At Illuminate Colorado, we work across systems to strengthen families and prevent child maltreatment. One integral piece of this work is advocating for children and families under the dome. This Colorado state legislative session, which ran January through May, we worked alongside our partners in prevention to promote policies that strengthen families by defending funding for family strengthening programs and engaging with legislators and partners on long term strategies to build and maintain the foundations for families to thrive.

Rooting in Protective Factors and Our Policy Priorities to Strengthen Families

At Illuminate, we recognize the importance of making policy decisions rooted in evidence. The Strengthening Families Protective Factors are one of the guiding, evidence-based frameworks that guides our policy work.

Strengthening Families Protective Factors

• • Parental Resilience
  • Social Connections
  • Knowledge of Parenting & Child Development
  • Social & Emotional Competence of Children
  • Concrete Supports

Learn more about our guiding frameworks and the Protective Factors here.

At the end of 2024, Illuminate engaged in an intensive process to establish our 2025-2028 Policy Priorities. Although the policy and political landscape may shift and change over time, we recognize the importance of remaining rooted in our long-term priorities, which are more important now than ever.

2025-2028 Illuminate Policy Priorities

• • Advance an aligned and comprehensive family strengthening ecosystem
  • Establish clear and family-centered systems of support for families with infants in order to ensure Colorado infants have the best start possible
  • Foster family financial wellbeing and independence by increasing pathways to economic security for families
  • Promote strengths-based information and support for families impacted by substance use including those impacted by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD)
  • Establish and connect long-term funding pathways to sustain and scale Illuminate Programs

Interested in learning more about our policy priorities? Dive deeper here.

Navigating a Complex Policy Landscape

This state legislative session, the Colorado General Assembly (state-level Representatives and Senators) were met with many challenges that impeded their ability to introduce and pass a wide array of measures that promote family strengthening. These challenges included the state budget deficit, enhanced and time-intensive focus on federal action, and the introduction of many new legislators.

As many likely saw on the news cycle throughout the past five months, Colorado is experiencing a substantial state budget deficit, with legislators needing to cut approximately $1.2 billion in state spending for the 2025-2026 state fiscal year. Due to the constraints that TABOR puts on state spending of collected tax revenue, increased cost of Medicaid, reduced spending of many Colorado households in anticipation of a recession resulting in reduced tax revenue, and fewer federal dollars entering Colorado due to the end of the public health emergency, legislators were not only unable to pass new legislation that would cost additional funds, but needed to cut spending within all state agency budgets. 

Colorado legislators also spent increased hours and capacity to respond to anticipated and actual actions made by the Executive Branch and Congress. This included intensive conversations focused on civil rights, healthcare and Medicaid, taxes, and state legal action and response, which resulted in many debates and the introduction and passage of several bills.

Finally, the Colorado General Assembly saw an influx of new legislators in the House and Senate, including throughout the session. This required many new legislators to learn the “how” of being a state legislator in the midst of the legislative session. New legislators expressed experiencing many challenges and opportunities in learning the positions, including building confidence, understanding the nuances of the legislative process, and developing collaborative and mentorship relationships with experienced, returning legislators across the political spectrum.

Defending Family Strengthening Programs

Due to the challenges experienced by the Colorado General Assembly to introduce and pass new legislation, and especially legislation that would require additional funds to improve, expand, or establish family strengthening programs, Illuminate’s focus and the focus of many advocates shifted to maintaining and defending proven programs at risk of funding cuts. Starting in November, Illuminate devoted our budget advocacy efforts to defending two programs at risk of funding cuts and elimination: Family Connects and Illuminating Child Care.

Family Connects is an evidence-based universal home visiting program designed to ensure every family with a newborn has access to strengths-based information, support, and resources. Currently implemented in Eagle, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, and Jefferson counties, Illuminate serves as the state intermediary to support the planning, ongoing implementation, and evaluation of Family Connects in local counties and communities. In 2024, the Colorado Department of Early Childhood (CDEC) requested state general funds for a five year pilot to support expansion and cost-savings evaluation of Family Connects, which was unanimously approved by the Joint Budget Committee.

