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Shayla Curts, the young mother of a toddler and infant, was pregnant with her third child when she was shot and killed by a man in December. Her family says this might not have happened if Jackson County's child welfare system had worked like it was supposed to.
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The child, who was only 13, ran away from agency Successful Dreams in late October.
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Kansas lawmakers are holding a special meeting to review foster care issues.
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Kansas in 2020 settled a lawsuit over the way the state’s foster care system treated children. Has the state lived up to its promises? Plus: A federal program aimed at helping low-income communities access food pays its own employees so little that some workers qualify for food stamps themselves.
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Care for children in Kansas' foster care system has been scrutinized for years. Department for Children and Families Secretary Laura Howard says the state is making progress improving the system.
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More than half the frontline staff working in the Children’s Division at the start of the last fiscal year left by the end of the year. Some who remain take second jobs or sell plasma to make ends meet. It’s a situation advocates warn puts Missouri’s most vulnerable children at risk.
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Kansas was supposed to make sure that foster care providers stopped making kids sleep in offices and similar places by the end of 2021.
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The Division of the Child Advocate, an office less than a year old, has already closed seven cases and found some troubling handling of foster care.
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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.
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The Jackson County Children's Division of the Missouri Department of Social Services is short hundreds of staff, resulting in overwhelmed case workers and reduced visits between biological parents and their children in foster care.
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Jackson County is facing a shortage of social workers, forcing birth parents to miss court-ordered visits with their children. Plus, the Missouri Senate's controversial conservative caucus has disbanded, leaving behind moral victories and calls for unity.
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With almost 900 kids in foster care and just 19 social workers, Jackson County's Children’s Division is short hundreds of workers and has the worst case-overload problem in the state.