WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – The Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) on Monday released its second annual report reviewing Kansas’ progress towards achieving its commitments under a settlement agreement for the state’s foster care system.
CSSP, the independent organization tasked with reviewing and assessing the state’s performance, found that in 2022, Kansase and its contractors failed to make the required improvements to the foster care system. In fact, the state regressed from its 2021 performance in several areas.
The state met four of the commitments in the settlement, and six others were unfulfilled.
The report showed Kansas foster children continue to spend nights sleeping in offices. This was one of the main practices the state was to end as part of the settlement agreement from a 2018 lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of foster children experiencing extreme placement instability and a lack of access to mental and behavioral health services. According to the report, the number of nights youth spent in offices increased by 54% from 2021 to 2022, with 85 youth spending a total of 257 nights in case management provider offices last year.
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Kansas DCF, in responding to the report, said for the first half of 2023, the number of children spending a night in a provider office has decreased more than 50 percent.
In a statement, Governor Laura Kelly said. “The latest Neutral Report shows we continue to ensure kids are in stable placements and are improving how many foster youth receive necessary mental health screenings and timely access to services. But this report also makes clear that, in spite of all of our efforts, there’s much more work to be done. I am encouraged by the steps we’ve taken in 2023 to decrease temporary overnight placements and instances of kids staying in offices, but clearly, the legislature and I must dig deeper, make more targeted investments, and come up with solutions that work.”
The report also showed that Kansas missed the mark in ensuring stable placement for foster children. The state met one benchmark measuring the percentage of youth in foster care who had a stable placement at the end of 2022. The state’s performance declined for one-night and short-term placements, where children had to be quickly moved from one place to another, as well as the total number of moves the children had to make.
Leecia Welch, Children’s Rights Deputy Legal Director, said, “We were trending in the right direction, and unfortunately, this year (2022), we really went off the rails with that number. I think that it will be really important for DCF to try to understand what happened.”
“Not knowing where they’re going to sleep at night, where they will go the next day has an impact that simply can’t be conveyed by the numbers in this report,” said Kansas Appleseed Child Welfare Advocate Adina Morse.
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The impact of these night office placements is seen in the mental health of foster children.
The state’s foster care system is overseen by the Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCF), but the state contracts out most services to private providers.
Neva Benton said becoming a foster parent has become a rewarding part of her life because she and her wife loved kids. They worked with kids before becoming foster parents. Over nearly seven years, the couple built their family, adopting three of their four children from foster care and continuing to welcome other children placed in their home.
“(We grew our) family in a way that we know that not only are we able to help somebody else, but they’re helping us,” said Benton. “We’re able to be parents and be part of the lives of kids that we would of never have even seen. We also love the fact that we’re able to help with bio-families and reuniting kiddos.”
The couple continues to welcome foster children into their home. While the kids are the joyous part of the process, Benton said, the system they have to work with is a mixed bag.
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“We’ve had really great experiences with them. We’ve had some where we’ve really had to go to bat and had to fight for our kiddos and things that were happening when kiddos were brought into our home,” she said.
According to the CSSP report, Kansas failed to meet its 2022 requirements for mental and behavioral health support. While performance improved over 2021, of the cases reviewed, only 43% of youth entering care were properly and timely screened for trauma and mental health needs, and only 70% had their mental and behavioral health needs addressed. The target goal was 85%.
One of the biggest challenges has been finding providers who are able to provide consistent services.
“How small the pool of providers even is that can do that for these kids who are trauma-informed and who are consistent because we’ve even had it where we’ve gone through mental health services here and our kiddo had multiple therapists within a year, so how do they trust that when they can’t even trust where they’re going to be from month to month in the same placement,” Benton said.
Although Kansas established a Family Mobile Response Crisis Helpline, the report found it is not yet assisting many children.
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Benton said one of the things people can do is advocate for these improvements.
“We need to be the ones that are on the front lines that you need to do this. If me, as a foster parent, if I wasn’t holding to the agreement I made with the state, they would let me know,” she said.
