The Core Services Program was established in 1994 to provide funding for strength-based resources and support to families. Core allocations are provided yearly to all counties who submit a Core Service Plan, which details how funds will be spent according to their community needs. This approach allows for individualized services to meet the needs of children, youth and families across diverse Colorado communities.
The Core Services Program is based on a foundation of family preservation. Family preservation services are generally short-term, family-based services designed to support families in crisis by improving parenting and family functioning while keeping children/youth safe. In Colorado, “family preservation services” are defined as assistance that focuses on a family’s strengths and empowers a family by providing alternative problem-solving techniques and child-rearing practices, as well as promoting effective responses to stressful living situations for the family. This assistance includes resources that are available to supplement existing informal support systems for the family.
There are 10 designated types of family preservation services, listed below, and this array of services constitutes the Core Services Program.

• Aftercare Services: Any of the Core Services provided to prepare a child for reunification with his/her family or other permanent placement and to prevent future out-of-home placement of the child.
• County Designed Services: An optional service tailored by the specific county in meeting the needs of families and children in the community in order to prevent the out-of-home placement of children or facilitate reunification or another form of permanence. County designed services encompass components of the menu of Core Services yet are structured in their delivery and tracked uniquely to gain detailed data on evidenced-based programs, as well as programs that are providing positive outcomes in communities around the state.
• Day Treatment: Comprehensive, highly structured services that provide education to children and therapy to children and their families.
• Home-Based Intervention: Services provided primarily in the home of the client and include a variety of services, which can include therapeutic services, concrete services, collateral services and crisis intervention directed to meet the needs of the child and family.
• Intensive Family Therapy: Therapeutic intervention typically with all family members to improve family communication, functioning, and relationships.
• Life Skills: Services provided primarily in the home that teach household management, effectively accessing community resources, parenting techniques, and family conflict management.
• Mental Health Services: Diagnostic and/or therapeutic services to assist in the development of the family services plan and to assess and/or improve family communication, functioning, and relationships.
• Sexual Abuse Treatment: Therapeutic intervention designed to address issues and behaviors related to sexual abuse victimization, sexual dysfunction, sexual abuse perpetration, and to prevent further sexual abuse and victimization.
• Special Economic Assistance: Emergency financial assistance of not more than $2,000 per family per year in the form of cash and/or vendor payment to purchase hard services.
• Substance Abuse Treatment Services: Diagnostic and/or therapeutic services to assist in the development of the family service plan, to assess and/or improve family communication, functioning and relationships, and to prevent further abuse of drugs or alcohol.
• Services focus on family strengths by directing intensive services that support and strengthen the family and/or protect the child/youth, and
• Provided services prevent out-of-home placement of the child/youth due to safety concerns or high acuity behaviors, or
• Allow for the return of children/youth in placement to their own home or unite children/youth with their permanent families through kinship care or adoption.