Hannah and Blake Letzler have fostered about two dozen children in the past five years. When a half-brother and half-sister, Luke and Lilly, needed a family, they first fostered, then adopted them.
It hasn’t always been easy for the Durango couple, both 28.
“We’ve had to definitely do a lot of work to figure out how to be a family unit,” Hannah said in an interview.
Of Luke, who turns 13 this month, she said, “He struggles a lot with me and my husband specifically in the parenting role, because he fears that we’re gonna leave, like every other parent figure has.”
Families like the Letzlers are still in demand, but not as much as a few decades ago, according to an analysis of Colorado adoption data from 2006 to 2024.
Adoptions from foster care for children have gone down 40 percent in that time, considered good news by the Colorado Department of Human Services.
In 2006, for example, there were 1,100 children adopted into a family from foster care, as compared to 658 children adopted from foster care into a family in 2024, according to data from the Community Performance Center website.
Staffers involved with placing adoptees are pleased with the decrease.
“This is very good news,” said Toilynn Edwards, Placement Resources administrator with the Colorado Department of Human Services.
“What this means for Colorado is that there are less children entering the system as a whole, and the ones that are entering the system, many are finding permanency and reunification through kinship families, or being reunified with their parents, and so the number of children who are being adopted are lower.”
Edwards said these figures refer only to children being adopted from foster care, not private or international adoptions.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t still kids waiting for adoption. Currently, there are nearly 300 children and teens waiting for adoption in Colorado, according to Adrienne Baxter, Recruitment and Retention communications specialist with the Colorado Office of Children, Youth & Families.
She said the Colorado Department of Human Services continues to seek foster and kinship families across the state, especially for siblings, teens and youth with behavioral or mental health needs.
Hannah didn’t want Luke’s difficulties adjusting to prevent him from having a family, so she and her husband, Blake, are committed to showing up for him even when it’s not easy.
“We refused to be another person who left,” she said, “and said we couldn’t handle it.”
