adoption

The number of foster kids in custody in Missouri has dwindled to just below 12,000 as of May, compared to more than 14,000 in 2021.

Older foster children in Kansas who face aging out of care will soon be able to choose their own families. In the past, they had to sometimes choose between being adopted or keeping important foster care benefits like free college tuition.

Kansas City’s central location and easy access to rail travel, along with Missouri’s simplified adoption laws favoring secrecy, attracted prospective parents from around the U.S. Over the first part of the 20th century, more than a dozen homes for unwed mothers flourished, the largest and most well-known of which was The Willows.

VineBrook, which owns thousands of homes in Kansas City and across the Midwest, is selling many of its properties to pay off debts. But after years of unresolved maintenance issues, the tenants are still angry. Plus: A Kansas grandmother was unable to adopt her child from the state’s foster care system, even though she was with that child at birth.

A Kansas judge went against a foster care agency’s recommendation when she placed a girl with a foster parent rather than her grandparents. Critics say the case represents chronic problems with Kansas' heavily privatized foster care system and lack of state oversight.

A recent high-profile case has again highlighted the difficulty of choosing between maintaining biological kinship or keeping a child with the foster parents they already know.

The decision could have wide-ranging impacts for biological families aggrieved by a judge's decision on whether to give custody rights to adoptive or foster families.

The Department for Children and Families is reviewing adoption subsidies in search of a design that’s better at encouraging adoption.

One Kansas City school says the COVID-19 pandemic underscored the need to support student needs past the academic year and through the summer. Plus, Kansas foster parents say the lawyers assigned to advocate for children rarely meet, and fail to protect, the kids they represent.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has renewed the spotlight on a small Kansas City radio station that is still broadcasting Kremlin-backed programming. Plus, Kansas needs more Black foster parents to give kids a more familiar environment after being taken from their biological families.

Missouri's Republican governor is walking back comments that he would not nominate a state health director “who does not share the same Christian values.” And he's defending the state's legal campaign against mask mandates and its controversial law that bans police in Missouri from enforcing federal gun restrictions.

Years after preliminary guidance from the Kansas Department for Children and Families, the state has made no progress in requiring that LGBTQ foster children are placed "in homes that respect their identities."