It seems that every week there is some terrible news story about Texas and its foster care system. This time the Texas Department of Human Services (DHS) is in the news because a federal judge has deemed the system to be “broken.” The June 26, 2016 article by Andrea Zelinski and published in the Houston Chronicle, “Judge beefs up plan to fix foster care,” reported the latest effort to address the governmental disaster known as Texas foster care. U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack has approved a research plan to find solutions to the state’s foster children crisis. Nine experts will weigh in on the present system and then submit their findings and recommendations.
On the face of it, this probably sounds like a great idea. Judge Jack noted in a 255-page order that children in Texas foster care “almost uniformly leave state custody more damaged then when they entered.” The state presently spends up to $403 million on the care for its foster youth. The judge has given this group of experts the summer to analyze the many issues confronting Texas’ foster care system.
There is no denying that one needs to know where the failures in the process exist before they can be addressed. However, there are aspects of the proposed research that are troubling. The order revealed that Texas foster kids are at grave personal risk of being attacked, beaten and raped. One critical area identified is the moving of foster children from “one dangerous home to another.” Clearly, a break down in the screening process of foster parents exists.
A much more disturbing finding in the order is the revelation of abuse of foster children by other foster youths. “Rape, abuse, psychotropic medication and instability are the norm.” The article then highlights that “child-on-child abuse in licensed foster care placements is common but not tracked, and that children who rape other children continue to do it as they relocate to new homes.”
In this context, the word “broken” really is a sugar-coated way of saying “environment where rapists and pedophiles are allowed to attack foster children with little to no fear of prosecution.” Calling this system “broken” severely understates the outrageous ongoing damage and criminal activity has been allowed to continue against children. At this point, you have to wonder why a separate group has not been brought in to monitor and supervise DHS foster care activities.
The order also highlighted both a Texas and national problem in foster care - the number of cases that social service staff handles. Across the country, case workers are being asked to manage 30 or more cases at one time. The Houston Chronicle showcased one social worker who was reported as having 70 cases. In my recent article, “Family Finding Specialists and CPS … Disconnected,” Janet Atkins, a California social worker for child-protection agencies, explained that case workers "either give priority to seeing the families and children under their watch, or do the paperwork."
Case worker burn-out is quite common, with some statistics citing turnover at roughly 70%. With this much turmoil and instability, it’s no wonder that issues within foster care homes are not tracked. It would be next to impossible to identify ongoing issues without having historical notes to reference. Yet with case workers having so little time in the first place, there can be no realistic expectation that staff will first identify a problem within a home and with a child, and then have the time to document their suspicions for future reference.
Scott McGown, the director of the Children’s Rights Clinic, an organization that represents foster kids in CPS cases, commented that “caseworker turnover and inadequate placement of children are the two most daunting challenges” for the state. I do take issue with one comment wherein McGown says that “any solution’s going to be very expensive.”
Nowhere in this or most articles that address the Texas foster care debacle is there the mention of family finding. Most child experts, judges and politicians agree that foster care is not a place for a child, especially as a long-term placement. The Fostering Connections Act of 2008 mandates that agencies search for parents and all other adult relatives. Texas has the following citation:
Senate Bill (SB) 993 from the Texas 82nd legislative session amended the Texas Family Code provisions (262.1095) regarding notification of adult relatives to include the Fostering Connections requirements on this issue and to clarify that this notice must be provided to all adult relatives related to the child within the 3rd degree of consanguinity (i.e. all grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and siblings).
As allocated through the Fostering Connections Act, Texas receives federal funding to execute these searches. At our organization, Forever Homes for Foster Kids, we have received several requests to perform the work of locating relatives of foster children, usually starting with a birth parent. Yet we have found that once the agency is aware that this work comes with a cost, no further action is requested – despite the fact that counties get federal and state dollars to do precisely this kind of work.
Let’s take at face value all the studies and articles that highlight the fact that case workers are overburdened. Foster care agencies are managed in such a way that they need to farm out portions of their work. Many do just that, routinely creating agreements with non-profits for many activities, with family finding being just one of them. So how realistic is it to think that these same agencies that reached out to an organization to perform family finding somehow miraculously find the staff, time and expertise to perform a thorough search?
Maybe in the crazy world of CPS this may happen - and on occasion apparently does - but the reality is probably closer to the agency management deciding that the effort will take too much time, funding and/or energy. These ongoing decisions do one thing: place more foster kids at risk of being attacked and raped while they spend additional years in foster care. And they are left at risk because someone in management decided to allocate federal and state dollars earmarked for family finding to some other, unrelated activity.
In the real world, that’s either called misappropriation of funds or “cooking the books.” I’m from Texas so I call it like I see it, and I call it stealing -- from foster children no less.
One more aspect of this research bothers me, and that is the way in which millions of dollars are siphoned away from needy causes through the pretext of research studies. Years ago I was reviewing an international study on medical equipment needs for a South American country. My mentor noticed the report and commented that the research was a scam. Seeing my confusion, he went on to explain that years before he had read a similar report for the same country. Millions of dollars had been doled out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to leading universities in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan.
On the face of it, this effort seemed very productive and efficient, as the research would identify the medical equipment needed and where to best place it for maximum usage. So how much medical equipment was purchased as a result? None. The country had incurred a debt of millions of dollars it needed to pay to the IMF for the research. To get another IMF loan to purchase the needed medical equipment first meant paying off the first loan. I’m sure someone in the government had thought that getting research was a smart idea; however, no matter how poor the planning, the country would probably have been much better served by simply taking out a loan and purchasing medical equipment that would have immediately helped improve the physical wellbeing of the country’s population.
Now, years later, I see another scenario where there may be a potential scam, albeit a sophisticated and elaborate one. Understand that I am not in any way questioning the integrity or reasoning behind Judge Jack's decision to accelerate the research to resolve this crisis or implying that this effort is a scam. However, I would be remiss if I did not recommend that foster child advocates and the public keep attention on not only the findings and recommendations of this body, but on such future studies.
It’s too easy for the media to move from topic to topic so that we rarely see a story to the end. However, Judge Jack has provided us with an excellent opportunity to see this matter brought to a conclusion by the end of September, as per her original order. We will then learn what solutions this panel of experts proposes. The identified issues will most likely not be dissimilar to those of other foster care agencies across the country. The proposed solutions will probably be appropriate for other agencies to model and put into place. Doing so would save every other state the $600,000 in research estimated to be paid by Texas.
Or we will see how, once again, a noble effort is set aside and ignored in lieu of another round of research. While more time and dollars are wasted, foster children are beaten, abused, raped and killed even as they are under the “care” of our foster care system. It’s time to find a focal point for change, and Judge Jack has provided us with that opportunity.
I will keep you updated as this critical matter unfolds because our foster children deserve better outcomes. Their very lives may depend on it.
Owner/Editor - Chris Chmielewski