Paramedics had to rush a Kansas foster teen to the hospital because the 15-year-old girl was overdosing on muscle relaxants at a foster care contractor’s office.
One month later, paramedics rushed back to that same Topeka office because a different foster child found glass and cut himself.
“Child on (scene) cut up his arms and neck … is (currently) outside screaming,” the police report read.
In both incidents, caseworkers at least momentarily lost sight of the children.
The two incidents this year make for yet another bad headline about the state’s use of foster care offices to house children rather than homes or rehabilitation facilities.
Poor supervision at offices has been a problem for years. One child sexually assaulted a 13-year-old when the two spent the night at an office in 2018. Another child ran away from an office in 2022 and was found dead days later.
Foster care contractor KVC Kansas, which runs the Topeka office where the children nearly died, said it couldn’t comment on specific details of the cases of children in its care. The agency wasn’t able to say how many people were supervising the children or how often they were being checked up on.
Speaking broadly, KVC said that its workers watch children at the agency’s offices and that the safety of children is important.
But the agency said difficult situations come with taking responsibility for children, especially teenagers at times of crisis. It said more spending on services that might prevent a child from getting thrown out of family care in the first place will help.
“We are actively working to raise awareness around the ongoing issues across the country that are resulting in the crisis of children staying in offices,” an agency spokesperson said.
Lawmakers have tried to help the foster care contractors. They’ve put together legislation promising fixes to nagging issues. But legislators say they’re frustrated that kids needed emergency medical assistance when agency staff should have been supervising children — children who they think shouldn’t be at the office in the first place.
Concerns about transparency
The Beacon learned of the overdose at the Topeka office and filed a dozen requests for police reports at that office and 25 others across Kansas. Some locations had no calls for emergency assistance. Others had plenty.
Police reports from the Topeka Police Department included additional notes on what happened on the call. Other police departments provided less detail on calls to foster care offices.
The Olathe Police Department recorded a mental health call at one office. The Lawrence Police Department investigated a child welfare check that ended with battery on a law enforcement officer. In Hutchinson, police responded to dozens of calls, including a battery.
Those reports don’t necessarily demonstrate that foster care workers were negligent. After all, foster care requires the supervision of children at some of the most troubled times in their lives. Children often come from abusive situations, get into fights or run away. Police involvement can be necessary, and commonplace.
Critical incident reports are filed with the Department for Children and Families when children almost die, try to kill themselves or are injured.
Kansas foster care staff filed 242 such critical incident reports from January through July. Copies of those reports, which record a variety of intimate details about a child, were not shared with The Beacon.
Those reports are also filed when kids sleep in offices and can be filed for children who aren’t in state custody.
State Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Louisburg Republican, criticized the state’s private foster care agencies at a Statehouse committee meeting in September for a lack of transparency.
“All we ask is when something occurs that is out of the ordinary, include that in the report (to lawmakers),” she said. “Historically, this committee has learned what is really going on from our foster kids when we get a phone call from (a news) reporter.”
That was before Baumgardner learned of the incidents in Topeka. She and key lawmakers on the committee said they hadn’t been told that children nearly died at foster care offices.
Lack of services
Linda Bass, president of KVC Kansas, said all the children who spend time in her agency’s offices have severe needs — mental, behavioral or physical health needs. Those children need specialized foster homes or specialized facilities.
Bass called on lawmakers to invest more in prevention services.
“Maybe there is still a perception out there that we have 3-, 4-, 5- (and) 8-year-olds in the office. We do not,” Bass told lawmakers at the September committee meeting. “We have teens that have come into care because their parents were overwhelmed by their behavioral health needs.”
Kansas spends 2% of its child welfare money on prevention services, a child welfare finance report from Child Trends said. On average, states spent 16% of their child welfare budget on prevention.
The Beacon has reported that about 120 kids a year enter foster care because their parents refused to pick them up from police stations and community treatment providers. Bass said in September her agency had a child sleep in an office because their foster family kicked the child out of the home at 11 p.m. and the child refused to go to another foster home that night.
Offices are outfitted to keep children for overnight stays. They keep blankets and other items on hand to make children feel more comfortable. They say they try to avoid housing children in offices, but that they have to be prepared so those children don’t sleep in cubicles.
The solution, foster care providers say, is not building more facilities to house these children, but investing more in prevention.
State Rep. Susan Concannon, a Beloit Republican, said the state has invested millions into therapeutic foster homes and passed legislation to help the agencies.
“That’s one way,” she said, “that we are addressing it.”
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
