Texas foster care leadership held in contempt of court for third time

HOUSTON (CN) — A federal judge laid out the failings of Texas' foster care system in a massive, 400-page ruling that held foster care leadership in contempt of court for the third time in five years on Tuesday for failing to protect the most vulnerable children in its foster system.

This is the latest development in a saga that began thirteen years ago, which saw a trial in 2014, an appeals ruling by the 5th Circuit in 2018, and two prior contempt holdings in 2019 and 2020.

In her April 15th order, U.S. District Court Judge Janis Graham Jack held Cecile Young, the Executive Commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, in contempt of two prior court orders for failure to adequately investigate child abuse incidents within the foster care system.

The judge has ordered Young and the commission to pay $100,000 per day until all of their investigations are compliant with the court’s numerous orders.

Tuesday's latest order focused on the Child Without Placement system used by the Department of Family and Protective Services. The Children Without Placement — those not placed in a formally licensed foster care facility or home — can end up in all sorts of places, from rented homes to motel rooms, according to the judge. These children are placed under a Permanent Managing Conservatorship, meaning that they are fully under the care of the state.

However, Jack emphasized that “children placed in CWOP suffer some of the worst abuses in the Texas foster care system,” including drug problems, sex trafficking, physical abuse and arrests. Moreover, at least three children have died while in the system or while running away from a placement setting, according to the substantial background laid out in the Tuesday order.

“As faulty as the monitoring and oversight in licensed settings has been, CWOP Settings lack even flawed monitoring and oversight,” the judge wrote. “CWOP Settings are not held to any minimum standards, and there is no investigation of minimum standard violations to ensure that basic safety measures are being followed. There is no contract, so DFPS is not overseeing contractual provisions related to safety and appropriate care — including contractual requirements related to medical and mental health care.”

Jack also emphasized that even the commission's own employees are harmed under the placement setting system, which has forced caseworkers to work long overtime shifts supervising the placement of the children.

She wrote that the caseworkers responsible for these children have little power to intervene to make these kids do anything, or to intervene if anything happens to them. They rarely have the training to deal with these kids, who often have specialized needs, and lack the support from those with proper training.

As such, some caseworkers relied on private security guards to control the children, who would “handcuff, pepper spray, and taser the children — none of which would be permissible were the same children in a licensed setting.” Others relied on frequent calls to the police, who would often arrest the children.

The placement settings are also driving up caseloads, burnout and turnover among caseworkers.

One official testified that “it runs side-by-side with the daily activities of caseworkers, kinship workers across the board. So everyone has to work CWOP. It is now an essential job function.” More than half of the department's caseworkers reported being overworked, and that “overtime was the rule, not the exception.”

Yet the system grew to rely more on Children Without Placement settings, particularly in 2021. That year, the number of children in those settings ballooned to over 100.

Even though the settings are meant to be temporary, state-appointed monitors found that children were spending an average of 32 nights, and a maximum of 271, in Children Without Placement. Meanwhile, 2023 workload data showed that the department is more than 350 caseworkers short of the number needed to keep each one at just a full-time caseload, rather than one mandating substantial overtime.

Despite that growing reliance, both department and commission officials failed to properly investigate Children Without Placement incident reports, and even failed to properly collect necessary data. Caseworkers and upper officials failed to communicate between divisions and between counties.

The Department of Family and Protective Services has even failed to keep basic medical and educational records for some children. As one witness in the December hearing put it, when it comes to the Children Without Placement system, “You can’t believe the numbers.”

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