The definition of what’s right and what’s wrong in CPS case
Tell me if this isn’t the definition of motherhood: two foster parents so dedicated to giving two troubled little boys a chance that they’re paying for intensive psychological therapy on their own dime and delving into a retirement account to fund a court battle against a state agency trying to take the boys away.
Tell me if this isn’t the definition of abuse: a supervisor at that agency, created to protect children, forcing the 4- and 5-year-old boys to visit relatives they’re afraid of, ordering them to attend an adoption fair, and, in the latest senseless blow, severing the foster mothers’ right to consent to the boys’ medical treatment.
How that last part could even be carried out is unclear. If one of the boys were critically injured, would Carol Jeffery and Angela Sugarek have to wait around in the ER for Child Protective Services to consent to emergency treatment? It doesn’t help that the foster family lives in Houston and the CPS staff overseeing the boys are an hour and a half away in Wharton County.
And does this mean these boys, with a history of abuse and neglect, will have to stop seeing the therapist at UT Physicians they’ve grown to trust over the past year?
No question. This is abuse. At the hands of the state.
The complex, multibilliondollar solutions to Texas’ overarching foster care crisis could be a decade in coming, but saving these two souls is simple.
Just let the foster parents they call Mama and Mommy love them, adopt them, and give them a stable, safe home.
Sugarek and Jeffery, both educators in the Heights, have been praised widely as exemplary caregivers who have made great progress with the two traumatized children. I began writing about them earlier this year when CPS removed the boys after the foster mothers repeatedly reported suspected abuse by a teenage half-sibling the brothers were required to visit.
CPS eventually returned the boys but maintained the teen had not abused them. CPS Supervisor Ramiro Hernandez has refused to consent to the adoption and still wants to find a family willing to take all three brothers. CPS policy requires it to prioritize keeping siblings together, but in this case, that doesn’t appear to be in the younger boys’ best interest. ‘Purely vindictive’
State Rep. Gene Wu, who informed me about the latest developments when I called about another topic, described CPS’ decision on medical consent as “quite literally insane.”
“This type of behavior by CPS is the very reason why people don’t want to be foster parents,” said Wu, a former prosecutor who now handles CPS cases in private practice. “So the only people you have left in the system are people who are doing it for the money, they know when to keep their mouth shut, and they’ll never question CPS on anything they do. It’s frankly outrageous.”
A gag order in the case kept me from attending a court hearing last week and kept Sugarek and Jeffery from commenting for this column.
But Wu, and state Rep. Jessica Farrar, who have been communicating with the foster mothers, said they were told that the judge at the hearing in Wharton County asked CPS staff if they had ever contacted the boys’ therapist about outcries of abuse.
CPS staff admitted they had not, the lawmakers said. A CPS spokesman in Austin declined comment.
The therapist, Vanessa Guidry, had previously told me the boys have been harmed by CPS’ handling of the case. She was present for the hearing and was finally able to share her findings with the court.
Abruptly after the hearing, the lawmakers said, CPS pulled the foster mothers’ medical consent. It defies explanation, but Wu has a theory.
“The way that I see it, it’s purely vindictive,” he said. Hopeful development
Guidry said in an email response to my questions that she was unclear whether she’d still be allowed to treat the children. She’d said Friday afternoon she’d asked CPS but had not gotten a response. Sugarek and Jeffery initiated this therapy themselves and stayed with Guidry even after realizing that she doesn’t accept Medicaid.
It’s also unknown if the boys will continue seeing their nurse practitioner at UT Physicians, Gloria Nwuga, who has also criticized CPS. She told me last week that CPS forced the boys to visit the teen sibling — on Halloween, no less — and days after, when she tried to administer a flu shot to one, he was “back to square one” in terms of behavior.
“It took us 45 minutes to give it to him, because he was so out of control,” Nwuga said.
Farrar, too, was incredulous about why CPS may be trying to deprive the boys of a therapist who has been “their lifeline.”
She shared with me one other development, a hopeful one. She said she’d been in contact with Hank Whitman, the former Texas Ranger who was appointed as commissioner to overhaul the broken Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
“The commissioner is trying to do everything possible to stabilize the lives of these children,” Farrar said.
I hope he succeeds. But he’s a busy man with a broken agency in charge of protecting thousands of Texas children.
Farrar said it’s hard to criticize an agency that’s been ignored and underfunded for so long, but the problem here, and in similar cases where CPS appeared to retaliate against conscientious foster parents, doesn’t seem to be lack of money.
“What’s so disturbing is they spend so many resources battling good foster parents that could be spent getting kids in good homes or making sure they’re not abused in foster care situations,” the veteran lawmaker said.
As I’ve said before, these little boys hit the jackpot with these moms. But the system is so broken, foster parents like these have become rare.
“How many other couples are there who really went to bat for some kids and just gave up, because they don’t have the know-how and the financial resources to hire an attorney and learn the process?” Farrar said. “Anybody else would have walked away.”
Sugarek and Jeffery refuse to walk away. But they shouldn’t have to stand alone. Somebody, anybody with power in this state, fight for these kids, for these moms. Stop the abuse. We can’t save them all. But these two, we can.