Child-Protection Issues
in Kansas
1995-2002Last updated October 26, 2001
Last revised March 11, 2022
Background Note & Overview:
Child-Protection Changes
in Kansas
October 2001:In recent years, Kansas has been the nation's foremost battleground for radical, combative, new approaches to child protection and foster care.
The battle has largely been between liberal, moderate and conservative hard-liners (and libertarian extremists), with the state's most vulnerable children -- and their families -- caught in the middle.
The resulting horror stories have brought headlines and lawsuits -- and dramatic changes -- but little real reform.
KANSAS FOSTER CARE —
— FROM ONE BIG MESS TO ANOTHERAt first, the Kansas child-protection system grew by leaps and bounds in the 1970's and 1980's, aggressively intervening in the defense of children. Administered by the Children & Family Services Division of the Kansas Department of Social & Rehabilitation Services (SRS), it gradually grew completely out of control.
By the early 1990's, the system was arguably becoming more of a threat to Kansas children than a protection. Lawsuits brought in the early 1990's, by legal guardians for certain Kansas foster kids, were eventually combined into one of the first-ever "class-action" lawsuits against a whole state's child-protection system. Kansas became only the second state in the union to have its entire child-protection system brought under the supervision of a court.
To settle the matter, the SRS promised reform, but a series of subsequent audits over several years showed that the SRS would not reform.
When the federal judge threatened to resurrect the lawsuit, the new Republican governor enacted radical change by "privatizing" the system — consolidating control of the system (and the children in it) — into the hands of a few low-bidder private companies.
This dodged the state's accountability for the mess — temporarily passing the buck to "free enterprise" — and eliminated much of the need for government social workers as case managers.
But rather than lay off the excess social workers, the SRS held onto them, and used them to expand its interventions in Kansas family life:
- The hundreds of idled SRS social workers were reassigned as "investigators" and investigator / case-managers.
- At the same time (while the Legislature slept) the SRS re-defined its own authority -- broadly re-defining the official grounds for intervening in a family.
These two factors led to an explosive growth in the numbers of children taken from their families.
As a result, the swelling influx of foster kids began clogging the privatized foster care system, which began to collapse, as the handful of winning private contractors staggered towards bankruptcy under the unexpected burden of their new roles. They began demanding multi-million-dollar bail-outs, and the state obliged.
All along the way, from before privatization to the present, the bureaucracy has grown in size and cost, while the quality of services provided to children, and to families in trouble, has continued to be humiliating, wretched, brutal and even cruel -- given the repeated, continuing findings of auditors.
Kansas now has one of the nation's highest-cost foster care systems, and one of the most aggressive -- far more likely to break up homes and families than almost any other child-protection system in the nation.
LIFE IN KANSAS FOSTER CARE:
Kansas foster children -- usually "parented" by an ever-changing committee of "professionals" (sometimes called a "wrap-around team") -- are routinely separated from all family, friends, and classmates, and then forced into the arms of strangers, and relocated.
And then they are relocated, again, repeatedly (often over a hundred miles from home) -- with frequent drastic disruptions of their social life and development, and constant interruptions of their education (most Kansas foster children are never allowed to complete high school).
When friendships are made, or even bonds with specific adults, they are commonly destroyed by further relocations. (With privatization, competitive bidding for contracts results in winning bidders taking foster children from losing bidders, then moving them to the winning contractor's foster parents or facilities -- literally a modern-day slave-trade.)
Facilities (orphanages) housing them are often poorly run and supervised, and wretched, but inspectors call ahead to give contractors a warning they are coming, allowing contractors to "clean up the mess" before inspection.
Physical injury and sexual assault are more common in Kansas foster care than in society at large, and authorities have documented these offenses even in facilities run by the President of the Kansas Senate (who has successfully thwarted legislative attempts at instituting independent oversight of the privatized foster care system).
For the foster children, their inevitable rebellions are treated with drugging, tormenting by ill-trained "therapists," and/or confinements.
Yet running away from this system, and even normal childhood rebellions and mischief, are routinely criminally prosecuted. Very many Kansas foster children are now simply dumped into the state's new "juvenile justice" system (imprisoned foster children are an overwhelmingly disproportionate population of the Kansas "juvenile justice" system, today).
The constant torment of Kansas foster care, deprivation of education, amateurish manipulations and mind-games of incompetent, poorly supervised "professionals," and the frequent, unpredictable interruptions of all close relationships, have eventually alienated many Kansas foster children from society, leaving them unable to interact effectively in the world.
On average, life outcomes for them are far poorer than for other children (even abused or neglected children) who have never been in state custody.
REFORM DEMANDS:
After a howl of protest from targeted families and their children (and the very few guardians willing to stand up for them) — and facing exploding costs — the Legislature has slowly begun demanding real reform (from SRS). But it hasn't come yet — and the Legislature, itself, refuses to enact genuine reform.
A complex, inter-dependent web of bureaucrats, court officials, trade groups, private contractors, and state politicians has stymied any real change in the status quo -- ultimately protecting themselves, and each other, more than the state's children.
Meanwhile — despite SRS's admission, last year, that it has taken 1,800 more children than it should have — over 4,000 children (at last count) are prisoners of this state's notorious "child-protection" system, with little hope.
A more detailed story follows, with an explanation of the system -- before and after the lawsuit and privatization -- and more details on outcomes.
~Richard Harris
former Commissioner,
Civil Rights / EEO
Commission,
City of Wichita,
Kansas
October 2001Click here for the detailed story of Kansas' Child Protection System
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