Missouri confirms KC child welfare chief no longer with department
Brian West, the Kansas City regional director for Missouri’s child welfare agency, who weathered a high turnover rate and several child abuse deaths in recent years, is no longer with the department.
West left his post last week, the Missouri Department of Social Services confirmed. The circumstances of his departure are not clear.
“He’s transitioned out of children’s division and out of DSS,” said Baylee Watts, a DSS spokesperson. “Our policies prohibit me from commenting on personnel issues.”
West was in the regional position for several years.
Back in 2019, West posted on Facebook about his Jackson County Children’s Division staff during child welfare worker appreciation week in September.
“Staff advocate for families, protect children, improve communities & serve their fellow citizens,” West said then. “The work is difficult, the hours are long, and the staff keep a positive outlook for the work.
“The incredible staff know every person they interact with has good in them and they’re willing to stick with them until that good shows through. Keep up the great work, team!”
His job became challenging in recent years as the local office was hit with turnover, staffing shortages and high-profile child deaths.
The Star wrote in early 2022 about struggles across the state inside the children’s division. The system faced a critical shortage of abuse and neglect investigators and a statewide turnover rate of 42% across the state, Darrell Missey, former CD director wrote in his plan detailing how he wanted to rebuild the system.
“Turnover is reported being over 100% in Kansas City,” Missey wrote in that plan.
At the time, and in the next nearly two years, the Kansas City region also experienced the gruesome abuse and neglect deaths of three children ages 4 to 6, including one boy who fell from a 17th floor apartment window in November 2023.
At least two of those three children and their families had previous involvement with the local children’s division office.
Missey, who took over in early 2022 and retired late last year, focused his leadership on keeping families together. The former director often spoke highly of West and his leadership in Kansas City.
On one occasion, as he was discussing his early days as the state director, Missey said he knew that everyone may not be embracing his thoughts on change. During one meeting, Missey told The Star in 2023, West spoke up.
“He said, “I think it’d be great if you came up with a new policy, that for the next year, we would have no new policies,’” Missey recalled West saying. “Just let us do our job for a moment and get our feet on the ground and figure out where we’re at.’”
Missey said he recalled thinking that West was “exactly right.” After that, Missey went on a listening and learning tour and spoke with staff all over Missouri.
West told The Star in 2023 that the transparency of the system during Missey and former DSS director Robert Knodell’s tenure allowed him to “have very open discussions with my court partners.”
He said it also allowed him to have those same kind of conversations “with our community agencies that work with our families to say, ‘We’re struggling. We are really struggling right now.’”
The state agency is in the process of finding a replacement for West.
