By RACHEL MIPRO
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Kansas’ foster care system has seen workers struggling under excessive caseloads, lackluster resources and foster children not getting the help they need. Legal limits to caseloads and changes to the state’s adoption system are being touted as potential solutions.
During a Monday House Child Welfare and Foster Care Committee hearing, lawmakers discussed House Bill 2371. The bill would limit caseloads, with case managers working with a maximum of 18 children in out-of-home placements. Exceptions would be granted in cases of temporary staffing shortages or when a case manager is working with a sibling group.
Under the bill, case managers would also need to complete required training before working independently on cases. Currently, state foster care case management grants stipulate that out-of-home case managers are not to exceed 30 cases.
To get down to an 18-case maximum, the Kansas Department for Children and Family Services would need to increase case management provider staffing by about 25%, according to the state budget director’s fiscal note. Adding the estimated 74 social workers would cost about $5,162,397, with the money coming from the state’s foster care budget.
Rachel Marsh, CEO of the Children’s Alliance of Kansas, said case managers dealt with extremely difficult situations, such as sexual abuse cases and familial suicides, and needed plenty of support to stay in the field.
“We want to make sure that with those challenging, heart-breaking and really soul-changing stories, that we give our case managers a sort of fighting chance of staying above water and being able to have a manageable workload so they can learn the job, learn the technical challenges and stay in the job,” Marsh said.
In June 2022, a watchdog group found that Kansas had one of the highest rates of missing foster children. An August 2022 DCF report showed that 66 of approximately 6,200 foster care children were unaccounted for. With more case managers, advocates said they hoped for positive changes.
Rep. Paul Waggoner, a Hutchinson Republican, questioned whether the bill would ultimately fix foster care workforce shortages.
“Are the folks actually out there to be hired?” Waggoner asked. “My impression is that they’re having a hard time hiring people, they just can’t get anybody. How is this going to solve that problem?”
During the meeting, lawmakers also voted to advance a bill that would require DCF to apply new standards when deciding adoptions for foster children. House Bill 2299 would remove the current requirement that the court give relatives first preference in granting custody, with second preference given to people with whom the child has close emotional connections, such as a foster parent.
The bill would require DCF to prioritize emotional attachments over familial connections. Under the bill, DCF would have to consider foster parents as prospective adoptive parents if the child has lived more than two years with the foster parent, more than half their life with the foster parent, or if it’s in the child’s best interest.