A legislative committee says lawmakers and other state officials should more closely monitor the Kansas foster care system. As Stephen Koranda reports, that is one of the recommendations that came out of a joint committee meeting Thursday.
The recommendations come after a state audit earlier this year, which said the Kansas Department for Children and Families wasn’t doing enough to ensure the safety of kids in foster care. One of the recommendations says lawmakers should create a panel that will more closely monitor and review foster care in Kansas.
Republican State Senator Forrest Knox says years ago the foster care system went through privatization and he believes eventually it wasn’t monitored closely enough.
“It was a shift away from oversight by the state. The pendulum swings back and forth. We moved to too little oversight and now we’re swinging back to more oversight,” says Knox.
Officials with the Department for Children and Families say Kansas is a leader in foster care child safety. They say the agency is implementing improvements in response to the audit’s findings.