa County Passages, a program dedicated to adolescent and teen youth in the foster care system.

Guest: Melissa Gutierrez, Adolescent Permanency Supervisor with Mesa County Department of Human Services Child Welfare Division.

Learn more about Passages here: https://mesacountypassages.org/

Transcription

00:01
This is Insight. Insight is a public affairs program with a focus on issues important to the western slope of Colorado. Insight is produced by Tyler Franzen and Libby Pelletier and is a production of NBC Grand Broadcasting. On this week's edition of Insight, a profile of Mesa County Passages, an agency dedicated to adolescent and teen youth in the foster care system, an interview with Melissa Gutierrez.

00:27
Melissa Gutierrez and I am an adolescent permanency supervisor with Mesa County Child Welfare. Joining us this week on Insight, Melissa Gutierrez. She is with Mesa County Child Welfare Services here in Mesa County. Melissa, thank you so very much for joining us today. How are you? Good. Thank you so much for having me here. We're here to talk about the program that you run and the general state of the foster care system here in Mesa County.

00:54
How long have you been working in child welfare services here locally and more broadly, how did you kind of get interested in being a part of this line of work? Yeah, that's actually a funny question because when people ask me, I'm like, oh, I think I've been working for child welfare for four years, it's actually been eight years. So I've been with the county for eight years now and I love the work that I get to do.

01:20
And really what brought me into this line of work is I was a part of Peace Corps Philippines. And so I spent two years in the Philippines and I was placed at an agency that does something fairly similar to what I do here. It supported youth and young adults in learning life skills when they had trauma and needed to be in a center. And I loved that work. So when I came back to the United States, this was an easy decision for me.

01:49
been integrated in eight years here working in Mesa County, what are some of the things maybe you've kind of observed about the state of childcare and child welfare broadly here in Mesa County that from your kind of perspective, what have you seen in the eight years that you've been here that's maybe changed, maybe stayed the same for the better, for the worse? I know that's kind of a broad question, but it's kind of fascinating as we're kind of talking about this, some of the things that people might think they know about foster care that maybe they don't know.

02:20
So I'm biased. I oversee the adolescent portion. So all of my insight is really gonna be about our teenagers. That's where I focus. So there are many changes that have happened in other areas of child welfare. But for me, I really focus on our youth and young adults. I think what people don't know is that my program can actually serve individuals that have been in foster care up to the age of 24. So it doesn't just end at 18.

02:47
I also think that it's important for our community to know that the greatest population that my team is serving is really those 17 to 21 year olds and really trying to help them be successful adults in the community. So I have seen a lot of changes for the better when it comes to supporting our youth that have emancipated from foster care. We have so many really cool programs. You can check most of them out on our website. So that's Mesa

03:16
And on there, you're going to see that we have CHAFE services, which is case management and life skills classes for anybody that has been in foster care after 14, up to the age of 24. We also have housing vouchers. And then a really cool addition is something called Youth in Transition. And that program allows individuals that aged out of foster care and went to go do their own thing and then discovered that being an adult is really hard. Yep. Really hard.

03:44
So it really allows them to come back and open a voluntary case with us and get support. We help pay for housing, get them into services, support with school, and they can participate in that until they're 21. Just so that people kind of understand the structure, where does Mesa County Passages fall under the umbrella of human services and of child welfare? Where does that kind of fall in the kind of the order of operations here?

04:12
So that's another really cool change that we are gonna have. We are actually working with the county to have Mesa County Passages be an adolescent continuum of all the services that we can provide to young adults in the community. So it's not just individuals that have been in foster care. My portion will also still be on that website and that is really under the child welfare umbrella. So serving anybody that has had foster care.

04:39
or Department of Youth Corrections experience in their lifetime. So if you had to kind of define it, would you say that Mesa County Passages is more like a nonprofit or is it more of like an agency type of deal? It is under government. So it is a government agency. We receive state and federal funding to support young adults in our community. There was something you said there I wanna go back to a little bit earlier. You mentioned that emancipated from foster care system. And I guess the...

