photo by: Peter Hancock

Sens. Laura Kelly, left, D-Topeka, and Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka, listen during testimony during a meeting of the Child Welfare System Task Force on Monday, Aug. 27, 2018.

TOPEKA — A task force set up by the Legislature to review the state’s child welfare system was told Monday that it should recommend a review of the privatized model it has been operating under since 1996 to decide whether it’s really in the best interests of the state.

That was one of several recommendations for reform that the Child Welfare System Task Force received from two working groups it set up to examine various parts of the complex system of programs operated within the Kansas Department for Children and Families.

Under privatization, DCF contracts with outside nonprofit organizations to manage the placement of children, many of whom are victims of abuse and neglect, into foster homes or adoptive families. There are currently more than 7,000 children in the state’s foster care system waiting to be reunited with their families or placed with adoptive parents.

Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, a member of the task force and the Democratic nominee for governor, said she thinks it’s time to re-examine that system.

“I think we need to take a look at it. Clearly that’s a huge part of the child welfare system as we do it in Kansas today, and I assumed that would be part of how we would go forward,” she said in an interview.

Kansas enacted the privatized model during former Gov. Bill Graves’ administration as part of a legal settlement in a case that alleged the child welfare system in place at that time was so poor it violated the constitutional rights of children in state custody.

The settlement called for implementing significant reforms, and for increased funding for the agency, then known as the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services. But the Republican-controlled Legislature at that time would not approve increased funding unless significant parts of its operations were handed over to outside agencies.

Currently, Kansas and Florida are the only states that have fully privatized child welfare systems, where contractors perform all functions except child abuse and neglect investigations. But a number of other states, such as Nebraska, use hybrid models where private agencies are in charge of delivering services in some parts of the state, but the state directly controls services in other areas.

Some have suggested that the privatized system makes it harder for the state to conduct adequate oversight of its own child welfare system, which has been plagued by controversy in recent years because of children who have died while in state custody.

But DCF Secretary Gina Meier-Hummel, who took over the agency in December, said the challenges the agency faces today were not caused by privatization.

“I think what you see now is the result of a very stressed system that wasn’t built to handle the number of children we currently have in out-of-home care,” Meier-Hummel said in an interview after Monday’s meeting. “We’ve had to build up to take care of that capacity. And we haven’t been doing the prevention services that we need to be doing. So I think if we make wiser investments in the front to help preserve families, then the private system can do what it needs to do.”

Kelly also said she thinks the biggest challenge facing the agency has been persistent underfunding, which has led to a high turnover rate among social workers in the agency and a large number of social worker positions going unfilled.

“I would say it’s been the decimation of the agency, which took away their ability to oversee the contractors,” she said. “That’s really where I think the oversight fell apart.”

Among the other recommendations the task force was asked to consider is to increase the base salaries of social workers who are directly involved in investigating cases of suspected abuse and neglect in order to attract and retain qualified employees.

Currently, the starting salary of licensed social workers in the agency, known as “protection specialists,” is $40,000 a year, according to a DCF spokesman. The agency also recently began hiring unlicensed social workers in order to fill chronically vacant positions. Their starting salary is $38,000.

Meier-Hummel noted in her testimony to the panel that DCF requested additional funds to increase those salaries, but the Legislature did not fully fund that request.

The task force is currently gathering reports from its working groups and will meet three more times before the end of the year, when it is expected to approve a final report with recommendations for the 2019 Legislature to consider.