In Kansas, an agency that institutionalized a six-year-old is looking for a bailout

Stock photo from Pixabay

Add Kansas to the list of states where private foster care agencies are looking for a bailout to cover high insurance costs. So far, California has caved, New York has resisted, and it looks like Illinois is going to study the matter. 

Insurance premiums are skyrocketing because of laws making it easier for victims of horrific abuse in foster care and institutions to sue. Those lawsuits are what insurance companies needed to notice something a lot of us have been saying for decades: Though foster care is portrayed as a safe haven for children, it’s rarely a haven – and often it’s not safe. 

So now agencies are running to government seeking either near-immunity from lawsuits, taxpayer bailouts or both. 

The real solution is to curb needless removal of children. That way, group homes and institutions no longer will be needed, and for the few children who really need to be taken from their parents, safe, loving family foster homes will be available. 

In few places is this more apparent than Kansas. When you count only the removals of children to which the state Department of Children and Families admits to taking, Kansas tears apart families at a rate more than double the national average. Add in Kansas’ own special form of hidden foster care, so-called police protective custody placements, and it’s probably closer to triple. 

                                        Nat. Avg.                 KS official      Estimate: KS+ "police                                                                                                                      protective custody"

Enter Brenda Watkins, president of EmberHope Connections, the latest subcontractor handling foster care for the Wichita region, telling the Kansas Legislature her agency needs a bailout – even as she admits to “pandemonium” in her own agency. 

As a story in the Kansas Reflector explains: 

She described “pandemonium,” staff and child injuries and security troubles. One security company fired EmberHope, and off-duty Wichita Police Department officers now help in place of private security guards. 

The issue arose in connection with the Wichita region’s dismal record for stashing children in makeshift night-to-night placements, such as offices. It happens across Kansas hundreds of times. And in 2024, the Wichita region, with roughly 27% of the state’s population, had 83% of such incidents.

Which brings us to the matter of institutionalizing six-year-olds. From the story: 

One 6-year-old boy spent 48 nights in an EmberHope office and 40 nights in a hospital in a three-month span. … 

The boy, who was eventually diagnosed with a neurological condition, has been living in a residential psychiatric treatment facility and is expected to soon be discharged into a therapeutic foster home, Watkins said. 

So was this child actually abused? Neglected? Abandoned? How exactly did a neurological condition call for any form of foster care, much less what this six-year-old is being forced to endure. 

Perhaps most disturbing is how Watkins spins this as some kind of success.  Now, at last, she says, 

“He has been wrapped around with community services and supports to meet his needs,” Watkins said. 

Yes, private agencies can pervert any term to suit their interests. No, warehousing a six-year-old in an agency office, a hospital, and a residential treatment center and then providing a supportive home is the antithesis of Wraparound. For the benefit of anyone who may be confused, here’s a brief video refresher course in what Wraparound really means: 

There are more details here. 

Of course, Watkins blamed a shortage of placements. But neither she nor anyone else explains why the so-called “shortage” apparently is even worse in Wichita than the rest of the state. 

One place to look might be back at those police protective custody placements.  When it comes to officially acknowledged foster care placements, the Wichita region does not appear to be out of line with the rest of the state in its rate-of-removal – it’s horrible everywhere. 

But when it comes to those off-the-books placements, Wichita is far worse. We don’t know why, but I can suggest one place to look. 

In Kansas child welfare, caseworkers come and go, private contractors come and go, commissioners come and go, even agency names come and go (DCF used to be SRS - the Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services). But for decades, there has been one constant: Ron Paschal, the deputy district attorney in charge of the Juvenile Division in Sedgwick County (metropolitan Wichita). 

Based on what I am sure is a sincere belief he is protecting children, there is no stronger advocate for a take-the-child-and-run approach to “child welfare” – and no stronger defender of police protective custody placements – than Paschal. Seventeen years ago, his office was accused of bullying caseworkers into including things in sworn affidavits that the workers didn't actually believe. Paschal’s staff also was accused of cussing at, screaming at, yelling at and threatening the caseworkers. 

The accusations came from none other than the head of SRS at the time – Don Jordan. Paschal strongly denied the accusations and, ultimately, so did Jordan. When Jordan found out his comments had been taped and would be made public, he called Paschal and apologized. He didn’t mean it, he said; he was merely “pandering” to the family advocates with whom he was meeting. (Details on all this are in the report on Kansas child welfare that we released at the time.) 

But there is no doubt that Paschal has spent decades pushing a take-the-child-and-run agenda and opposing any attempt to curb it. 

So he, too, really should watch the video above. 

And then he and Watkins should read that new study from Sweden -- the one finding that, by age 20, foster children were more than four times more likely to have died than those alleged to have been comparably-maltreated but left in their homes. So no, the horrifying finding is not because the foster youth were in worse shape to begin with. 

The major cause for all those foster child deaths: Suicide. 

So after reading the study, I hope that Paschal will reconsider his approach. And I hope Watkins, whose agency is not responsible for the initial act of removing children, will speak out about those who are responsible and are taking too many needlessly. 

I also hope Watkins will move heaven and earth to wrap real help around that six-year-old for a long, long time. Because it sure sounds like he’s going to need it.