Child-Protection Issues in Kansas
Links to Other Websites' Information:The Topeka Capital-Journal
Quoted content on this page is Copyright 1998-2001, by the Topeka Capital-Journal
Last updated January 29, 2020
foster care articles & commentary
These are some of the Foster Care stories and editorials published from 1998 - 2001
in the archives of the Topeka Capital-Journal
(www.CJonline.com)
including a letter from the Governor.Excerpts of important points from each story or editorial are shown after the title [with supplemental annotations and notes added by this website, enclosed square brackets] -- along with a link to the full text of the article or editorial for your convenience. Clicking on these links (or on the title) will generally take you to the appropriate page of the source's own website (if it is still accessible online; we cannot control what they do or do not keep posted).
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About dates: Note that the date of the article may be one day off from the actual date of publication in the Capital-Journal's print edition, due to differences in timing between online publication and paper publication.
1998
Man sentenced for abuse of sisters in foster care
by the Associated Press
Topeka Capital-Journal, 09/10/98
EL DORADO -- A man was sentenced to nearly 18 years in prison for the 1997 abuse of two girls in foster care at his mother's home. ... three years for felony child abuse for beating a girl, then 7, with a belt. ... also was sentenced to 15 years for aggravated indecent liberties with a minor for fondling her sister, then 9. ... Gillum abused the sisters ... while he was living with them at his mother's house. His mother... was a Kaw Valley Center foster parent licensed by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. ... Gillum must first complete a sentence for a 1996 aggravated robbery conviction in Sedgwick County. ... The health department brought no action against Kaw Valley Center... The two girls had been removed from their Emporia home in early 1997. They were reunited with their mother in December.
Kaw Valley Center of Kansas City, Kan., took over foster care in the eastern third of Kansas in early 1997 when the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services consolidated services among three private agencies. The girls' abuse occurred about one month into consolidation. (click here for the full story)
Parents share their experiences with system
by Roger Myers
The Capital-Journal
September 13, 1998
Foster care system gets mixed reviews Foster parents, social workers and anguished parents shared their stories about the privatized system of foster care Friday as a legislative committee tried to sort out whether privatization is working or is hopelessly fouled up. Several of the witnesses broke into tears as they told personal stories about how the foster care system had deserted, ignored or slighted them and their children or their foster children. ... The SRS Transition Oversight Committee wrapped up four days of intensive hearings on the privatized foster care system.
Sen. Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, the committee chairman, said he thinks his panel will have specific recommendations for change in the foster care system next session. [Morris is a close ally of Senate President Dick Bond, who appointed him to the committee. Bond, in turn, was the Chairman of the Board of Kaw Valley Center (picked as the SRS's chief foster care contractor), and later a board member of KCSL, one of the two remaining foster care contractors.] Some of the foster parents who testified Friday, such as Judith Dieker, of Emporia, rebuked the State Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services and the private contractor which handles foster care in her area for the high turnover of social workers and case managers assigned to the foster children under her care. Dieker said one of her foster children had seven case managers in 10 months from Kaw Valley Center, the private contractor [headed by Senate President Dick Bond] which handles foster care in about 33 eastern Kansas counties.
"I've been a foster parent for four years, and I've watched the system go from workable to impossible," Dieker said. "It's time to admit that privatization is not working. We rushed into it too fast." Dieker said the constant turnover of Kaw Valley case managers and SRS social workers destroyed continuity in parenting her foster children, and that Kaw Valley case managers wouldn't communicate with her. "I have yet to see a foster child arrive at my home with any clothes," Dieker said. "I've spent hundreds of dollars clothing foster kids."
But Jeanne McCready of Olathe, told the panel, "I've been a foster parent for six years, originally licensed with SRS and now with KVC. "Privatization has worked for me ... for every negative story about KVC, I can find one about SRS. ... "I have seen KVC employ some unique solutions to help two different girls in my home. I feel that a private agency is able to be more flexible than SRS." For Sharon Smith of Garden City, however, the foster care system has been a nightmare. She said SRS has notified her that all three of her foster children will be placed with another family in 30 days. She said social workers objected to her consorting with members of her birth family, and they didn't like her and her husband working long hours at the IBP beef packing plant in Garden City.
(click here for the full story)
Auditors give criticism, praise.
