Topeka ? Several Kansas judges who oversee child welfare cases took aim Wednesday at inadequacies in the state’s foster care and adoption systems.

“Most of the children (in custody) in Leavenworth County are in foster homes in other parts of the state — in western Kansas, in southeast Kansas,” said Leavenworth County Judge Robert Bednar. “Transportation is a huge problem; I’ve got a lot of kids making five-hour trips.”

Many times, Bednar said, children in foster care aren’t in one place long enough to receive services ordered by the court.

“They’re constantly being moved,” he said.

The children’s parents don’t fare much better, Bednar said, noting that many couldn’t afford the mental health services they need before a court would allow their children to return home. And most, he said, are clueless about how the courts work.

“I have parents in court all the time who are totally unprepared,” Bednar said. “It’s a tremendous problem.”

Sedgwick County Judge Timothy Henderson said the foster care system often appeared penny wise and pound foolish. He cited a case involving three children who remained in foster care because their father couldn’t come up with the $400 needed to pay off past-due utility bills.

“I’m not a math major,” Henderson said, “but I think (the system) would be ahead if we helped dad pay the bill rather than paying $4,500 a month to have three kids in foster care.”

The judges’ comments were part of an open forum by the Kansas Legislature’s Joint Committee on Children’s Issues. Other participants included guardian ad litem attorneys, prosecutors and legislators.

Several judges and attorneys complained that many adoptions, especially those involving foster parents who want to adopt children in their care, were held up for months because Kansas Children’s Service League, the state’s sole adoption contractor, insists on doing its own assessments rather than accepting those performed by the foster care contractors.

“It seems like a lot of time is being wasted on cases that ought to be a slam dunk,” said Sedgwick County Judge James Burgess.

Henderson said he wondered if Kansas Children’s Service League promoted the delays as a way to collect payments on the system’s low-needs children to help offset the costs of the high-needs children.

Afterward, Roberta Sue McKenna, assistant director of children and family policy at the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, said the judges’ concerns were valid but not widespread.

“The things they talked about involve individual cases, like the $400 utility bill,” McKenna said. “That shouldn’t have happened. That goes against SRS policy, and it goes against the contractor’s policy. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen or it didn’t happen, but I am saying it’s not supposed to happen and it shouldn’t happen.”

McKenna said SRS shared the judges’ concerns about children being moved from home to home.

“A few children get moved around a great deal, that’s true, and we need to do a better job on that. But it’s also true that we’re much improved over where we used to be,” McKenna said.

At Kansas Children’s Service League, adoption director Sandra Dixon denied that adoption delays were tied to the agency’s financial needs.

“I know the perception is out there, but I can assure you that no decision on when to finalize an adoption is based on how much money KCSL is going to make,” Dixon said.

Much of the discussion irked the committee’s chairwoman, Rep. Brenda Landwehr, a Wichita Republican.

“We keep hearing the same thing over and over. This time it was from the judges — kids move around too much, they aren’t close to home, they can’t get services, and transportation is a huge problem,” Landwehr said. “I have to tell you, I’m getting tired of this. Things need to change.”