Missouri’s child welfare agency director to retire next month • Missouri Independent

The head of Missouri’s child welfare department will retire effective Nov. 1, an agency spokesman told The Independent on Monday.

Darrell Missey has served as Director of Children’s Services since January 2022. Housed within the Department of Human Services, the agency oversees the foster care system and investigates child abuse and neglect.

There were frequent changes in leadership in the division, although Missy stayed there longer than most. He was the sixth director under Gov. Mike Parson, who was sworn in in 2018. Missey’s three-year term is the longest for a director under Parson.

Missey previously served two decades as a district judge in Jefferson County, where he oversaw juvenile cases. He ran for judge by criticizing a sitting district judge for being overly willing to remove children from their families and terminate their parental rights.

As children’s director, he spoke openly about trying to reduce the number of children Missouri takes into foster care and reallocating resources to prevent them from entering the system. When he came to power, there were more than 14,000 children in care. There are now 11,539, as of August.

Last year, Missy led a campaign to obtain legislative funding for 100 new children’s units. staff positions to focus on preventive efforts, which he called the first step in an attempt to “rebuild and reform” his unit. Missouri does too little to prevent children from ending up in foster care in the first place, he says. saidFinally, there are too few resources to move foster children into stable, permanent homes.

He inherited a department that had been under scrutiny from lawmakers over issues ranging from missing foster children and unlicensed boarding schools to serious personnel problems.

Staffing problems in a tight labor market have delayed child protection investigations. These pending cases have has decreased in recent months as staffing levels have recovered.

Kayla Weligger will serve as interim director of children’s services, said Bailey Watts, a spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services. Uehligger currently serves as Director of Operational Excellence.

Weligger has been with the children’s department since 2013, with experience as a front-line child abuse and neglect investigator, family-centered services and foster care specialist, supervisor and specialist, Watts said.

“The search for a new director will begin,” Watts said in an email, but did not immediately provide a timeline.

The new governor will take office in January when Parson leaves office due to term limits. Both of the party’s leading gubernatorial candidates—Republican Mike Kehoe of Jefferson City and Democrat Crystal Quaid of Springfield— publicly expressed support for salary increases in the Children’s Department to improve recruitment and retention.