It was after 5 p.m. on May 13, and 17-year-old Korbin Papadopoulos sat in the Macon County office of the Missouri Children’s Division waiting for his next foster placement.
Korbin had type 1 diabetes and autism, so his caseworker, another division worker and their supervisor searched the state’s foster provider database for a home licensed to handle elevated medical needs.
Between 6 and 7 p.m., they found what seemed like a match, according to a police investigative report obtained by The Independent. Korbin and two workers set off on the 300-mile journey to southwest Missouri with a brown paper bag containing his medications, arriving around midnight.
On May 19, Macon County workers learned they had made a mistake.
The foster parent was licensed only to care for his own relatives, who did not have diabetes, and could not take Korbin. Workers resumed searching for a foster home equipped for the teen’s medical needs.
In the ensuing 18 days, the foster parent asked Macon County workers at least twice to move Korbin, according to police records. On June 6, a Children’s Division supervisor booked transportation to return Korbin to the Macon County division office two days later.
He died that same day, 24 days after arriving in the office.
Autopsy reports list his cause of death as diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening build-up of toxins in the blood that occurs when the body does not have enough insulin. Though police records include a doctor’s note from April showing Korbin was struggling to manage his diabetes and “at high risk” of diabetic ketoacidosis, his foster parent said he didn’t show signs of being sick until a day and a half before his death. After a police investigation, no criminal charges were filed.
Korbin’s father, Teddy Papadopoulos, told The Independent his son needed help “every step of the way” managing his diabetes — a primary reason he was in foster care.
Natisha Jett, Korbin’s mother, said that while her son knew how to use his blood sugar monitor and insulin pump, “he wouldn’t do it unless someone was there at all times” and needed help entering his carbohydrate intake to adjust his insulin dosage.
The Missouri Department of Social Services, which oversees the Children’s Division, declined to comment on Korbin’s case, citing state privacy laws. But in the months after his death, the Children’s Division issued new instructions addressing both problems that surfaced in his placement: placing children with foster parents who aren’t licensed to take them and responding when foster parents ask that a child be removed from their home.
When reached by The Independent, Korbin’s foster parent declined to comment beyond the contents of publicly available police records.
Surge in caseloads
Korbin’s death comes as Missouri’s Children’s Division reckons with mounting caseloads among its child abuse and neglect response team and as workers increasingly struggle to finish investigations within the 45-day deadline in state law.
Current and former division workers interviewed by The Independent over the past two months say the recent surge in caseloads is compounded by new rules and prescriptive policies that require more steps to close investigations or refer them to the court system. Additional layers of consultation, checklists and supervisory review, they said, are driving turnover and contributing to gaps in care, as remaining workers take on additional cases while training new colleagues.
A division worker involved in Korbin’s placement who was interviewed by police after his death said the teen “had multiple changes in case managers” in the months preceding his death. His current caseworker, according to the police report, had only been handling his case “maybe a week or two” when Korbin was placed in southwest Missouri. His previous case manager quit.
In July, the most recent month with available data, children who had been in foster care for at least a year in northeast Missouri averaged 3.86 workers for the duration of their time in the division’s custody, according to data from the Missouri Department of Social Services. Macon County exceeded that regional average, with 4.38 workers per child.
Statewide, foster children in care for at least a year averaged 3.82 workers in July.
The division’s July monthly report on its implementation of a 2020 law on foster care, which reflects data through March, noted that “the number of workers assigned per child increases notably for children in care longer than 12 months,” with “potential impacts on continuity of care.”
While the department declined to comment directly on Korbin’s case, it released a statement saying that while the division “recognize(s) that policy enhancements can add steps to frontline work” and respects staff, “the questions that arise following critical incidents underscore leadership’s responsibility to strengthen safeguards when opportunities for improvement are identified.”
An Aug. 18 message from Children’s Division Director Sara Smith instructs staff to get permission from a foster family’s licensing worker before placing a child in care. If workers need to make an emergency placement without prior approval, they must research the foster parent’s license status and notify the licensing worker within 24 hours of moving the child.
“It is a violation of law and a significant safety risk to place a child in a home that is only licensed for relative placement when the child in need of placement is not a relative,” Smith wrote.
An Aug. 12 message from Smith to Children’s Division staff says that when foster parents request the removal of a child, “the worker must take immediate steps to locate a new placement within the timeframes given by the provider.” If the foster parent asks for immediate removal, workers “shall not delay making arrangements to move the child while a placement is being located.”
‘Can you take these kids?’