05:08
The question I really want to ask is what does emancipated from foster care mean? I guess also too in that same breadth, what would be the circumstances that would lead to a teenager wanting to emancipate or maybe even needing to emancipate from the foster care system? Yeah, we have a lot of different circumstances that can lead to a youth being emancipated from from foster care and emancipating from foster care really means that they are in care.

05:37
on their 18th birthday. So they were not adopted or not returned to parents. We always try and support our youth and adolescents in finding family. We wanna return our youth and adolescents to family members or get them adopted if that is their choice. I think another thing people don't know is that after the age of 14, adolescents have to say whether they want to be adopted. And some of my young adolescents don't want that. They want to learn the life skills and they're ready to go out on their own.

06:05
So they do choose the goal to be emancipated from foster care and live independently. We're talking with Melissa Gutierrez. She's with Mesa County Passages here today on Insight. And so let's kind of dive in a little bit more into what the specific program that you do. You mentioned some of the life skills and the courses and some of the vouchers and stuff. So it's a very broad set of services. If you could just kind of give us a taste of the kind of things that you do specifically with Mesa County Passages and how you kind of help these

06:35
these teenagers, these adolescent teens go either continue through their foster care journey, or you mentioned also transitioning out of foster care. What are some of the things that you kind of do to facilitate that? Yeah, that's a really big question. We do a lot of things. That's why I'm here. That's why you're here. So I think the first program I wanna talk about is CHAFE. That is really doing case management and support for youth and young adults, 14 to 24, that have experienced foster care.

07:03
With that, they get a case manager that can help them with any of their goals. We have funding that helps with paying for interview clothing or down deposits for apartments. We also do life skills classes. So we've done a life skills class on CPR and first aid to help them get certified. We are also doing a life skills class that's white water rafting so that they can learn river safety and have some fun this summer. Okay, okay.

07:29
And I guess just curious, CHAFE, is that an acronym for something or is that just named after something else? It is named after the person that started the CHAFE program. So CHAFE is actually federal funding and is a program that is across the nation. Okay. So when it comes to the foster care system and how these teens are, you know, they're in the system, they're, some of them may age out of it, some of them may...

07:59
get adopted hopefully or maybe even maybe best case it would be to get back to their original families. What's some of the experiences that you've had maybe a story you can share or want to share about how you impacted an adolescent's life that that really kind of made you go okay this is this is why this type of work is important.

08:25
I love my job because every youth and young adult that we work with is incredible. I love what I get to do and support individuals in returning to family or being adopted and still supporting them. I think that it's a really special conversation when you are able to sit down with a young person no matter where they are and say, here are all the supports I can offer you. Becoming an adult is hard.

08:52
I really wish that I had somebody that would walk alongside me and teach me how to budget and grocery shop. And I think also our young adults get access to free college, which is huge. So helping with that application process. I don't know that there's just one story that I can tell you because we work to meet every single family and youth where they're at. I do think...

09:19
My heart lies with the Youth in Transition program. So those young adolescents that have emancipated out of foster care and come back and open a case with us because they just need some more help. I think that is my favorite part of my job. Do you find any unique challenges with, because you mentioned at the beginning of this conversation that you're primarily working with adolescents. We hear very frequently about the...

09:48
the struggles of kids broadly in foster care, but the much more challenging aspects for adolescents and teens, they're less likely to get adopted, they're less likely to, you know, sort of, if they're in the adolescent teen foster care system, they're likely to stay there until they're 18. What are some of the things for you that you've observed that maybe is kind of, like I said, a unique challenge for these adolescents and teens that are in the foster care system currently? There are so many challenges.

10:17
And really, this is where I need the help from the community. I would say our greatest challenge is housing. There are not enough foster homes that want to have teenagers in their home. And then when we have our teenagers that are 18, finding somewhere that we'll rent to them is really hard. They don't have somebody that they'll cosign for them. They don't have credit history.

10:42
And so we really need landlords and community members that are willing to take a chance and partner with us. Because of that difficulty, we actually are having a landlord forum this summer that I would love to share some information about if there's any landlords that are willing to come and attend. Our landlord forum is going to be 4.30 to 6.30 on June 5th and it's to learn more about the programs and how we support our youth and some of the benefits to if you're willing to try renting.

