KANSAS CHILD PROTECTION & FOSTER CARE
UPDATES since 2001:
2007

OpEd:
Too Many Kansas Kids Are Under State Control
  or:   PHOTO of CLIPPING
critique of Kansas juvenile justice & child-protection
by Richard Harris, former Wichita Civil Rights Commisioner
Wichita Eagle Opinion Essay
Oct. 4, 2007, page 7A

Columnist Mark McCormick rerported that there's a shortage of juvenile correction officers ("Do juvenile correction offenders get enough help?" Wichita Eagle, Sept. 30 Local & State section). That's not the problem.

There are too many kids under state control, in systems designed to fail, produced by politicians eager to pretend to help society, while actually preying upon it.

The basic problem is that Kansas is much too eager to arrrest, prosecute and seize control of children. It's the same as the problem with the child protection system. Control freaks from the governor on down to the average voter have made Kansas one of the most aggressive and reckless states in the nation for intervening forcibly in the lives of young people.

Our Kansas politicians, liberal and conservative alike, acting through state government, cannot resist the temptation to exert unnecessary (and often unreasonable and destructive) control over others -- without real, analytical, sober regard to cost or outcomes.

The Kansas child-control industry -- juvenile "justice" and child "protection" -- has a long history of over-intervening in the lives of children, at a rate higher (often much higher) than the national average:

Current data from the renowned Kids Count Data Book, of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, shows that Kansas fairly consistently ranks among the 15 states most likely to lock kids up, and clearly above the national average for placement in foster care.

This is further fueled by an entire industry of people-controllers (tens of thousands in Kansas alone) -- judges, lawyers, court service officers, law enforcement officers, social workers, psychologists, wardens, jailers, prison builders, commercial foster care operations, and entire government agencies of bureaucrats. They all feed off the poor judgement and misfortune of the least powerful among us, mostly at taxpayer expense.

The result is children going from fair to bad to worse -- often in a system of amateurish mind games and incarcerations that leave a child much worse after the horrors of reckless state intervention than before it.

The No. 1 solution is a system of performance measures, based in scientific research. These must be applied to a set of rational, explicitly defined criteria that take into account all the costs of public intervention in children's lives -- including the massive cost borne by those in whose lives the intervention happens. Then apply these rational performance measures against all the government and private players who claim to be "beneficial" in their interventions -- rewarding the constructive and terminatinng the destructive.

We need to discipline ourselves. before we take too much control of others and destroy what we claim to be saving: the next generation of Kansans.

ADDITIONAL ARTICLES:
2015

Judge in 2013 ruling:
DCF conducted 'witch hunt'
against [LGBTQ foster parents].
  Dec 4, 2015, Wichita Eagle
  E-mails from DCF officials cited in the opinion show that agency officials sought to have the women's foster care license revoked and talked ...

2016

State audit: DCF fails to ensure safety
of children in foster care.
  Jul 28, 201, Wichita Eagle
  DCF failed to investigate allegations of abuse or neglect called in to the Kansas Protection Report Center in a timely manner, state auditors [reported]...

OpEd:
Kansas child-welfare system is broken.
  Aug 7, 2016, Wichita Eagle
[paraphrased:]
  But DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore has dismissed the seriousness of the audit and is blaming the media for the agency's problems.

Foster care system doesn't meet
two-thirds of requirements, audit finds.
  September 21, 2016, Wichita Eagle
[paraphrased:]
  An audit finds that Kansas's Department for Children and Families (DCF) child-protection system only complies with about a third of federal requirements checked by state auditors, says a report released Wednesday.

The findings follow a July audit, which had found that the DCF system failed to properly ensure the safety or stability of Kansas children in foster care (sometimes disrupting education), nor arrange adoption for an expected percentage of children who had been in the system for a year or two. However, it did meet requirements for placing foster children with their siblings and relatives.

Wednesday's report was the second in a three-part series of audits.

  • The first (in July) was to determine whether DCF was adequately providing for the safety of children. (It found that the state did not do background checks on all residents of a foster home, did not always conduct monthly case-management visits with foster children, and didn't ensure that foster homes had sufficient money to care for the foster child.

  • The second, released Wednesday, was about compliance with state and federal laws that govern the child-protection / foster care systems, and about the monitoring and payment of contractors (another area where DCF failed to meet all requirements).

