Yes, there’s a way to make child abuse horrors less common in Kansas — but it’s not what you think

Residents gather for a candlelight vigil Tuesday night at Evergy Plaza in downtown Topeka to remember the city's child victims of homicide. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector)

A child dies a gruesome death. The child was “known to the system.” In fact, the case file had more “red flags” than a Soviet May Day parade. That leaves everyone asking: “How could it have happened?”

The answer is counterintuitive.

Tragedies like the death of Zoey Felix, who was killed after slipping through the cracks, happen in every state. But they are more likely to happen in Kansas. That’s because Kansas has embraced an approach to child welfare that can be boiled down to: Take the child and run. Kansas tears apart so many families needlessly that workers have less time to find those very few children — like Zoey — who really do need to be taken.

Kansas takes children from their parents and consigns them to foster care at a rate double the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in. Those are only the placements the Kansas Department for Children and Families admits to. Add what DCF calls “police protective custody” placements — foster care in all but name — and Kansas probably takes away children at triple the national average; the third highest rate in America.

Overwhelmingly, parents whose children are taken are nothing like the killer of Zoey Felix. In 76% of cases in which DCF took away a child in 2023, there was not even an allegation of sexual abuse or any form of physical abuse. In 78% of cases, there was not even an allegation of any form of drug abuse.

Far more common are allegations of neglect. Sometimes that can be extremely serious; more often it means a family is poor. Kansas was the scene of a massive natural experiment illustrating the confusion of poverty with neglect. When former Gov. Sam Brownback slashed public assistance, foster care numbers went up. Conversely, study after study finds that even small amounts of additional cash reduce what agencies like DCF call neglect.

The class bias is compounded by racial bias. Black children are in foster care in Kansas at more than quadruple their representation in the general population. More than half of all Black children will endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation before they are 18, and more than 14% will endure foster care — only nine other states are worse.

Still another indication that Kansas tears apart families needlessly can be seen in those police protective custody placements. Those that do not become official foster care placements last no more than six days. Potential child rapists and murderers don’t get rehabilitated in six days. But six days torn from everyone a child knows and loves is plenty of time to traumatize that child. If you can send the child home within six days, you almost certainly never needed to take the child at all.

Consider the harm:

The rotten outcomes for many foster children were vividly documented by the Kansas City Star. When the Star went looking for young people who’d been in foster care, they started in one of the places they are disproportionately likely to be found: Jails. So it’s no wonder multiple studies find that, in typical cases, children left in their own homes fare better even than comparably maltreated children placed in foster care.

Multiple studies also find abuse in one-quarter to one-third of family foster homes; the rate in group homes and institutions is even worse. This is, of course, far more abuse than DCF acknowledges. But, as we’ve recently seen, DCF has a system that virtually guarantees a lot of abuse in foster care will be overlooked.

Even that isn’t the worst of it. All the time, money and effort wasted on thousands of false reports, needless investigations and needless foster care placements is, in effect, stolen from finding children like Zoey Felix.

Two key steps can start Kansas down the road to making all children safer:

• Become laser-focused on ameliorating the worst harms of poverty. Small amounts of additional help can go a long way. Kansas can afford it. Because foster care is so much more expensive than better alternatives, Kansas actually spends on child welfare at one of the highest rates in the nation.
• Provide every family with high-quality defense from the moment DCF shows up at the door. That means a lawyer with a reasonable caseload, a social worker and sometimes a parent advocate who’s been through the system herself. No, it’s not to get “bad parents” off; it’s to craft alternatives to the cookie-cutter “service plans” doled out by DCF. This approach has been proven to safely reduce foster care with no compromise of safety. The federal government will pay half the cost in many cases, and the rest is likely to be covered by reduced foster care expenses.

Reducing needless placements does not guarantee fewer tragedies like the death of Zoey Felix, but it’s an essential prerequisite. Failing to reduce needless placements guarantees such tragedies will repeat over and over.

Richard Wexler is executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.