Hello, Kansas reflector listeners. This is Reporter Rachael repro. Here today with trauma therapist Tara Wallace, child welfare advocate Alexandria, where Anton Wilson, president of advocacy group Kansas action for children. Today we'll be discussing alternative options to the state's child welfare system, namely the sole initiative, which stands for support opportunity, unity and legal relationships. So let's talk a little bit about what this would entail. Would anyone like to start?
Sure, John, and I first I want to say that one of the reasons that I love the sole family permanency option is because it was an idea created by young people and youth involved in the child welfare system. And, and it's been developed over the past year or so with input from lots of different stakeholders. And to me, it reflects the ideal when it comes to creating new policy options out there create something that is informed by people's lived experience, and be faithful to their experience throughout the entire process. So the concept itself, though, is the idea that it's a it's a different permanency option that currently exists in Kansas. And it meets the needs of young people by allowing them to maintain important relationships in their lives and have that formally recognized under the law.
And as I understand it, this is for people who are almost about to age out, right, like 16 and older, correct. Great. So let's get into why this is important. Right? Like, let's talk about what we're seeing today in that landscape. And I guess we can start with you if you want.
Yeah. So I'm Alexandria, where my pronouns are she her. And a lot of things were seen within the the Child Welfare landscape is really one, we still have young people sleeping in offices, even after the lawsuit in the investigations. We have a lot of young people who are aging out of care, and they aren't having those permanent connections, they're not having family members to go to or foster families are getting adopted. And we see that time and time again. And in like, Wichita region, I know where I'm from, we have 100 Young people who age out of foster care every year. And so that's 100 Young people who can end up homeless, that's 100 Young people who have no financial stability plan 200, Young 100 Young people who don't have connections. And so when we think about a lot of the issues going on in child welfare, there's a lot of social emotional issues going on, there's a lot of lack of healing, there's a lot of lack of understanding, we have kids coming into care, because parents are having behavioral issues. And we don't have enough mental health access. We rank terribly in throughout all the states have mental health access. But also we're seeing young people come in because they're getting in trouble with the law. And so they're putting them in child welfare. So right now we're seeing increasing rates of young people coming into the system because of that. And so for, for me as an advocate, as someone who has lived experience, someone who owns their own nonprofit, it's really important that we're thinking about how can we work with these young people to give them a different option? So how can we make sure that their voices at the table? And we're thinking about who do they go to when they have issues? Who do they call on? Who is their emotional sounding board? Who do they have an emotional tie with? So it's really like, the way I kind of understood it today after kin, this policy meeting was like, it's kinship care for older youth, and GIFs. We just call it soul. And at the beginning, in the middle of it, it's the youth picking who they want to be their kinship care provider.
I like that. I think that and I just jumped right in there, Tara Wallace, she her pronouns.
This is the first time I've ever seen youth in the child welfare system. Excited about something, because this is not just people who don't know them. People have never seen them, making decisions about their lives. This is their voice. They don't even have a seat at the table. They built this table. And it's long overdue. So I'm really, really excited.
I think one of the other things that's been nice to see is that the agency itself, the Department for Children and Families has been a has had a seat at this table built by young people and driven by young people. And importantly, they have they've sat through the feedback they've they've heard what's working and what's not. And they have embraced this notion that something new and different has to be done. And if you attend any of our meetings where we're working on this soul family permanency option, some of the some of the biggest cheerleaders for this effort outside of the young people, is the agency and staff of the agency because they see the value of this and you know, the DCF hasn't fair share of problems and to sit through the discomfort of hearing those problems and facing that and still be excited about an option, I think is is really powerful.
Yeah, I really like that you say that because I got involved with soul. Like from the jump when we had our first like meeting kickoff. And that first meeting, it was all of us young people saying like, they decided to tell us all these good things they were doing. And we were like, well, what? No, we can't, we can't pretend to any Casey like, this is all we're doing. And we're not addressing the root causes. I'm in for them to hear. That's good 17 of us, all 17 of us tell our different experiences of how they failed us and how the system is still failing young people in them to sit there and take it and be like, This is what they needed. And we had to give them that space. It was really, really powerful of them. Like John said, they still they still have their issues, but they they were able to hear what we had to say, so that we can make this permanency option the best for young people who are in the system.