Another area where the state is not meeting the commitment is in a statewide data system. Currently, the providers operate on different platforms, which makes it hard to share data with the state or foster parents. Benton said it was something she experienced seen firsthand.
Benton said, “That’s how I feel kids get lost and information gets lost, and we’re not doing them as good of a service. We all upgrade our phones every one to two years, but working with the children’s lives and we haven’t upgraded that system in 20, 30 plus years, and it’s making it harder for the workers to be able to do their job and it’s harder for the kids to be able to have the information that they need.”
The state said it is working on the process of implementing a statewide data system with an RFP process started.
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This report comes as the contracts with private providers for foster care services ends in 2024. The child welfare and rights groups and attorneys said what they would like to see is more collaboration from the groups involved – state and providers – to make the necessary changes to improve the system and services children are receiving.
Kansas Appleseed Litigation Director Teresa Woody said, “Obviously, everybody wants to spend their time, energy and money in a positive way, if possible, rather than a negative way. Part of the whole system with the Neutral is to try to figure out what’s going on and make improvements. Ultimately, if the state can’t make those improvements, then the plaintiffs do have the ability to go back to the court and seek the court’s enforcement. That’s something that is a possibility, but obviously, everybody would like to spend the resources in a more positive way.”
Copyright 2023 KWCH. All rights reserved. To report a correction or typo, please email news@kwch.com
Women Are Roasting The Kansas City Chiefs On Instagram
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On May 11th, Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker gave a commencement address to graduates from Benedictine College. During his speech to the private Catholic liberal arts college in Kansas, he suggested Pride Month was a “deadly sin,” condemned abortion rights, and informed women that they had “the most diabolical lies” told to them (after he quoted a Taylor Swift song earlier in his speech, of course).
He went on to speak about his wife, Isabelle, claiming she would be the first to say that “her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother” and that he was able to be the man who he is because his wife embraced one of the most important titles of all: being a homemaker.
After Harrison gave his speech, it not only garnered a direct response from the NFL stating that Harrison’s views were not those of the NFL as an organization but also widespread backlash from people across the country. But while a lot of people have vocalized their disgust about the commencement address on their own personal social media accounts, women have begun to leave sarcastic comments about their “abilities as a woman” directly on the Kansas City Chiefs’s Instagram account — and they’re brutal in the best way possible.
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1.
Here are some of the top comments that were left on multiple Chief’s Instagram posts, like this woman who’s sad she won’t be able to attend any more games because of her “true vocation.”
2.
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Or this woman who said her life hasn’t begun because she’s not married to a man yet.
3.
It seems like snack time is vital for this couple.
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4.
This commentor also wants some clarification.
5.
A woman watching men on TV? Not in this household.
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6.
Sorry, gotta skip the game, the kitchen is calling.
7.
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Maybe this person’s husband is nice enough to give permission. Fingers crossed.
8.
Who needs thoughts when you have a husband, am I right?
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9.
Shoot, I bet our 84 cents to the dollar won’t even be worth anything.
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I would be concerned, too.
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11.
This woman doesn’t even believe she’s considered to be “alive” before marriage.
12.
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Even the men are wondering what they can do with their wives now.
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At least this man is honest about his wife’s “abilities.”
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14.
It’s a valid question.
15.
Finally, does anyone know the answer to this question?
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Do you have any thoughts about Harrison Butker’s commencement speech? Tell us in the comments below.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – Friday is the 70th anniversary of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case that ruled segregation in schools unconstitutional. It forever changed the face of public education and Kansas schools say today the work continues to make students of all races feel equally supported.
“When I think about it being only 70 years, that’s not a long time,” said former Shawnee Mission Public Schools DEI coordinator Dr. Tyrone Bates.
As local educational leaders throughout the Kansas City area explain, progress toward racial equality in schools hasn’t always been linear.
“The Supreme Court justice’s opinion was not that schools should be segregated because it was the right thing to do but rather African Americans were inept, they were not qualified to teach students of color,” said Bates.
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Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools officials say looking back at the past 70 years, its schools have become more diverse. Currently, its student population is 60 percent Hispanic, 30 percent black, and multiracial.
