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.
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Missouri’s system for providing legal representation to families ensnared in the foster care system is highly decentralized and has little state oversight. The result is that some parents go without legal help at all, while kids stay in foster care far longer than the national average. -
The number of people waiting in jail to be transferred to state mental health facilities reached an all-time high in February. People are sometimes being incarcerated for longer than if they’d actually received the maximum sentence for the crime they were charged with. -
A federal judge said Missourians living in poverty "have gone hungry" due to bureaucratic hurdles that the state knows about but has failed to address. -
A coalition of business groups and individuals sued to strike down Proposition A, which Missouri voters passed in November. The new law raising the minimum wage and expands paid sick leave is set to take effect Thursday. -
A GOP-led bill takes aim at ordinances passed in several Missouri cities to protect tenants from discrimination based on the source of their income — especially tenants who use federal housing choice vouchers to pay rent. But portions of Kansas City would be exempted under the Senate version. -
The child, who is not a Missouri resident, was visiting Taney County in the southwest part of the state and was diagnosed “soon after arrival." Kansas has so far reported 37 measles cases as part of an ongoing outbreak. -
A Republican-backed bill would gut Proposition A, a voter-approved law requiring most employers to provide paid sick time off starting May 1. After it passed the Missouri House, Senate Democrats spent more than nine hours blocking action on the bill. -
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program was designed to help those with few resources cover their home energy bills in the summer and winter — but the entire staff was fired last week. Since October, the program has helped more than 100,00 Missouri households. -
Under national standards, at least 35% of kids entering foster care should exit with a permanent living situation — whether adoption, guardianship or reunification with family — within one year. But only 12 of Missouri's 114 counties met that goal. -
Bills sponsored by Missouri state Sen. Stephen Webber and state Rep. Kimberly-Ann Collins are designed to provide more oversight to state nursing homes and require certain staffing levels. But so far they’ve made little progress in the legislature.
