State Leaders Order Texas Department Of Family And Protective Services To Shape Up

AUSTIN, TX -- State officials on Wednesday have ordered the Department of Family and Protective Services to enhance its services and relieve a backlog of children waiting to be placed in homes.

In a rare joint call for action, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Joe Straus issued a joint letter to the department's Commissioner Hank Whitman, directing him to forge a plan to hire and train more investigators to take up the backlog of at-risk children who have not had a face-to-face interaction with Child Protective Services, as the Texas Tribune and other media outlets reported.

The state leaders also called for the agency to train and hire more caseworkers to continue working with community organizations. The lawmakers also categorized recent news reports of children who are wards of the state sleeping in CPS offices and hotels as "unacceptable."

The Austin American-Statesman reported Sunday that 330 children have slept in hotels, offices or emergency shelters since January given the lack of foster homes in which to place them. In some cases, both children and caseworkers have been hurt in such arrangements when at-risk children became violent. In one case, two teenagers stole a caseworker’s car and crashed it after driving 100 mph on I-35, the Statesman reported.

The lawmakers' joint letter comes eight days after DFPS released statistics showing the welfare of nearly one thousand at-risk children under CPS care was not checked on in the course of six months. That report also showed caseworkers did not check up on 1,800 children withing a 24-hour period after alleged abuse or mistreatment.

“We also will not tolerate inferior residential foster care operations," the joint letter reads. "The state’s residential providers must be held to the highest standards while caring for our most vulnerable or no longer operate in our system.”

Making matters worse for the department, it faces a $40 million budget shortfall with a staff of overworked caseworkers.

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