“I believe that all of our students need access to dual language programs, multilingual resources, resources outside of their community to help support the community,” said KCKPS diversity, equity, and inclusion executive director Dr. Canise Salinas-Willich.
The district’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion department works with other departments to create programs and policies that are inclusive for all students. Students have also been given the chance to share their personal experiences and give feedback that can create real change in the district.
“Our investment in our students is evident as we invest in their voices and we invest in making sure that we bring quality education, quality work into the classroom,” said Salinas-Willich.
Meanwhile, Dr. Bates now works in consulting but during his tenure with SMSD, he established equity practitioners. These are staff members who learn how to support each building in the district. He also established employee resource groups that support staff members who are part of marginalized groups.
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“I’m proud of the fact that many administrators were doing whatever they could to break down barriers and bridges between students of different backgrounds,” said Bates.
Last year, a black student at Shawnee Mission East High School was called a racial slur by another student and attacked. Bates explains how this is an example of how racism still exists in schools and communities.
“There’s still work to be done around understanding racial equity, understanding racial justice. There’s a tremendous difference between the two. Racial equity is about improving outcomes. Racial justice is about breaking down hierarchies so we don’t have glass ceilings for people who are not in economic power,” he said.
Bee farmer Jimmy Lunsford handles a hive at Ioway Bee Farm, the largest tribal apiary in North America. Credit: Mark Birnbaum Productions / American Heart Association
When one of the elders in the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska asked if he could keep bees on the reservation, Tim Rhodd’s answer was straightforward: “Absolutely.”
Soon, the bees started buzzing in the alfalfa fields. Then they started pollinating.
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Then they all died.
“Once we started looking into it, we found there was a chemical (class) called neonicotinoid that caused the death of these bees,” said Rhodd, the tribe’s chairperson. “That was the very, very first part of what I had seen that we were doing things wrong.”
Facing the reality that their soil was contaminated—and the realization that the same harmful insecticides that killed the bees would be bad for them, too—the Ioway started questioning their farming practices.
After receiving a grant in 2019, the tribe switched its farming operations from monocropping—growing one plant in the same soil, year after year—to regenerative agriculture, a process designed to promote biodiversity and soil health by minimizing disturbances and maintaining living roots as much as possible.
By caring for a rotation of diverse crops throughout the year—rather than controlling the soil year-round for just one seasonal crop—farmers eliminate the need for herbicides and pesticides.
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Moving away from monocropping is as much a challenge to standard practice as it is a physical feat. The so-called Green Revolution in the 1960s changed industrial farming to address food shortages by ushering in the extensive use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Working to improve the yield of a single crop became the norm, thanks in part to profitability and operational efficiency.
But monocropping has been shown to damage soil health, and farmers’ reliance on pesticides and herbicides can harm pollinators and water supplies while insects and weeds rapidly develop resistance to the chemicals.
“Just monocropping, eventually you use up all of your nutrients,” said Olivia Brien, tribe member and its director of communications. “And what happens is that you run out of the nutrients to grow good food, so then you’d have a desert. It becomes a desert.”
The tribe’s Ioway Farms operation has implemented regenerative practices and indigenous methods across 2,400 acres of row crop production and 2,500 acres of pastureland in rural northeast Kansas, near White Cloud. The tribe runs Ioway Farms along with several other ventures—including a bee farm, a seed company, a hemp farm and an orchard that includes pears, peaches, plums and apples.
The farm generates vital revenue for the tribe and helps the Ioway, also known as the Báxoje, reconnect with their culture—and the land. The tribe found historical evidence that diverse irrigation processes mimicking a more natural system had been in place on the land within the past 200 years.
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Lance Foster, tribal historic preservation officer and former vice chair for the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, stands atop a burial mound site dating from 1200 to 1400. Credit: Walter Johnson Jr./American Heart Association
“Holism is about everything being parts of the whole,” said Lance Foster, tribal historic preservation officer and former vice chair of the tribe. “You cannot have health without the land. You cannot have good food without the land. The Ioway don’t have a word for wilderness, because to us, it wasn’t wild. It was our home.”
