‘That kid is me’

New leader is overhauling child welfare in Missouri; it’s personal

Darrell Missey is standing in a room of social workers who toil in Missouri’s beleaguered child welfare system, telling the story of a young boy.

The 7-year-old lived in a loving home with his parents and two younger sisters. But his mom, who was a “wonderful and brilliant” person, suffered from mental illness. And one day, a severe episode from her bipolar disorder led to an incident that could have split the family apart.

Had the state removed the children from the home because of concerns about instability within the family, it would have changed the trajectory of the young boy’s life, as well as his siblings.

The 56-year-old Missey has told this story often since he was brought in last year to rescue Missouri’s long-troubled Children’s Division. He shares it with caseworkers and lawmakers, child advocates and community partners in every pocket of the state. When he does, he provides a glimpse of the system he envisions, one that prioritizes keeping families together.

His words, spoken fast and with purpose, begin to sink in. The boy in the story isn’t just any child — it’s Missey himself. And the job he’s held for 16 months is personal.

“I fully believe that in 1974, if you had to come to my house, there would have been requests for custody,” he told the group of social workers and other Children’s Division employees, meaning they would have recommended he and his sisters be put into foster care. “Instead, we did a safety plan. Grandma came over, and mom went to the mental hospital. … Our family stayed together.”

And that’s the way it should work, if possible, Missey said.

But too often in Missouri it does not.

The state has among the highest number of children in foster care per capita nationwide. On the last day of 2021, there were 14,137 kids in care, which represented a 34 percent increase from a decade earlier.

A former juvenile court judge, Missey wants to transform Missouri’s system, which has a rate double the national average for removing kids.

He pitched a plan to the General Assembly this sesFor

sion to hire 100 new caseworkers who would focus on family preservation. He’s fought for and received substantial raises for workers to stave off high turnover. And he’s hoping for the go ahead to hire 34 attorneys to give caseworkers support inside the courtroom as they fight for what’s best for a child.

As social workers and child advocates listen to Missey — and see what he and his boss Robert Knodell, acting director of the Department of Social Services, have done in just 16 months — there’s a sense for the first time in many years that real change could be coming. Already, there are nearly 1,000 fewer children in care.

“We are in a better place right now than we’ve been in a long time,” said Emily van Schenkhof, executive director of the Children’s Trust Fund, Missouri’s foundation for child abuse prevention. “Because we have a director, a department that is looking this issue straight in the face and has recognized and articulated that preventing child abuse and supporting vulnerable families is the best strategy for improving outcomes.

“We cannot investigate our way out of this problem, we cannot use our court system to get us out of this problem.”

Missey knows the state’s child welfare system through the eyes of a judge, which he was for 19 years in Jefferson County in eastern Missouri where he grew up. From the bench, he saw families crippled by poverty, addiction or mental illness torn apart in the name of protecting the child.

He knows it from the viewpoint of a young attorney who served as a guardian ad litem for kids trapped in the system. Missey remembers what a 15-year-old boy in foster care told him nearly three decades ago: “I’ve been taken by force. I’ve been kidnapped.” Those words are never far from Missey’s mind. “I think that when you come to this work from a place of experience, you are better at doing the work,” said Lori Ross, a child advocate in Missouri for more than 30 years. “Doing it matters to him in a way that it doesn’t to someone who’s just filling a seat.”

It’s the third lens he sees through, the one where Missey views a system that could have easily split up his family in the 1970s, that at times brings him the most clarity.

“I mean it when I say this,” Missey told the Star. “As I do this work, I always have in my mind Leroy and Diane Missey. I think about my parents. I think about how fragile our circumstances were. I think of what would have happened to us if somebody would have just charged in and taken the children, just in case.

“This is a system that deals with family trauma by busting that family apart, even temporarily. Is that the right way to do this?”

His family’s story

That day when he was 7, Missey’s mother, Diane, called the family into the living room.

