Kansas fails to keep promise to fix foster care system, new audit finds: 'Failed across the board' | KCUR

Foster children in Kansas are not receiving adequate mental health treatment, are being shuffled between too many different homes, and social workers are facing excessive workloads, according to an audit report on the state's foster care system released Monday.

The court-commissioned report paints a dire picture of Kansas' foster care system – a system that not only shows no improvement in key areas, but is actually getting worse.

“Children in the foster care system are abandoned at every turn and left to fend for themselves in a broken system,” Kansas Appleseed said in a press release.

Kansas Appleseed, the National Center for Youth Law and Children's Rights sued Kansas in 2018 for poor treatment of foster children. In July 2020, the groups and the state's child welfare system reached a court-ordered agreement to improve the children's situation. If no progress is made, the case could end up back in court.

The foster care audit, released Monday, is the third report on changes the state has made or not made and covers data going back to 2023.

Governor Laura Kelly said the report shows great progress in nursing care, even though the data contradicts this.

“More needs to be done to improve access to mental health services,” Kelly said in a press release.

Young people in the office

The settlement in the lawsuit required Kansas contractors to refrain from allowing children to sleep in their offices through December 31, 2021.

Yet in 2023, 57 children spent 68 nights in an office. That's an improvement from 2022, when 85 children spent a total of 257 nights in offices, and from 2021, when 53 children spent 167 nights in an office. However, the state may not have been able to sustain that success.

The lawsuit agreement states that preliminary data for 2024 showed that office stays increased significantly. Cornerstones of Care was also praised for sending children to an out-of-state facility while boasting that the children did not have to sleep in offices.

Nursing homes provide basic sleeping accommodations in their offices. The private contractors who run the state's nursing home system don't want children in the offices. But severe mental and psychological problems make it difficult to accommodate children.

Linda Bass, president of the foster care brokerage KVC Kansas, told lawmakers at a meeting in September that a child was sleeping in an office after being kicked out of his foster home at 11 p.m. The agency found alternative placement, but the child refused to go.

“The juvenile did not go and I understand why,” Bass told deputies. “This was a really rough night for the juvenile. Their foster family told them to leave the house. The police dropped them off in a parking lot.”

The longest office stay was eight nights. Five times children spent more than one night in an office.

Access to mental health care is lacking

Kansas has failed to provide adequate mental health services for children in need, the foster care review says.

To meet the settlement's goals, the state must provide mental health care to 85% of incarcerated children. In 2022, 70% of youth received adequate help. That number dropped to 52% in 2024, the audit said, and some of those children did not receive that care quickly.

The report identified 197 of 263 children who required psychiatric treatment.

Of these 197 children:

• 43 were treated in a timely manner. That is 22% of the cases examined.
• Help was provided in 60 cases, but there were delays. That is 30% of the cases examined.
• 94 did not receive appropriate treatment. That is 48% of the cases examined.

“We filed this lawsuit and negotiated a settlement in good faith to stop harmful practices, but the state and contractors have failed to meet their obligations,” said Lori Burns-Bucklew, an attorney and child welfare law specialist, in an emailed press release. “The state demanded control, but it has consistently failed to exercise oversight. The state needs to think about whether or not self-reforms can be effective in Kansas.”

Ministry for Children and Families

Foster children move too often

The average foster child in Kansas lived in 7.94 different places over a 1,000-day period, or about two years and nine months. That's slightly worse than the 2022 data and a big step back from the 5.84 homes every 1,000 days in 2021.

The report states that youth in Kansas live with fewer than two families each year, even though foster care places children with nearly three new families each year.

A small number of children were relocated frequently. According to the settlement report, 131 children were relocated over 1,500 times. Younger children moved less frequently, and teenagers were more likely to live in multiple locations.

On average, 12- to 17-year-olds lived in just under 15 households per 1,000 days.

Leecia Welch, deputy legal director for Children's Rights, said the group sued Kansas six years ago because children were moving so often that they were effectively homeless.

“Sadly,” she said in a press release, “nearly six years later, that grim picture still looks pretty much the same.”

High number of cases

Social workers in Kansas often handled too many cases at once.

According to the review of foster care, 39 percent of foster care workers had more than 30 cases at one time. The private foster care facility St. Francis performed the worst, with 48 percent of children assigned to a foster care worker with 30 or more cases.

Kansas contracts for its nursing work. These contracts include a requirement that permanent caseworkers handle no more than 25 to 30 cases at a time. However, this goal has not been met.

What Kansas did right

In Kansas, nursing homes rarely exceeded their maximum capacity – 99% of homes met capacity requirements.

Kansas has made great strides in its foster care system. The state is using federal funds to prevent children from being placed in foster care in the first place and is drastically reducing the number of minors in state care.

“I am proud of the steps we have taken and the changes we have made so far to improve our state's child welfare system,” Department of Children and Families Secretary Laura Howard said in a press release. “I recognize this is a process and there is more work to be done.”

This story was originally published by The lighthousea member of the KC media collective.