Topeka ? Kansas’ foster care system is confusing, complicated and sometimes doesn’t have the best interest of children at heart, foster care parents and child advocates said Tuesday.

Dozens of people involved in foster care brought a long list of gripes about the system to a House-Senate Committee on Children’s Issues.

Noting the divisiveness of the many interest groups, Walter Thiessen, executive director of the Wichita Guidance Center, said, “We have to get back together and say these are our kids. As adults, we have to get our act together.”

Chairwoman Brenda Landwehr, a Republican state representative from Wichita, said she saw improvement in the foster care system, but that some areas needed attention, especially in services aimed at keeping families intact through counseling and supervision.

“We have to put more energy into family preservation,” she said, and that will reduce the number of broken families. The state spends about $121 million yearly on foster care and approximately $10 million on family preservation services.

Several foster parents said they were often mistreated by the private agencies that place the children and the state.

Donnie Stark of Sterling said he had social workers threaten him with taking away children “if you make them angry.

“The fear of retribution is very real,” he said.

Landwehr said she had heard of instances like that and said social workers who made such threats should be punished.

“That’s not tolerable, not acceptable,” she said.

Others complained they had cared for children with severe emotional problems and mental illness, but that the state failed to provide any services for them.

And others complained that the state’s system of contracting foster care services to five private companies is too bureaucratic and resulted in long delays in processing adoption of foster care children.

Another common complaint was that the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services was too quick to separate children from their families, instead of working with the parents to keep the family together.

Sue McKenna, with children and family policy at SRS, said the agency was trying to become more family-centered.

“Children need to be safe, but they also need to maintain connections,” she said.

Landwehr said sometimes removing children from their families — even in abusive situations — could be more traumatic for the children because they still love their parents.

“Sometimes we create mental health issues that affect the child,” she said.

— Staff writer Scott Rothschild can be reached at (785) 354-4222.