Kansas reaches settlement over lawsuit to fix state’s troubled foster care system
Attorneys for Kansas foster children and the agencies charged with protecting them have agreed to settle a class action lawsuit aimed at improving the state’s long-troubled child welfare system.
The State Finance Council unanimously approved the resolution Wednesday afternoon after presented with details of the agreement. A judge ultimately will have to sign off on it in the near future before anything is final.
Members of the State Finance Council, a body made up of top legislators and chaired by Gov. Laura Kelly, moved in and out of executive session Wednesday morning to discuss the issue. The council voted in the afternoon.
Multiple members confirmed they had approved a settlement in the foster care lawsuit, but refused to go further. Details about the settlement are confidential until it is filed with the court. That is expected Thursday.
Rep. Troy Waymaster, a Bunker Hill Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said the agreement will address “some of the systemic issues we’ve been having for quite some time.”
Lawmakers learned in 2017 that because of a shortage of foster homes and residential beds, contractors had resorted to having kids — many of them with extreme needs and hard to place — sleep in offices overnight when needed. Others were going from placement to placement.
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, said children won’t be sleeping in offices or placed in hotels or motels overnight under the agreement.
“That’s a problem I think will be resolved by the settlement,” Hensley said.
Multiple legislators also said the settlement can be accomplished administratively and won’t require additional funding.
Laura Howard, secretary of the Department for Children and Families, declined to comment following the meeting, but said she is willing to speak after the settlement is filed with the court on Thursday.
Filed in November 2018, the suit alleged that children had been treated so poorly that they’ve suffered mentally or run away from foster homes. In some cases, they have been trafficked for sex, sexually abused inside adoptive homes or in one instance reportedly raped inside a child welfare office, the suit said.
The goal of the suit wasn’t to receive money, but to fix the system for these children and others who come after them, the attorneys who filed the suit have said.
In September, attorneys representing foster children filed a motion to amend the suit, saying that children were still being harmed and the state hadn’t solved the problems. Mediation began after that.
One attorney for the plaintiffs said when the suit was filed that the crisis in Kansas — in terms of housing instability and lack of mental health support — was one of the worst that they’ve seen in decades of doing this work.
This story was originally published July 8, 2020 at 4:47 PM.
