May 23, 2025 • 12 mins
Nobody ever said parenting was easy. And for families in crisis, Kansas Legal Services offers the Parent Advocate Program. It's designed to help keep children in their homes and keep families functioning. Parent advocates Shyla Estes and Jill Ayers discuss some of the many ways this program benefits our community.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is the Wichita Weekend Podcast from iHeartRadio Stations ninety
seven point nine, B ninety eight, one oh two to one,
The Bowl, Channel nine sixty three and All one oh
seven three. I'm your host, Don Guidis. Thanks for joining us.
Welcome to the Wichita Weekend Podcast. Our guests today come
to us from the Parent Advocate Program of Kansas Legal Services.
(00:25):
We have Jill Airs in the studio. Jill's a good
friend of ours. She's been to Wichita Weekend interviews in
the past. We also have Shila Estes, she is a
lead parent Advocate. Welcome to Wichita Weekend the podcast. Jill,
you were telling me a little bit before we began recording.
What is this program all about and why is it here.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
The Parent Advocate Program is a program within Kansas Legal
Services and what we do is when DCF has become
involved with a family there's been a call for an
investigation on their home. DCF goes in. If they see
issues in the home that need to be be changed
(01:08):
or need see things that the family needs help with
in keeping the kids in the home from going into
foster care. They send us a referral. We go in
and we meet with that family totally voluntary. The family
does not have to work with us, they don't want to,
but we go in and help identify the strengths of
the family and identify what the issues are, how we
(01:28):
can help, and if there's a legal piece involved, we
send a referral over to our legal department. We help
with all kinds of things. I mean, just depending on
the needs of the family. We can you know, if
it's housing, safe and suitable housing that they need. We
have landlords that we work with that we can hook
them up with if they need help with with getting
(01:52):
birth certificates.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
We have tons of cases and every single one has
their own unique story, their own unique situation. So we
go in and we look at their strengths and we
really work off those strengths with the goal to make
sure that they are stable before we leave the home
and that they're self sufficient enough to be able to
(02:13):
keep DCF out of the picture for good.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
That sounds simple, but I bet it is far from it.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
One thing unique about our program is we are able
to step outside of the box if we need to,
and we have advocates. There are eight of us in
different counties around Kansas, and we all come from very
diverse backgrounds and that brings a lot to the table
in terms of being able to network and think outside
(02:41):
of the box and come up with resources and come
up with different ideas and so working together, many times
we are able to come up with resources and help
for the families that some other agencies maybe aren't able to.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yeah, exactly, well, I question pop just in my head, Shilah.
How did you happen to get involved? How did your
past inform where you are today working with this group.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Well, I am one of those people with lived experience.
I myself have struggled through life. I have children of
my own, and I remember having a lot of people
help me. They gave me a hand up to be
able to make it through. So when I was offered
this job, I really had the heart for it. I
started off as just an advocate and then later I
(03:31):
became the lead And so yeah, I just have a
huge heart for helping the people that we help.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
All right, And like you say that, you're kind of
the early intervention. Yes, if you would, So how do
people find you DCF?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
All of our referrals come from DCF. Okay, And well,
now we are also able to get referrals from other
Family First agencies, but most of our referrals we are
funded through a grant through DC. But most of our referrals,
like I said, when DCF goes in to investigate a
home and feels like the family needs help and wants
(04:11):
to keep the kids in the home and not go
into foster care, they send a referral over to us.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Now, Jill, let me ask you a question. Is it
possible for a family to self refer?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Right now, we cannot take self referrals, although any family
that has had contact with DCF can contact their worker
and ask them to send us a referral. If they
feel like they need help with any actually anything to
keep their child in the home, they can just contact
the worker that contacted them from DCF and ask them
(04:42):
to send Kansas Legal Services Parent Advocate Program and referral.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
So they can't self refer, but they can.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Request absolutely, okay.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And that's that's important to keep in mind because you know,
some families might work better with one personnel and others
might work better with another.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
There and there are many things that some times people
might not think about. And you know, if they've had
DCF involvement and they have, Like I had one dad
that had recently gotten his seventeen year old son returned
to him and he was involved with DCF because the
child refused to go to school. So a truancy call
came in and they sent a referral and the dad said,
(05:21):
you know, I'm ready to give up because he won't
go to school. The schools refusing to give him an IP.
He's not getting what he needs and so he's refusing
to go to school. He said, I don't know what
to do. I don't have any experience with this. I'm
ready to just send him back. I was able to
go contact the school, get an IP set up, educate
dad on how to maneuver that IEP and what his
(05:43):
rights were. We kind of educated him on what his
rights as far as the child's education was, and we
had the meeting. The child got into school. I contacted
him back as for a follow up a couple weeks later,
a couple of months later, and he said he's in
school making a's and b's doing wonderful. So the family,
that little piece, the dad was ready to give up.
