Private agencies may be the answer

With more than 12,000 Missouri children currently in the state's foster-care system, it seems highly unlikely that enough funding will ever be made available so state caseworkers have manageable workloads. Currently, caseworkers are expected to handle 20 to 25 families, but some have as many as 90 families.

Of the more than 12,000 children in foster care, approximately 1,500 are served by private social agencies. The state has contracts with 15 private agencies, mostly in the Kansas City and St. Louis area, and the Division of Family Services caps the workloads for private-agency caseworkers to 12 families, a number that is considered manageable by both private and public agencies.

At one of the hearings last week held by a Missouri Senate interim committee looking into foster-care services, a spokesman for private agencies, many with religious affiliations, said those agencies would like to take as much as 90 percent of the foster-care caseload.

"We can do this a lot better than the state can," said Larry Weber, executive director of the Missouri Catholic Conference.

But the state has no plans to expand its contracts with private agencies to provide foster care. Instead, the state wants to assess the success of existing foster-care contractors.

Both issues -- cost and quality of care -- should be paramount. And if private contractors can do a better job and do it cost effectively, such a system should be aggressively pursued by bureaucrats and legislators alike.