Kansas senator says state agency refuses to help child, 3, stay in only home she’s known
A Kansas lawmaker said the state’s child welfare agency could step in to help a little girl in foster care but so far has refused to do that.
The girl, who turned 3 on Friday, has lived with a Gardner foster family since she was three days old. The couple has been unsuccessful in their attempts to adopt the girl, drawing the ire of other foster families and lawmakers over how the case has been handled.
Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Louisburg Republican, said she and other lawmakers were told it was the court system that had determined the child’s future. But information shared Wednesday during nine hours of testimony behind closed doors revealed that isn’t true, Baumgardner said.
A state child welfare contractor overseeing the girl’s case plans to place her in an adoptive home with three biological siblings whom she has never lived with. All four children would be removed from foster homes where they’ve been since 2019. And that could happen as soon as next month.
“We were led to believe it is the court who mandated the siblings need to be together,” Baumgardner said Wednesday evening at the end of a special meeting of the Joint Committee on Child Welfare Oversight. “What we have learned is that right now it is in the hands of (the Department for Children and Families) to make that recommendation.
“... The secretary of DCF can certainly intervene and say, ‘OK, folks, we’re going to go back and we’re going to come up with a better plan that addresses the needs of each of the individual children.”
Mike Deines, a DCF spokesman, said because of the “ongoing nature” of the case, officials can not comment on specific details.
“The agency appreciated the opportunity to provide information to the committee in a closed session,” Deines said in an email, “and we will continue to be responsive to their questions.”
Baumgardner has been one of the loudest voices in recent weeks advocating for the little girl. About a month after she arrived at the home of John and Nicole DeHavern, the couple took in a newborn boy who they’ve since adopted. The family said the two children have bonded as brother and sister.
The DeHavens alerted Cornerstones of Care — one of four contractors that handles foster care in Kansas — nearly two years ago, after the biological mother’s parental rights were terminated, that they wanted to adopt the girl. But, the couple said, they were told that the four children had to be adopted together.
Foster mother makes plea
Nicole DeHaven was at the Capitol on Wednesday and said Cornerstones planned to move all four children into the adoptive home on November 23, the day before Thanksgiving. The children have only spent about 10 hours with that family, she said, and “our little girl” hasn’t spent even one night with someone else, including grandparents or other family members.
“I’m just praying that somebody will decide that, you know, ‘We got to do the right thing,’” DeHaven said. “Especially for these children. When you knowingly know that it’s going to create trauma, that’s on the verge of child abuse.”
The little girl’s therapist, she said, is concerned that the toddler is showing signs that she “knows something’s happening and she’s not comfortable with it.”
“Things need to change,” Nicole DeHaven said. “And they need to move fast.”
Cornerstones of Care has told The Star it cannot comment on a specific case but provided general information on the policy aimed at keeping siblings together. Through a spokesman, Cornerstones has said its recommendations to keep siblings together “are based on multiple research studies and evidence that siblings raised together experience better long-term, healthy outcomes.”
In Fiscal Year 2022, 93 percent of the Kansas children adopted at the same time as their siblings were placed in the same home, according to information provided by DCF. The year before, it was 91 percent and in 2020 it was 96 percent, DCF said.
It isn’t clear how old those children were when they were adopted and how long they had been in foster care. Or whether those siblings were in foster homes together.
In this case, the three siblings, who were removed from their mother’s care four months before the little girl was born, have been in the same home for three years, Baumgardner said.
The current foster mother of those three would like to adopt the 5-year-old girl and the owner of the daycare where they’ve gone has told Cornerstones that she and her family would like to adopt the older two.
The DeHavens shared the entire story with members of the joint committee last month. And earlier this month, lawmakers called for Wednesday’s special hearing to delve deeper into the case and ask why certain decisions have been made.
Critics of the plan to keep the four together in an adoptive home with parents they don’t know say Cornerstones of Care and DCF are ignoring what’s best for the child and her siblings and advocating instead for what looks good on paper. There must be flexibility, critics say, when children have bonded with foster families and become attached to their environment such as schools and sports teams for the older children.
In this case, foster families and lawmakers question why Cornerstones has taken so long to decide on permanent placement. If the contractor and the state knew that in the end the four children needed to be adopted together, they ask, why wasn’t that done sooner? Why didn’t Cornerstones move more quickly to keep the little girl from building a bond with a family during her first three years of life?
And why move the other three away from the schools, friends and sporting teams that they’ve grown attached to since 2019?
A vote of no confidence
After meeting for hours in “executive session,” members came back for open discussion. At that time, Baumgardner said that throughout the day the committee repeatedly heard that keeping siblings together is the “regulation.”
“It is not a regulation that has been put in place by the Kansas legislature,” Baumgardner said. “That is a policy of DCF.
“In the situation we met for today, the four siblings have never been together.”
Baumgardner later called for a “no confidence vote” on the decision by Cornerstones and DCF to place the four siblings in an adoptive home together, removing them from families and friends and schools that they are connected to. That passed along party lines 7-2.
Rep. Jarrod Ousley, a Merriam Democrat, voted against no confidence and said he worried the committee was acting prematurely and setting a dangerous precedent. The case, he said, has become political.
“It’s divided on partisan lines with an election coming up,” Ousley said.
At one point, during open discussion, a committee member asked if Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat up for reelection, could step in and change the course of the case. Another member asked if the attorney general, a Republican running against Kelly, could do the same.
Attorneys for the Legislature were directed to research the question.
Rep. Susan Concannon, a Beloit Republican and chairwoman of the joint committee, said she believed the goal of Wednesday’s meeting was to study the case as it relates to the foster system as a whole and potential legislation.
“I don’t know in this particular case if there’s anything that we’re going to change moving forward. I don’t pretend to know more than professionals in the field but I do know I represent Kansans and we’re looking out for the best for them,” Concannon said. “Common sense tells us one thing and DCF and Cornerstones are looking in a different direction.
“There’s several people who would like to have an impact on this particular case and it’s very sad.”
This story was originally published October 28, 2022 at 11:04 AM.
