ST. LOUIS — The staffing crisis at the Children’s Division, the state agency that’s supposed to support foster children and their parents in hopes of reunifying families in crisis, has gotten so severe in Kansas City and Ƶ that the director called on volunteers from other jurisdictions and job specialties to parachute in.
“We have only a fraction of the people we need to do our required investigations in the cities, and we have desperate need in every other program in the metro areas as well,” Children’s Division Director Darrell Missey wrote in an email to staff early this month.
Missey promised overtime, travel pay and lodging, but Missouri’s rural areas, where the number of children entering the foster care system has dramatically increased in the past decade, are also struggling. A few days after his Sept. 2 note, there was reluctance from at least one supervisor to help “answer the call.”
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“I completely understand that this creates a staffing issue in the area from which the volunteer comes, but that is decidedly less severe in most of the state than in Ƶ and Kansas City where we have a daunting number of overdue reports and a severe staffing shortage,” Missey wrote in a follow-up note to staff.
This was in full evidence last week, when a reporter sat in on family court hearings in the city of Ƶ and Ƶ County. Judges were frustrated that status reports, due days before the hearings so interested parties can make informed decisions, were not filed on time by the Children’s Division.
At one point in the county, Judge Jason Dodson told Maudi Gomez, a Children’s Division attorney: “We’ve got to get our hearing going. This is a problem.”
The foster child’s biological father, calling in from out of state, was among the parties waiting. He’d attended hearings, at least by phone, but he hadn’t been in touch with a caseworker.
“I have no information,” he testified, adding that he wanted to be in his son’s life. “I am in the dark.”
During a hearing in the city, Judge Steven Ohmer expressed frustration with Kevin Cordia, a Children’s Division attorney who indicated he’d also received the reports late from his team.
“There’s just no excuse for this,” Ohmer said from the bench about missing paperwork.
Adding to the delays in progress, uninformed Children’s Division supervisors are often filling in to testify on behalf of absent caseworkers who are supposed to regularly meet with foster children and work with their parents. Parents must complete a lot of programs to bounce back from being accused of abuse or neglect. Testimony signaled that communication on both fronts — with the parents and children — is often lacking.
Testimony also signaled that foster children are lingering in the system without good plans in place. Some have been split up from siblings, without regular visits. And some foster parents aren’t getting the help they need.
In one case, a 12-year-old boy with all of his belongings was dumped off in August at the Children’s Division downtown office in the Wainwright State Office Building. There had been hope that his aunt would adopt him after being his foster parent about two years.
“We are missing outreach opportunities to provide support in the home setting,” testified Cari Grant, a pediatrician and volunteer advocate for the boy.
After the placement fell apart, Children’s Division lined up an emergency placement that didn’t last. The boy landed at SSM Health DePaul Hospital for about a month before recently being transferred to Faith Foundation Children’s Home in southeast Missouri.
“This kid has so many things going on,” said Judge Barbara Peebles, as she ordered more regularly scheduled meetings about the case. “It’s going to be difficult.”
The boy’s mother was dead; his father possibly homeless. Eric Jones, a Children’s Division case manager, recently handled the case. He wasn’t part of the court hearing. Children’s Division testified the day before in a different case that Jones was out sick. Asked for clarification on his status at the Wainwright building, supervisor Monica Witherspoon wouldn’t comment to a reporter without an attorney present. Later in court, Gomez said it was a personnel matter.
Appeal to Parson
Child protection hearings like these are with some restrictions regarding what the judge considers to be in the best interest of the child. Gomez argued to limit what a reporter could see. Meanwhile, Susan Block, an attorney and former Ƶ County family court administrative judge, seized on the opportunity to bring more awareness. In open court, she called on Gov. Mike Parson to launch a special legislative session.
“We need in the state of Missouri money for Children’s Division, funding for mental health services of all kinds,” she said. “We are not doing the best we can for the children of our state.”
Block was in court representing a Webster Groves family unable to connect their 16-year-old adopted daughter with the resources she needs. They said in an interview that she was kicked out of two privately funded residential treatment homes. They said she had a tendency to run away and have run-ins with law enforcement. They said she was suicidal and had spent several months in the past year living at Ƶ Children’s Hospital. Out of options, the parents said they abandoned their daughter at the hospital in March in hopes she would get better access to help through the state.
Her stay in Children’s Division custody has been rocky. She was eventually placed at Perimeter Behavioral Health in Springfield. Her parents said Perimeter eventually had her taken back to Ƶ, dropped off at the Wainwright building. Perimeter didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The 16-year-old girl is back at Children’s Hospital again. For her well-being, she’s staying in a room without a bed, according to testimony in her child protection hearing last week. Parties in the case were notified that a new potential home placement had been found in Joplin, 285 miles away. It was at an ISL, or individualized supported living location, though Children’s Division representatives at the hearing didn’t immediately know what that meant. They couldn’t confirm basic information about the case, such as whether the Department of Mental Health was involved.
“It’s a very new situation for me,” testified Witherspoon, the Children’s Division supervisor, vowing: “I am going to get clarification on all of these things.”
The parents looked beaten down. Going from a hospital room without a bed to living in Joplin and attending high school there seemed like a big leap, even if their daughter did have constant supervision in the new home placement. They were also concerned their daughter gained a significant amount of weight.
“Hopefully, we can break this cycle ... so she can do the work of functioning,” testified the mother.
“We need better places that are more appropriate with the type of mental illnesses we are working with,” testified the father.
‘The worst I have ever seen’
Earlier this month, there was no time to talk about prevention, care and programing for children and families in crisis.
Missey, the ninth director of the Children’s Division in about a decade and arguably one of the better hires, called on his statewide staff to help meet the basic needs of the beleaguered agency in Ƶ and Kansas City.
“I understand the hardship and sacrifice involved in adding anything to your already overloaded schedules, but we need everyone to pull together to get through the current emergency,” Missey, a former family court judge in Jefferson County, told staff by email. “I am hopeful that we will get the help we need in the next legislative session, and that we will be able to overcome our current struggle.”
There have always been turnover struggles in this field, said Trish Harrison, 55, a former Ƶ University Law School professor currently representing the interests of foster children in the city.
“Right now,” she said after court last week, “it is the worst I have ever seen.”