Missouri child welfare problems are piling up again

Good morning, and welcome to The Weekender.

Lawmakers are hauling the Missouri Children’s Division back to the Capitol on Wednesday.The hearing will cover some of the agency’s recurring trouble spots: relative foster placements, child fatalities, reunification rates and how the department has carried out laws passed since 2020.

Steph Quinn published two stories this week that, read together, are an argument about what the last six years of fixes have actually produced.

The first showed child abuse investigations piling up again.

Missouri says investigators should carry no more than 15 open cases. At the end of July, workers in St. Louis County averaged 97.

The average investigation there had been open 144 days. State law generally gives the division 45.

This isn’t ancient history. Three years ago, Missouri had more than 10,000 backlogged abuse and neglect cases. Frontline turnover had hit 55%. Lawmakers put money into hiring more workers, and the division knocked down most of the backlog.

Now it’s coming back.

But this time workers are pointing to more than staffing. They describe a job increasingly consumed by mandatory consultations, checklists and supervisory reviews. The rules are supposed to prevent mistakes. Workers say they also leave less time to interview families, visit children and close cases.

Then there is Steph’s second story this week, this one focused on Korbin Papadopoulos.

Korbin was 17, autistic and diabetic. In May, the Children’s Division needed to find him a foster home equipped for elevated medical needs.

They found one 300 miles away.

But there was a problem: The foster parent was licensed only to care for his own relatives. Korbin wasn’t one of them.

Workers figured that out six days later. The foster parent asked at least twice for Korbin to be moved.

He stayed another 18 days.

Korbin died June 6 from diabetic ketoacidosis, a build-up of toxins in the blood that happens when the body has too little insulin.

We don’t know that an overloaded system caused his death. Steph’s reporting doesn’t establish that.

But look at what happened next.

In August, Children’s Division Director Sara Smith sent workers a memo clarifying the rules for foster placements. It reminded them that they need approval from a foster family’s licensing worker before making a placement and spelled out what they must check when an emergency placement happens after hours.

The memo also made something else explicit. A relative foster home is licensed for particular children. Placing an unrelated child there is “a violation of law and a significant safety risk.”

Translation: Make sure the home is actually licensed for the kid you’re sending there. Move the kid when the foster parent says he can’t stay.

Missouri has spent years putting new safeguards around the Children’s Division. Usually, they come after something has gone wrong and are meant to keep it from happening again.

The problem is that every new safeguard becomes another thing somebody has to do. And the people doing this work say they are already drowning.

Ashley Allen left her job investigating abuse and neglect in Jasper County this spring with more than 30 open cases. She described days when she was racing to find a child in a three-hour emergency while emails piled up asking why other cases weren’t closed.

None of this means the answer is less oversight. A state agency that can remove children from their parents needs plenty of it. But there is a difference between writing a safeguard and having a system capable of carrying it out.

That distinction should be at the center of Wednesday’s hearing. Lawmakers will hear about policies, restructuring and implementation. All of that matters.

But I’d start somewhere simpler.

How did Missouri reach the point where “make sure the foster home is licensed to take the child” had to be spelled out again in an August memo?

And what good is the next new rule if the people responsible for carrying it out are already buried under the last ones?