social services

Missouri officials say that thieves installed inconspicuous gadgets at grocery store checkouts, many along Independence Avenue in Kansas City’s northeast, and skimmed the data and dollars right off the EBT cards.

Rainbow House, an emergency shelter in Columbia, shuttered unexpectedly in September after providing thousands of children with a temporary home over nearly four decades.

The Children’s Division is almost fully staffed now — a “remarkable turnaround” from the hundreds of vacancies it had in recent years. Now, the majority of overdue cases are from the Kansas City area.

Eligible low-income children will receive $120 in grocery benefits as part of a federal program that is administered by states. More than 400,000 kids are eligible.

Starting salaries for Missouri Children’s Division investigators are often much lower than those in other governments and the private sector.

The federal government told Missouri it is concerned the state is not doing enough to “achieve and sustain” compliance with federal rules on Medicaid and CHIP. In Missouri, 72% of insurance applications took more than 45 days to process — the worst in the U.S.

Missouri child advocates and legislators are alarmed over the sporadic use of a program to steer parents to drug rehabilitation and keep their children out of foster care. It's especially underutilized in Kansas City and St. Louis.

The head of the agency that oversees the Missouri Children’s Division says he wants investigators to treat evidence of fentanyl as an imminent danger to kids.

A district court judge rules that Missouri's practices around SNAP benefits — including long call center wait times and a lack of accommodations for those with disabilities — violate federal laws.

A state report found that 20 children under 5 died of fentanyl or in combination with other substances. It found that Children's Division investigators, who are tasked with following up on claims of abuse and neglect, “lacked essential procedures, missed warning signs and left vulnerable children at risk.”

Missouri faces a backlog of child abuse and neglect investigations — the Kansas City region has the most, with 3,036 cases that have been open for at least 46 days. With a shortage of investigators at the state's Children’s Division, lawmakers consider hiring private contractors to help.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requires that Medicaid applications for the largest group of participants — who are low-income children, families and adults — be processed within 45 days. In February, Missouri took an average of 77 days to process applications.