The latest Department of Family and Protective Services news from The Texas Tribune.
The Department of Family and Protective Services has increasingly relied on housing foster kids in hotels when it can’t find them a home. In the 2022 fiscal year, after record staff turnover, more than 1 in 4 caseworkers had less than one year of experience. Full Story
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Advocates say better accounting of deaf and hard-of-hearing children in the state’s care and better access to translators are needed. Full Story
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The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services’ investigations division has seen record-high staff turnover, with 4 in 10 investigators leaving their jobs in 2022. Full Story
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A Child Protective Services disability specialist says Texas’ foster care system isn’t preparing teens with cognitive disabilities and mental health challenges for adult life. Full Story
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Legislators also passed bills that will provide foster kids entering the troubled system with duffel bags or backpacks and those aging out of the system with help setting up bank accounts. Full Story
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A U.S. district judge has long presided over a court case that found Texas’ foster care system unconstitutionally harms kids. Tuesday’s hearing was the first appearance by the state’s new team of defense attorneys. Full Story
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Lawmakers were assured that outsourcing management of foster care services would fix the state’s troubled child welfare agency. But the rollout of the new model, set to be completed by 2029, has been complicated by setbacks. Full Story
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The legislation came after The Refuge, a Bastrop foster care facility, hired a caretaker without knowing she had a history of sexual misconduct with children at a state juvenile facility. Coworkers also concealed evidence of the abuse, which further put the foster girls at harm. Full Story
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House Bill 63 is an attempt to reduce the amount of vindictive or false child abuse reports made to the state, but child advocates say it will deter valid reports, too. Full Story
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The action came after The Refuge, a Bastrop foster care facility, hired a caretaker without knowing her history of misconduct. Full Story
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Residential facilities did not refill medications in a timely manner, failed to follow psychiatric orders and, in several instances, violated state guidelines, court monitors documented after site inspections. The lawyer representing the foster kids said it could be “the tip of the iceberg.” Full Story
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The upper chamber unanimously passed Senate Bill 182 after The Texas Tribune reported that a state-licensed foster care facility hired a caretaker whom the Texas Juvenile Justice Department previously fired for having inappropriate relationships with children. Full Story
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Relative caregivers, like grandparents who want to keep kids out of foster care, usually get half as much state assistance as strangers who take in children. Full Story
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Sharon Fonvielle-Baughman said Texas Department of Family and Protective Services leadership has failed to support the special investigators division, a unit created in 2005 to handle the most high-risk cases. Full Story
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Caseworkers and foster care providers often get incomplete and inaccurate information about foster kids in their care because of the state child welfare agency’s archaic technology system. Full Story
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In the state’s final brief to appeal a September injunction that halted the investigation into Texas parents of transgender children, Paxton argued that individual families must provide evidence of harm from the actions of the Department of Family and Protective Services. Full Story
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After a murder-suicide in 2018, a reporter spent years investigating Texas’ troubled foster care system. Too often, it prioritized terminating parental rights over keeping birth families intact. Full Story
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Bills that would give relative caregivers more money have missed key deadlines to make it in front of the full House. Full Story
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State and federal laws are supposed to protect foster youth until they turn 21. But Texas all too often erects unnecessarily burdensome hurdles. Full Story
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Texas lawmakers and a federal judge say attorneys in the case against the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services should not hire lobbyists using funds won in court. Full Story
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