(06:06):
That child would have gone into foster care because of
that piece. So sometimes parents don't realize what pieces we
can help with. So if there's anything you know, that
they feel like can help keep that child in their home,
they need to request a referral be sent over.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
And the important thing I think to remember is act
early early intervention.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Right, Yes, that's very much key, And I also wanted
to just add on to that that it doesn't necessarily
have to be through DCF anymore. We can now accept
referrals through any Family First programs that are also partnered
with DCF, So any of those partner agencies can also
refer families over to the Parent Advocate program and then
(06:47):
that way we can kind of just wrap around families
and give them the support and help that they need.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Like agencies like Families Together, we are most of us.
Most of the advocates are educational advocates as well, so
some of the other programs like Families Together, you know,
if they need help, if a family needs assistants maneuvering
through the IEP process or educational stuff, they can that
agency can send us a refral.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Do you find that as the years go by your
services are more in demand as the.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Years go by, Absolutely, especially right now in Kansas where
we have you know, almost seven thousand children in foster care,
and we don't have enough foster homes, and you know,
kids are bouncing around the state and without a home,
and most parents want to be good parents. They do.
Sometimes kids that go into foster care sometimes their parents
(07:40):
were foster children. They just didn't have the training and
the parenting skills that they needed to parent. But they
want to parent and they want to be good parents,
and they just need that little that extra support and training.
And many times we go into work with a parent
and some of us think are little things. You know,
these parents have never parented sober, some of them, not
(08:03):
all of them obviously, but some never parented sober. So
the little things like getting kids enrolled in school, getting
you know, finding safe and suitable housing, things that we
would think would be you know, easy things to do,
can be very overwhelming for them. So just having that
little bit of support can not only help those kids
stay out of foster care, but it helps generations, you know,
(08:26):
that their kids kids stay out of foster care and
their kids kids stay at of OSCAR. You know, it's
a big piece of what we do is help people
families identify their informal supports because a lot of people
don't realize that they do have supports out there. It
might be a neighbor, it might be a counselor at
the school, it might be someone in a church close
(08:46):
by their area. We hook people up with informal supports
and help them identify their informal supports.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Our guests today are from the Parent Advocate Program of
Kansas Legal Services. We have Shila Estes and Bill Airs
here in the Wichita Weekend podcast studio and downtown Wichita,
and we've just been talking about what they do and
how they keep families together and hopefully keep kids in
the home and a million other things. I don't know
how you do all you do? How many people are
(09:15):
doing what you do.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
There are eight of us with the Parent Advocate program
at KLS and like, so we're spread out around Kansas.
We have an advocate. There are two of us advocates
in Wichita.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
You know, we cover eleven counties total, and the advocates
are kind of spread out between those counties.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Gotcha.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
We are in Summoner, Calie, Sedgwick, Butler, Leavenworth, Wyant, Johnson.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So basically Greater Wichita and Greater Kansas.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
City right roughly, and we have great advocates in Chilotte
does the interviewing for these positions. But what you look
for is someone who you know, all the basic stuff
with every other job, but this job, there has to
be that human compassion piece. There has to be that
you have to have the heart to do this or
you can't do it. And our advocates were very lucky
(10:06):
to have some great people working for us. And you know,
with our goal was to keep less than ten percent
of the children from going into foster care that we
work with with the families that we work with, and
we are at one percent, So that means less than
one percent of the kids have gone into foster care
with the families that we've worked with. Yeah, we're pretty
proud of that.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
That's amazing. How many within a year do you work
with do you think?
Speaker 3 (10:31):
I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I do
know that it's increased from year to year. Every year
that we are out there helping families. We do definitely
see a study incline of more families coming in and
getting assistance. And like Jill said, we have an amazing
group of advocates. They all have such huge hearts and
(10:53):
willingness and to help these families and to do whatever
they can to help in any way possible.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And the neat thing about our program is, you know,
we build relationships with these families, and sometimes it's hard
at first because some families feel like, you know, maybe
you're part of DCF and they don't want anything to
do with these staff right now. But when you develop
a relationship, even when you close the case and you
know maybe their current needs are met and you close
(11:20):
the case, that family can call us later if something
else comes up. All they have to do is call
us and we can reopen the case. We don't have
to have a new referral. It's very easy to do
and we can step back in and help them again.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
So, if is there a place we can send people
to go to learn more about you?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
My email is actually listed on the Kansas Legal Services website. Okay,
But if they want to reach out to me for
additional information just to see if it would be a
good fit or not, they can reach me at ss
at KLS Inc.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Shilin good to Know and Jill usual contact methods for you.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Then they can reach me at my email address, which
is ay R. E. S. J At Klsinc dot org.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Okay, and of course you can learn more at Kansas
Legal Services dot org. Jill Airs and Shilah Estes, thank
you so much for being with us today on Wichita Weekend.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
This has been the Wichita Weekend podcast produced by iHeartRadio
Wichita
This is the Wichita Weekend Podcast from iHeartRadio Stations ninety
seven point nine, B ninety eight, one oh two to one,
The Bowl, Channel nine sixty three and All one oh
seven three. I'm your host, Don Guidis. Thanks for joining us.