The tribe also started practicing adaptive multi-paddock grazing, a system of managing livestock to mimic the constantly moving herds that once roamed the prairies so that their grazing patterns encourage more biodiversity in the soil.
“Once we have our healthy soils, we’ll be able to have healthy plants, healthy animals, healthy humans,” Rhodd said.
That includes the bees. A 2019 study in the journal Global Change Biology found the United States is among the countries where the increasing number of pollinator-dependent crops—such as soybean—has far outpaced the diversity of crops that bloom at different times, giving bees a year-round habitat.
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Credit: American Heart Association
At Ioway Farms, flowering plants line the border of crops.
“Nature hates one crop; it hates a monoculture,” said Eric Fuchs, a consultant with Understanding Ag, a regenerative agriculture consulting company that works with the tribe to implement regenerative practices.
“So, we want to see diversity. A lot of the fields, we’ll have pollinator strips around the edge, and we’ll have multi-species cover crops planted. There is living root in the soil at all times. There will always be something when you come to the Iowa tribe that will be green.”
The decision to move away from monocropping was an easy one, tribal leaders say, even if the work involved has been difficult. The Ioway believe making their land more diverse and productive year-round is the key to solving challenges from sustainability to food security to soil health.
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“There are a lot of different definitions of regenerative,” Fuchs said. “From my perspective, it’s leaving things better than they started out. A lot of things in agriculture over the last 100 years or more, it seems like it’s a ‘take, take, take’ agriculture. We do things … that actually improve the soil for future generations.”
They’re seeing signs of success already. Improvements in the quality of the tribe’s soybean yield have paved the way for valuable business with tofu producers, for example.
“We’re actually developing new markets that we’ve never had before,” Rhodd said. “I’m very proud to say that the farm team has had 100% food production across all of our acres. That’s been one of our goals, and we met that goal.”
In the fall, Ioway farmers harvest the crop they planted the previous year and follow directly behind the combine harvester with a seeder, planting cover crops such as rye, along with turnip or radish. The cover crops grow through the winter, and in the spring, the Ioway flatten them to keep the ground temperature lower, control weeds and provide nutrients for the next layer of soybean or corn.
“It makes you feel pretty good when you’re driving around in December and stuff is green—not dead,” said Kyle Rhodd, the manager of Ioway Farms and brother of the tribe’s chairperson. “It’s pretty amazing to see.”
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Kyle said the move to regenerative agriculture has been transformational for the tribe. And it’s changed the way he sees the soil.
“I honestly didn’t look at the soil as a living thing,” Kyle said. “I just looked at it as dirt. Going along on this journey, it makes you realize there is so much more than just dirt on the ground. … There are living organisms down there that are getting taken away from all the chemicals being used.
“With a biology in the soil, making that all mesh—it’s already there. Why do that synthetically when you can let nature take its course?”
The Ioway have seen the benefits of caring for the soil in the quality of their produce.
“After one year of regenerative principles, the Ioway came back and said their tofu beans had a better, nuttier flavor and yielded better,” Fuchs said.
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“What we’re seeing is what’s happening in the soil—healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy animals, healthy food. … We have seen changes that impact all over the country. The way we grow food—the health of our food, the nutrient density of our food—it’s a broken system.
“This type of agriculture is a learning curve, but it can be done.”
A review of research, published in 2017 in the journal Nutrition Reviews, found diversifying crops may improve diets and nutrition outcomes in people living in low- and middle-income countries.
The Ioway believe that’s what regenerative agriculture will do for them. They say providing fresh, nutrient-rich produce for local tribal members and neighbors in their rural area of northeast Kansas—where access to healthy food is limited—will help them take ownership of their own health and reconnect to their land.
“All of us are indigenous to somewhere,” Brien said. “All of our ancestors understood that you have to live in balance, and we aren’t currently living in balance. That change is going to be difficult, but it’s for the best. It’s wonderful. It’s a beautiful thing.”
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American Heart Association
Citation:
To save their soil, Kansas tribe shifts to regenerative agriculture—and transforms their farms (2024, May 17)
retrieved 17 May 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-05-soil-kansas-tribe-shifts-regenerative.html
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