‘Listen to the children.’ Kansas adoption case expands as three more kids may be moved
A Kansas foster mother stood before state lawmakers in Topeka recently and played a recording of a 10-year-old boy she’s raised since 2019.
The boy and two of his sisters, ages 5 and 12, have lived in her home since June 2019 when they were removed from the care of their biological mom. But the state contractor handling their case plans to remove them from that home the day before Thanksgiving and place them in an adoptive home in Manhattan.
The boy asked his foster mom to fight for him, to make sure the adults who are deciding his future — and the lawmakers trying to help — know what he wants. As his voice filled the room, his words simple and sentences squished together, there were “many tearful eyes,” one lawmaker said.
“I don’t want to move to Manhattan and I want to stay here and be with my friends,” the fifth-grader said. “And I don’t want to go to a different school. And I like being in Tonganoxie. I like my school.”
The children’s case has gained the attention of other foster families, lawmakers and state officials. Many view it as the difference between what looks good on paper — keeping biological siblings together — versus what is best for the children. Some lawmakers and other foster parents say sometimes it’s better, as in this case, to keep kids in the environment they have grown up in and with families they have become attached to.
In late 2020, when parental rights were severed, two Tonganoxie families — including the current foster mother, Jackie Schooler — asked to adopt the kids so all three could stay in a community where they feel safe and loved.
But the state contractor handling the case had other plans. The boy and his two sisters, and a third biological sister who is 3 — and wasn’t born when her siblings went into state care — would all be placed in an adoptive home in Manhattan with a family they didn’t know.
Last week, a few days after a special meeting of the Joint Committee on Child Welfare Oversight, the head of the Kansas Department for Children and Families changed course and said the toddler could be adopted by her foster parents in Gardner.
But the state has yet to budge on the three siblings in Tonganoxie. The plan now is to remove them the day before Thanksgiving and take them to Manhattan to live with the family they only know, Schooler said, through a few playdates and an overnight stay last weekend.
The contractor, 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.”
DCF also said it can not discuss individual cases.
‘Adoptive resources’ in Tonganoxie
The day after the biological mother’s parental rights were severed, Schooler said Cornerstones of Care — one of four contractors that handle foster care in Kansas — sent her some adoption paperwork.
“They said, ‘Go ahead and fill out your adoption packet,” Schooler said. “‘Likely they’re not going to find an adoption resource for all of these kids and since you’ve had this little girl for so long,’ and I got her when she was a year old, ‘it would be very traumatic for her to be moved to a different home.”
She said the worker with Cornerstones said it would be “the best case scenario” if the little girl stayed with her. And, Schooler said the worker told her that she wouldn’t have to adopt the two older children because “they’re old enough to understand the situation and work through it.”
“I said, ‘Absolutely, I’ll adopt her. I don’t want to traumatize her,” Schooler said. “She’s a sweet little girl.”
Several months later, in July 2021, Gretchen Meitler, who runs a daycare the two older children had attended for two years, contacted Cornerstones of Care and said she and her husband, Brian, were interested in adopting them. The Meitlers have two boys the same age as the two siblings they hope to bring into their family.
When all four siblings were placed on a website in February 2022 advertising that they needed a home where they could be together, Meitler sent an inquiry through the site and again explained her family’s desire to adopt the two older children.
Since March, Meitler said she and her husband “have begun making the necessary changes to our home, adding additional beds, purchasing bedding, clothing and other items needed to grow our family.”
But the case dragged on. And Cornerstones eventually told the families that it had identified an adoptive family in Manhattan for all four siblings.
“For the last three years they have been able to start healing many of their original wounds,” Meitler said of the three children she’s watched grow in her daycare center. “Now by doing what is proposed, even though loving homes have all been identified, we are going to yank the scab from the original healing trauma wound and create a new one that will start the healing process all over.”
Schooler said Cornerstones has said the three will need therapy after the move in order to deal with the trauma it will cause. But she and Meitler said the state could alleviate that if the contractor just kept them in Tonganoxie.
