After Kansas passed juvenile justice reform in 2017, children previously served by the Juvenile Justice System began entering foster care. While the Children’s Alliance supported the goals of juvenile justice reform, the new policy came with unintended consequences: youth with delinquency behaviors entered foster care and lost access to support from experienced juvenile justice professionals. The Alliance advocated to ensure effective approaches to “crossover” youth were prioritized because the impacted youth still needed support and services from juvenile justice trained professionals. Today, Kansas implements the Crossover Youth Practice Model and is working to ensure youth with dual-status needs have targeted support regardless of which system they enter.

The federal Family First Prevention Services Act passed in 2018, when Kansas was experiencing a foster care crisis partly caused by an ongoing upward trend of more and more children placed in foster care. The Alliance convened with stakeholders to share the possibilities of the Family First Act—for the first time, federal funding was available to support family services before foster care placement. Alliance members worked with partners, state agencies, the judicial branch and legislators to ensure legislation and appropriations passed to implement the Family First Act in Kansas. Today, Kansas has invested in multiple evidence-based, in-home services for families that have helped reduce the number of children in foster care by 1,300 from June 2019 to June 2022.

Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facilities (PRTF) are an essential health care service for children with severe mental health needs who cannot be placed safely in a family or community setting. Kansas was a leader in PRTF care for years with almost 800 beds available for youth ten years ago. During 2011, state policy changes made PRTF access extraordinarily difficult. This forced multiple PRTF providers to close their doors, which impacted children with suicidal ideation, self-harming behaviors and dysregulated aggressive behaviors. The Alliance advocated for improved access to PRTF care for multiple years on behalf of these impacted youth. Today, bed capacity has increased from a low of 298 to 424 and improved reporting of PRTF access data supports ongoing access to care.

Together with our members, the Alliance serves as a steady voice bringing family well-being subject matter expertise to Kansas public policy. In 2021, we advocated for a sensible approach to the Office of the Child Advocate to ensure any Act is drafted with the needed awareness of the complexities of the family well-being legal and practice environment. We helped remove harmful restrictions so foster parents can serve as stable family placements for youth with juvenile offender charges. We supported the Foster Care Academic Report Card and worked to ensure accurate data reporting and collaboration with the Department of Education. We helped overturn needless restrictions on the social work profession to strengthen the family well-being workforce.