It is kind of what you said. I mean, for the first time, like the people I've talked to about this is exactly what we're talking about here of like, Finally, an exciting option that will maybe work. So again, like let's talk about what this would look like in practice. So it would be about like legally binding agreements between supporting adults. Tell me a little bit more about the actual, like, how would this would unfold in real life?
It's a great question. And we have some sense of how it might unfold that if this goes through Kansas will be the first state in the country that has this sole family permanency option. And thankfully, we have the support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, helping us to bring all the stakeholders stakeholders together to build it from the idea of the policy itself, thinking through what does the actual bill language look like, and then the next step of getting it through the legislature, but then also thinking about implementation, we have to think about it to the full lifecycle, and we have the structure as a group to do that. So you're right, there are essentially like three main components of the sole family permanency option. The first is legal relationships with supportive adults in young people's lives. And that can look different than what the current permanency options look like where you have to not have formal contact with a biological parents, for example, under certain options, so this allows folks to maintain relationships with people important in their life and legally designate people who may or may not be their family members to be supporters of Yeah, and
let's back up a moment and talk about what the options are right now. Like, what are you looking at right now?
So, So Tara is going to be much more informed about the options than I am. But we essentially have permanent custodianship, we have adoption, and then we have reintegration as an option. But this would be a kind of a new option.
And as John was saying, most of those options, don't necessarily hear the voice of the child. If this environment was not good for you, you don't thrive in that environment, you're not empowered in that environment, putting you back in there, is repeating the cycle. And with all of the shortages that we report in our state, that's not something that we want. We want young people to recognize that this person may not be related to you by blood, this person cares about you cares enough about you to want to get into this agreement, so that you can thrive because they see your potential. And even if you don't see it yourself, that's somebody in your corner. And that's important. They don't have that right now.
So right now, like what we're probably seeing is the most common, I would say it's maybe adoption, right? And that's more primarily family based, if I understand it, right.
And those are younger kids. More and more. As Alexandria said, more and more older kids in custody are aging out. And they face homelessness, they face trafficking, they face any number of things, simply because they're floundering. There's nothing to sustain them.
Okay, and then this will change it. So we have three options right now. Now we're looking at a fourth option.
Yeah, and each of these options also has various financial and programmatic benefits that come with them. And this is kind of taking the best of various options so that people don't have to choose between ongoing financial support or educational support or health care supports and finding that permanent family.
Yeah. So in addition, soul would really replace off law is what like young people who are 16 Plus go into if they're not getting adopted, or if they're not really integrating. So there's a lot of sometimes concurrent planning, where you're planning for a kid to be adopted, but then at the same time, you're planning for them to be aging out of care. So the hope is that soul replace opolis So no young person is aging out of care. So they don't have to choose between a family and their benefits because As they still would get their benefits if if and when this goes through, so they would still be allowed to get the ETV funds. The Chafee funds, were figuring out how the tuition waiver would work. We're figuring out how insurance would work, because some of those things are federal statutes. And federal statutes are a little harder to to change than state statutes. Um, so how would that how would that work for young people, as well.
So this is really interesting. Like, I mean, again, this is like, as you say, almost one of the first cases of this happening if it goes through, so what type of different family structures will we be looking at.
So it can really, that's the again, it's there's kind of all kinds of options that are ahead of us, because this is something that's youth driven, it's what each individual young person might need in their lives. So as we've talked about this over the last year, it could be, you know, people who have a coach in their lives, it's really meaningful, or an uncle that they have a great relationship with, it can kind of take any any number of formats. And so I think that's, that's the the beauty of the policy. And it's also probably the part that makes it uncomfortable for certain lawmakers is if it can't be spelled out, and there's not a kind of follow the steps type things and it's maybe more uncomfortable for them to see how it plays out.
