‘Kids every day are suffering.’ Kansas fails to meet outcomes set in foster care settlement

Kansas continues to fail kids in foster care, with children still sleeping in offices and others being moved to too many homes, a newly-released report said.

More kids in care spent the night in child welfare offices last year than they did in 2021 because of a lack of foster homes and facilities for some kids with special behavior needs. In another glaring setback, foster kids were moved to more homes over a 1,000 day period last year than they were in 2021.

And the majority of youth entering care last year weren’t properly and timely screened for trauma and mental health needs.

That’s what an independent monitor found in its second report measuring how well Kansas is following the 2020 settlement agreement in a class action lawsuit aimed at improving the state’s troubled child welfare system. The report — by the Center for the Study of Social Policy and its president, Judith Meltzer — focuses on the state’s performance for the calendar year of 2022.

The report said that while the state showed improvement in “certain areas,” Kansas’ overall performance last year “failed to meet expectations.” A third review is expected to be released in a year.

“It is hard to understand how the State of Kansas can continue to be so negligent in its provision of mental health services to these youth who are in the foster system,” Lori Burns-Bucklew, a Kansas City attorney and child welfare law specialist who is among the four entities that filed the lawsuit five years ago, said in a release. “Kansas is a poor parent indeed for these young folks who are struggling after having been removed from their homes and families.”

State leaders — including Gov. Laura Kelly — said in a release that Kansas is making progress as it works to repair the child welfare system. She pointed to what she described as “stable placements” for children and improvements made in mental health screenings and “timely access to services.”

“But this report also makes clear that, in spite of all of our efforts, there’s much more work to be done,” Kelly said in the release. “... Clearly the legislature and I must dig deeper, make more targeted investments, and come up with solutions that work.”

Later Monday, when asked at an event about the report and its findings that kids were sleeping in offices and having too many placements, Kelly said she was “very concerned.”

“I was actually pretty surprised when I saw those because we have been working really diligently,” she said. “... So it’s clear to me that we need to double down, evaluate what we’re doing. Is it the right thing to be doing? Do we just need to do more and different things? Or is what we’re doing just not effective and do we just need to restart? I don’t know.”

Lawsuit sought changes

Local advocates and two national children’s rights organizations filed the suit in November 2018 alleging that 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 class action lawsuit settlement, which a judge approved in 2021, the state needs to meet 14 standards before it is released from court oversight. At this point, nearly half of those have still not been met according to the new report.

Of the 14 measurable outcomes, the “neutral” — which refers to Meltzer and the Center for the Study of Social Policy — found that Kansas had met four benchmarks, including requirements to track youth incarceration and amend state contracts to include immediate mandates for private contractors.

Two outcomes couldn’t be determined because of “data issues.” And another two are in progress.

In the end, the state failed to meet six benchmarks, the report said.

One year ago, the state met five benchmarks, failed to meet seven and was in the process of hitting another one. And one more couldn’t be determined last year because of “data issues.”

Monday’s report pointed out that Kansas lacks a Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System and has to rely on outdated and sometimes incompatible data systems. That has hampered the independent monitor’s ability to validate state data and review individual children’s case files, the report said.

“The biggest thing they could do something about is their computer system,” Burns-Bucklew told The Star Monday night. “It prevents the state from using data to make improvements because they don’t have good enough data.”

Included in the outcomes not met in 2022 was the failure to end the night-to-night placements, which was supposed to be reached by the end of 2021, and the failure to address the mental and behavioral needs of 85 percent of the cases reviewed.

Leecia Welch, the deputy legal director for Children’s Rights, which was part of the class action suit, said she recognizes that agencies charged with protecting Kansas foster kids are trying to fix many problems. But she and others said results continue to fall short.

“We hope that DCF begins to act with a greater sense of urgency and really uses the neutral’s work to help guide what their next steps should be,” Welch said Monday. “There really are foster children who are losing their childhoods to the system. … Kids every day are suffering.”

Holding contractors accountable

Laura Howard, who is the head of the Kansas Department for Children and Families, said she’s seen successes as the state implements more programs and makes changes.

