- Services
Core Services
Families First
Children and teens belong with their own families whenever possible. KVC works to safely reunify hundreds of families each year by providing parenting skills training, therapy and other support.
Caring People Needed
On any given day, KVC Kansas provides out-of-home care for thousands of children and teens. Relatives, non-related kin like teachers and neighbors, and foster parents are all critical to providing temporary care for these children and teens. See how you can make a difference as a foster parent.
- Impact
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Children and Families Need You
Through KVC, you can strengthen families, prevent child abuse and neglect, and help create a bright future where every person is safe and connected to a strong family and a healthy community. Please join us today! Learn More
- Resources
Overview
Our free resources help you stay informed and educated about foster care, child welfare, adoption, mental health and childhood trauma as well as how KVC Kansas is working toward building healthier communities.
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- About Us
About KVC Kansas
KVC Kansas is a private, nonprofit organization that serves nearly 13,000 children and adults each year. Our team of professionals provides family strengthening and preventative services, foster care case management, family reunification services, foster family recruitment and support, adoption, aftercare, outpatient therapy and more.
We envision a world in which every person is safe and connected to a strong family and a healthy community.
- Blog
History
In 1970, a group of caring women from the Junior League of Johnson and Wyandotte Counties started the “Wyandotte House” because they saw children in need. Wyandotte House eventually grew, with Logan House added in 1974 and Kiely House in 1976, and became Kaw Valley Center. 
In 1987, with the help of federal funding from Senator Robert Dole and the efforts of the late Mayor Jack Reardon, KVC’s children’s mental health hospital, sitting on a 75-acre campus in Kansas City, Kansas, was dedicated. Since then, the hospital has expanded to also include residential services and these programs provide a professional and effective, family-friendly treatment environment. KVC adopted a philosophy of “no reject-no eject” admissions, representing the intent not to turn a child or family away.
The Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services (SRS), initiated the privatization of the state’s child welfare services in 1996 and selected KVC as one of its initial lead contractors. KVC remains a primary contractor and a significant partner with the Kansas Department for Children and Families (formerly SRS and now DCF) and continually raises the bar in its provision of child welfare services, with broad experience in both urban and rural communities. KVC staff provide case management services geared towards the achievement of safe and timely permanency for children and families. Aftercare is provided for up to one full year to ensure safety and stability.
In the early 2000s, Kaw Valley Center started expanding beyond the state of Kansas. Currently we serve children and families in Nebraska, Missouri West Virginia, Kentucky, and Kansas. In 2003, Kaw Valley Center became KVC Behavioral Healthcare to bring our name in line with the scope of our work. A few years later, the parent organization KVC Health Systems was created, which has several subsidiaries such as KVC Kansas and Camber Children’s Mental Health (previously KVC Hospitals) that provide direct services to children and families.
KVC opened Camber Hays (previously known as KVC Hospitals Hays or KVC Wheatland Hospital) for children’s psychiatric treatment in 2010 in Hays, Kansas to provide acute inpatient services to children and adolescents in central and western Kansas.
KVC’s rich history has enabled us to grow and represent one of the strongest child welfare/behavioral healthcare continuums of care in the nation. This allows KVC to meet the needs of any child and family requiring behavioral health treatment, no matter how significant. Since 2005, KVC Kansas has safely reintegrated thousands of children back into their homes and successfully matched thousands more children with adoptive families.