Beginning October 1, 2019, the DCF rates for foster families will be changing, and we hope these will be positive for your family and help you to continue to provide excellent care to the children in your home. It has been several years since Kansas has reviewed and updated the rate structure, and this new plan is designed to help you provide for clothing expenses, activities, additional daycare payments and more. Furthermore, as a reflection of our commitment to improve support and services for foster parents, we will be moving to a twice a month payment schedule soon.

Along with this new rate structure are changes to the Level of Care (LOC) tool that KVC and St. Francis uses to evaluate children to best meet their needs. This new tool is tied to new placement types in the updated DCF rate structure. KVC has begun using this new LOC tool and we will continue to evaluate throughout the transition. Beginning October 1, in addition to evaluating each child, we will include a Caregiver Tool which is intended to capture the strengths and needs of the caregiver. We hope this addition will recognize the hard work foster parents are doing to increase the well-being of children in their care and take these factors into consideration when determining the way a child is scored.

Below is a graph of the update rate structure. We will continue to provide updates about this transition as we approach October 1, and if you have any questions about this change, please reach out to your Family Services Coordinator.