“She took out the family Bible, which was one of these big things that my dad got when he was in the military. You know, one of the big ones, where we write all the family birthdays,” Missey said. “She got it out, she turned to the Book of Revelation. And she told us about how the world was going to end, we were all going to die, and we had to get ready.”

Thinking “that’s not right,” the young Missey looked over at his dad, Leroy, the strong and patient family presence.

“She was thinking people were watching us, the neighbors were watching us,” Missey said. “She had stopped doing the things she used to do. You know, she stopped doing the dishes. The condition of the house got really bad. I mean, it was piles of clothes everywhere.”

Soon after that meeting, his mother called for another one. Again, in the living room.

“She said, ‘I’m sick,’” Missey said. “She said, ‘Some people have sicknesses that affect different parts of their body. And I have a sickness that affects my brain. And I have to go to a hospital to get it fixed. And I’m going to be gone for a while.’”

But she assured her son and 5-year-old daughter that Grandma would help and take care of the baby and “Dad’s gonna be here, and it’s going to be fine.”

Those three months “were the darkest of my childhood,” Missey said, referring to missing his mother. But he knew she was getting the help she needed, which back then was shock therapy and a mixture of drugs.

He and his sisters couldn’t see or talk to their mom during that time, but after one of his dad’s visits with her, he brought back two yarn dolls she had made Darrell and his younger sister, Michelle.

Missey still has the green doll with the big orange eyes and yellow hair, which he keeps in his office. For him, it signifies his mother’s love and that when she was away for that time, she was thinking of him.

“She left not because she didn’t love me,” Missey said. “She fought for her mental health and I knew part of that was for us. (The doll) signified not just her struggle, but her success and our relationship. It meant all that to me.”

As a kid, he could have never known that he would use dolls like this, ones that he made himself, to show a system of overworked and overwhelmed workers that they’re appreciated.

As an adult, he said he can empathize with every child and family he’s encountered through his work in and around child welfare. And his resolve to improve the system in the state where he grew up only grows stronger.

“I always thought when I was a young lawyer, when I was a judge, and now I think, but for the grace of God, that kid is me. And that family is mine,” Missey said. “You change up anything in my family’s makeup, and it could have been very, very different for us. … They would have destroyed us when what we needed was help.

“We work in a system that hasn’t always valued the ability of families like mine to take care of themselves like we did, or to get them resources so that they can take care of themselves like we did.”

Chosen to lead

Soon after his October 2021 appointment by Gov. Mike Parson to serve as acting director of DSS, Knodell set out to learn more about the “real challenges” facing one of its largest agencies, the Children’s Division.

“We were at a crossroads,” said Knodell, who had been the governor’s deputy chief of staff. “I think department-wide, you know, many, many of these programs — Child Welfare chief among them — have been under-invested in for a long time. That manifests itself in staffing issues as well as programmatic issues and the sum of those two really, really strain your culture.”

As he met with people to get their take on struggles inside the child welfare agency, he kept hearing the same advice.

Talk to Judge Missey.

The judge had become known for his work in preserving families in Jefferson County and his knowledge of child welfare. Missey first ran for associate circuit court judge in 2002 after seeing how the judge at the time “wanted to take everybody” into state care.

When the two met in November 2021, Knodell wanted to know Missey’s thoughts on the system. And the then-judge laid it all out. He shared what he had seen from the bench and as a young attorney.

“I saw a system that was reactive,” Missey told the Star. “It was reactive and driven by fear. It’s like we see some trouble in this family, and we’re going to react to it based on our fear of the worst possible outcome.”

He said he often thinks of that 15-year-old boy who told him he felt he’d been kidnapped by the state.

“He said to me, ‘Darrell, I did not ask to be here,’” Missey said. “‘My mom’s problems were being handled just fine before you all showed up.’ … And I never forgot it.”

When he became a judge, Missey started asking children who came before him one question.