But these are lives, you're dealing with lives, and you're dealing with unique individuals and unique circumstances. So they have to recognize these aren't widgets, these these don't fit neatly into whatever box you want to put them in, you have to recognize that these young people are mature enough to adopt someone in their life, it could be their teacher, it could be the neighbor, it could be someone that's not a blood relative that is willing to say, Yes, I will take this child into my home, I will create this environment where they can become whatever they want to be a lot of young people aged out, and their dreams die because there's nothing out there for them. And there's nobody to help them navigate all of the systems becoming an adult. So you know, there's nothing.
Yeah. And the nice part with this option is that it can be more than one person. So it can be a coach and an aunt. And those people. So if you think of like this circle, the young person's in the middle of this circle. And it's if you go to any Casey's website, or I don't remember which organization in Kansas has said on their website. But in the middle, it's the young person. And then you have the people who are maintaining the legal relationships with bio parents and siblings, then you have who the person who's the primary legal guardian, per se, relationship, whatever word you would like to like to use. And so then you have people who are like, recognized as our long term relationships. So that can be mentors, coaches, pastors, whoever that is for that young person. And then they still get to get all their caring adult like relationships and their benefits and all those things. So it's like this working, we'll have wraparound services and wraparound support, to make sure that child's young well being is being taken care of. So we're not just looking at like, okay, safety, and this is what's safe for them, we're looking at what is their well being, what are they saying, is going to help them thrive to become the best adult that they can be, whether that's, maybe they want to start a podcast, or they want to go into therapy, or they want to go work with legislators, whatever that may look like. So being able to wrap that around, and you have people who are making those legal day to day options, but they still get to keep everything else, you're not seeing young people aging out of care and then turning 18 And then going to look for their biological family because they were taken from them, they still get that relationship.
And that's one of the things that I really appreciate. Because just because this child is not in the home, does not mean that there aren't relationships there that need to be maintained. And who knows what the family has been working on where that child has been out of the house, there's still opportunity, and you don't have to lose who you are in order to participate. That's one of the things I think is great.
And now, all three of you, everyone here has pretty much been strong advocates of this program. You all have testified before the legislature on that. I'm interested when you said that, like sometimes they have been uncomfortable with that, is that the general response or
what it's hard to understand, I think what happens is we have the child in need of care code. And there has been a process that's been built up over decades that the judicial system is used to following and all the players that are within that system. And so when you introduce something new that brings together legal relationships with benefits with things like how do you handle inheritance, or how do you handle those sorts of things, those all have to be worked out, which is why we've been using a really deliberative an intention. On processes that whole saying if if you want to go far go together, if you want to go fast go alone, we want to go far, which is why we've tried to bring all the stakeholders together to work on this and make sure that nobody is caught off guard about what this is and isn't.
Yeah. And I also think it's just when we think about young people, no matter if they're in foster care, child welfare, family, places, system, whatever, we're afraid to be innovative. And when we are innovative, that scares people, because these are children. And we're scared to harm children, we're scared for children to be hurt more. And especially with the way our our Kansas family policing system is currently we're scared about, okay, if we do this option, what more harm are we going to cause? So there's people who there's legislators who are supportive of it, you know, but then people also are a little leery, because we don't like to be innovative when it comes to to working with kids.
And does the history of our child welfare system play any part of this? I mean, we've seen a lot of I don't want to say failures in the past, but we've seen some really negative results. And, you know, so is an angle here are people worried about messing it up even further, or like not repairing the damage that's already been done? Is that an angle to this?
House speak, I'm half of people who have lived experience on the team, that is something we talk about a lot is, and even outside of people who have lived experience, a lot of people are really worried that we're not going to do this, right. And we want to do it right we want to go for we want it to be where no young persons at now. And they don't have to choose between benefits, their biological family or emotional support. We want young people to be able to really have soul, but also moving towards a system that is kin first, right. So soon as they're coming in, touching the Child Welfare family policing system, they're going to Kin, they're not going to strangers. And it's the same thing with soul. If we have to put young people in care, we want them to be with people who have an emotional, they have an emotional tie and support to so as the whole state and everyone who works in child welfare. We're really all focused on how do we support them with being akin first state, not just that prevention, and intervention, but you know, at the end, at the end of this system to with our young people.
Okay, and then, again, this is something that's relatively new to me. But how long has this been a process that everyone here has been working on? For a while, I'm assuming? When did you realize that, hey, this is something that we should be looking at?
