Giving Compass' Take:

• Governing magazine reports that a young girl in Kansas' state custody was sexually assaulted inside a child welfare office. After this disturbing incident, Gina Meier-Hummel, Kansas Department for Children and Families Secretary, says that the department will be making big changes to improve the system.

• How can we provide safer child-welfare services across the U.S.? What is the best way for states to improve the safety and supervision of kids in the system?

• Here's how the child welfare system could improve to support and protect more children while saving billions of dollars. 

After months of headlines about missing runaways, foster children sleeping in offices and high-profile deaths, this was the last thing the Kansas Department for Children and Families wanted to see.

A 13-year-old in the state's custody reportedly was raped inside a child welfare office in Olathe. And the young man charged with the assault earlier this month also was in Kansas' care. Both were at the KVC Behavioral Healthcare office waiting to be placed in an available foster home or facility.

"It's tragedies like that that folks have been deeply worried was going to happen," said Benet Magnuson, executive director of Kansas Appleseed, a nonprofit justice center serving vulnerable and excluded Kansans. "It's one of these moments: if this doesn't shake us and get us to take action at the deep level that's needed, I don't know what will."

The assault happened in early May, although it didn't become public until last week after The Star had obtained police calls for service to the KVC office. It occurred just as DCF Secretary Gina Meier-Hummel and her administration were in the midst of making changes and implementing programs that some say are beginning to show success.

Read the full article about the troubled Kansas child welfare agency by Laura Bauer at Governing.