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 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.
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A Missouri investigative team has helped locate 628 foster kids this year who were missing from state custody, lawmakers were informed this week.
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Attorney General Andrew Bailey claims the proposal amounts to religious discrimination. But Missouri’s child welfare agency already offers guidance to foster care providers to use a child’s "preferred name and pronouns" and provide "physically and emotionally safe and supportive care and resources regardless of one’s personal attitudes and beliefs."
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Kids made up almost half of Missouri residents disenrolled from Medicaid since renewals resumed this year, even though children are eligible for coverage at higher levels than adults. And paperwork issues are the main reason most Missourians are dropped — not lack of eligibility.
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Kanakuk Kamps alleges its insurance company discouraged camp leadership from disclosing information about sex abuser to families.
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Over a year after a lawsuit alleged that Missouri's "dysfunctional" SNAP call center violates federal law, low-income Missourians are still facing automatic disconnections and wait times of around an hour.
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Tucked in the hills of the Ozarks near Arkansas and Oklahoma, Noel is a summer tourist destination that spans just two square miles. For three decades, migrants have come to work at the Tyson poultry plant, which offered jobs that didn’t require English proficiency at higher-than-minimum-wage pay — until it closed this month.
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The people imprisoned were supposed to receive rehabilitative mental health services that allow them to stand trial, but they have been found to languish in Missouri jails — often for months — without having been found guilty of any crime.
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A law passed by the Missouri General Assembly last year made sleeping on state-owned land a Class C misdemeanor. The legislation was modeled off a template by a conservative think tank, but housing advocates say it criminalizes homelessness and was improperly tacked onto an unrelated bill.
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Missouri’s share of children being disenrolled from Medicaid is third-highest among the states that report age breakouts. Nearly 40,000 kids total lost coverage — mostly for paperwork reasons — and it's not yet clear how many were able to cycle back or move to another program.