Drug abuse by Kansas parents – particularly meth – continues to take an extreme toll on both our youth and the state agencies which oversee their care and well-being.

The Department for Children and Families is overrun with reports of abuse, neglect and at-risk children to the extent that it cannot hire enough qualified workers to properly investigate, and new DCF Secretary Gina Meier-Hummel has floated filling these positions with lesser-qualified individuals out of pure necessity.

In 2016, Child Protective Services received 34,537 reports of abuse or neglect and was able to substantiate only 7.2 percent of these reports. Nationally, 16.5 percent of reports were substantiated that same year. It is likely that this discrepancy can be attributed to case overload and botched investigations – not frivolous reports.

read more