There are increasing reasons to be concerned about the Texas foster care system. The way our state treats children who have been taken from their families because of abuse or neglect is embarrassing and shameful.
An ongoing federal court case has shed a lot of light on this issue in recent years. In the most recent development, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack found the state in contempt of court four months ago for failing to demonstrate that it promptly and fully investigates allegations of abuse and neglect of children in state care.
Now another alarm bell is ringing, but it is not being rung by a judge or lawyers suing the state. It is coming from the state itself.
The Texas State Auditor General has found that the Department of Family and Protective Services is not adequately tracking the placement of children in temporary foster care under the state’s new community-based care model.
The state has been in the process of implementing a system for years that places children in facilities closer to home in the hope of better outcomes. A system has been established in which DFPS contracts with a single organization that oversees placements by region.
But when the auditor reviewed the files of two of those regions – the Panhandle and the Hill Country – he found that in nearly half of the cases, those contractors failed to provide DFPS with important records about the children’s education, medical care, contact with family, necessary medications or other important needs, according to a July report.
At 48% of the 58 sites audited between September 1, 2022 and October 31, 2023, key forms were either incomplete or missing, the audit found. Worse still, the DFPS lacked a control system to even capture the missing information.
The audit notes that DFPS has acknowledged the failures. It agreed to implement a process to verify that its contractors are completing placement paperwork for children in temporary care by the end of the year, the audit says. DFPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins reminded us that the audit only covered a “very small sample of the placement forms in our system.”
It is good that the DFPS is making improvements. But there are still significant concerns. Some MPs have complained about the state’s slow rollout of the community-based care model. Out of 16 regions, the DFPS has signed contracts in only seven of them. And some of those contractors have had significant problems, including allegations of child abuse in foster care.
When lawmakers reconvene in January, they will again have to address the myriad problems of Texas’ foster care system, which serves about 50,000 children. At the top of the list is whether the state is successfully managing the transition to its community-based care model.
We should never forget that behind every reference to foster care “placement” is an abused or neglected child who deserves a better life, not more of the same at the hands of the state. Texas must do more to ensure that doesn’t happen.
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