Wichita ? The state’s child protection agency has become too concerned with keeping families together, even if it means children are being harmed, critics of the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services say.

One potential solution, they say, is to create a center where the full range of professions involved in protecting children – social workers, law enforcement detectives and medical and mental health professionals – work together.

The criticism comes three weeks after police removed two malnourished and bruised girls from their Wichita home. The SRS had received eight reports of suspected abuse or neglect against the girls – ages 6 and 7 – since 2001.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has said the system apparently failed the two girls and ordered an investigation, which is being conducted by her chief counsel, Matt All.

While declining to discuss the Wichita case specifically, Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston said the SRS has moved too far away from protecting children.

“The agency is a behemoth that needs to be re-evaluated,” Foulston said in written responses to questions from The Wichita Eagle. “In a mega-agency such as SRS, it appears that many children are lost, or, in the worst case, never found.”

In response, SRS Deputy Secretary Candy Shively said in a statement: “Our job is first to protect the child and identify whether services can be provided to eliminate the safety risks. … SRS has a family focus which is different than the criminal focus by law enforcement.”

Federal law requires that “all reasonable efforts be made before recommending removal of a child from their home,” Shively said.

In the Wichita case, prosecutors say the two young girls were tortured over 10 months before they were removed from their home July 21. Police went to the girls’ home after an SRS social worker called them. Investigators say the girls had been deprived of food and water for some time, and doctors found extensive bruising.

The girls’ father, Alex Wood, and stepmother, Jennifer Wood, have been charged with felony child abuse. Jennifer Wood also has been charged with aggravated battery.

Gary Brunk is executive director of Kansas Action for Children, a private, nonpartisan group that seeks to change public policy so that it focuses on protecting children.

Brunk said the Wichita case raises questions of whether the SRS child-protection system has moved too far toward keeping children with their families, and whether it has sufficient staffing to receive and assess reports of child abuse.

Part of Foulston’s criticism focuses on the initial process when an SRS worker gets a telephone call from someone reporting possible abuse or neglect. She said little investigative work is done and the initial assessment is made without fully developing relevant facts.

In many cases, she said, “the complaints of abuse/neglect are screened out without further investigation, purely based on meager facts.”

“The stated mission of SRS is to preserve families, and oftentimes I believe that in so doing, more harm comes to the children,” Foulston said, who suggested that the department’s funding could influence decisions not to remove children from homes.

State Rep. Brenda Landwehr defends the agency. A Wichita Republican who has studied SRS issues for years, Landwehr said the department often has been too quick to remove children from their homes.

“Government doesn’t make a good parent,” she said.

Foulston, Landwehr and others do agree that the best solution may be creating a Child Advocacy Center, which would put all child-care professionals in one place and operate 24 hours a day.

Ron Paschal, a deputy district attorney who supervises child-in-need-of-care cases, said such a center would improve communication and accountability between agencies and reduce the number of interviews a child would have to endure.

Such centers are used in Tulsa and are common in urban and rural areas of North Texas, Paschal said.