Topeka ? Nine years of court supervision of Kansas’ foster care system is expected to end June 30, the state and a children’s rights organization said Tuesday.

Under an agreement between the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services and the group Children’s Rights Inc., SRS will create a unit to monitor services for some 3,300 abused and neglected children in state custody.

That unit is supposed to monitor foster care programs and issue a public report each year, starting in September 2003.

New York-based Children’s Rights Inc., once part of the American Civil Liberties Union, said SRS has made significant progress and is now in substantial compliance with the terms of a 1993 settlement imposed in Shawnee County District Court. The agreement announced Tuesday won’t require court approval.

A Topeka attorney who served as a guardian for children sued the state in 1989. The lawsuit alleged the foster care system did not protect the children in state custody and sometimes exposed them to more abuse or moved them from home to home.

The ACLU became involved, and the settlement resulted four years later. A state judge in 1995 said there had been too little improvement and appointed a task force. The Legislative Division of Post Audit began monitoring foster care, reporting its finding to the court and Legislature.

Officials of Children’s Rights Inc. said Tuesday that SRS has improved its handling of reports of abuse and neglect, is better about reporting children’s placements to district courts and has limited foster children to three moves before they are adopted.

“Children in Kansas are now safer, are now more likely to get adopted or to get back to their families quickly and have better placements in foster care,” said Susan Lambiase, the group’s associate director.

SRS continued to face criticism after a 1997 decision to turn foster care programs over to private nonprofit groups. Five groups now provide services, and some legislators, particularly Democrats, still suggest that the providers are not as accountable as SRS was.

The state expects to spend $44.2 million on providing foster care services during the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.

Rick Spano, a social work professor at Kansas University and an outspoken critic of privatization, saw little reason to praise the settlement agreement.

“There are big unknowns in all this,” he said. “First, there isn’t any data that shows what happens to these kids after they go home; we know they’re home, but we don’t know if they’re any better off. And second, I don’t see any evidence that the foster-care placements are any better than they were before. I don’t see where the data say they are.”