Agencies that deal with neglected or abused children face a terrible dilemma. If they are too slow to remove a child from an unsafe home, or too quick to return the child to one, they will be blamed if anything later goes wrong, and the child is injured or killed.

And sometimes something does go wrong; in nearly 7 percent of cases, an abused or neglected child who has been taken into care is subsequently re-abused.

On the opposite extreme, if agencies act aggressively in the name of children's safety, they can inflict other kinds of long-lasting damage. Not because foster care is unsafe in itself, but because children taken from their homes and put in unfamiliar places lose the support of their extended families, their schools, their friends and their neighborhoods.

Since 1992, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has been exploring a no-extremes model they call Family to Family. Starting in 2002, and then through the active efforts of the Hickenlooper administration, Denver has worked to implement the model - with striking success. Indeed, the rate of re-abuse in Denver has fallen from 6.7 percent to 2.3 percent.

Under the old model, says Roxane White of the Department of Human Services, child welfare agencies in essence waited until a child met the legal definition for abuse or neglect, and then they went to court for a removal order. With the Casey model, agencies offer families services before things get to that point, in hopes that things never will. The centerpiece of the model is a team approach to placement decisions, involving not only public agencies and their employees, but birth families and community members. Whenever possible they place children in kinship care, or with foster families in their own neighborhoods.

Since 2002, the department says, placements in treatment centers are down 39 percent, while 62 percent more children are staying with family members or in kinship care. In-home services for families are up by 59 percent.

It's a good example for other cities to follow.