Governor Hickenlooper signed a few child welfare bills into laws at the capitol in Denver.

One deals with foster parenting, and what types of verification potential foster parents must undergo before children can be placed with them. The increased measures include extensive background checks, comparison to national sex offender database, FBI fingerprinting and more.

Our media partner, 7News and TheDenverChannel.com, had conducted   investigations that led to the change in laws, so kudos to them. They recently found that the Denver Department of Human Services had placed foster children with a convicted sex offender, and then, when they were removed from that home, placed them with a woman convicted of child abuse.

After that, 7News discovered that the DHS failed to complete hundreds of fingerprinted background checks, leading to an audit of the whole system by the state Department of Human Services and eventually leading to this legislation.

Governor Hickenlooper signed the bills into laws yesterday, and State Senator Linda Newell was one of the bills sponsors and she acknowledged the importance of the investigative work by 7News in helping to expose the problems and create the legislation.

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