Welfare officials have launched a major overhaul of the state’s contracts for foster care, adoption and family preservation services.

“The changes, we think, will make the system better for kids,” said Sandra Hazlett, director of children and family services at the state Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.

The changes include:

• Rather than children being moved from the foster care contract to the adoption contract after their parental rights have been severed, the foster care contractor will handle the adoption processes involving foster parents, relatives and others who have shown an interest in adopting the child.

The adoption contract will be limited to finding adoptive parents for children whose foster families or relatives are not in a position to adopt them.

• Rather than paying the contractors a set fee for each month a child remains in the system, contractors will be paid 100 percent of the fee for each of the first six months; 66 percent of the fee for the second six months; 29 percent of the fee thereafter.

These fees are subject to the bidding process and are expected to differ from contractor to contractor.

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• As in the past, the contracts will be good for four years. But the new contracts will include an optional two-year extension.

Contractors — a group that includes Lawrence-based DCCCA — have until Aug. 6 to bid on the services they are interested in providing. Plans call for the contracts awarded in January 2005 to take effect July 1, 2005.

Child advocates welcomed news of the overhaul.

“This is a major step forward,” said Gary Brunk, executive director at Kansas Action for Children. “SRS is addressing the things we’ve been most critical of since the beginning of privatization. I think it’s great.”

Responding to persistent criticism and an American Civil Liberties Union-backed lawsuit, Kansas privatized most of its child welfare services in 1997.

Since then, Brunk and others have argued that moving children from the foster care contract to the adoption contract is disruptive.

Putting the contracts up for bid every four years also proved disruptive, Brunk said.

The new payment schedule is meant to be an incentive for contractors to move children through the system quickly.

“When the first contracts were awarded, the payments were incentive-based,” said SRS’ Hazlett. “Then, in the second round of contracts, we went to monthly payments. What we’re going to now is a combination of the two.”

SRS records show that children moved through the system with fewer delays when the contracts included incentives, Hazlett said.

Contractors’ response to the changes remains to be seen.

“Making adoption part of the foster care contract is both the biggest and most positive change. And it’s something we’ve advocated for in the past,” said Sherry Love, president of the permanency division at KVC Behavioral HealthCare, formerly known as Kaw Valley Center.

“But the payment incentives are the big unknown,” she said. “It’s going to be difficult to know how to bid. There’s no historical precedence.”

KVC Behavioral HealthCare has the regional foster care contract for Douglas, Franklin and Jefferson counties.

DCCCA has the family-preservation contracts for much of the eastern half of the state.