DCF secretary highlights progress despite criticism during stop in Hays

DCF Secretary Laura Howard speaks to the media Tuesday during a stop in Hays.

By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

Kansas Department for Children and Families Secretary Laura Howard remains focused on agency process, despite recent criticism from child welfare advocates who are pushing for more rapid reform in the agency.

Howard made a stop Tuesday morning at the Hays DCF office.

One of the recommendations from the Child Welfare Task Force was to increase recruiting for foster families.

“Placement stability is one of our top priorities as an agency as we come on board with a new administration,” Howard said. “There is no doubt that kids have been placed too far from home, and they move around too often. We are doing a number of things in that regard.”

The agency has new foster care management contracts starting, and the agency will have individual contracts with child placing agencies. Additional funds will also be available for foster family recruitment.

The agency is starting a practice called Team Decision Making, where the agency is able to bring more resources to the table for kids and bring other people who have connections to the child into the process.

“What the evidence tells when we do that from other jurisdictions that use this model is that children are more likely be placed with a relative and be placed in their home community, and they also reach permanency more quickly,” Howard said.

The new contracts begin Oct. 1. The Team Decision Making model will be phased in over the next 12 to 18 months and will be launched in the Kansas City area.

Kansas has 7,300 children in the foster care program, which is high compared to other similar states. The agency is looking at prevention programs to help children and families, so children do not have to be removed from their homes.

These can include parent training, early childhood services, Parents as Teachers and mental health services.

DCF also will be using the federal Families First program, which will bring federal funds into the state that can be matched with state funds.

“Part of my goal is to reduce the number of youth we have in foster care,” Howard said. “Our system has a lot of strain today, but as we are successful in diverting children safely on the front end to preventive services, we will have less demand than we have today as we have fewer kids actually in the foster care system.”

She said Kansas initially saw more children coming into foster care during the recession. Other states saw their numbers decrease as the economy recovered. Kansas has not.

“I attribute it to a couple of things. I can’t prove these things, but I at least see a correlation between policy changes that were made about safety net programs in Kansas,” she said, “and there were policy changes made in Kansas in the last few years to reduce eligibility for the TANF cash assistance program down to a two-year lifetime limit. There were other changes made to really limit family access to cash assistance, to child care assistance.”

The governor has recommended an additional 52 workers per the recommendation of the task force. Twenty-six workers would be added this year and 26 next year. These would primarily be social workers in field offices. The Legislature is close to approval of at least the first round of these new employees.

The agency is also trying to take advantage of social work practicum students and is working to reduce requirements for social workers coming from other states to work in Kansas.

Task force members said in a recent letter they have “deep concern” lawmakers have only made minimal progress and have made no progress on most recommendations, according to the Associated Press.

The agency has also been criticized in recent years for several high-profile deaths of children after DCF became involved with the families. In the latest case in Wichita, a 3-year-old boy was found dead in his crib and a 4-month-old boy was removed from the home and hospitalized in critical condition.

Howard said she could not comment on that case specifically, but said DCF is investigating.

Howard said some reforms will need to be enacted by the Legislature, but other actions can be done internally within DCF.

She said the task force’s tier one recommendations are being met, including new staff, aggressively pursuing Families First, $13 million in new funding (half federal, half state funding) and improvements in the agency’s information systems.

“I am actually really pleased that the governor and the Legislature have prioritized those tier one recommendations,” she said. “There are more recommendations, but many of those recommendations we are already making progress on administratively.”

DCF is working with the state’s managed care organizations that control Medicaid to help youth in foster care more timely access health care, health care screenings and mental health care.

“It is important to understand that some things require legislation. Some things require new funding. Some things just require us to change how we do our business or practice and our practice models,” she said.

Howard said she has walked into some agencies that do not have the resources they need, but she said she was pleased in the progress that has been made in the last 100 days.

“What I would say is that agencies have really been hollowed out over the last few years based on the state’s challenge with financial resources,” she said. “I have agencies that don’t have enough staff, and they don’t have enough resources. We won’t get out of that overnight. It is going to take some time to dig out of that.”