11:11
to our youth and young adults. When it comes to Mesa County specifically, you mentioned the lack of housing broadly for teens renting after they've aged out of the system. When they're in the system, it's harder to find foster parents or parents that are willing to adopt. Is there anything specific to Mesa County that you've noticed that maybe is, it makes either going into or coming out of the foster care system

11:41
better, worse in Mesa County than maybe some other parts if you have any background knowledge in that.

11:50
Oh, that's a very hard question. I would say one of the greatest difficulties, of course, other than housing is substance use. We don't have a lot of supports in our community for adolescents that are struggling with substance use. And because we are such a small community compared to Denver, there are not as many services that can help for my youth trying to get sober.

12:20
I would say that, again, I'm biased, but I think our program does things really well. We have youth from other counties that purposefully move here to work with us or request to keep their case open with us. And when we have youth move outside of Mesa County, they request to keep us as their serving agency. So I think that does speak to the relationships that we're able to build. And we really value supporting our youth and what their goals are.

12:49
We're talking with Melissa Gutierrez. She's with Mesa County Passages here in Mesa County, working with adolescents and teens in the foster care system. You mentioned things like substance abuse. What are some of the challenges that these, besides obviously being in the foster care system, the things that come with that? Are there any other risk factors or things that we as a community should kind of look out for? For.

13:16
adolescents and teens that are in the foster care system that maybe they need a little extra help with this or maybe there's a greater risk of them falling into these habits. What are some things that maybe that that we can kind of be aware of when it comes to teens in the foster care system? I worry about the stigma that comes with being in the system. I think that sometimes my youth are not given the same opportunities because of that stigma. So it all relates to stability.

13:44
If you don't have supportive connections or family members, you don't have stable housing, how are you going to maintain stable employment? And if you don't have stable employment, how are you gonna pay for everything that you need? So that is another thing that we are working to address with our youth, and we actually are forming a very strong connection with our Workforce Center and the WIOA program that serves adolescents and adults in Mesa County with job readiness programs.

14:13
GED and internships. And we've had really good success with our youth partnering there and getting that stability and employment, which then leads to stability everywhere else in their life. One of the statistics I read a few years ago, or might've even been as recently as this past year, about foster care teens' graduation rates almost plummet compared to kids that have either been adopted or who've never had to go through this obviously type of system before.

14:42
As far as education, you mentioned that there was a free college program for some of these kids in your Passages program. What other ways in which are you kind of helping to, pardon the pun, foster these kids in terms of getting them education opportunities? Yeah, that's another thing that I'm very passionate about and our community is passionate about. So we actually do a celebration every year called the Celebration of Educational Excellence. And we partner with

15:11
judges and CARES and the Workforce Center and FAM to honor and celebrate any youth that has experienced difficulties and is either graduating or just had educational excellence to really show them that when you put forth the effort, we're going to honor and acknowledge you. So that's something we do every May. We have that coming up. We do a catered meal, gifts, certificates, and we have seen a really big outcome from that.

15:41
A great story I have is we had one adolescent that had just not had stability and was failing all of their classes. We talked to them about, hey, school is where we can really support you. They turned it around and had all passing grades, all Cs. So we nominated them and they were so excited that they now have straight As and are on their way to graduation. That's so cool. That youth, I am so proud of. When we look at, you know,

16:09
the system and I can't believe I've actually gone this far without even asking you about some of the raw numbers here. How many adolescents and teens would you say come through your program on a regular basis? Or do you have a kind of a number you can give us about what the kind of work kind of impact that you do with Mesa County Passages? Yeah, so again that depends on which program you're talking about. So I would say any given day we have

16:34
I would say close to 30 or 40 teenagers that are currently in foster care. And those are our youth under the age of 18. With my CHAFE program, I would say annually we serve around 50 youth with life skills classes, youth and young adults. And then with our youth in transition program, since that started in 2021, we have served 44 youth and we currently have 20.

17:00
individuals that are in between the ages of 18 and 21 that are partnering with our program. You mentioned that you've been with this particular wing of Mesa County, even Child Welfare, for about eight years now. So normally, I know we don't like to go back and look on this particular point in our history, but COVID pandemic, what were for you operating a foster care program for adolescents and teens, what were some of the main challenges that you had to

17:30
period of time during the pandemic? So during that time, I was actually the CHFEE coordinator. So I was providing direct services to our youth in our community. And it was so difficult. We couldn't do our life skills classes. We couldn't have those gatherings. Youth felt so isolated. I think everybody felt isolated during that time. And if you look at our youth and young adults in the system, they already have such a small support group.

