For more than 50 years, KVC Health Systems has provided heart-centered services to children and families. These services strengthen families, prevent child abuse and neglect, and help both children and adults achieve mental health wellness.

KVC has grown from a grassroots volunteer effort to support children in Kansas City, Kansas, to a national leader with over 60 locations across the U.S. and best-practice training and consultation around the world. Throughout this journey, KVC’s presence in its home region of Kansas and Missouri has continued to expand.

If you are wondering what mental health and child welfare services KVC provides and in which areas, this guide is for you! Get ready to learn how you or others can take advantage of KVC’s child and family services. Or, if you’re not looking for services, learn how you can join KVC as an advocate, volunteer, financial supporter, event sponsor, foster or adoptive parent, or even team member. Your support helps us achieve our vision: to create a world in which every person is safe and connected to a strong family and a healthy community.

KVC Health Systems

KVC Health Systems is a family of nonprofit organizations that share the same values in how they serve children, families and communities.

Jason Hooper is the President and CEO of KVC Health Systems. The Executive Team also includes Erin Stucky, Chief Operations Officer; Chad Anderson, Chief Clinical Officer; Lonnie Johnson, Chief Information Officer; and Sherri Lohe, Chief Financial Officer. Most of these leaders have been with KVC for more than 20 years. This reflects how our values-driven culture and charitable mission create a meaningful, rewarding place to work.

KVC Health Systems Executive Team

As the parent organization, KVC Health Systems does not provide direct services to children and families. Rather it provides administrative support to its subsidiaries or business units. By centralizing critical functions like Accounting and Human Resources, KVC’s local teams can focus on their core competencies such as social work, therapy and inpatient children’s mental health treatment. The shared services model also ensures consistency and reduces costs. It enables smaller business units to access high-quality experts and resources that might otherwise be out of their reach.

KVC’s shared services teams are Accounting, the Ball Event Center, Business Information Technology, Employee Engagement, Fund Development, Human Resources, the KVC Institute, Legal, and Marketing & Communications.

These administrative teams must be agile and innovative as they provide the infrastructure that supports one of the nation’s broadest continuums of care.

Our Unique Continuum of Care

See below or click here to see a helpful graphic that explains our continuum of care. KVC’s expertise spans from preventative, educational services that are the least intensive way to help children and families, to community-based services like foster care, to high-end, acute inpatient children’s mental health treatment which is the most intensive way of helping a person in crisis. It is incredibly rare for a single organization to have a continuum of care this broad. This makes KVC an ideal partner for health and human service agencies that need deep expertise in serving families with complex needs.

It’s important to note that KVC does not have the same mix of services in each state. Each KVC subsidiary or local team has different programs and services based on its history in the community and local needs.

KVC Health Systems’ local subsidiaries are:

• Camber Mental Health
• KVC Kansas
• KVC Missouri
• KVC Nebraska
• KVC Kentucky
• KVC West Virginia
• KVC Foundation

Keep reading to learn more about the first three which serve children and families in Kansas and Missouri.

Camber Mental Health — Mental Health Treatment

Camber Mental Health is a nonprofit organization serving patients who are struggling with depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, the impacts of trauma, and other behavioral and mental health challenges. Our team implements innovative, neuroscience-based treatment approaches at our inpatient acute mental health hospitals and residential mental health treatment centers serving Kansas and Missouri. Camber is accredited by The Joint Commission and considered the gold standard in healthcare. Learn more about admissions here.

Camber’s Models of Treatment: Both levels of treatment include a full medical, clinical, and nursing assessment of each client, medication management, individual, family, and group therapy sessions, case coordination, 24/7 support and supervision from our skilled nursing staff, and innovative treatment and education to teach patients about their brains and how to regulate their emotions.

• Inpatient Mental Health Hospitalization — When a youth is actively in a mental health emergency, inpatient acute treatment at one of our hospitals provides them with immediate intensive clinical services to keep them and others safe. Some examples of a mental health emergency include a plan to attempt suicide, harm themselves or harm others. The goal of treatment is to stabilize the crisis the child is experiencing. Then they can discharge to a lower level of care as soon as safely possible and continue treatment in their community. Camber currently provides this level of treatment in Kansas City, Olathe and Wichita. It is a shorter-term treatment with stays typically between four to seven days.
  • Children’s Mercy + Camber Mental Health campus in Olathe provides comprehensive inpatient hospitalization for individuals of all ages, including youth (ages 6 to 18) and adults.
• Mental Health Residential Treatment — This provides youth with intensive clinical services in a home-like environment with 24-hour supervision and support from our trained clinicians and staff. A youth receiving this level of care is not actively experiencing an emergency but has ongoing struggles with their mental or behavioral health. Typically, they have engaged in outpatient services but haven’t experienced improvement. The goal is to teach youth emotion regulation and coping skills. They are given opportunities to practice their new skills while enjoying fun and educational community outings. Camber provides this level of treatment, also called PRTF, in Kansas City and Hays. It is a longer-term treatment with stays typically between one to three months.

KVC Kansas

The next subsidiary is KVC Kansas which provides child welfare and mental health services. Many people associate KVC Kansas with foster care. That’s a fair association, as KVC Kansas has been a foster care case management provider for the State of Kansas for decades and continually and actively supports hundreds of kinship caregivers and foster families.

But when you have a passion for helping children, teens and families as our team does, you quickly discover that the best approach to foster care is to safely prevent the need for foster care by strengthening families. This upstream work of preventing a crisis is talked about less often than foster care. But prevention efforts are proven to be up to 98% effective in keeping families together. Safely preventing the need for foster care means less trauma and separation for families. Additionally, these efforts are exponentially more cost-efficient.