Welcome to the Wichita Weekend Podcast. Our guests today come
to us from the Parent Advocate Program of Kansas Legal Services.
(00:25):
We have Jill Airs in the studio. Jill's a good
friend of ours. She's been to Wichita Weekend interviews in
the past. We also have Shila Estes, she is a
lead parent Advocate. Welcome to Wichita Weekend the podcast. Jill,
you were telling me a little bit before we began recording.
What is this program all about and why is it here.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
The Parent Advocate Program is a program within Kansas Legal
Services and what we do is when DCF has become
involved with a family there's been a call for an
investigation on their home. DCF goes in. If they see
issues in the home that need to be be changed
(01:08):
or need see things that the family needs help with
in keeping the kids in the home from going into
foster care. They send us a referral. We go in
and we meet with that family totally voluntary. The family
does not have to work with us, they don't want to,
but we go in and help identify the strengths of
the family and identify what the issues are, how we
(01:28):
can help, and if there's a legal piece involved, we
send a referral over to our legal department. We help
with all kinds of things. I mean, just depending on
the needs of the family. We can you know, if
it's housing, safe and suitable housing that they need. We
have landlords that we work with that we can hook
them up with if they need help with with getting
(01:52):
birth certificates.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
We have tons of cases and every single one has
their own unique story, their own unique situation. So we
go in and we look at their strengths and we
really work off those strengths with the goal to make
sure that they are stable before we leave the home
and that they're self sufficient enough to be able to
(02:13):
keep DCF out of the picture for good.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
That sounds simple, but I bet it is far from it.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
One thing unique about our program is we are able
to step outside of the box if we need to,
and we have advocates. There are eight of us in
different counties around Kansas, and we all come from very
diverse backgrounds and that brings a lot to the table
in terms of being able to network and think outside
(02:41):
of the box and come up with resources and come
up with different ideas and so working together, many times
we are able to come up with resources and help
for the families that some other agencies maybe aren't able to.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yeah, exactly, well, I question pop just in my head, Shilah.
How did you happen to get involved? How did your
past inform where you are today working with this group.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Well, I am one of those people with lived experience.
I myself have struggled through life. I have children of
my own, and I remember having a lot of people
help me. They gave me a hand up to be
able to make it through. So when I was offered
this job, I really had the heart for it. I
started off as just an advocate and then later I
(03:31):
became the lead And so yeah, I just have a
huge heart for helping the people that we help.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
All right, And like you say that, you're kind of
the early intervention. Yes, if you would, So how do
people find you DCF?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
All of our referrals come from DCF. Okay, And well,
now we are also able to get referrals from other
Family First agencies, but most of our referrals we are
funded through a grant through DC. But most of our referrals,
like I said, when DCF goes in to investigate a
home and feels like the family needs help and wants
(04:11):
to keep the kids in the home and not go
into foster care, they send a referral over to us.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Now, Jill, let me ask you a question. Is it
possible for a family to self refer?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Right now, we cannot take self referrals, although any family
that has had contact with DCF can contact their worker
and ask them to send us a referral. If they
feel like they need help with any actually anything to
keep their child in the home, they can just contact
the worker that contacted them from DCF and ask them
(04:42):
to send Kansas Legal Services Parent Advocate Program and referral.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
So they can't self refer, but they can.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Request absolutely, okay.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And that's that's important to keep in mind because you know,
some families might work better with one personnel and others
might work better with another.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
There and there are many things that some times people
might not think about. And you know, if they've had
DCF involvement and they have, Like I had one dad
that had recently gotten his seventeen year old son returned
to him and he was involved with DCF because the
child refused to go to school. So a truancy call
came in and they sent a referral and the dad said,
(05:21):
you know, I'm ready to give up because he won't
go to school. The schools refusing to give him an IP.
He's not getting what he needs and so he's refusing
to go to school. He said, I don't know what
to do. I don't have any experience with this. I'm
ready to just send him back. I was able to
go contact the school, get an IP set up, educate
dad on how to maneuver that IEP and what his
(05:43):
rights were. We kind of educated him on what his
rights as far as the child's education was, and we
had the meeting. The child got into school. I contacted
him back as for a follow up a couple weeks later,
a couple of months later, and he said he's in
school making a's and b's doing wonderful. So the family,
that little piece, the dad was ready to give up.
