Colorado’s child advocacy centers — a lifeline to kids who’ve suffered abuse — are scrambling for money amid federal cuts

Lori Jenkins is running as bare bones as she can at the Kindred Kids Child Advocacy Center in Cañon City.

The center, which supports children who survive abuse and neglect, has three employees — the lowest number allowed under its professional certification. Jenkins, the center’s executive director, scrapped plans for a satellite office in Salida, and said no to providing educational presentations about abuse to elementary school students.

There’s just no money for it.

Child advocacy centers across Colorado are scrambling to stay afloat as a much-relied-on federal funding pool dries up at an alarming pace. The centers, many of which are nonprofits, provide wraparound care to children who survive abuse — from conducting forensic interviews or physical examinations that can be used in a criminal prosecution, to providing therapy and family support.

The 19 child advocacy centers in Colorado are each designed to be one-stop shops where child survivors and their families can begin to heal and move forward. Collectively, they served 6,598 children across 57 Colorado counties in 2023 — and more than 60% of those children were survivors of sexual abuse, according to the Colorado Children’s Alliance, a statewide nonprofit that supports child advocacy centers.

The centers have been heralded as the best approach to care for child survivors, but they — and many other victim-focused organizations — are now scrambling to find reliable funding as grant money from the federal Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA, fund rapidly evaporates.

The 40-year-old VOCA fund collects fines and forfeitures from federal prisoners and gives that money to states, which then distribute grants to local organizations and agencies that provide services to crime victims.

The fund has been shrinking for several years largely due to a drop in money collected — both because of changes in the way federal prosecutors handled cases and because of the slowdown of court activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The depletion grew so severe that Congress took action in 2021 to try to stabilize the fund, though its balances have since continued to drop.

In 2018, Colorado received $56.7 million in VOCA funds. That dropped to $13.6 million in 2024, a 76% decrease, according to the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice, which warned that service providers may soon be forced to reduce staffing, limit their scope or turn away clients.

For Colorado’s child advocacy centers, that drop translated into about $12 million less in federal funding. The centers received about $16 million in VOCA funds in 2018, but will get just $3.8 million next year, said Ashley Jellison, executive director of the Colorado Children’s Alliance, the local chapter of the National Children’s Alliance, which sets accreditation standards for child advocacy centers.

Colorado sets aside about $1.3 million annually for accredited child advocacy centers, Jellison said. Sixteen of Colorado’s 19 centers have that accreditation, and the other three are working toward it, she said.

But that state funding isn’t enough to make up for the federal shortfall, she said.

For Jenkins, Kindred Kids went from receiving $150,000 in VOCA funds annually to $79,000 allocated for next year, she said. The federal funding made up 90% of the center’s budget when it first opened in 2018, but now makes up just 64% of its funding, as Jenkins has turned to other sources to meet her $350,000 annual budget, she said.

She’s found the money to stay open through 2025 partly because Cañon City officials agreed to waive the center’s $1,800 monthly rent for space in a city-owned building.

“But I will tell you that 2026 is going to be very, very difficult,” Jenkins said. “…Until there is a fix to this problem, every year is going to be a struggle.”

At SungateKids, a child advocacy center in Greenwood Village, executive director Diana Goldberg has three open staff positions that she can’t fill because of funding shortfalls, and she worries about burnout among the staff she has left as they carry heavier loads.

She hasn’t yet had to cut services to children, but any such cuts would be devastating, Goldberg said.

“What happens when a child doesn’t get services?” she said. “We know the long-term detrimental impacts are huge. …The financial cost of child abuse is enormous. The more services we can provide, and the more early, effective interventions we can implement, the lower the cost is on the back end, in terms of mental health services, health services, incarceration, lost wages, lost productivity, early death — that is what child sexual abuse has been linked to.”

The Colorado Children’s Alliance this year surveyed 239 law enforcement personnel, prosecutors and social services providers across the state on the value of child advocacy centers. The survey respondents collectively reported they would need to spend $24 million a year to match services if the state’s child advocacy centers were to shut their doors.

And 99% of survey respondents said such a closure would have a “significant, massive or catastrophic impact” on abused children, the report shows.

Jenkins and Goldberg said their centers will need more funding from the state or from local cities and towns to make up for the federal shortfall.

“The common misperception about child abuse, particularly sexual abuse, is that it only happens to certain sectors of kids, and that is not true,” Goldberg said. “It cuts across all socioeconomic and other kinds of dividers. It could happen to anyone’s kids. And when that happens, you want a child advocacy center helping your kids.”

Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.