Clara Bates
Reporter, Missouri IndependentClara Bates covers social services and poverty for The Missouri Independent. She previously wrote for the Nevada Current, where she reported on labor violations in casinos, hurdles facing applicants for unemployment benefits and lax oversight of the funeral industry. She also wrote about vocational education for Democracy Journal. Bates is a graduate of Harvard College and is a Report for America corps member.
-
The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requires that Medicaid applications for the largest group of participants — who are low-income children, families and adults — be processed within 45 days. In February, Missouri took an average of 77 days to process applications.
-
Troy is the first Toyota plant nationally where workers have gone public with a union drive — and the latest in a string of non-union plants seeking to join the UAW after it won record contracts late last year for the Big Three.
-
Missouri’s child welfare agency took at least $6.1 million in foster kids’ benefits last year to reimburse itself for the cost of providing care. It’s a longstanding practice that has come under increased scrutiny across the country.
-
Under current Missouri law, 16- and 17-year-olds are allowed to get married with parental permission to anyone under the age of 21. A new bill co-sponsored by Kansas City state Sen. Lauren Arthur would prohibit issuing marriage licenses to anyone under the age of 18 under any circumstances.
-
Missourians trying to enroll in or retain Medicaid — the government-run health insurance program for low-income Americans — are running headlong into the state’s increasingly-strained system. The result: lost and missing paperwork, indecipherable state notices and marathon call center wait times.
-
Two Missouri senators have filed legislation that would remove the state's remaining restrictions on providing food benefits to those convicted of felony drug offenses. Missouri's rules comprise "one of the nation’s most stringent bans for receiving SNAP benefits."
-
The program would provide $40 in food benefits for each month an eligible child is on summer break, loaded onto a card that can be used like a debit card to purchase groceries. Missouri's decision is nonbinding, and the state now has until Feb. 15 to submit a detailed plan to the federal government.
-
A wide-ranging bill passed by the Missouri General Assembly last year banning sleeping on public land was struck down on Tuesday by the Missouri Supreme Court. Critics of the bill feared it essentially criminalized homelessness.
-
Missouri has 285 people waiting in jails to be transferred to state-run psychiatric hospitals, potentially for months, without having been found guilty of a crime. And that number has been going up over the last few months, despite new mitigation efforts.
-
Missouri’s Board of Education changed a rule this week that had prevented many child care providers from accessing the $26 million in grant funding allocated by lawmakers.