BY: RACHEL MIPRO Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — A Republican state senator demanded answers Tuesday on deaths in Kansas’ foster system, asking if children are still slipping through the cracks after a 5-year-old girl was sexually assaulted and died last year after living in a homeless camp.
Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a member of the Senate committee that oversees public health and welfare, said she knew of two more foster care kids who had died this month, though she did not provide other details.
Baumgardner, R-Louisburg, asked Kansas Department for Children and Families secretary Laura Howard to give an estimate of how many foster children have died over the past year, as well as more details about the death of the 5-year-old, a case that sparked widespread outrage over system failures.
“When will we find out more information about the little five-year-old here in Topeka that was murdered, living in a tent home and that trail of contacted, not contacted, touched, not touched as far as with law enforcement or with DCF?” Baumgardner asked.
A department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to Reflector inquiry on the number of foster care deaths.
In October, the five-year-old was found at a gas station in southeast Topeka, sexually assaulted and with life-threatening injuries. She was taken to a local hospital for treatment but died shortly after. Her former neighbors said she had been living in a homeless camp at the time of her death, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported.
The state’s child welfare agency received multiple reports asking the state to look into her case before her death. The Kansas Reflector obtained a summary of the reports, showing five home visits and a phone call from department officials. The reports, which ranged from September 2022 to little more than a month before her death, warned that the child wasn’t supervised, was living in a home without utilities and was around drugs, among other allegations.
Howard said she could not release many of the details publicly due to state statute, but said the agency has implemented policy changes such as requiring tighter time frames for workers to contact law enforcement if they aren’t able to reach families, along with supporting legislation that would allow more public release of data in cases such as these.
Beyond keeping children physically safe, other questions for the department focused on how to help them after they become young adults. Sen. Chase Blasi, R-Wichita, said he wanted to ensure youths leaving the system had adequate resources.
“What steps are we doing or can we do to ensure kids who are aging out of foster care don’t just go to the streets?” Blasi said. “Ultimately that is a very horrific thing to do in a first world country. I mean, I hope that something that’s not something we can do to help address that.”
Howard said there were housing partnerships and subsidies to help youths exiting the system, but her agency was working on the best ways to engage this population.
“How do we best support them in understanding that these resources that are available to them aren’t about trying to control them or keep them in a system or anything like that” Howard said. “This is about giving them the opportunity to be successful as they leave the system. And, again, we do have fairly robust supports, I think the issue is engagement.”