State weighs privatized foster care
Lawmakers eye $220M boost to implement program in four areas, including Houston
State lawmakers are in talks to boost funding for child welfare services by more than $220 million this session in an aim to speed up the rollout of a yearslong effort to privatize foster care across the state.
The money, proposed in early-stage budget drafts released this week, will help the Department
of Family and Protective Services implement “community-based care” in four new areas of the state, including Houston and El Paso. The program, which allows a local organization to oversee foster care placements and other welfare services in its region, has been slow to roll out since its creation in 2017.
Lawmakers are earmarking $128.1 million to expand the initiative, while another $100 million would bolster foster care provider rates.
Funding is just one of dozens of child welfare-related reforms that lawmakers will discuss over the next five months. The proposals include making college tuition free for foster youth; increasing pay for foster parents caring for children under 17; and giving parents additional information about their rights after Child Protective Services launches an investigation.
“When you look at foster care, or the investigative side — to me, it’s a police action,” said state Rep. James Frank, a Wichita Falls Republican who authored the bill on parental rights. “‘I am threatening you with removal of your child’ — that’s scarier than going to jail. But yet there’s very limited due process.”
His legislation would, in essence, establish a child welfare version of the Miranda warning that police officers give to suspects in custody. House Bill 635 would require DFPS officials to tell parents that they do not have to speak to child welfare workers or let them into their home without attorneys present.
Frank, who chairs the House Human Services Committee, said he has passed most of the child welfare bills he’s wanted to pursue, but he’s open to other suggestions. For him, much of the issue boils down to DFPS leadership since the agency is responsible for executing community-based care and other legislative mandates.
He’s optimistic: The department has a new leader, Stephanie Muth, who started earlier this month. Muth replaced
Commissioner Jaime Masters, whose tenure was marked by turmoil — the departure of thousands of state workers, hundreds of children sleeping in office buildings, high-profile allegations of abuse at state-contracted facilities.
Muth previously served as the Medicaid director at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. That experience could prove critical as the community-based care rollout regains steam, Frank said.
The transition may take a different shape in San Antonio, where Democratic state Sen. José Menéndez has been exploring a hybrid program to replace Family Tapestry, the organization responsible for the communitybased care initiative there. The organization terminated its contract with DFPS in 2021 after state officials blasted the shelter for “unacceptable” conditions and required the facility to relocate children in its care.
Menéndez is in early talks with Frank and Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai, a former children’s court judge, about the new initiative. In theory, the program would partner the county with a local nonprofit group to supervise child welfare services — but the lawmakers are still trying to determine whether they need specific legislation or an additional appropriation to move forward.
Elsewhere, Menéndez said he is working on a revision to House Bill 567 from the 2021 legislative session, which was meant to prevent CPS from wrongfully removing children from their homes. The bill prohibited caseworkers from removing kids unless they are in immediate danger, which has significantly lowered the number of neglect cases over the past year.
But the bill has also raised concerns for some Democrats and child welfare workers, who say the language is too stringent and may keep children in dangerous homes.
“It’s sad that it appears, sometimes, like we’re having to choose between what’s the safest thing for the children versus what’s going to keep families together,” Menéndez said. “It’s so sad that those two things aren’t the same.”
Frank authored HB 567 and said he’s open to adjusting the language, but “I haven’t seen any need for it” yet. Changing the law always produces some early anxieties, he said.
State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham and the chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, said she is also looking at “major reforms to the way DFPS operates” this session — but the details aren’t yet clear.
“Children are our most precious resource, and it’s crucial that we focus on improving the safety and scrutiny of every child in the care of providers, as well as strengthening our capacity with more community-based foster care solutions,” she said in a statement.