Kansas Enacts New Permanency Option for Older Youth in Foster Care

On April 15, 2024, Kansas Gov. Lau­ra Kel­ly signed a law mak­ing the state the first in the nation to cre­ate a SOUL Fam­i­ly legal per­ma­nen­cy option — a way for old­er youth in fos­ter care to form legal, last­ing families.

The law allows young peo­ple ages 16 and old­er who are in fos­ter care to estab­lish per­ma­nent legal bonds with trust­ed adult care­givers with­out sev­er­ing legal ties to their bio­log­i­cal par­ents and sib­lings. Fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships legal­ized under SOUL Fam­i­ly will be eli­gi­ble for ser­vices that help young peo­ple tran­si­tion suc­cess­ful­ly to adult­hood, including:

• finan­cial support;
• edu­ca­tion­al ben­e­fits; and
• health cov­er­age.

“Now Kansans ages 16 and old­er who are leav­ing fos­ter care will be empow­ered to choose who will join them on their jour­ney as they grow into the next phase of their lives, fin­ish school­ing, set­tle into jobs and become adult mem­bers of their greater com­mu­ni­ty,” says Kansas Depart­ment for Chil­dren and Fam­i­lies (DCF) Sec­re­tary Lau­ra Howard.

A Per­ma­nen­cy Inno­va­tion in Kansas

SOUL stands for Sup­port, Oppor­tu­ni­ty, Uni­ty and Legal Rela­tion­ships. The frame­work for SOUL Fam­i­ly was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived in 2018 by Jim Casey Fel­lows — young lead­ers and advo­cates with fos­ter care expe­ri­ence who par­tic­i­pate with the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Jim Casey Youth Oppor­tu­ni­ties Ini­tia­tive^®. In 2022, state DCF lead­ers and young Kansans who have expe­ri­enced fos­ter care com­mit­ted to devel­op­ing a SOUL Fam­i­ly pro­pos­al as an inno­v­a­tive solu­tion to address the state’s high num­ber of young peo­ple exit­ing fos­ter care with­out sol­id rela­tion­ships and con­nec­tions. In Kansas, more than 56% of youths 16 and old­er leave fos­ter care with­out per­ma­nent families.

“Inno­va­tions like SOUL Fam­i­ly are need­ed to help reduce the num­ber of young peo­ple leav­ing fos­ter care with­out crit­i­cal rela­tion­ships and sup­port,” says Leslie Gross, direc­tor of the Casey Foundation’s Fam­i­ly Well-Being Strat­e­gy Group. Nation­al­ly, 51% of old­er youths in fos­ter care — about 20,000 — age out of these sys­tems each year.

Young lead­ers, advo­cates, DCF offi­cials and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the state’s four pri­vate fos­ter care providers adapt­ed SOUL Fam­i­ly to address Kansas’ spe­cif­ic child wel­fare needs. They will con­tin­ue to part­ner in design­ing the mech­a­nisms for imple­ment­ing and sup­port­ing the plan.

“All old­er youth in fos­ter care want the abil­i­ty to choose,” says Mar­quan ​“MT” Teetz, an advo­cate for the per­ma­nen­cy option who told leg­is­la­tors about his expe­ri­ence in Kansas’ fos­ter care sys­tem. ​“We’ve been ordered most of our lives by a sys­tem that does­n’t under­stand us or the con­nec­tions we’ve built.”

The devel­op­ment of SOUL Fam­i­ly marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in the state’s jour­ney toward more youth-led and youth-cen­tered case plan­ning. When the new per­ma­nen­cy option is imple­ment­ed, young peo­ple can choose care­givers from a group of adults, includ­ing kin, with whom they already have sol­id rela­tion­ships, to ensure they leave fos­ter care with last­ing bonds and support.

“Had it been avail­able for me,” Teetz says, ​“SOUL Fam­i­ly could have allowed me and my aunt to remain togeth­er and offered the nec­es­sary resources and guid­ance to help us nav­i­gate our situation.”

The Ori­gin of the SOUL Fam­i­ly Model

In 2018, a group of Jim Casey Fel­lows saw a need for a new legal per­ma­nen­cy option for old­er youth in fos­ter care. The exist­ing legal per­ma­nen­cy options — reuni­fi­ca­tion, adop­tion and guardian­ship — are effec­tive for find­ing per­ma­nent fam­i­lies for many young peo­ple. How­ev­er, they do not address the com­plex­i­ties, needs and breadth of expe­ri­ences of many old­er youth who need rock-sol­id life­long connections.

The Fel­lows envi­sioned a way to ensure more young peo­ple could leave fos­ter care with the sense of sta­bil­i­ty and belong­ing pro­vid­ed by a lov­ing, last­ing and legal fam­i­ly. Their idea, which they lat­er named SOUL Fam­i­ly, would:

• pro­vide a plan­ning process that expands and hon­ors the young person’s abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy poten­tial care­givers in their own net­works of sup­port­ive adult rela­tion­ships — includ­ing kin and non-kin who are cho­sen family;
• allow young peo­ple to remain legal­ly con­nect­ed to their bio­log­i­cal par­ents and siblings;
• estab­lish their new legal fam­i­ly for life, rec­og­nized by the courts and the com­mu­ni­ty; and
• ensure the young peo­ple receive the same types of finan­cial sup­port and ser­vices attached to oth­er per­ma­nen­cy options so they do not have to choose between gain­ing a fam­i­ly and receiv­ing need­ed ser­vices or assistance.

“SOUL Fam­i­ly rep­re­sents the pow­er of solu­tions cre­at­ed by young peo­ple who have expe­ri­enced the child wel­fare sys­tem — and know best what they need to thrive into adult­hood,” says Gross. ​“This new per­ma­nen­cy option has the poten­tial to change the tra­jec­to­ry for young peo­ple who need fam­i­lies. We are extreme­ly proud of the Jim Casey Fel­lows who designed this inno­va­tion and their peers and part­ners in Kansas who are col­lab­o­rat­ing to make it a reality.”

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