The increases will come from within the budget, Winterer said.

HHS also has moved Vicki Maca from her interim job as southeast service area child welfare reform administrator to oversee reform in both the southeast and eastern service areas.

Maca, 48, will make $101,173 annually in her new position.

Her team will focus on service delivery, community partnerships, contract oversight and quality improvement.

Winterer said Friday HHS has had serious conversations with KVC recently about where to go from here and how the contractor could better reduce costs to operate with the money that is available.

Those conversations included whether KVC would continue to be a lead agency, although Winterer would not elaborate.

"Let's just put it this way, we looked at all the options that we could come up with in terms of continuing to do the reform in different ways, how we could utilize KVC in a different fashion ... we looked at different iterations of services they could provide to us," he said.