By Jim McLean
The Capital-Journal
November 11, 1998
Legislative investigators gave the state's recently privatized foster care system mixed reviews in an exhaustive report released Monday. The report ... by the Legislative Division of Post Audit -- concluded that while significant progress had been made under privatization, serious shortcomings remained in the system designed to care for neglected and abused children.
Heading the auditors' list of criticisms was the frequency with which children ...were moved between foster care facilities ... Many children ... endured four or more foster care placements in less than a year's time. "Moving around so much continually thrusts these children into situations where they're living with total strangers and have virtually nothing to call their own."
Auditors also were alarmed to discover that even though criminal background checks are required for all foster parents and residential facility employees, such checks weren't performed on 5 percent of the workers sampled [-- one in twenty].
Additionally, auditors were concerned by what they called a "severe shortage of family foster homes" and the system's inability to appropriately handle the growing number of foster children with behavioral and psychological problems. ...
The report did more than identify lingering problems in the system. It also highlighted improvements. ... The needs of children entering the system are being assesed more quickly and more accurately. Services are being delivered in a more timely fashion. And in 99% of the cases that were reviewed, children in the system were protected from additional abuse or neglect [in their original homes]. However, auditors discovered one case where a 14-year-old girl who had been sexually abused by her father was removed to a foster home only to be molested by her foster father.
Senate Minority Leader ... criticized [contractor] Kaw Valley [Center's] purchase of an old nursing home in Kansas City, Kan., as a group residential facility, [and] likened the facility, which currently houses 110 foster children, to an old-style orphanage.
Finally, despite SRS reports to the contrary, a survey contained in the audit report indicated significant percentages of SRS social workers and foster parents felt they couldn't openly discuss problems with the system. The report quoted one SRS social worker as saying, "There has been a very clear message from the secretary, ... that SRS staff would fully support privatization or they should look for other employment. Most employees feel they have too much to lose to speak honestly."
(click here for the full story)
SRS plan has agencies rethinking participation
by the Associated Press
The Capital-Journal
November, 29, 1998
Problems highlight funding crisis WICHITA -- Two not-for-profit organizations that provide services to children in state custody could stop because of a proposal from Kansas officials to extend existing contracts by five months. ... Wichita Children's Home and the Salvation Army believe they have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars providing services for children in foster care. They had hoped for more money after state contracts expire Jan. 31.
But now SRS is asking programs whether they can go another 5 months without an increase... The two groups don't know that they can. ... [Under the state's now-privatized foster care system] Youthville provides [all foster care] services in Sedgwick County and 52 other counties in western Kansas. It contracts with the Wichita Children's Home for an emergency shelter and with the Salvation Army for foster homes for about 300 children and two residential homes for girls.
... Earlier this year, SRS gave its three contractors another $25 million... Youthville received $11.2 million of the $25 million, but passed none of it on to the Salvation Army or the Wichita Children's Home. Instead, Youthville used the money to cover its own losses. Three months ago, the Salvation Army and Children's Home estimated their combined losses at more than $1.7 million. The Children's Home receives $73 a day for each child in its care. It estimates it needs $120 a day to break even.
(click here for the full story)
Lawmakers lament lack of information, agree additional money needed.
By Jim McLean
The Capital-Journal
Dec. 29/30, 1998
In recent weeks, it has become apparent that more taxpayer money will be needed to correct problems in the state's foster care system. Nearly two years ago, amid much fanfare, the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services turned responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the system to three private contractors. The hope was the private not-for-profit organizations could provide better services more efficiently than the state bureaucracy. But, a dramatic increase in the number of abused and neglected children pouring into the system and unrealistic initial cost estimates led immediately to significant cost overruns.
The privatized foster care system has been hampered by shortages of both staff and funding," a recent report by the Legislative Division of Post Audit concluded. "Contractors and others have expressed concerns that the low rates they are able to pay service providers may force a number of providers from the foster care system, or drive them out of business completely." Since privatization in March 1997, SRS has been forced to provide the contractors with more than $45 million in emergency funding. ...
[SRS Secretary] Chronister's proposed $81.6 million foster care budget is about $20 million higher than the amount she proposed a year ago. ... The governor stressed that privatization was intended to provide a better, not a cheaper, system. "A low-cost private contract that delivers poor service to Kansans is not a good deal, and it is not a deal we want," Graves said. Sen. Stephen Morris, R-Hugoton, a fiscal conservative who serves as chairman of the SRS Transition Oversight Committee [and who is a close ally of Senate President Dick Bond -- leader of foster care contractor Kaw Valley Center] , said he will urge his colleagues to support a budget increase for the foster care program. "The Legislature has got to step up," Morris said. "If we have to put more money in the budget to make the system work better, we'll just have to do that." ...
