Members of the child welfare task force consider draft legislation on Oct. 19 in Jefferson City. Pictured from left are Missouri Department of Social Services Legislative Director Haylee Musso, attorney and guardian ad litem Tamara Veit, Missouri Network Against Child Abuse Executive Director Jessica Seitz and Children's Division Director Sara Smith (Steph Quinn/Missouri Independent).Missouri child welfare workers and courts would be required to use the same standards to determine when children are unsafe and what must change before they can return home under draft legislation being developed by a state task force.
The proposal, discussed Monday by the 18-member task force appointed by Gov. Mike Kehoe, aims to make decisions about children’s safety more consistent across the state, give parents clearer expectations and help move cases more quickly through an overwhelmed child welfare system.
The draft bill would amend state law to establish common definitions and practices for division workers, juvenile officers, judges and guardians ad litem to use when assessing children’s safety and determining next steps. Courts would be required to use the same framework in protective custody and permanency hearings.
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The proposed legislation would also require the Missouri Department of Social Services and the Office of the State Courts Administrator to develop standard forms for the division’s court reports and social service plans that outline what parents and the division must do to address safety concerns.
The task force was created to propose a statewide definition of child safety, identify gaps and contradictions in existing laws and policies, and establish processes to put the new definitions into practice.
The executive order establishing the task force came less than 24 hours before a bipartisan legislative hearing examining foster care deaths, staff turnover and rising investigation backlogs in the Missouri Children’s Division. It set a Nov. 15 deadline for the task force to recommend legislation.
Establishing statewide safety standards
Walking the task force through the draft bill, Teri Armistead, director of the department’s Division of Legal Services, emphasized the importance of identifying and clearly describing safety threats early in a case. She said it provides clarity to parents about the expectations of the division and courts and, if a child is removed from their home, can provide a blueprint for the division, juvenile office and courts to address those threats.
“If we on the front end can articulate well what the safety threat is for that child, and if that child does have to be removed from the home, that through line carries throughout the entirety of the case,” Armistead said.
The draft says a child is unsafe when parents or adult caregivers are unable or unwilling to protect them from “present or imminent” safety threats. A safety threat must be “specific” and “articulable” and could include a “situation, behavior, motive, emotion, perception, capacity or lack thereof in a child’s home” or household.
The goal is to ensure that the reasons a child is considered unsafe — and what must change before that child can return home — remain consistent as the case moves through the child welfare system.
The proposed legislation would require the use of a “safety framework” to identify threats and decide how to respond. The division currently uses a safety assessment tool called Structured Decision Making, or SDM. During the last task force meeting on Oct. 5, members discussed the SDM and a child safety guide from the American Bar Association as models for Missouri legislation.
Armistead said the division would consider putting safety threats from the American Bar Association safety guide into its regulations. That guide lists fifteen types of safety threats, including living arrangements that endanger a child’s health and caregivers who lack the knowledge, skills and motivation to meet a child’s basic needs.
The draft bill would require courts to use the same definitions and practices as the division during hearings after children enter the division’s custody. During permanency hearings, when courts assess whether it’s in a child’s best interests to stay in foster care, return home or be adopted, courts would have to consider “whether safety threats persist, the protective capacities of caregivers and potential caregivers, the child’s vulnerabilities and whether less intrusive means are available….”
Children’s Division Director Sara Smith said standardized statewide forms and practices will help streamline the work of frontline staff and reduce caseloads by moving children’s cases through the system more quickly.
“I think it’ll directly impact our caseloads to be able to move children into more sustainable care and permanency in a more timely way because those standards and what we’re looking for are clearly articulated to families about how to have their kids back,” Smith said.
Armistead said standardized forms would prevent frontline workers from having to duplicate their work. Currently workers must complete the division’s paperwork as well as separate court forms that vary among judicial circuits, she said.
In addition to developing new forms, the division would design a training program on child safety and the safety framework for all division employees and contractors who work with children.
Republican state Rep. Melissa Schmidt of Eldridge, the chair of the task force, said the proposed changes could bring relief to overwhelmed division workers.
“A standardized process — knowing that we’re all speaking the same language, that definitions are the same across the board — takes some of that frustration out and also takes out that burden of having to figure it all out by yourself,” Schmidt said.
Concerns about temporary placements
The discussion of new safety standards came as Children’s Division officials shared findings from a year-long review of the agency’s existing practices, including concerns about how workers use temporary arrangements to place children with relatives.
Kara Wilcox, the department’s head of safety policy, said some staff were over-using temporary alternative placement agreements, or TAPAs.
TAPAs, which were put into state law in 2020, place children in a relative’s home for a maximum of 90 days, subject to renewal, while parents work with the division to address safety threats.
Wilcox said the division should ensure that parents are willing and able to make the changes needed to keep their children safe before initiating a TAPA.
“What we’ve seen is we don’t necessarily take into a lot of consideration whether the parent is truly ready for change,” Wilcox said.
Significant substance use issues often can’t be addressed within the timeframe of a TAPA, Wilcox said.
“So we should probably be considering all of our other resources and be recommending removal,” Wilcox said.
Part of the 2020 law requires TAPAs to identify “behaviorally specific changes” needed before the child can return home.
Marcia Hazelhorst, the division’s deputy director of safety, said workers have sometimes focused too heavily on providing services rather than determining whether parents have actually changed the behavior that put their children at risk.
“We should be building in services, but not relying on them, and getting a lot more concrete about what behavior it’s going to take (to move a case forward),” Hazelhorst said.
Haylee Musso, legislative director for the department, said that while offering services can “help us get that behavior change,” it “doesn’t generate immediate safety.”
Musso also emphasized that the goal of safety planning is to do everything possible to prevent children from being removed from their home.
Emily van Schenkhof, executive director of the Children’s Trust Fund of Missouri, said the state needs to do more to link families to behavioral health services.
“I’ve been perennially disappointed in our ability to truly make these connections happen,” van Schenkhof said. “So much of the risk that children and families that children face are when a parent or caregiver has a substance abuse disorder or mental health disorder.”
This story was updated on Oct. 20 at 7:58 a.m. to reflect that Haylee Musso is legislative director for the Missouri Department of Social Services.
