TOPEKA — Adoptive parent Janelle DuBree knows firsthand what it meant to be responsible for children who exhibited behavior so extreme they were regrettably placed back into the Kansas foster care system.
DuBree, of Emporia, said she and her husband had been assaulted by youth in their care. Children in her care also attacked school staff and classmates, and damaged property at home and school while suffering from substance abuse and mental health challenges, she said. The juvenile justice system, a backstop in extreme circumstances, was content to place these violent individuals on probation.
“As a parent, I feel that my children need to be held accountable,” DuBree said. “Probation has made no positive impact. Placing children that have criminal-like behaviors into the foster care system is not the answer.”
DuBree said the comprehensive foster care reform law adopted in 2016 to reduce youth incarceration rates removed an important tool for moderating unhealthy conduct. Contents of Senate Bill 367, hailed as a landmark overhaul of the problem-plagued foster system, moved Kansas away from relying on state custody and group homes and toward community-based treatment. Limits were placed on sentencing so fewer youth funneled into a criminal justice system that could culminate in prison.
“Senate Bill 367 had good intentions of rehabilitating youth, but in reality it isn’t doing so,” she said. “It is giving youth a false idea that they can assault others and damage property and only receive probation time and time again.”
DuBree’s view wasn’t an isolated response to the complex, heartbreaking difficulties of dealing with more than 6,000 Kansas children and youth in foster care. During a joint House and Senate committee hearing on foster care, several parents and activists highlighted unintended consequence of the 2016 legislation as well as ramifications of other changes made by the Legislature.
Caseworker expertise
Nicole DeHaven, of Gardner, requested the Joint Child Welfare System Oversight Committee turn the dial back toward licensure of caseworkers engaged in foster care. In 2018, the shortage of caseworkers in the state prompted the Kansas Department for Children and Families to lower a requirement that all of those workers had to be licensed in the field.
“This removal has not benefitted Kansas in any way,” DeHaven said. “We have a regular issue with caseworkers not having the knowledge needed to effectively make decisions regarding the best interest for our children in need.”
Nicole, and her husband John, were engaged in a lengthy dispute that prompted a Wyandotte County judge’s decision requiring a 3-year-old girl they cared for since birth to be surrendered to a Manhattan family where the child would live with biological siblings. DCF had recommended the DeHavens be allowed to adopt the child.
Nicole DeHaven said the state should give consideration to licensing caseworkers through implementation of an exam of the type deployed for people working in cosmetology. She said test questions ought to include child welfare subjects ranging from ethics, trauma a well as fundamental policies and procedures. Higher standards would hold accountable agencies contracting with the state to perform foster care duties, she said.
Kansans convinced a caseworker wasn’t conducting himself or herself in an ethical manner or following correct procedures didn’t have opportunity to file complaints with a state licensing board. Instead, anyone alleging wrongdoing filed directly against the organization committing the purported infraction.
“Agencies are not going to admit that their workers are not accurately doing their job,” DeHaven said.
‘A primal wound’
Sister Therese Bangert, of Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, said children in the state’s welfare system claimed a place in her heart nearly 50 years ago when she worked as a teacher and child care worker at St. Vincent Home in Topeka.
Bangert said she learned it was easy to grab headlines when a tragedy occurred, but hard to find ways and means to protect vulnerable Kansas children. She said removing a child from the home might result in trauma so deep it could fairly be characterized as “a primal wound.”
Challenges facing the state’s privatized foster care system included a shortage of experienced workers, she said, but other complications included economic inequities of families and the motivation of some foster parents.
