Lindsey Stephenson

Lindsey Stephenson, LSCSW, is President of KVC Missouri. This nonprofit includes KVC Niles, which has a strong 138-year legacy of providing children’s behavioral health programs in the heart of Kansas City, MO, as well as a range of new community-based services for children and families such as pre-service training for adults to become foster and adoptive parents, training on trauma-informed caregiving to support youth with higher needs, mental health treatment, and education. Learn more at www.kvcmissouri.org.

Lindsey Stephenson has been with KVC for 15 years. She was previously Vice President of Operations for KVC Kansas based in Olathe. In this role, she led a team that dramatically grew community support for children who are in foster care due to abuse or neglect, increasing the organization’s foster and adoptive families by 78%, from 500 to 892 homes. KVC Kansas sponsors more foster and adoptive families than any other organization in the state, making it more likely that children can be matched with a family in their home community rather than experiencing educational disruption. She also expanded community partnerships, such as collaborating with Global Orphan Project’s CarePortal to create Protective Homes in Kansas and working with community mental health centers and churches to strengthen families and safely prevent children from entering foster care.

Stephenson and KVC have been on the forefront of child welfare best practices including creating trauma-informed care, reducing residential care of children, and helping children and teens grow up in families through evidence-based family strengthening and mental health services. KVC’s historic first-ever creation of trauma-informed foster care was examined in a five-year study with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Child Trends and Dr. Glenn Saxe of New York University. In addition, KVC implemented the philosophies of the Family First Prevention Services Act decades before it was federal law. For example, KVC helped right-sized congregate care of Kansas children in foster care from 30% in 1996 to just 4% in 2013. Knowing that “children grow best in families,” KVC has sought residential treatment only for children with higher mental or behavioral health needs.

Stephenson led the transformation of KVC’s youth residential center in Kansas City, KS into a Qualified Residential Treatment Center (QRTP), in line with the Family First Act. This treatment center is licensed to care for up to 16 adolescent youth with mental and behavioral health needs at a time by offering comprehensive services and helping them successfully transition back to family-like settings with relative caregivers, foster family homes, or their birth family homes.

In addition to overseeing KVC Kansas’ Child Placing Agency (CPA) and QRTP, she oversaw its Admissions, Quality and Data Management, and Community Outreach teams. Stephenson received her graduate and undergraduate degrees in social work from the University of Kansas.