Lori Burns-Bucklew is a Kansas City attorney in private practice. She graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law and began practicing in 1984. An accredited Child Welfare Law Specialist, she has represented children and youth, as well as parents, grandparents, and other caregivers for children whose families are subjected to state intervention. She has served as class counsel in several civil rights class action matters on behalf of children in state care. She has trained hundreds of lawyers in the Kansas City metropolitan region regarding child welfare law and children’s issues.
Your Team for Social Advocacy in Kansas
Both our staff and our board members live in communities across the state of Kansas. We’re your friends, your neighbors, sharing the joys and responsibilities of our collective growth.
To ensure the future of our state remains bright for all of Kansas, we make it our life’s work to compassionately understand what Kansans face and then systemically improve:
- Child Welfare
- Food Insecurity/Hunger
- Youth & Adult Justice
- Integrated Voter Engagement
Social Advocacy in Kansas
Our advocacy professionals analyze data from multiple sources, finding the real story behind the numbers and presenting it to legislators for active change and to fellow organizations and concerned citizens for grassroots advocacy.
Our Reports for Social Advocacy in Kansas
Resources
Expand Medicaid to Unlock Savings
Medicaid expansion could save the Kansas Department of Corrections around $11 million. Our white paper explains how it could benefit Kansans in need, and Kansas’s bottom line.
COVID-19 and Hunger in Kansas
This report examines how hunger and hardship in Kansas were impacted by COVID-19, and it explores opportunities for policymakers to respond to hunger not just during the pandemic and its recovery period but in the years to come.
SOUL Family Legal Permanency Program
In partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, this program was designed by and for young people in foster care to reflect their vision of family and supportive adult networks.
Strengthen Families Rebuild Hope
Kansas Appleseed is a part of the Strengthen Families Rebuild Hope (SFRH) coalition, an independent coalition formed in 2018 advocating for a better foster care system for Kansas kids. The coalition has convened town halls, produced reports on the status of Kansas’s foster care system, and advocated for statewide reforms. SFRH is comprised of youth who have experienced foster care, foster parents, social workers, and other allies.
Litigation Partners
The fight to reform our state’s foster care system isn’t just important to Kansans; it is also important across the country. In our 2018 lawsuit (M.B. v. Howard), we partnered with these individuals and organizations to transform the broken foster care system and end years of victimization and trauma for Kansas children.
The National Center for Youth Law is a non-profit law firm that helps low-income children achieve their potential by transforming the public agencies that serve them. For more information, please visit www.youthlaw.org.
Every day, children are harmed in America’s broken child welfare, juvenile justice, education, and healthcare systems. Through relentless, strategic advocacy and legal action, we hold governments accountable for keeping kids safe and healthy. Children’s Rights, a national non-profit organization, has made a lasting impact for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable children. For more information, please visit www.childrensrights.org
DLA Piper is a global law firm with lawyers located in more than 40 countries to help clients with their legal needs around the world. DLA Piper has a long-standing and deep commitment to giving back to our communities through pro bono legal services, and it is one of the largest providers of pro bono legal services globally. www.dlapiper.com
Help Us Make an Impact in Kansas
We must ensure our state enables all its eligible citizens to participate in a positive society. Kansans, working together, can build a state full of thriving, inclusive, and just communities.
Contact us about advocacy opportunities. We’ll provide the information, strategies, and motivation to create a supportive system for Democracy.
A Clear Vision of the Future for Kansas
Thriving
All Kansans should have the resources they need to support themselves and raise healthy families.
Inclusive
All Kansans should be able to participate fully in their communities.
Just
All Kansans benefit from a fair and effective system of justice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Kansas Appleseed doesn’t offer direct services for social advocacy. Our focus is instead on systemic change, knocking down legislative hurdles and blockades while providing solutions that can build a more thriving, inclusive, and just Kansas.
We’re here to advocate on the state and local legislative levels, make connections for forward movement, and supply research, data, and informative presentations to like-minded organizations who want to make Kansas—and the world—a better place to live.
Kansas Appleseed takes pride in having statewide reach. Our staff members and board members live in communities across the state. Because we’re not concentrated in a single city or region, we have a better understanding of the barriers and challenges Kansans face—because we’re right there with you.
Our staff members are based in Emporia, Holcomb, Lawrence, Piqua, and Wichita, where they work to make both their home communities and our entire state more thriving, inclusive, and just.
This proliferation across the state means a Kansas Appleseed team member can speak at your event or to your organization in person. We can also do meetings via online meeting resources. Please email our Operations Director, Lori Johns (ljohns@kansasappleseed.org), for more information.
The social advocacy that Kansas Appleseed does every day helps our communities in multiple ways:
- Creating policies that stop racial targeting that hurts minorities and destroys police credibility.
- Enacting legislation to help Kansans keep their licenses so they can work to pay off their debts.
- Backing changes that make the Kansas foster care system function properly to end the foster care cycle.
- Opening legislative doors for support systems that reduce food insecurity for Kansas kids.
- Knocking down legal roadblocks to voter engagement and their participation in democracy.
- Informing other organizations, news outlets, and grassroots advocates with research, reports, and presentations.
When kids leave the foster care cycle, it costs the state less, takes burden off an already overtaxed system, and, most importantly, improves these children’s chances to become great fellow citizens.
Stopping the over-incarceration of adults and children keeps families together while helping them find help for a better future.
Creating regulations that keep Kansans fed means better health. Food insecurity, along with poor access to healthy foods for the working poor, is linked to many health problems—including delayed development in younger children, high cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension, asthma, anemia, and long-lasting psychological issues, such as anxiety and aggression.
Eliminating the hurdles created to reduce voter participation allows all Kansans participate in—and feel confident about—our country’s commitment to democracy. The voices of all Kansans should resound at the voting booths.