The services KVC Kansas offers are:

• Family Strengthening and Prevention Programs
  • 2Generation Program: Free personalized, community-based services that tackle the root causes of poverty for families living below 200% of the poverty line within 27 specific Northeast and Southeast Kansas Counties.
  • Connect Parent Groups: Free parent and child attachment classes available to Kansas birth parents and foster parents caring for youth ages 8-18.
  • Healthy Families America: Free home visiting program providing family-focused and empathetic services for parents with a child under 24 months, pregnant parents with children at home or in foster care, and pregnant teens in foster care, available in seven Northeast Kansas counties.
  • Kansas PMTO: Free evidence-based parent training program to strengthen families and keep families safely together.
  • Rise Up: Free in-home and community-based support to help youth with behavioral health needs in Shawnee County and their families maintain stability and improve family dynamics.
  • Safe with Me: Batterer’s intervention program provides community-based educational and counseling services to domestic violence batterers in Johnson County who use dominating, controlling and abusive tactics in relationships.
  • Strengthening Families Program: Free parenting classes for Kansas families to improve parenting skills and build stronger bonds. Available to families caring for youth ages 6-11 who are not involved in foster care.
• Foster Care Case Management —KVC Kansas provides foster care case management services for all youth in foster care across 11 counties in eastern Kansas. With their foster care case management services, KVC Kansas also provides family reunification services, kinship care coordination and adoption services. Kansas is unique in using private, nonprofit agencies to provide case management services for youth and families experiencing foster care. KVC Kansas is the only organization that has continuously provided these services since privatization in 1996. This work is referred to as “permanency” because it focuses on helping each child and teen find a stable, permanent family and home.Learn more about the structure of these state contracts, family reunification success stories, kinship care and aftercare following a safe family reunification or adoption. KVC Kansas also provides independent living support for older youth.
• Foster & Adoptive Family Support — As a licensed child-placing agency, KVC Kansas recruits, trains and supports adults to be caregivers for children and teens in foster care. Learn more about the rewarding process of becoming a Kansas foster or adoptive parent here. You can also see profiles of children and teens who need loving, adoptive families here.
• Family Reunification & Aftercare —  The primary goal of foster care is to safely reunify children and teens with their families as soon as it is safely possible. In 2024, KVC Kansas helped 212 families safely reunify with their 366 children after experiencing foster care. KVC Kansas offers aftercare support for six months following reunification, permanent custodianship or adoption finalization. Therapists work in partnership with caregivers to keep youth safe and stable in their homes by providing intensive in-home services. They also connect fam
• Outpatient Behavioral Health — Finally, KVC Kansas has an outpatient behavioral health team that specializes in providing trauma-informed mental health services. Services include therapy, substance use disorder treatment and medication management. Learn more here.

KVC Missouri

With more than 20 locations including five regional campuses in St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Columbia, and St. James, KVC Missouri has a legacy of caring that stretches back to the early 1800s. KVC Missouri is the state’s most comprehensive children’s mental health and family services provider.

Through our broad continuum of care, we offer innovative quality care models, clinical expertise, and exceptional outcomes, including our groundbreaking work in trauma-informed care. Our 900 caring team members and network of supporters are actively working together across the state. We’re transforming children’s mental health in the Greater St. Louis region and throughout the state.

The primary services KVC Missouri offers are:

• KVC Academy — Our K-12 Therapeutic Education program provides an inclusive learning environment. Our trauma-informed team works to build trusting relationships with students and empowers them with individualized tools. Painting a brighter future for young people struggling with learning, mental health challenges or substance use disorders.
• Residential Psychiatric Treatment — Youth in this program receive intensive clinical services in a home-like environment with 24-hour supervision and support from our trained clinicians and staff. Youth learn emotion regulation and coping skills and practice their new skills while enjoying fun and educational community outings. This care helps each youth move beyond crisis ready to safely discharge and return to their community.
• Foster Family Support — We partner with the Missouri Department of Social Services to provide foster care services throughout the state of Missouri. We license and support foster homes across the state, providing general foster care services, including free screening, training, licensing and support. We also provide Treatment Foster Care, including training and licensing caregivers for youth who require a higher level of care as well as case management services for children in foster care in Missouri.
• Foster Parent Training — Prospective foster parents are required to complete 27 hours of in-class STARS training. KVC Missouri holds trainings two to three times per year in various regions.
• Meramec Adventure Ranch — A 1,200-acre therapeutic wilderness campus. Here, children from all types of backgrounds heal, as well as groups of adults. Using the great outdoors as a space for quietness and growth is a practice as old as time itself. The Ranch also offers thrilling adventures and transformative experiences that cater to groups of all kinds, including athletes, church groups, schools, scouts, families, and more. 

For More Information

We hope this guide has helped you understand KVC’s mental health and child welfare services in Kansas and Missouri. Here’s a quick recap and where to go for more information:

• For inpatient psychiatric treatment or residential treatment, contact Camber Mental Health at (913) 890-7468. Plus, follow Camber on Instagram @cambermentalhealth or on Facebook.
• For child welfare, foster care and mental health services in Kansas, contact KVC Kansas at www.kvckansas.org. Or call (913) 499-8100 for family strengthening programs, permanency, and aftercare. Plus, follow KVC Kansas on Facebook here.
• For foster care services, our educational program or mental health services in Missouri, contact KVC Missouri at www.kvcmissouri.org or (844) 424-3577. Plus, follow KVC Missouri on Facebook here.
• For our administrative support teams like HR or Accounting, contact KVC Health Systems at www.kvc.org or (913) 322-5900. Plus, follow KVC Health Systems on Facebook here or on Instagram here.

If you’d like to support KVC’s mission, learn about the best ways to get involved.