Rep. Phyllis Gilmore, R-Olathe, a member of the House subcommittee that oversees the SRS budget, called the foster care system a "nightmare." "Sort of what we did is to go from a public monster to a private monster," Gilmore said. "I don't know how much of the problem is money."
Rene Netherton, a Topeka lawyer who serves as the legal guardian for hundreds of children in the system, cited several specific instances where needed services weren't provided to children or their families. In one case, she said, a social worker [for private foster-care contractor KCSL] urged the court to return a teen-age boy to his father's house, claiming the father had overcome a drug and alcohol problem. But Netherton said a check of the record revealed the father had been convicted of several recent felonies, and he was still abusing alcohol and drugs. "I can't believe what they (KCSL) tell me," Netherton said. "They are flat lying to me."
(click here for the full story)
1999
Report: More children coming into foster care than leaving
By Roger Myers
The Capital-Journal
July 1, 1999
Private contractors didn't meet some standards but exceeded in others.
More children entered foster care in Kansas last year than left the system, an independent evaluation firm said in its first year-end report on the state's privatized child welfare system.
But the report by James Bell Associates, of Arlington, Va., also told the state Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services that the three private contractors who run the state's foster care program all fell below established standards in finding permanent placements for children in the system.
More children coming into the foster care program than were expected has plagued the first two years of the privatized child welfare programs. The consultant said in its report that during 1998, 3,390 children entered foster care while only 2,866 exited. That is 524 more children who came into the system than left it last year.
There were about 5,240 children in foster care at the end of May 1999.
The report also said the three contractors failed to achieve the standard for the percentage of children who were returned to their homes, or put in other permanent placements ... the standard for putting children into permanent placements within six months of referral to the contractors was 40%. ... statewide the contractors placed only 27%. ... The standard for getting foster care kids into a permanent placement within one year was 65%, but ... only 33% achieved permanent placement within 12 months.
While the report said the contractors didn't meet some standards during the year, they exceeded standards in other important areas: Child safety... Holding placements below four moves... and placing foster children within their areas of origin [however hundreds of Kansas foster children were relocated over a hundred miles from their hometown, even in temporary placements].
[NOTE: Kansas SRS frequently describes audits by James Bell & Associates as "independent" audits of SRS's privatized child protection system, and offers them to the Legislature as "proof" of their good conduct. But the company was hired by SRS, and SRS retained the right to terminate their 3-year audit contract at will -- effectively compromising the "objectivity" and "independence" of the Bell audits of the SRS system.]
(click here for the full story)
2001
GOP nixes foster care review
By Jim McLean
The Capital-Journal
July 25, 2001
Republican legislative leaders resisted Democratic attempts on Tuesday to formally authorize a special study of the state's foster care system.
House Minority Leader Jim Garner wanted the Legislative Coordinating Council, the Legislature's governing body, to sanction a review of the system by the Joint Committee on Children's issues, [saying] the bankruptcy of one service provider and the financial struggles of others indicated the need for a comprehensive review of the system, which was privatized in 1997. ... Republicans on the GOP-controlled LCC acknowledged that the Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month of Wichita-based United Methodist Youthville, the state's largest foster care contractor, raised troubling questions. But they wanted to narrow the focus of any potential review to ensure that it was productive. ...
[Sen.] Hensley said he believed GOP leaders were reluctant to turn the children's committee loose because of the views of its outspoken chairwoman, Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita. ... In a recent published report, Landwehr complained that SRS officials provided her with misleading answers during the legislative session when she asked about Youthville's financial condition. ... "I think the time has come for a major audit of all the contractors," Landwehr said. "I am getting real tired of not getting straight answers."
Recently, the Kansas Children's Service League, the foster care contractor that serves Topeka and northeast Kansas, acknowledged that cash-flow problems had forced it to delay payments to subcontractors. Last year, Lutheran Social Services, the state's adoption contractor from 1996 to 2000, threatened to file bankruptcy if its subcontractors didn't accept reduced payments for their services.
(click here for the full story)
Legislators to review use of provisos attached to appropriations bills
Last Modified:
[SRS Oversight Committee killed by governor.]