17:59
Things like coming to life skills classes, going to school and seeing friends, those are the main lines of stabilization and that wasn't there. I also see struggles with communication. Youth and young adults didn't have access to steady ways to communicate with the important people in their life. And so for me, it was extremely challenging to just support our young adults with learning those life skills. How do you learn?

18:29
how to have face-to-face conversations when you can't do that. How do you learn how to build healthy friendships when you can't do that? We're coming up a little bit short on time here. I wanna thank you again for coming in. We'll end on a relatively positive note, and then we'll get some of the more details about where people can go for more information. But generally speaking, when it comes to working with adolescents and teens in the foster care system,

18:59
What gives you hope? What gives you hope about them as individuals or broadly going forward for them? What gives them hope knowing that, you know, knowing that they've come through this program, that you're setting them up on the right path? What gives me hope is seeing the youth and young adults. These are some of the most incredible people. I wish everybody could get to meet my youth and see how resilient and strong and whole and capable that they are.

19:29
And for the community to recognize that they've overcome challenges that many of us haven't and they can persevere. I love what I get to do because of the youth that we serve. The website is for now Mesa You were kind of mentioning though that you're working on there's a transition of this program to doing more with Mesa County. Is that what I understand right?

19:56
Yep, the website will stay the same. We are just trying to have it be a one stop shop for any adolescent or young adult in the community, even if they haven't experienced foster care. But all of our foster care youth can still go through that website as well as donors. And my contact information is listed there for any landlords that want to partner with us. So that's Mesa And is there anywhere else people can go for more information about?

20:21
either work you do or about foster care or anything of that sort, where else can they go for information? I would really point to that website and if they want direct information, again my contact information is on there, you can reach out directly to me via email or a phone call and I'm happy to do sit down meetings. Very good. Melissa Gutierrez with Mesa County Passages joining us today here on Inside Melissa. Thanks so very much for being here. This was an absolutely fantastic conversation. We'll hopefully get to talk to you again very soon. Thank you so much.

20:51
My thanks once again to Melissa Gutierrez, Adolescent Permanency Supervisor with Mesa County Child Welfare and the Passages Program for being my guest this week on Insight. Information about Mesa County Passages and the foster care system is at Mesa On next week's edition of Insight, we're hoping to talk with CDOT Region 3 spokesperson Elise Thatcher. She's been the most frequent guest on this program to talk all things road and travel projects in western Colorado.

21:18
One of the most pressing projects right now is the ongoing repairs to the US Highway 50 bridge that crosses the Blue Mesa Reservoir near the Dillon Pinnacles in Gunnison. Upon inspection of the bridge earlier this month, cracks were observed that caused CDOT to temporarily close the bridge and immediately begin repairs. As Acting Governor, Lieutenant Governor Diane Primavera verbally declared a disaster emergency due to the bridge's closure. This process begins the interagency collaborations that are needed for such a project.

21:46
as well as begin the steps necessary to acquire federal funding for emergency relief. While there is currently no timetable for the bridge's reopening, CDOT is maintaining that all available resources are going towards the bridge being operational as soon as possible. We hope to know more on next week's edition of Insight and our conversation with Elise Thatcher, Region 3 spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Transportation. Join us next week for Insight, same time, same place, right here on this NBC Grand Broadcasting Station.

22:16
Once again, my thanks to Melissa Gutierrez, adolescent permanency supervisor with Mesa County Child Welfare and the Passages program for being my guest this week on Insight. Information about Mesa County Passages and the foster care system is at Mesa For Insight this week, I'm Tyler Franzen. If you have any suggestions for story ideas to cover on Insight, email our NBC Grand News Department at news at gjradio.com. This is Insight.

22:47
Insight is a public affairs program with a focus on issues important to the western slope of Colorado. Insight is produced by Tyler Franzen and Libby Pelletier and is a production of NBC Grand Broadcasting.