“If I could wave a magic wand and have something happen, what would it be?”

And they all wanted to go home, Missey said. “I saw so many families that were like that, and that if only we could give them help, we would not have to do this thing,” he said. “I think we should come up with the resources to make removal only necessary in circumstances of real danger of abuse. “That would be a different approach, wouldn’t it?” At the end of that 2021 meeting, Knodell asked Missey if he’d be interested in leading the Children’s Division.

Within weeks, Missey would put retirement on hold, rent a one-room apartment with a futon in downtown Jefferson City and make regular weekend trips to Florida where his wife and three grown daughters live.

“Given what I’ve seen, I could not say no to this,” Missey said. “This system is so important to so many people, and I’ve got the opportunity to help make it right.

“That is something that is the opportunity of a lifetime to me.”

A system in despair

Missey was the seventh Children’s Division director in less than four years. When he took over, more than 14,100 kids were in state care.

The state’s largest circuits, in Kansas City and St. Louis, were experiencing a critical shortage of investigators. Vacancies in most positions plagued offices across Missouri. And because of the turnover, especially in Kansas City where it eventually topped 100 percent, children faced a revolving door of caseworkers and were lingering in care too long.

Overwhelmed workers, with caseloads two and three times the national standard of 15, said they were afraid children would be hurt before they could protect them.

“I knew every office was struggling,” Missey said. “They were all struggling in different spaces, different ways.”

To get to know his regional leaders, he held a virtual meeting.

“They were not sharing everything at that moment,” Missey said. “I was brand new.”

He also knew that everyone may not be embracing his thoughts on change. At one point, Brian West, the Kansas City regional director, spoke up.

“He said, ‘I think it’d be great if you came up with a new policy, that for the next year, we would have no new policies,’” Missey recalled West saying. “‘Just let us do our job for a moment and get our feet on the ground and figure out where we’re at.’

“And I thought, ‘That’s exactly right.’”

So Missey went on a listening and learning tour and spoke with staff in all of Missouri’s 46 circuits. Late into the night, for many nights, he read complaints and concerns that he asked them to submit in his “vision box,” which was in the shape of a house.

And in an effort to fill vacancies, he spent one Saturday last year writing to 150 long-time employees who recently left the agency. He told them that Knodell had approved a hefty raise for workers, about other changes and that he thought “more help is coming.”

“I wrote out letters that said, ‘Thank you for working with us. … If you ever consider coming back, you’d be very welcome,’” he said. “I got reports that some people came back. Not all 150, that would have been great. (But) I’m hoping that more will come back.”

Knowing that he wanted to be the right leader for this time, Missey also did his homework. He turned to David Novak’s podcast and his book — “Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen” — about how he turned companies like KFC around.

He said he soaked in all the advice he could, especially what Novak said about recognizing the good work of his employees. Novak gave out a rubber chicken to signify someone had done really good work.

“They began to covet the chicken,” Missey said. “So I was thinking about what I could give.”

And he turned back to his own story and childhood, and what he had kept all these years.

That’s when the Yarn Doll Award was born. He searched the Internet and figured out how his mom — who died in 2018 — made them. After buying a whole lot of yarn and materials for the eyes and noses, Missey spent his off time making doll after doll. So far, he’s given out more than 50 dolls to workers and still more to family court judges, community partners and other members of the child welfare system.

“Every one of them I make, I’m thinking this is for somebody who is helping a kid like me,” Missey said. “It really is a piece of my heart when I give them a yarn doll.”

Amanda Hardy received her second yarn doll from Missey the day he visited the Cass County office in late March. She and a colleague were recognized for their work in returning a baby to Missouri who wasn’t supposed to leave the state.

Listening to Missey speak and seeing how he acknowledges that their job isn’t easy makes her even more grateful that she returned to the division full time in November after several months part time.