2:31 a.m. 8/17/2001
By John Milburn
The Associated PressTo the average Kansan, a proviso may not sound like a big issue. It sounds like any other government term with a vague meaning. But the use -- or overuse -- on provisos by legislators to direct state agencies on how to spend money is growing. Now some legislators and a former lieutenant governor think it is time to rein in proviso "creep."
... Gov. Bill Graves' veto this year of a proviso that would have renewed the SRS Transition Oversight Committee, which dealt with such issues as the privatization of foster care services. [Republican State Senator] Kerr [ close ally of Gov. Graves & former Kansas Senate Pres. Dick Bond ] said it is a committee that could and should have been established by separate legislation.
"He kind of called us on that. We probably would have made it a law if we had any warning," Kerr said. "He made his point."
(click here for the full story)Letters to the editor
A Letter from Governor Bill Graves:
Last Modified:
2:31 a.m. 8/17/2001Graves: State should help foster-care service providers A letter printed in Wednesday's paper by Donald Bruner... claims the foster care system is far worse off now than before our public/private partnership began and he states that $140 million will be spent this year over the $70 million spent the year before privatization.
...Kansas is the first state to undertake a transition from a state-run child welfare system to a more responsive public/private partnership delivering child welfare, foster care and adoption services. The result is a statewide network of child service providers ready to assist children any time. Foster care, mental health evaluation, social services and adoption services are all part of this professional network.
The positive results are obvious. Five years ago, it was not unusual to find foster children on a waiting list for services. Children's social services were only available from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Less than half the counties in Kansas offered family preservation services with the goal of solving problems and keeping families together. Today, all critical social services for children are available in every county, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I am not exaggerating when I say Kansas child welfare services are delivered more efficiently than ever before. ...
(click here for the full letter)
Last Modified:
1:48 a.m. 8/24/2001
By John Hanna
The Associated PressGraves, contractors discuss concerns, issues facing foster care Gov. Bill Graves says he plans to meet with foster-care contractors because the state needs to help the non-profit groups "on the business management side" of providing services to troubled and abused children.
Graves has a meeting scheduled for Wednesday with representatives of five non-profit groups providing services across the state. They include United Methodist Youthville, of Newton, which filed for bankruptcy in June to obtain protection from its creditors. ...
... Democratic leaders have proposed creating a special commission to monitor foster-care services, the contractors and their subcontractors. They contend turning the programs from the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services over the non-profit groups has been a failure.
(click here for the full story)
Last Modified:
2:53 a.m. 8/30/2001
By Chris Grenz
The Capital-Journal...Kansas became the first state in the union to privatize its child welfare services when foster care was put in the hands of non-profit contractors in 1997.
Since then, critics have charged Kansas' model has added another layer of bureaucracy that takes dollars away from children. Democrats and some Republican lawmakers have suggested the state needs to establish a separate oversight agency.
The criticism has been fueled by the bankruptcy filing in June of Newton-based United Methodist Youthville, one of the five main contractors.
Supporters of privatization have upheld Kansas as an example for other states to follow. Graves had earlier said the system is providing quality care, although he believed it was plagued by management problems within the private contractors. ...
... SRS Secretary Janet Schalansky was invited to the meeting. ... Graves started to excuse her so he could talk privately with the contractors ...
(click here for the full story)
UPDATES since 2001:
UPDATE: 2016Review highlighted in new audit
shows DCF fell short
on two-thirds of foster care benchmarks
September 24, 2016, Topeka Capital-Journal
The Kansas Department for Children and Families’ foster care system complied with federal standards for protecting children from abuse and neglect, according to a federal review highlighted in a newly released state audit. But the agency failed to reach substantial compliance on two-thirds of the benchmarks examined, the review found.[Same topic at:
"Foster care system doesn't meet two-thirds of requirements audit finds
2016-09-21 - Wichita Eagle"]
UPDATE: 2019Kansas foster care instability
led to surge in runaways,
left children vulnerable to sex traffickers.
Posted Oct 15, 2019
Updated Oct 17, 2019Special Report published in Salina Journal
produced by Topeka Capital-Journal
and KCUR, in conjunction with
American Public Media
by Peggy Lowe & Sherman SmithNOTE: While this report focuses on runaways from the state's child-protection system, and their entanglements with sex trafficking, it also thoroughly summarizes, and provides important details on, the recent history of the Kansas child-protection system, and the various factors affecting it generally.
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