“The report affirms our commitment to the continuous improvement of the Kansas child welfare system,” she said in the state’s release. “Several factors including implementing a youth statewide mobile crisis service, adding therapeutic foster homes as a level of service, and working with the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services to implement Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers (CCBHCs) are responsible for the steady improvement of these mental health outcomes.

“We expect to see this number continue to improve as more CCBHCs come online and more families across the state become aware of the youth mobile crisis service.”

In the mid 1990s, Kansas became the first state to fully privatize its child welfare system. Four private contractors handle foster care services in the state.

For years, lawmakers, child advocates and industry experts say the state hasn’t done enough to ensure that private agencies properly care for kids and keep them safe. Monday’s report reiterated that for many.

“DCF must hold its contractors accountable for meeting the commitments of the settlement agreement, and provide vigorous oversight of their care of Kansas children in the foster system, or we will not see improvement in the system,” said Teresa Woody, litigation director for Kansas Appleseed, which was involved in filing the class action suit.

Another outcome the state continued to not meet in 2022 was the requirement to end the practice of having foster kids sleep in child welfare offices overnight. Kids end up there when contractors say they can’t find another placement for them and their special needs.

The state was supposed to meet that requirement by the end of 2021. It didn’t. And last year even more kids spent the night in offices, according to the report. The report refers to the temporary overnight placements as “failure to place.”

“The total number of nights spent by children/youth in care in provider offices was 257 — an increase of 54 percent when compared to 167 nights in CY 2021,” the report said.

Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Louisburg Republican, said that’s unacceptable.

“An office isn’t a home, an office isn’t a secure placement,” she said. “And how do we know that? Because we had a foster child last year die …. when they just left the foster contractor’s office.”

The 15-year-old, who had run away from foster care many times in recent years, ran from a Cornerstones of Care office in April. In the days after the teen ran away from care on April 11, 2022, a Special Response Team for DCF began searching for the teen, the child welfare agency said last year.

The teen’s body was found in an empty lot near 9th Street and Central Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas, on April 15 by a neighbor in the area, police said. According to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the child’s family, the principal cause of death was ketoacidosis, a metabolic process which occurs when someone with Type 1 diabetes is not treated with insulin.

Another foster teen died in late October when he left his residential treatment facility in southeast Kansas, stole a truck and crashed head-on into a tractor trailer. The 13-year-old died of his injuries two days later in a Tulsa hospital.

Too many moves

One of the biggest setbacks detailed in the report dealt with placement moves for children in care. The suit required that by the end of 2021, children entering DCF custody shall not have more than seven moves per 1,000 days in care. The state met that in last year’s report.

But in 2022, the state fell short. Last year, that climbed to 7.29 moves per 1,000 days in care. The target for 2022 was 6 moves per 1,000 days in care.

“It is very troubling,” Welch said. “Trying to drill down and understand the reason that they went so far off in the wrong direction is going to be really important to improvements for next year.”

For 2023, and “period three” of the settlement, “they have to get down to five moves per 1,000 days,” Welch said. “And then for the final outcome, they have to be at 4.4 moves per 1,000 days,” which is basically the national metric of where the state should be.

Last year, Baumgardner called for the resignation of Howard. On Monday, she said the agency still was not providing the best support for Kansas kids.

“It is impossible for the Legislature to do anything more than continue to provide funding, which we have done, and we have had to implement legislation to try and improve the situation for children that find themselves in the care of the state,” she said.

State Rep. Jarrod Ousley, a Merriam Democrat, said he felt the Legislature over the years had not done its part to improve outcomes.

Ousley said he remembers discussions about improving the IT and data system for the agency dating back to former Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration. But the dollars have never been allocated, he said.

“It just seemed like maybe legislators don’t understand just how large that system is and how antiquated it is,” he said.

One of the most impactful things the state could do to improve outcomes and keep kids out of foster care and ensure contractors have resources, Ousley said, is expand Medicaid.

Kansas is one of 10 states that has not expanded the healthcare program. GOP leadership in the Legislature have been adamantly opposed to the measure.

In the absence of a big swing, Ousley said, the state is left with small efforts to improve the child welfare system.

“When the political reality is that you’ve still got to provide care for the kids, so you’re going to do the next best thing,” Ousley said. “It’s just unfortunate that politics gets in the way.”