(06:06):
That child would have gone into foster care because of
that piece. So sometimes parents don't realize what pieces we
can help with. So if there's anything you know, that
they feel like can help keep that child in their home,
they need to request a referral be sent over.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
And the important thing I think to remember is act
early early intervention.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Right, Yes, that's very much key, And I also wanted
to just add on to that that it doesn't necessarily
have to be through DCF anymore. We can now accept
referrals through any Family First programs that are also partnered
with DCF, So any of those partner agencies can also
refer families over to the Parent Advocate program and then
(06:47):
that way we can kind of just wrap around families
and give them the support and help that they need.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Like agencies like Families Together, we are most of us.
Most of the advocates are educational advocates as well, so
some of the other programs like Families Together, you know,
if they need help, if a family needs assistants maneuvering
through the IEP process or educational stuff, they can that
agency can send us a refral.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Do you find that as the years go by your
services are more in demand as the.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Years go by, Absolutely, especially right now in Kansas where
we have you know, almost seven thousand children in foster care,
and we don't have enough foster homes, and you know,
kids are bouncing around the state and without a home,
and most parents want to be good parents. They do.
Sometimes kids that go into foster care sometimes their parents
(07:40):
were foster children. They just didn't have the training and
the parenting skills that they needed to parent. But they
want to parent and they want to be good parents,
and they just need that little that extra support and training.
And many times we go into work with a parent
and some of us think are little things. You know,
these parents have never parented sober, some of them, not
(08:03):
all of them obviously, but some never parented sober. So
the little things like getting kids enrolled in school, getting
you know, finding safe and suitable housing, things that we
would think would be you know, easy things to do,
can be very overwhelming for them. So just having that
little bit of support can not only help those kids
stay out of foster care, but it helps generations, you know,
(08:26):
that their kids kids stay out of foster care and
their kids kids stay at of OSCAR. You know, it's
a big piece of what we do is help people
families identify their informal supports because a lot of people
don't realize that they do have supports out there. It
might be a neighbor, it might be a counselor at
the school, it might be someone in a church close
(08:46):
by their area. We hook people up with informal supports
and help them identify their informal supports.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Our guests today are from the Parent Advocate Program of
Kansas Legal Services. We have Shila Estes and Bill Airs
here in the Wichita Weekend podcast studio and downtown Wichita,
and we've just been talking about what they do and
how they keep families together and hopefully keep kids in
the home and a million other things. I don't know
how you do all you do? How many people are
(09:15):
doing what you do.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
There are eight of us with the Parent Advocate program
at KLS and like, so we're spread out around Kansas.
We have an advocate. There are two of us advocates
in Wichita.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
You know, we cover eleven counties total, and the advocates
are kind of spread out between those counties.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Gotcha.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
We are in Summoner, Calie, Sedgwick, Butler, Leavenworth, Wyant, Johnson.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So basically Greater Wichita and Greater Kansas.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
City right roughly, and we have great advocates in Chilotte
does the interviewing for these positions. But what you look
for is someone who you know, all the basic stuff
with every other job, but this job, there has to
be that human compassion piece. There has to be that
you have to have the heart to do this or
you can't do it. And our advocates were very lucky
(10:06):
to have some great people working for us. And you know,
with our goal was to keep less than ten percent
of the children from going into foster care that we
work with with the families that we work with, and
we are at one percent, So that means less than
one percent of the kids have gone into foster care
with the families that we've worked with. Yeah, we're pretty
proud of that.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
That's amazing. How many within a year do you work
with do you think?
Speaker 3 (10:31):
I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I do
know that it's increased from year to year. Every year
that we are out there helping families. We do definitely
see a study incline of more families coming in and
getting assistance. And like Jill said, we have an amazing
group of advocates. They all have such huge hearts and
(10:53):
willingness and to help these families and to do whatever
they can to help in any way possible.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And the neat thing about our program is, you know,
we build relationships with these families, and sometimes it's hard
at first because some families feel like, you know, maybe
you're part of DCF and they don't want anything to
do with these staff right now. But when you develop
a relationship, even when you close the case and you
know maybe their current needs are met and you close
(11:20):
the case, that family can call us later if something
else comes up. All they have to do is call
us and we can reopen the case. We don't have
to have a new referral. It's very easy to do
and we can step back in and help them again.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
So, if is there a place we can send people
to go to learn more about you?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
My email is actually listed on the Kansas Legal Services website. Okay,
But if they want to reach out to me for
additional information just to see if it would be a
good fit or not, they can reach me at ss
at KLS Inc.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Shilin good to Know and Jill usual contact methods for you.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Then they can reach me at my email address, which
is ay R. E. S. J At Klsinc dot org.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Okay, and of course you can learn more at Kansas
Legal Services dot org. Jill Airs and Shilah Estes, thank
you so much for being with us today on Wichita Weekend.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
This has been the Wichita Weekend podcast produced by iHeartRadio
Wichita
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