“This is all very personal for him as it is for us, because we’re on the front lines,” Hardy said, her newest yarn doll in her hands. “So he’s recognizing what we do. We haven’t had a lot of directors do that.

“It’s nice to know that even though he didn’t work the frontlines like we do, he’s been in the field. He has his own personal story — all of us have a personal story, that’s why we’re here.”

Laura Farmer, executive director of CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) of Southwest Missouri, said Missey has a “great message” for workers statewide.

“People are listening and excited about what he is saying and doing,” Farmer said. “To have a leader that is investing in them and supporting them and their role will make a huge difference.”

The yarn dolls are a good example, Farmer said. “To take his own time to create something,” she said, “I think that speaks a lot to who he is.”

‘Acknowledging the problems’

Speaking to lawmakers a year ago in April, three months into the job, Missey rattled off the challenges his agency had been facing: the Children’s Division was down by 237 workers.

Hiring blitzes weren’t working and staffers in every circuit statewide were overwhelmed and underpaid. Most caseloads were double and triple what they should be.

He was just getting started.

“They’re tired,” Missey told a legislative committee about Children’s Division workers statewide. “They are discouraged. And they are spread mightily thin. And they need our help. … My perspective is, we’re treading water. We’re doing our best to stem the bleeding.”

All eyes in the room stayed on him as he spoke bluntly about an agency that for decades has shielded itself from scrutiny and transparency. He said what lawmakers, advocates and attorneys across Missouri have wanted someone to acknowledge for decades.

“The biggest emotion I had was relief,” said van Schenkhof, of the Children’s Trust Fund. “The department was acknowledging the problems and the director was being candid. Because you can’t solve problems when you’re denying there is a problem.”

After reading media reports describing the April 5 hearing and listening to the shock in the voices of people who appreciated his transparency, Missey talked to his boss.

“I said, ‘Am I OK?’” Missey said, smiling as he recalled his conversation with Knodell. “He said, ‘I gotta tell you Darrell, I love it! Rip the Band-Aid off and show the whole world what’s going on … so that they can help.’”

Knodell said often in state governments the goal can be to “try to accentuate the positive and distract people away from the negative or not confront it.”

But he doesn’t see it that way. Not if you are trying to solve an urgent problem.

“Real change won’t come until you’re willing to, you know, have honest conversations,” Knodell said. “And for those that want to help, so that they’re not reaching in the dark or trying to figure out a way to be helpful, let’s sit down and chart the course together.”

Rep. Sarah Unsicker, a Shrewsbury Democrat who is on the Children and Families Committee, said it’s unusual for any director to say his division has problems.

“I think division directors are afraid to go against the governor,” Unsicker said. “They don’t want to say something that goes against what he wants. … (But) it’s hard to find out what they need when they don’t tell us — and they often don’t tell us.”

Missey has, she said, and she applauds that. “Children’s Division cannot fix the problem by themselves,” she said. “We have to get resources throughout the state and just take care of people to help family preservation. Broken people don’t make as good of parents. And it’s hard to fix that without fixing brokenness.”

A change in Kansas City

The way Brian West sees it, Knodell’s and Missey’s willingness to speak the truth gave him license to do the same.

West — the director of the Children’s Division Kansas City region — had been hit with a turnover rate of workers that climbed to more than 100 percent about a year ago. At one point in 2022, he had as few as 10 trained investigators — about one-fifth the number he should have. Other departments were crippled with vacancies, too.

West didn’t have enough parent aides last year for kids in care to have timely family visits. And because of a lack of staff and the churn of workers, some children were lingering in care longer than they should.

“I think what (Knodell’s and Missey’s transparency) did was open the door for me personally to have very open discussions with my court partners,” West said. “To have open discussions with our community agencies that work with our families to say, ‘We’re struggling. We are really struggling right now.’”

Angie Blumel, president and CEO of Jackson County CASA, has noticed a more open agency not only at the state level but locally as well.

