Missouri Bill Would Let Unlicensed Religious Facilities Take Foster Children

Missouri lawmakers are considering a bill that would let certain unlicensed religious facilities receive foster children from the state. That should alarm anyone who knows this state’s history.

Our firm represents survivors of abuse from Missouri boarding schools and religious residential programs. We have helped secure justice for more than three dozen survivors. We know what happened in these places. We know what weak oversight produces. And we know Missouri has no business creating a new path that puts foster children into facilities outside the ordinary licensing process.

That is what this bill would do.

Right now, children in state custody are supposed to be placed in licensed, contracted facilities. This bill would carve out another route for certain unlicensed Christian residential facilities. Instead of full state licensure, those facilities could register through the Missouri Association of Christian Child Care Facilities and rely on peer accreditation.

That is a bad idea on its face. It is worse in Missouri, where unlicensed religious programs already left a long trail of damage.

Our firm has represented survivors from institutions where children reported forced labor, sexual abuse, starvation, force-feeding, torture, and isolated imprisonment. We have seen allegations of children being pinned down, humiliated, threatened, cut off from help, and treated as if obedience mattered more than safety. Those were not isolated breakdowns. They were the predictable result of closed systems with too little outside scrutiny and too much institutional power.

Missouri should have learned from Agape, Circle of Hope, and other abusive programs. Instead, this bill would move in the wrong direction. It would create a second-track system for certain religious facilities that want the benefit of state placements without the burden of ordinary state licensing.

The bill also would create a new Child Protection Board to oversee facilities registered through that association. As proposed, the board would include people tied to the same faith-based childcare world it is supposed to oversee. That structure should trouble anyone paying attention. When insiders regulate insiders, children lose.

Supporters of the bill say Missouri needs more placement options. The foster system is under strain. That much is true. There are too many children in custody and not enough safe placements. Some children with serious needs have ended up in hospitals, mental-health facilities, or placements outside Missouri because the system has run out of room.

But shortage does not justify lowering the bar.

When the state takes custody of a child, it takes on a serious duty. That duty does not shrink because placements are hard to find. It does not disappear because a private facility prefers peer review over state regulation. Foster children are among the most vulnerable children in Missouri. The answer is to expand safe, accountable placements—not to create loopholes for unlicensed institutions.

Supporters also point out that the Children’s Division would still investigate abuse allegations and could revoke a facility’s registration after substantiated abuse. That misses the point. By then, the child is already there. Real protection starts before placement. It starts with licensing, inspections, reporting requirements, and meaningful enforcement. Cleanup after abuse is not a substitute for preventing it.

This bill gets the sequence backward. It relaxes the front-end safeguards, then promises intervention later if something goes wrong. Missouri has already tried versions of that approach. Survivors are still living with the consequences.

Lawmakers should reject this bill.

Missouri needs more foster placements. It needs more qualified providers. It needs more urgency. But it also needs memory. It should not respond to a placement crisis by reviving the same conditions that let abusive institutions operate behind closed doors for years.

If a facility wants to receive foster children from the State of Missouri, it should meet the same licensing standards everyone else must meet. No carve-outs. No softer track. No private workaround.

Children in state custody deserve better than this bill.

If you or someone you love was abused in a Missouri boarding school, religious residential program, or youth home, contact McGonagle Johnson.  Our firm has represented survivors across Missouri and is on the frontlines of the fight to hold abusive institutions accountable.