This year, Illuminate worked diligently to inform Joint Budget Committee (JBC) members of current implementation, preliminary results, and the need for maintained funding for Family Connects and Illuminating Child Care. We at Illuminate are celebrating the inclusion of these programs in the state budget package, which preserved 90% of ongoing state funding for Family Connects and made no changes to Illuminating Child Care funding, resulting in maintained ongoing funding for the program.

We at Illuminate are immensely grateful to our implementation partners, program ambassadors, and advocacy partners for providing stories, data, and information to Illuminate and JBC members to support ongoing funding for these influential programs. With this, we, alongside many of our partners in prevention, are disheartened by cuts to other important and integral programs.

Highlighting Our Partners in Prevention: Promoting Family Strengthening through Legislation

While not all good news in regards to the state budget, we at Illuminate are celebrating our partners in prevention who led initiatives to strengthen families. By covering a wide range of topics, from promoting increased opportunities for family strengthening programs to serve families to ensuring continued access to care, our partners led creative and collaborative policy conversations to create ongoing change and protect proven programs in an especially complex and challenging legislative session.

HB25-1204 Colorado Indian Child Welfare Act: Led by the Southern Ute Indian Tribe in collaboration with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Navajo Nation, this bill repeals current reference to the Federal Indian Child Welfare Act from Colorado statute and reinserts this and additional protections as the “Colorado Indian Child Welfare Act” to promote long-term Tribal sovereignty, support indigenous families and children involved in child welfare, and promote Tribal practices and leadership in child welfare court proceedings. This bill will promote better outcomes for indigenous children and families by working to keep families together and children within their communities.

HB25-1279 State-Level Data for Colorado Works Program: Led by Colorado Children’s Campaign, this bill updates TANF data reporting requirements to ensure clarity of how TANF funds are spent throughout the state, understand outcomes of recent changes to TANF, and understand general outcomes of TANF spending. This bill will promote fiscal responsibility and data-informed decision making to ensure TANF, a concrete support, benefits families.

SB25-017 Measures to Support Early Childhood Health: Led by Healthier Colorado and Colorado ABCD, this bill codifies HealthyStart into statute to provide a clear mechanism and opportunities for federal, state, and local funding for the program. This bill will promote family strengthening by setting families with newborns up for success, promoting knowledge of parenting & child development.

SB25-290 Stabilization Payments for Safety Net Providers: Led by the Save Our Safety Net Coalition, this bill establishes a clear funding mechanism and opportunities for additional streams for safety net providers. This bill will ensure continued funding for safety net providers, promoting continued access to healthcare for families who are under- or uninsured, promoting parental resilience, knowledge of parenting & child development, and the social & emotional competence of children.

What’s Next?

Moving into the second half of the year, we at Illuminate are ready and inspired to continue to engage in policy efforts that strengthen families at the state and federal level. In the midst of complicated federal budget processes, we at Illuminate are coordinating with our national affiliates and advocacy partners to advocate for continued funding for programs, such as SNAP and Medicaid, that evidence shows strengthen families and prevent child maltreatment. In addition, we are partnering with our national affiliates to inform innovative policy concept development and advocate for the introduction and passage of policies that support Colorado families and those across the nation.

At the state level, Illuminate will monitor the implementation of bills passed this and past legislative sessions to ensure families and family strengthening advocates have a seat at the table. We will also monitor and engage with conversations or legislation arising from a special session this year, which the Governor may convene to address any decisions made by Congress to cut Medicaid funding to states. In addition, we will engage in stakeholder work to develop policy and practice recommendations and engage in thought leadership on policy concepts that strengthen families. Sign up to receive our Illuminate newsletter and email updates and follow us on social media to stay up-to-date with our policy work and learn about opportunities to get involved.

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