Um, I got asked, Oh, last year, so it's almost been two full years. And Qantas started this back in like, 2021, when any Casey had like a meeting with all the states, and just to put out interest, like, Hey, we're interested in states doing this, as, you know, bringing it to them. And then I got asked, and at the beginning of like, January 2022, to be a part of it. I think they were hoping that like my break from Child Welfare was over before they like came. And so I took a little break, because I was I was burnt out. But yeah, I think that's what it was.
Yeah, and we've been having regular quarterly meetings with lots of different stakeholders, advocacy groups, folks, from the state agencies, youth leaders, everybody coming together on a regular basis for at least the last year and kind of in earnest. And it's only recently that we actually have come to a place where we have a, we actually have actual bill language that we can present at the legislature. One of the great things, though, that has come about as a result of our presentation to the Joint Committee on Child Welfare oversight is that that committee did recommend this for consideration in the upcoming legislative session, which is a huge thing for them to have done. One of the things I may be jumping around a little bit, but this what I what I like is this is a innovative new option for for youth already in the system. And I also don't want to ignore the fact that there is still plenty of work to be done to help avoid this, the need for this option in the first place. And unfortunately, we have a lot more work to do in Kansas to to create supportive environments for kids and families. And you know, one of the things that we do at Kansas X for children is make sure that lawmakers understand the needs of kids and families in all of their decision making across lots of issue areas. But right now we have much more we can be doing to make sure families can meet their basic needs through existing state and federal programs. We've put up too many barriers to accessing those. We we are not doing our best work when it comes to supporting education and helping helping people in the education field. We don't invest really anything and when it comes as a when it comes to state funding and child care and early learning all these things that we know can help position young people for a lifetime of success and also help families who are struggling again to meet their basic needs. So we could probably spend a whole podcast also on the lack of support for kids and families. And I know that there's not a lawmaker in the statehouse that doesn't talk about how important kids are and don't talk about the importance of family. But where we are seeing a disconnect is their willingness to use the state dollars and state programs to actually help young people and help their families.
And then, but this one, we are thinking that, you know, come the next legislative session, we will be seeing some action on this. So you're all hopeful about this?
Absolutely. And they were encouraged by the number of voices, especially young people that were involved. That's one of the things that they kept bringing up is that this didn't just come through organizations and agencies, these were young people with lived experience, sharing why this is important, and why it's needed.
And like, again, let's go back to the idea of what we're seeing right now, in terms of the child welfare system. What are the issues right now? And again, I know we've discussed this a little bit, but I want to like pinpoint more concretely what we're seeing today? I know it's a heavy loaded question.
It is a loaded question. There are a lot of resources that are being directed towards not necessarily critical issues within families. But that could be directed towards families with distinct needs. I mean, if it's a legitimate situation, absolutely, that family needs to be surrounded. And that family needs to be supported in getting through life, because life is happening for all of us. But there are instances where there's excess, and it's not necessary. It could be resources use for, like I said, families with critical needs. And that's a big part of the problem.
I think another issue we're seeing is, we aren't listening to people who have lived experience and learning experience. So what I mean by learning experiences are social workers are policymakers who have to read this in code. So the child had made a care code, if you have not read it, it's it's it's intense. But you have to learn about all these issues, or you live through these issues. And we're not listening to people, there's so many barriers that the judicial systems putting up, like, if we're going to move towards a kid for state, you can't tell people like, oh, well, let's not look at kin. Or we need to prioritize, you know, adoption, like how fast can we get these kids adopted? Instead of how can we meet the families where they're at. And so, when you come into care, you know, as a parent, there's a lot of issues of most parents get the same things that they have to do. It needs to be individualized. I mean, if my kids were taken, which I don't have any, but let's say, hypothetically, I had kids, and they were taken, and I'm telling you, I've never done drugs, I never trade, but I have to do a drug assessment. That's a waste of time. Because you're not actually helping me, we're not surrounding me with the things that I actually need. So if I need food, or I need water, all these things, that's not abuse or neglect, that's poverty. And so in our system, we see a lot of kids coming into care because their parents are poor, or they're living in poor conditions. Instead of like John said, making sure we're wrapping stuff around for families. I mean, kids need childcare, parents need to be able to go to work. And if you can't afford childcare, because it's outrageous. We there should be something there to help people. And so we see a lot of kids coming into care because of just general family issues. And it doesn't matter. Right now. It is expensive to be a human, it is expensive to be a person. And so how do we meet people with grace of understanding that beef is I mean, I went to the store yesterday, and I found a steak for $11. And I was like, oh, man, this is one big steak. Good thing. It's only me and my partner, because we're gonna split it right down the middle. But it was $11 for one steak. Imagine having 5678 Kids and having to feed all those those amounts all the time. And we don't think about about that. How can we help our neighbor? How can we love our neighbor? How can we make sure like we're doing things that really impact them?
