Commission On Children’s Justice Considers Changes To Report On Child Welfare System

The Missouri Supreme Court’s Commission on Children’s Justice is debating the provisions going into their report of how to fix the state’s troubled child welfare system while lawmakers are already making changes of their own. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice John Holstein chairs the commission. He says there will probably need to be something in the final report that provides for a review in the future of how many of the panel’s recommendations are actually put in place and how well those recommendations are actually working. Commission members debate who that agency should be and promise to take it up the next time they meet. While the Commission fine tunes what will be in the final report due out in mid-June, lawmakers facing a mid-May end of legislative session are already taking some of the preliminary recommendations to craft new laws now.