A new federal report on Texas’ failing foster care system makes clear the state has a long way to go before Texans can be confident the agency is adequately protecting more than 10,000 children in its care.
Texas continues to expose children without permanent foster home placements to “risk of serious harm in unregulated sites” without sufficiently trained caregivers, monitors appointed by a federal judge found. Wait times for those reporting abuse of children in the foster care system grew longer, and some children in foster homes still are not being adequately protected from trafficking, among other long-running systemic deficiencies.
Texas has long failed these most vulnerable children who deserve so much better from the system that is supposed to protect them. We urge the 88th Texas Legislature to do everything it can to address and correct systemic flaws in the state’s foster care program.
REPORT FINDS SOME IMPROVEMENTS IN STATE FOSTER CARE
The federal report does contain welcome news: The court monitors reported progress by foster care system managers, including better caseload management and training for caseworkers, and fewer children languishing in foster care without these advocates. Investigations of abuse, neglect and exploitation of children in foster homes are becoming more thorough, the report also found.
In 2021, Texas lawmakers appropriated $90 million for improvements, including additional foster care facilities to accommodate children removed from their homes and expanded mental health services for children with the greatest emotional needs. That money is helping to rectify an appalling record of failure by the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services, but it’s only a start. Armed with a $33 billion state budget surplus, the legislature should invest in foster care facility upgrades and improved technology to help workers better track children and monitor their progress. The state also needs to pay more to extended family members who assume responsibility for these unfortunate kids. Studies show children removed from their parents’ homes do better with extended family members than strangers, but relatives who take in children in Texas are paid barely half the amount that non-related caregivers receive.
It also makes sense for the legislature to invest in the mental health of struggling parents. Parental drug and alcohol abuse figures in more than two-thirds of cases involving children removed from their homes in Texas. State programs that provide psychological and substance abuse counseling, as well as parent skill-building services, are eligible for federal matching funds under the Family First Act signed into law by President Donald Trump. Texas should take advantage of these funds because it costs less to help these adults early-on than to pay for their incarceration and/or foster care for their children later.
Texas foster care advocates last week endorsed these measures in the wake of the latest court monitoring report, which stems from a class action lawsuit filed against Texas 11 years ago on behalf of nine former foster care children who claimed the state Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) violated their constitutional rights. In 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Janice Jack ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered the agency to clean up its foster care system. Instead, DFPS officials wasted several years fighting Jack’s order, and the state spent more than $10 million on legal challenges instead of admitting the problems and ordering DFPS officials to fix them.
LAWMAKERS MUST ACT URGENTLY TO CORRECT ONGOING FLAWS
During that time, Jack’s monitors found that DFPS routinely shipped some children in foster care to unlicensed out-of-state homes, sometimes putting them in dangerous situations. A lack of adequate facilities for children in foster care forced some to sleep in state offices or motels, and the agency lost track of some kids. The DFPS says no children in its care have slept in state offices since early 2022.
In June, 2022, an exasperated Judge Jack threatened to levy huge fines against the state while castigating DFPS leaders as “un-transparent and uncooperative and completely ignorant of what’s going on in their own department.”
We hope the improvements detailed in the latest report on the state foster care system signal that the DFPS is finally getting Jack’s message with the dire urgency it requires. State lawmakers meeting in Austin for the 88th Legislature should build on these improvements and correct systemic failures.
When children suffer from neglect and mistreatment, whether by their parents or in the foster care system, they are more likely to end up entangled in the criminal justice system, and that hurts all of us. The state’s most vulnerable children deserve better. State lawmakers should act on their behalf this legislative session and do everything in their power to protect them.
Austin American-Statesman
