I trained to foster a child in Kansas. Here’s why I walked away | Opinion

An open letter to the Kansas Department for Children and Families:

I write this not as a disgruntled applicant, but as someone who entered your foster care training with open eyes and heart and left with a sharpened lens. What I saw was not a system designed to protect children — it was a machine built to sanitize suffering, reward compliance and perpetuate harm under the guise of care.

Your licensing process is a masterclass in whitewashing. It is not designed to assess capacity for love, resilience or advocacy — it is designed to filter for wealth, whiteness and spotless records. The result? A foster system that excludes the very people most capable of offering unconditional love, and instead rewards those willing to contort themselves into bureaucratic shapes that serve the institution, not the child.

Let us be honest about who becomes a foster parent under this system:

• The delusional dreamers — rare, well-meaning, and quickly disillusioned.
• The emergency placements — kin who step up out of obligation, not preparation.
• And perhaps most common, the exploiters — those who commodify children for government stipends, performative saviorism or worse: physical, emotional and sexual abuse. These are the ones willing to bend over backward to meet your arbitrary standards, because they have already set aside integrity in favor of access.

Even facilitator failed with child

During training, I learned the backstory of one of the facilitators — a woman who had taken in a baby boy just days old. She poured herself into his care, doing everything right. But despite her love and effort, the traumas he carried eventually led him to in-patient treatment as an adult. That moment shattered my assumptions. It wasn’t just about love or commitment — it was about a system that lets harm persist by failing to support mental health early. Her story made me question whether I could walk this path, knowing how deeply broken the structures around it are.

The agency I worked with was willing to submit my licensure application to DCF even though staff members knew there were unresolved issues. It felt like a gamble — “Let’s just see if it goes through.” When it didn’t, they shifted the blame, asking me to jump through new hoops without acknowledging their role. I could have pursued expungement and likely passed, but that pattern — of pushing forward recklessly, then gaslighting when things backfire — was emblematic of how the system treats both caregivers and kids: expendable, not supported.

This is not just a failure of policy — it is a failure of moral architecture. Your system incentivizes exploitation and disincentivizes permanency, connection and unconditional love. You dangle the idea of family in front of applicants but offer no promise of stability. You expect parents to love freely and deeply, while reminding them that the child may be removed at any time. That is not care — it is emotional extraction.

For those of us who enter with the intent to love and advocate unconditionally, your system makes it clear: We are not welcome. Because for this machine to function, love must be conditional — tethered to case plans, court orders and compliance. Anything deeper threatens the system’s control.

And so, the absurdity compounds. Children are shuffled, sanitized and taught to be grateful for a system that enslaves them to its dysfunction. The very hoops you claim are protective are the ones that trap them. You do not prevent harm — you perpetuate it, institutionalize it and call it care.

I did not fail these children by walking away. I refused to take part in a system that fails them every day. And until you dismantle the barriers that exclude real advocates, until you stop rewarding performative compliance and start honoring relational integrity, you will continue to harm the very lives you claim to protect.

This clarity is your gift to me. Let this letter be the return receipt.

Morgan Hamlin, a Wichita system analyst and dreamer, completed foster care training in Kansas and made the informed decision to walk away.