A few years ago, I got 10 minutes with Gov. Jared Polis. It might not sound like a lot of time, but I came more than prepared to make the case Colorado needs to radically reform its foster care system.

Ahead of our brief meeting, I’d sent Gov. Polis a four-page memo that outlined my concerns. Those concerns were informed by my four decades of experience as both an attorney and advocate for children removed from their families. He complimented my purple hair, ushered me into the photo area and assured me he’d read the document. That left eight minutes to persuade him how much the 4,500 or so children living with foster and kin families needed his help.

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To put it bluntly, too many of these children aren’t thriving and won’t thrive until changes are made from the top down. For our meeting, I’d created a five-point action plan. I believed Gov. Polis did, and does, want to do better by children in foster care and for the families taking them in, whether strangers or kin. He listened, was open to learning and assigned a fantastic policy person to work with me. But only a few months later, she went off to Washington, and things trailed off after that.

I’ve since lost touch with the governor on the issue, which is disappointing for me but devastating for the children. They deserve better from all of us, and we deserve better outcomes for the hundreds of millions of dollars we spend on foster care in Colorado every year with local, state and federal funding. What seems to be missing is the will to change. That sort of leadership must come from the top.

I think the plan I shared with Gov. Polis is as relevant today as it was then, more so if we consider children are still being moved from foster home to foster home, often with no notice or explanation a kid can understand. I know of one baby who was moved seven times in a single year, and another child who had 28 placements during his time in foster care. You read that right: 28.

Children in the foster care system can still be forced to visit with parents who may have been abusive, without anyone asking whether they want to and despite the horrific trauma they may experience from the visit. These kids are still more likely to drop out of high school, get pregnant and get into drugs than their peers who are living at home with their parents. The foster care to prison pipeline is no myth, with a horrifying number of children growing up to become homeless or imprisoned adults.

No private business would tolerate results this poor, and our political leaders shouldn’t either. I shared with Gov. Polis then and I’m saying it now — here’s what Colorado should do to begin to make a huge difference in the lives of children in the system:

• Launch a statewide initiative to create awareness of what children in foster care and the adults taking care of them need and outline which of those needs are going unmet.
• Stop requiring certification before blood relatives who want to take these children in can actually have them in their homes, while ensuring they are safe and receive the financial support necessary for stability.
• Require trauma-support specialists be involved in new placements and visitation plans to avoid re-traumatizing the kids all over again.
• Trigger an emergency court hearing whenever a child is moved for the third time, whether to a new foster home or a new placement with family or at a facility, and take measures to ensure it’s the last move.
• Create an immediate study/audit of any children placed outside the state and identify what went wrong: number, reasons, whereabouts, costs, etc.

Kids aren’t widgets. We can’t keep treating them as interchangeable or without agency. Better decisions now will lead to better outcomes not just down the long road, but around the very next corner. A kid who comes into the system today could and should be welcomed into a system so much better functioning than the one now in place.

I vacillate between outrage and tears: two sides of the same frustrated coin. I’ve seen what harm the system can do to children and also what magic can happen in a child’s life when it gets things right. I know we can’t legislate humanity, common sense, or loving homes. But we can stop operating in the shadows and insisting on secrecy because minors are involved. We can be open about what needs to be done — and then get it done.

Governor, let’s talk.

Shari F. Shink is the founder of the Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center and executive director of Cobbled Streets, which is focused on changing the lives of foster and homeless children.