End dysfunction in the foster system
Before I retired in 2019 after 13 years as a state caseworker for Child Protective Services, I mainly dealt with difficult-to-place teens as a conservatorship worker. Through my experience, I am familiar with many of the challenges faced by CPS caseworkers in the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, or DFPS, system.
For months, the Texas State Employees Union, of which I am a member, has been trying to call attention to caring for children without placements, or CWOP — and caring for caseworkers.
Foster care facilities keep closing, and motels and hotels understandably are not welcoming to foster kids, who are often destructive and difficult to manage, and shouldn’t be there, anyway.
Working as a CPS caseworker can be dangerous. One of my friends was badly beaten by a youth. Another friend has been quarantined three times because of exposure to COVID-19.
CPS caseworkers should be compensated with hazard pay for what they must endure, and leaders should do more to ensure it isn’t so hazardous in the first place. But they don’t, so caseworkers quit.
Attrition levels are up because family and personal lives are disrupted by the unacceptable burden of overtime, partly because of CWOP. Each time caseworkers leave, DFPS must hire new caseworkers and invest time and money into training them. And the dysfunctional cycle continues. Worst of all, the children continue to suffer. Texas needs state-of-the-art residential treatment centers and emergency shelters that can meet the needs of these youth before they end up in the juvenile justice system, a hospital or worse.
We need to keep these children close to home where they can heal. But DFPS hasn’t been able to afford enough trauma-informed caseworkers and therapists or the well-equipped facilities that are necessary to care for foster children.
City, county and state leaders must examine their priorities regarding the urgent needs of our foster
youth, caseworkers, foster parents and relatives who provide kinship placements. It’s time they fix our broken system.
And the community must get involved. They must recognize the needs of the children who have been born into poverty, neglect and abuse. I challenge them to consider becoming foster parents and to vote for leaders who will better fund a more reliable safety net for children.