What happens to the 13,000 children who end up in the Missouri foster care system — and how can that system be improved?
That was the topic of discussion in a House budget subcommittee hearing. One plan calls for an additional 100 staffers as part of a rebuild and reform of the Children’s Division. But what else needs to be done?
Darrel Missey, director of the Children’s Division of the Missouri Department of Social Services, tells KMOX that children in Missouri are removed from their homes at a rate nearly double the national average. That means Missouri needs a lot of help.
“We are fifth in the nation of kids in foster care per capita and good functioning child welfare systems protect children and help families without removing the children,” Missey said. “So we're way down on the list. And I think we really need to do work to turn that around.”
Staffing the division better is something that would be a big help, Missey said.
“If we don't do that, our hope of doing all the other things kind of goes out the window,” he said. “We have to have adequate funds to pay these folks adequately for the difficult job they do. And when I came here, I came here because I wanted to do reform. And what I discovered was, before we could do reform, we had to rebuild.”
The best way to do that, he explained, is to make sure that people are paid what the market demands for the work they do. If that happened, it would mean the division could hire enough people who can work on the reform initiatives, which means preventing kids from being taken from their families in the first place.
One state Missey looks to as inspiration is Maryland. It’s a state that is similar to Missouri in both size and demographics, he said, and between 2006 and 2016 they reduced the number of kids in foster care from more than 12,000 to fewer than 4,000.
Hear more about plans to reform and rebuild the Missouri foster care system:
Copyright 2023 KMOX (Audacy). All Rights Reserved.
Follow KMOX | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Listen on the free Audacy app.
Tell your smart speaker to play K M O X.