“There’s adoptive resources for all three here in town, that would minimize the disruption in their life,” Schooler said. “They wouldn’t have to change schools, they wouldn’t have to change friends, they wouldn’t have to change routines.”
What she said she doesn’t understand is why couldn’t other foster children needing a forever home, especially larger sibling groups, go to the family in Manhattan?
“These kids have had adoptive resources for almost two years,” Schooler said. “But they’ve wasted so much time and taxpayer dollars recruiting for this family that they don’t need, when there are hundreds and hundreds of kids in foster care in Kansas that don’t have adoptive families, that do want to be adopted.
“So they’ve been wasting time and money on our case, when there’s all these other kids that legitimately could be matched with this family but they won’t.”
What is right for the kids?
The case gained public attention in September after John and Nicole DeHaven first told their story to the joint committee. The DeHavens took the 3-year-old into their home on Halloween 2019 when she was three days old. By then, the three other children had been living with Jackie for several months and were beginning to settle into routines.
At that time, and in the weeks after, the main focus centered on the toddler. Now that she is able to stay in Gardner with the DeHavens, the battle has turned to the three siblings.
“I’m trying to figure out how to fight to get them to be able to stay in Tonganoxie,” Nicole DeHaven said after she learned that she and her husband could adopt the little girl. “... As soon as we got the good news, it was like, ‘Well, what’s happening with the other three? And they were like, well, that appears to be moving forward as planned. That was somewhat of a bummer for us. We want the same thing for all the kids.”
The three moms are in regular contact. They said they just hope that Cornerstones and DCF realize that they can reverse course with the three, just like they did with their younger biological sister.
“We’re not doing what’s right for the kids,” said Meitler, who told the state months ago that she and her husband were willing to adopt the 5-, 10- and 12-year-old if that was needed. “We’re doing what the system thinks is right. But the system doesn’t know these kids intimately. And hasn’t spent now three years of their lives with them, you know?”
Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Louisburg Republican, has been the loudest advocate for all four siblings. She said she still has concerns for the future of the three, who are still in regular contact with older biological siblings — there are a total of eight children in the family — who live about 20 minutes from Tonganoxie.
“The move would strip them away from older siblings they are still in contact with,” Baumgardner said. “They are not addressing the individual needs of each child in this case. … You have to listen to the children.”
Baumgardner was in the closed-door meeting when Schooler played the recording of her 10-year-old foster son.
“Out of the mouth of babes, he spoke the truth,” Baumgardner said. “When we listened, you could tell the weight of the world was on his shoulders.”
As the uncertainty lingered in recent weeks, and the state planned to keep all four biological siblings together, Meitler said she spoke to the fifth-grader many times about the future.
“When he would see me (he would say), ‘Miss Gretchen, ‘I just want to come to your house,’” said Meitler, who told him, “I know buddy, we’re going to fight as hard as we can. Just trust us that we’re trying and we’ll do everything we can.”
After last week’s decision to allow the DeHavens to adopt the 3-year-old, Meitler wrote a long letter to child welfare officials and lawmakers about her family’s effort to try to adopt the older two children. And because she understood that officials didn’t want to split the three children, she again said her family would adopt all three.
“I am beyond thankful that ‘careful consideration’ was made for the DeHavens’ foster daughter to be adopted by them,” Meitler wrote. “Now, I ask that you assist me, my family and all other parties concerned to reconsider the placement of the final three children.
“... This would allow us to keep in close and constant contact with the current Foster Mom and her two biological children as well as all of the other family connections they have made over the last three years.”
Though the families’ main goal would be for Schooler to be able to adopt the 5-year-old, both Meitler and Schooler want the three to remain in Tonganoxie where they’ve created a life.
They said their hope is that DCF considers what is best for the siblings and listens again to what the 10-year-old boy told lawmakers late last month.
“I hope we have a really great Christmas present this year,” Meitler said, “for all of us.”
