Kids in harm’s way
Harvey could exacerbate CPS’ long-standing problems. The troubled agency needs help.
Post-Hurricane Harvey, parents and children are coping with lives laden with extra stress. Some families are homeless; others are crammed into temporary housing. In tight spaces, tempers can rise along with temperatures. Single mothers are returning to filthy homes that are nearly impossible to sanitize. Caregivers are being forced to cut grocery lists and make due with fewer diapers and other staples. In times like these, more children are at risk of abuse and neglect.
Yet Harvey’s blows fell not only on people but on the institutions whose mission it is to take care of them.
Four regions of Child Protective Services, the agency set up to protect children from neglect and abuse, were seriously affected by the storm, according to Texans Care for Children, a nonprofit. These four areas are home to about 40 percent of children in foster care. Forty-three percent of CPS employees work in these regions. In the Beaumont/Port Arthur region and the Houston region, 10 to 14 percent of caseworkers and supervisors were unable to come to work after the storm.
At least two residential childcare facilities need to relocate and rebuild. More than 10 providers or faith-based communities have already offered space for families in need, and Texas first lady Cecilia Abbott should renew her call for good foster families to step forward and pitch in. Although these acts of generosity should help, they won’t be enough to solve the shortage of homes for children, many with special needs.
As many families were troubled before Harvey blew through, so too has CPS been in institutional crisis for decades. Its failure to meet its basic responsibilities culminated in a 2015 decision by a federal court finding the permanent custody system unconstitutional for exposing children to an unreasonably high risk of physical abuse, sexual abuse, suicide and poor supervision in group care.
Although Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Henry “Hank” Whitman has made limited progress in improving the agency, this disaster could exacerbate, at least temporarily, the agency’s long-standing problems.
In Harvey’s aftermath, the state should devote more resources to efforts that keep children with parents or relatives rather than remove them for neglect. A foster care system under duress should be a true last resort.
Whitman and other officials at CPS should encourage caseworkers to do more to help families who lost their home to flooding to find alternative housing. Caseworkers need updated lists of nonprofits so that they can help to connect parents who relapsed during Harvey with treatment.
Other children and their parents are suffering from trauma caused by hair-raising evacuations. Perhaps these families can be kept intact if caseworkers are able to steer family members toward appropriate mental health services.
In a dramatic rescue, a helicopter landed at a foster home in Lumberton surrounded by floodwaters, as reported by The Dallas Morning News. At the behest of Whitman, the pilots were delivering doctor-supplied formula for a 2-year-old boy with a severe gastrointestinal disorder. His supply was about to run out.
While this feat was hard to pull off, the hardest work of keeping Texas’ most vulnerable children safe begins after Harvey is over. It starts with making an extra effort to keep children with their parents and keeping them away from a system recovering from traumas of its own.