Korbin first entered foster care in 2019. His father told The Independent he and Korbin’s mother approached Children’s Division for help after their son was diagnosed with diabetes and autism. They couldn’t afford the treatment their son’s doctors advised, Papadopoulos said, and the division indicated they could provide resources.
Jett said she and Papadopoulos went to the division because they “just wanted to get (him) the help he needed so he could have the life he deserves.”
Korbin “didn’t need a family,” Papadopoulos said. “He already had a family.”
Papadopoulos said Korbin had more than 15 placements in residential facilities and foster homes before his death.
“I don’t think we ultimately received the help that he really needed,” he said.
In August 2025, while splitting time between his parents, Korbin drove in his first demolition derby competition. He chose 13 for his car, which is his dad’s demolition derby number, with a K for his name — and he won. In a photo from that day, Korbin is hefting a trophy half his height and his prize money for smashing the other drivers’ cars into submission.
A video from that day posted by Jett on Facebook shows the teen speeding past cars laid to waste on the dirt track, still delivering hits with smoke billowing from his car’s crumpled hood.
“Korbin had every single hit down and could tell you exactly what happened,” Jett wrote.
Korbin spent about a year in a trial placement split between his parents, but reentered foster care in May when aggressive behavior and problems managing his diabetes persisted.
Macon County staff searching for a placement for Korbin in May relied on the division’s foster family database. One worker called prospective foster parents, while the supervisor searched for licensed medical foster homes, according to police reports.
After Korbin’s death, the worker who made the phone call told police she did not ask the foster parent in southwest Missouri if he was a medical provider.
“I did not ask him specifically if he was a medical provider because (the supervisor) had clicked those selections,” she told police.
The worker told police she informed the foster parent “that Korbin was a type 1 diabetic, that he managed his medications pretty well on his own, that he’d done that for years.”
The phone call wasn’t the first time division workers asked him to take in children with medical needs, the foster parent told police. Previously, he had refused to accept a placement of a teenaged brother and sister who had autism and were nonverbal.
Smith’s Aug. 18 memo acknowledges that when workers search for “elevated medical needs homes,” the foster provider database “will return both licensed relative and foster homes.”
The worker told police on June 23 that she was aware the database returned both kinds of homes.
Relative foster parents, she told police, are “going to get calls a lot. ‘Can you please take these kids?’ But their training and their contract states you cannot take other children.”
The foster parent told police he thought workers wouldn’t have called him about a placement he wasn’t allowed to accept. That was also what he told his licensing worker when she called him saying Papadopoulos couldn’t stay at his house.
“I didn’t know,” he told police. “Children’s Division called me. I thought they’re all looped together.”
‘They should have trained me better’
During the nearly three weeks Children’s Division workers in Macon County were struggling to find a medical foster home, Korbin remained in southwest Missouri.
Korbin’s foster parent told police the teen spent time at the pool, and that he dropped him and his girlfriend off at the movies and to get burgers.
By early June, however, Korbin was getting sick.
The foster parent told police that Children’s Division workers never explained to him exactly what Korbin needed to do to manage his diabetes or how he could help. He didn’t know when Korbin was supposed to check his levels or how often.
The battery on Korbin’s insulin pump died before his death and was never recharged. The device, which is worn externally and delivers insulin under the skin, was still dead when his belongings were returned to his parents, according to data his father downloaded from the device and shared with police.
Korbin’s foster parent told police that the teen ran out of replacement Dexcom blood sugar monitors, which can take continuous glucose readings using a sensor under the skin. They called the pharmacy, the foster parent told police, but were notified that Korbin’s prescription had expired and that he would need a new prescription from a diabetes specialist.
On June 2, the evening after Korbin’s check-up with the nurse practitioner, the teen called emergency medical services to check his blood sugar because he was feeling hot, which can be a sign of high glucose levels. Korbin’s levels were elevated, according to police records, but he told his foster parent he’d be fine if he took his insulin shots.
A day and a half before Korbin died, he started throwing up. His foster parent’s youngest grandkid was also sick, so he told police he thought it might have been a stomach bug.
On June 6, the foster parent thought Korbin might be improving because he was throwing up less, though the teen had been unable to keep much food down.
The foster parent told police he kept asking Korbin whether he needed to go to urgent care, but the teen said he was all right. When the foster parent tried to wake Korbin so he could take him to urgent care, he told police, the teen’s fingernails were already blue.
“They should have trained me better,” he told police, “and they should only take him somewhere where they could have known something about diabetes.”
This story was first published by the Missouri Independent.
