‘Broken their promises.’ Kansas backslides, fails to meet foster care settlement marks
For the third consecutive year, Kansas failed to meet requirements of a foster care settlement stemming from a class action lawsuit and in some areas took a step back, a report released Monday said.
Fewer children were in stable placements during calendar year 2023, and “the rate at which children moved between placements increased,” according to the report by the Center for the Study of Social Policy and its president, Judith Meltzer. Though Kansas reduced the number of nights children sleep overnight in offices — which is an issue in several states across the nation — that practice wasn’t eliminated.
“While the State continues to show progress in several areas,” the report said, “it is far from meeting the majority of the anticipated final targets within the time frames expected in the Settlement Agreement.
“... The State continues to struggle to improve its overall case practice with children/youth and families.”
The independent monitor highlighted “failures” that should be “a wakeup call for every Kansan who cares about kids,” said Teresa Woody, litigation director of Kansas Appleseed, one of four entities that filed the class action lawsuit in late 2018. And those failings, she said, have caused “devastating trauma and harm to Kansas’s most vulnerable children.”
“The State, DCF (Department for Children and Families) and its contractors have broken their promises and are not protecting the health and well-being of the children in their care,” Woody said. “DCF and its contractors must be held accountable, and Kansas must step up to find the resources and reforms necessary to keep its children not only safe but thriving.”
Added Lori Burns-Bucklew, a Kansas City attorney who is among those who filed the suit: “We’re concerned about whether Kansas is going to be able to self reform.”
State officials, though, said in a release that Kansas is making progress as it works to repair the child welfare system. They pointed to data in the new report that show that 69% of children and youth in DCF custody received timely mental health and trauma screenings. And that in 52% of the cases reviewed, children and youth had their mental and behavioral needs addressed.
Additionally, officials said, 80% of the children who needed mental health or behavioral health services did not see a delay in mental health treatment being provided due to placement instability.
DCF Secretary Laura Howard said she wants to focus on that small cohort of youth experiencing extreme instability that at times can end up staying in child welfare offices overnight.
“I’m proud of the steps we’ve taken and the changes made so far to improve our state’s child welfare system,” Howard said in the release. “But I recognize this is a process, and there is more work to be done.
“We’re continuously assessing the barriers we face in certain areas and looking for creative solutions and community partnerships that will help us continue making meaningful change and ultimately improving the lives of the Kansas children and families we serve.”
Howard told The Star Monday afternoon that she’s disappointed the state didn’t meet more benchmarks in this latest report but believes many in the system are working hard to satisfy the agreement. She said she is encouraged by improvements made outside the settlement, including having more foster children placed with relatives and how there was a 42% reduction in the number of kids entering care last year.
“We have a lot of things to feel really good about, but I think our focus as we move forward really has to be with this cohort of older youth who have really, really intensive needs,” Howard said. “And how we can best meet those needs and help them to find stability and permanence. “
Linda Bass, president of KVC Kansas, one of five contractors that currently handle foster care in the state, said it’s important to understand that much of the settlement focuses on a smaller group of children who are hard to place. Those children often have behavioral and mental health needs.
“I don’t think we can just discount that for the majority of kids, the system is working just as intended,” Bass told The Star. “They’re safe in care. They’re stable in care, they have their mental and physical health needs met, and they go home to their families, or they’re adopted.”
“We’re paying attention to the settlement because that’s about the youth that the system is not working as intended.”
More benchmarks not met
Local advocates and two national children’s rights organizations filed the suit in November 2018 alleging that some children in Kansas had been treated so poorly that they had suffered mentally or run away from foster homes.
In some cases, the class action suit said, they had been trafficked for sex, sexually abused inside adoptive homes or in one instance reportedly raped inside a child welfare office. 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.
As part of the settlement, which a judge approved in early 2021, the state needs to meet 14 standards before it is released from court oversight. According to Monday’s report, the state failed to meet more than half of those in the calendar year 2023, which is the year this third analysis measured.
Meltzer found that Kansas met four benchmarks, including reporting data for caseloads for workers and supervisors. But the state failed to meet eight, the report said.
One couldn’t be measured, and the state is in the process of meeting another.
That means that in 2023 the state met the same number of benchmarks it did the previous year, and the number of benchmarks it failed to meet went up in the most recent report compared to the year prior.
Last year, Kansas failed to meet six benchmarks and met four, including requirements to track youth incarceration and mend state contracts to include immediate mandates for private contractors.
Two outcomes in last year’s report couldn’t be determined because of “data issues.” Another two were in progress.
“To make additional progress, the State will need to more aggressively pursue strategies to increase placement stability for all children/youth in care and improve their access to quality, accessible mental health services,” Monday’s report said. “They will also need to focus specific efforts on those children in their custody who are having the most problematic experiences in terms of placement stability and permanency.”
Advocates and attorneys who filed the suit are frustrated by the lack of progress. And they question whether more entities should come in to assist.
“The human toll this system is taking is staggering and it just seems to be getting worse,” said Leecia Welch, deputy litigation director of Children’s Rights, which was part of the class action lawsuit. “DCF clearly can’t fix this system without help — help from the Legislature and help from outside experts.
“Whatever steps DCF has been taking are clearly not enough and far too many children remain trapped in a broken system.”
Bass agrees that people must get involved to improve lives for all kids in care.
“We’re not happy with where the settlement report is, either,” Bass said. “We recognize that there’s nothing on that settlement as a category that we think is trivial. Placement, stability, access to mental health care, those are all the basic building blocks of foster care.”
But she and others said that the fix must come from everyone inside the state’s child welfare system, which also includes the community, courts and medical professionals.
“We can do every single thing that we can think of and do it perfectly, and we’re still never going to be able to do it alone,” she said. “Because this is a system of organizations, and we’re going to all have to keep working together.”
Changes in 2024
State child welfare officials say they’ve made progress in certain areas this year not reflected in the report, which only covers 2023.
Contractors that handle the state’s foster care agree.
“I think every case management provider has now made changes that we are going to see (next year),” said Bass, of KVC.
One area where KVC has seen improvement in recent months is mental health assessments, she said, and making sure a referral for services is made in a timely manner. KVC has a team dedicated to conducting assessments of youth and families entering care, she said.
“We have a very tight tracking system to make sure that nobody falls through the cracks,” Bass said. “So I feel really solid in our system, and I know that other CMPs (nonprofit contractors) have done something similar.
But when it comes to some foster care children sleeping in offices, the state continues to struggle in the calendar year 2024.
In July, The Star reported that three out of the four contractors in the past year had children sleep in offices on multiple occasions.
When children are kept overnight in a child welfare office, they sleep on a cot or couch or other accommodations and are given basic hygiene items if they don’t have them, DCF has said. Staff members stay in the office overnight with them.
Kansas foster children spent 136 nights sleeping in offices from July 2023 through May of this year, The Star found after analyzing information from DCF. Cases managed by Saint Francis Ministries — headquartered in Salina — made up 80% of those stays (109 nights), which the state refers to as “failure to place.”
Saint Francis had kids log 88 nights in April and May alone.
Overnight office stays are just one way some foster kids are failed in Kansas, advocates and attorneys said.
Freya Pitts, senior attorney with the National Center for Youth Law, said the state must do more.
“Young people across Kansas are still ensnared in a system that fails to provide them with safe and stable placements and is not equipped to meet their mental health needs, either in times of crisis or as they navigate their daily lives,” Pitts said in a release Monday.
“The State must take action to reverse course.”
This story was originally published September 16, 2024 at 2:50 PM.
