San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Stop blaming child services; hold Abbott accountable
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services’ Child Protective Services agency has been burdened with the colossal task of fixing its perennially broken system — but year after year, it continues to implode.
In her scathing 2015 ruling in a 2011 class action lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack concluded, in part: “The reality is that DFPS has ignored 20 years of reports, outlining problems and recommending solutions. DFPS has also ignored professional standards.”
Since then, caseloads, turnover and the foster care capacity crisis have worsened in the Texas child welfare system, which included nearly 29,000 children and youth as of
Sept. 7. The pandemic has exacerbated the problems, and the beleaguered state agency is repeatedly judged, sanctioned and monitored.
Gov. Greg Abbott and other state leaders should be held accountable for the crisis in our child welfare system and be expected to do more than make reactive policy changes. The lives and futures of vulnerable, voiceless children are on the line.
If Abbott used some of the daily energy he pours into his law-and-order response to immigration at the southern border, perhaps he could get something meaningful done and change lives for the better. Child policy experts have said Abbott and state leaders could start by allocating federal COVID relief funds — through the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA — and also expanding Medicaid and implementing policy changes for CPS.
It seems every municipality, nonprofit and business wants a piece of the $16 billion in federal pandemic relief funds for Texas, and while these needs are real, the welfare of children should come first.
We strongly encourage Abbott and state lawmakers to enact four recommendations from state Sen. José Menéndez and some other members of the Child Protection Roundtable group, and use ARPA funds to address these key issues:
Procure and implement a new DFPS data system. Provide supplemental payments for kinship caregivers.
Distribute bonus checks for front-line workers. Restore funding for purchased client services for substance-use prevention and treatment, adoption services, home studies for relative placement and other such services.
In a Sept. 14 hearing, Jack again rebuked the department, saying the system is still failing children. A court monitors’ report filed before the hearing explores the standard of care for children in temporary housing, finding incidents of child-on-child sexual abuse, and children being overmedicated, not getting their prescribed medication, being unnecessarily physically restrained, and meeting sex traffickers at state office buildings and leaving with them.
DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters acknowledged during the hearing that caseworkers “are not adequate” for the tasks they’re assigned and she feels she’s failing children — but she isn’t to blame. Texas is failing them.
In July, the monthly high of foster children without placements reached 416; children were sleeping in motels, churches and office buildings, though they legally could no longer stay in offices as of last month.
The state has closed several foster facilities, with a loss of about 1,600 foster care beds since January 2020, under pressure from Jack. The number of children without a placement has increased each month this year, but Masters defended the decision to close these facilities — including Family Tapestry in San Antonio, which faced allegations of mismanagement and abuse — admitting they’d been unsafe for decades. The blame was misplaced here, too, as providers have been underfunded for decades.
The sobering truth is by the time children end up in foster care, the safety net has already failed them. Consider that Texas is increasing its foster care capacity by sending hundreds of its foster care children to other states that have chosen to accept federal Medicaid dollars and use them to bolster their foster care programs.
The Texas GOP refuses to expand Medicaid, despite our state’s distinction of the most uninsured people in the nation.
Jack’s decision to move past blame and sanctions, placing pressure on Abbott for immediate solutions, is past due.
Abbott must prioritize the lives of Texas children, and that should begin with these ARPA funds.