I think it's important for legislators who are not impacted by any of this to understand the lived experiences and that's why I appreciate the young people participating. But when you get to the heart of the matter, you have individuals dealing with the life because someone recognizes They're struggling, they make a report. And the next thing you know that family is connected to the child welfare system. Next year, I will have been at this for 10 years, and I have yet to see a single family get out of the child welfare system once they're connected, that should not be happening. And as Alexandra said, you have families who have never touched drugs in their lives. But treatment is one of the things that they have to do. I don't think legislators are listening to themselves, because if they did, they would recognize this does not make sense. DCF. Same thing, if this family has never had an issue with drugs, and you're requiring them to go to classes, you're taking away resources, and you're taking away time. As Alexander said, they don't have that to give. So you're putting them in a situation where there may be another report made simply because the family is trying to do what they've been required to do without the resources to support them as they do it. I said to the legislators a couple of years ago, this system perpetuates itself. And until we throw a wrench in there, and stop it, as in taking families out of the house, requiring them to do things that are unnecessary, which puts them in deeper into poverty. That's the cycle, not the child welfare system, the cycle that happens with families and the trauma, I can't even begin that's a whole nother podcast, we cannot even begin to talk about how it impacts families to come home. After a long, hard day, you think you're going to go home and get comfortable. And there's a card in your door because DCF has been at your house, the rest of the evening is completely changed simply because parents are acting differently. Children are responding to parents, children go to school the next day still on that high of reacting to their parents. There's another report. And as I've seen it happen. And that's not the way this is supposed to work. If you want it to work on paper, and in real life the same way. You have to stop that portion of the cycle to help families.
Really well put. John, did you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. So breaking the cycle, putting out new options,
it's one thing to have the great policy option presented. And we have that in in this whole family permanency option. But we also we have seen that great ideas don't sell themselves in the legislature, no matter how much data supports it, no matter how many compelling stories are driving it, it takes continued action by people to make sure an idea makes it to the finish line. And so for anybody who is listening to this podcast and is energized, like we are about this whole family permanency option or energized about doing more to support families and kids at all stages of their lives, then I think a next step is to make sure that the people who represent you hear about that and hear from you. It's really important, because it's easy, I think for lawmakers to feel insulated during the legislative session that they are interfaith Topeka doing their work. And in many cases, our elected leaders are the gatekeepers for what information gets back to their districts, because there's not a lot of local news outlets anymore. And so if you are somebody who cares about the well being of kids and families, and cares about improving the child welfare system, then absolutely find out who your lawmaker is your state representative and your state senator and let them know that you want them to take action on this.
Even better if you are an organization or an agency that serves families and recognize the need for this, invite your legislator to your organization, so that they can interact and see exactly what families are dealing with every day.
And then if you are a young person who has lived experience, or family who has lived experience within the child welfare system in this, this excites you to get involved in be at the table, reach out to Kansas action for children and they'll connect you with John and we can help you prepare your testimony to testify on behalf of this, this option and so in that I'm also the the policy chair for for souls. You'll work with John and I on on all that. So we really want to make sure that young people who know that this option would have been great for them or they had an option like this with with a family before a soul was sold, that you know where your voices are being elevated and they're being lifted and all that and figuring out how can we make sure we're using you using your story to make sure that other young people and other families don't have to go through the same trauma and heartache that you went through.
