Judge fines Texas $50,000 a day over foster care woes
24-hour oversight lacking at large group homes
U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack threatened to throw state officials in jail on Tuesday, as she ordered Texas to pay a $50,000 fine for every day foster children living in large group homes go without aroundthe-clock supervision.
Jack — who found the Texas foster care system unconstitutional in 2015 and ordered fixes — accused state officials of lying to her and was visibly agitated as she chastised them for not following through on a past order requiring 24-hour supervision at homes with more than six children.
The jail threat was aimed at state officials who Jack says have failed to cooperate with a team of monitors overseeing the state’s compliance with the judge’s orders.
“I cannot find DFPS to be credible at any level,” she said, calling the state’s be
havior shameful. “I am going to have to rely on the monitors for everything.”
The state has fought against Jack’s reforms for four years now, voiding several of her original mandates through appeals. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in July also ordered the state to move forward with other reforms.
Marc Rylander, a spokesman for Attorney General Ken Paxton, defended the state agencies involved, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and the Health and Human Services Commission.
The agencies “sought clarification concerning the broad order at issue in this case and demonstrated that they are working expeditiously to comply with the court’s order,” he said in a written statement. “Our children deserve reasonable provisions that make that care more safe and accessible, and we are dedicated to working with all parties toward that goal.”
Jack accused the state of dragging its feet on the remaining court-ordered changes, including studying workers’ caseloads to see what they can safely handle.
For the caseload study, Jack said she was “stunned” the state picked a child welfare expert who is on record saying that there is no relation between caseloads and outcomes. But she did not sanction the state.
“No matter how weak the effort was, it was made,” she said. It was not clear Tuesday when the caseload study will be complete.
Though Texas is now implementing reforms stemming from the 2011 class-action lawsuit that alleged mistreatment of children in long-term foster care, the court will likely continue to be involved for years to come.
Jack indicated she will depend on court-appointed monitors — Kevin Ryan and Deborah Fowler — to keep her updated on the state’s progress. Jack has yet to determine how much the state must pay in attorneys’ fees, though the cost to taxpayers will likely be millions of dollars. Since the case has dragged on for eight years, many of the foster children in long-term care who helped bring the lawsuit are now adults. They aged out of state care and faced unemployment, homelessness and at least one lost a child of her own to state custody.
The state needs to follow Jack’s order to ensure child safety, said Paul Yetter, a Houston attorney working with New York-based advocacy group Children’s Rights, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the roughly 11,000 long-term foster children in the care of the state.
“We heard shocking things in court today,” Yetter said. “The judge came down hard on the state for good reason.”
The fines Jack ordered begin Friday and continue until a team of court-appointed monitors confirms that all children living in large group homes — those with over six children — have supervision from adults who are awake at night. The fines will double to $100,000 a day if the state doesn’t comply by Nov. 18, Jack said.
In addition, Jack ordered the department to notify all caregivers by Friday if any foster children in their care have been sexually abused or are sexually aggressive.
The state said it tracks that information and provides it to caregivers, but the judge said the monitors found instances in which the notifications did not happen.
Jack said Tuesday that testimony during a 2015 trial led her to believe that large foster care facilities were already required to have overnight supervision, but said she learned recently that wasn’t the case until this year.
Kristene Blackstone, associate commissioner for Child Protective Services, told the court Tuesday that many large foster care facilities were already providing overnight supervision before the department mandated they do it last summer.
But Jack said the monitors recently found that supervision wasn’t adequate in several cottage-style facilities and children were easily able to foil alarms meant to sound if they left their rooms at night.
“You have created a crisis,” she said.