  • The third, to be released in 2017, will evaluate the costs, resources and outcomes of Kansas foster care. Kansas has apparently already conceded it did not meet nearly half of the outcomes expected. ...

2017

Some Kansas children sleep in offices
while waiting for foster [homes]...
  Sep 19, 2017, Wichita Eagle
  "Many counties don't have enough licensed foster homes, the audit found. As of June 2016, more than 550 children in foster care were in homes..."

More than 70 foster children missing
in Kansas
  Oct 10, 2017, Wichita Eagle
  "DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore responds to an audit, which found that her agency had failed to ensure the safety of children in the foster [care system]...

As questions mount,
Kansas DCF leader leaving agency.
  Nov 3, 2017, Wichita Eagle
  "DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore responds to an audit, which found that her agency had failed to ensure the safety of children in the foster [care system]...

Secrecy inside child welfare system can kill.
- The Kansas City Star [reports].
  Nov 13, 2017, Wichita Eagle
  "Social workers for DCF and its two foster care contractors have told lawmakers and The Star that high caseloads at times make it difficult ..."

2018

Lawsuit: Kansas Foster Care System
Harming Children

Kansas City Star / Associated Press
in U.S. News & World Report
Nov. 16, 2018

A federal lawsuit says foster children in Kansas are shuffled between homes and facilities so much that they can be essentially rendered homeless while in state custody.

The Kansas City Star reported that a class action lawsuit filed Friday — on behalf of 10 children, by local advocates and two children's rights groups — alleges children are treated so poorly, in the [Kansas] foster care system, that they suffer mentally or run away. It says some have been sexually abused.

A 10-year-old spent three months in a series of night-to-night placements, during which he never knew where he would be sleeping. Another boy has had more than 130 placements during the six years he has been in state care. ...

Improving child welfare system a high priority,
[Gov.] Kelly says.
  Nov 19, 2018, Wichita Eagle
  "DCF has been working for the past year to reduce the number of missing children in foster care after revelations that upwards of 70 children [in Kansas foster care are missing, and cannot be accounted for.]" ...

2019

Kansas foster care instability
led to surge in runaways,
left children vulnerable to sex traffickers.
  Posted Oct 15, 2019
  Updated Oct 17, 2019

Special Report published in Salina Journal
produced by Topeka Capital-Journal
and KCUR, in conjunction with
American Public Media
by Peggy Lowe & Sherman Smith

NOTE: 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.

Throwaway Kids
(A detailed expose' of foster care in Kansas and nationwide)

Dec. 15, 2019
6-part Special Report published simultaneously in
the Kansas City Star & the Wichita Eagle

(Excerpted & Summarized, with graphs, on this website
...with links to the original articles.)

Includes these Parts/titles:

  1. 'We are sending more foster kids to prison than to college.'

  2. As U.S. spends billions on foster care, families are pulled apart and forgotten.

  3. Frequent moves don’t just harm foster kids’ emotions — they hurt their brains.

  4. Graduation rate of 35 percent? Many foster children 'robbed of a good education.'

  5. Aging out: Thousands of foster youth graduate to the streets every year.

  6. 'The state that neglected me as a kid is the same state that wants to kill me.'

NOTE: This is probably the broadest, most thorough, documented, detailed, and graphic account of foster care, its victims, and their outcomes, ever published in Kansas. A MUST-READ.

2020

Governor, lawmakers, advocates
focusing on Kansas foster care crisis.

Special Report published in Salina Journal
January 9, 2020

This article outlines failures of the current administration and legislature, lawsuits, and organizational restructuring efforts and plans. Provides details on who is attempting to do what, and what is being advocated for -- by whom.

Note that the problem remains largely one of an entrenched, and self-defending, social work bureaucracy -- something largely advocated for by Governor Kelly, who has a related career background. ~RH

Docs: KS foster care leader
charged $469K to credit cards
  Dec 22, 2020, Wichita Eagle
  "The former CEO of Saint Francis Ministries, a Salina foster care [contractor]" .. [engaged in controversial use of foster care money.]... DCF in January hired a Topeka accounting firm to audit finances at [the contractor]" ...

COMING SOON: Links to other sources.

Click here to return to the top of this KANSAS Special Information Section

Click here to return to the CHILD PROTECTION DEMONSTRATION WEBSITE GATEWAY