“Just the willingness to say, ‘We need help,’ created a culture — in Jackson County anyway — where we all wanted to step in and assist because really, it’s about the kids,” Blumel said. “It’s not about pointing fingers and laying blame. It’s about what is best for the children and we all want to do that.

“And a lot of people, they stepped up. Our community agencies stepped up and said, ‘OK, what can we do? What can we do to help? What can we take off the workers’ plate?’”

In the end, a group of organizations came together, partnered with Centennial United Methodist Church and trained volunteers to help supervise family time, Blumel said.

The Jackson County office still has turnover, but not what it was. And new workers continue to come in.

From January to the end of April 2022, the local office had 19 new workers start, West said. In that same four-month period this year, 38 workers started new positions.

“The more we get coming in the door, the better we do at retention,” West said.

His ‘closing argument’

During his visit to the Cass County child welfare office, Missey leaned back in his chair as he spoke with the Star. He was ready to talk about “our plan.”

He slid across a table a black folder with a plastic cover that contained 24 pages that make the case for real change and reform in Missouri. He wrote the report — which he calls his “closing argument” — leaning on discussions he’s had all over the state.

“We are unable to recruit and retain front line workers,” the first page of the plan reads. “We lack essential personnel needed to operate a proactive and holistic child welfare system.”

On page three: “Given the extreme expense of this system, it makes financial sense to invest in services needed to reduce the use of foster care.”

Missey outlines four critical steps that need to be taken, including increasing workers’ salaries, adding staff to lower caseloads and allowing some workers to concentrate solely on prevention “to preserve family integrity and keep children out of foster care whenever possible.”

Late last year, Missey presented a “rough draft” of the report at a judicial engagement team meeting in Jackson County. Blumel was there.

“I was moved in that I hadn’t seen something like that from the division before,” she said. “It’s very forward thinking, specifically in terms of families being engaged in the system and also preservation of families.”

Child advocates and workers inside the system have been pushing for that for years. But there was often hesitation, the money wasn’t there and child welfare experts say it was like they were too busy putting out fires every day and didn’t have the resources or staff to actually focus on preventing the fires.

“We already knew before Darrell Missey came to the Children’s Division that kids don’t have great outcomes in foster care,” West said. “That’s just what the statistics and the data show.”

But Missey’s report — and the plan he and his staff are selling — hammers that home even more.

For his part, Missey has worked his way through the Capitol, making sure legislators see the plan.

“Every chance I can, every chance I get, I give it to one, (saying) ‘Have you read our plan yet? Here.’”

The report — “A Plan to Rebuild & Reform Children’s Division” — takes a crucial step toward being an agency that “does prevention,” Missey said.

“We don’t do any of it right now,” he said. “We don’t have the people to do it. We didn’t have the philosophy to do it. We did not have the tools to do it. This is the first step toward that.

“How successful that will be will depend on how much of the rest of the system we can bring with us. We have to bring the juvenile officers with us. We have to bring the courts with us. We have to bring the lawyers with us.”

The last two pages of the report are an email Missey received late last year from a caseworker that he says “touched his heart” and further fueled his desire to make lasting change in Missouri.

“I wanted to let you know we appreciate you and all of your efforts,” wrote the worker, who started at the agency more than 30 years ago and has “left and come back twice.” “I know you are doing everything that can be done to turn things around.

“… Now the but,” she wrote. “I am so tired and discouraged. I bounce from emergency to emergency trying to keep kids alive because of the severity of mental health needs. I have never had so many kids that are suicidal and homicidal.”

The worker continued: “You don’t need a survey to tell you I am failing my families, I am failing my kids, and I am most certainly failing to keep up with documentation and paperwork. … I do appreciate you. I completely agree with your goals. Eventually they will be attainable.”

She thanked Missey for reading the two-page email and indicated that his leadership is making a difference.

“My yarn doll, Hope, continues to have a place of honor on my desk,” she wrote.