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Child's Play: Foster Care's Fiasco, by Dave Mann..



 
 
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Old April 29th 07, 07:21 AM posted to alt.support.child-protective-services,alt.support.foster-parents,alt.dads-rights.unmoderated,alt.parenting.spanking
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Default Child's Play: Foster Care's Fiasco, by Dave Mann..

Child's Play: Foster Care's Fiasco
by Dave Mann

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2441

March 09, 2007 — Capitol Offense
Child's Play: Foster Care's Fiasco
by Dave Mann

On February 22, the House Human Services Committee met to consider how
to repair one of the most fractured parts of the state bureaucracy—its
care of foster children. This might surprise the casual observer. You
may have heard that state lawmakers fixed Texas’ ailing Department of
Child Protective Services two years ago. You may remember that in 2005,
following a string of news accounts detailing gruesome deaths of abused
children, Gov. Rick Perry declared the crisis at CPS an “emergency
issue” for the Legislature. The resulting reform legislation infused the
agency with $250 million in new state money and reorganized or
privatized several CPS functions. Many political observers hailed the
CPS reform as one of the Legislature’s great successes in recent years.
When the bill passed, Sen. Jane Nelson, a Lewisville Republican and one
of the bill’s architects, declared, “This legislation will ensure that
the agencies responsible for making life-and-death decisions are
properly equipped and trained to make the right decisions.”
Sen. Jane Nelson (R-Lewisville)

Well, not so much. Two years on, CPS has improved in some respects, but
the agency is once again foundering. And as the Human Services Committee
convened its meeting in the Capitol basement in late February, lawmakers
were again faced with media reports of grisly and preventable deaths
among foster children. Some children’s advocates say the latest round of
reform bills may make the situation even worse.

Joyce James, an assistant director of CPS, was the first to testify
before the House committee, chaired by Patrick Rose, the young Democrat
from Dripping Springs. Many of the lawmakers on the committee are new to
the issue of child protective services, and they began peppering James
with questions about how the agency functions.

Though CPS’ mission is straightforward enough—take care of abused and
neglected kids—the agency’s machinery is fairly complex. The department
performs two main jobs: Investigate families it suspects abuse or
neglect kids, and care for children removed from their families. Once a
kid enters the foster care system, CPS finds the child a permanent
home—either with relatives or a foster or adoptive family, or in a
facility. CPS caseworkers guide the child through the bureaucratic
maze—representing them in court, to family members, whatever’s
required—until the minor enters a safe, permanent home.

Before 2005, the investigative piece of the agency caused the
controversy. Severely understaffed CPS investigators failed to remove
several children from parents who later injured or killed them. In one
infamous incident, a Plano woman sliced off her 10-month-old daughter’s
arms with a kitchen knife while chanting religious hymns; four months
earlier, CPS had deemed the woman’s mental state “stable.” Other
similarly gruesome tales forged the political will for change. In the
2005 CPS reform—filed as Senate Bill 6—state lawmakers allocated $250
million to beef up CPS’ investigations unit. That part of the bill has
been reasonably successful. The agency hired more investigators;
caseloads among CPS workers dropped; and the crisis seemed to pass.

As James told the committee, CPS has another crisis arising from the
other half of the agency’s mission: foster care. Paradoxically, the
department now removes children from dangerous homes more frequently,
but the kids potentially face new harm once under the care of the state.

In 2005, state lawmakers provided scant new funding for the foster care
side of the CPS mission. With most of the new money earmarked for
investigations, SB 6 offered a panacea for the foster care side of
CPS—privatization.

Under the 2005 bill, the Legislature directed CPS to privatize all its
foster care placement and adoption services. Private companies already
handled 80 percent of current foster care placements and adoptions—SB 6
mandated the privatization of the remaining 20 percent. The most radical
piece of SB 6 privatized all the oversight work currently handled by CPS
caseworkers. The children’s lone advocate in the system was supposed to
be replaced by private, in some cases for-profit, companies. Private
providers would represent kids at every stage, even in state court. CPS
would retain legal responsibility for kids completely in the care of
private companies.

CPS planned to test this privatized design in the San Antonio area
before taking it statewide. But in fall 2006, just as the agency put out
a request for private bidders in Bexar County, a new flood of CPS horror
stories put the plan on hold.

In late November, the Dallas Morning News reported on the deaths of two
young children that CPS had placed with private foster care agencies. In
Corsicana, a young child died of head injuries in a foster home. The
company that placed him there—Mesa Family Services—had been cited by CPS
for more than 100 safety violations, yet the agency had renewed Mesa’s
contract three months earlier, the Morning News reported.

With such lax oversight, it didn’t seem like such a good idea to turn
the state’s foster care and adoption system over to private companies
like Mesa. Stunned by the reports, Sen. Nelson directed CPS to put all
privatization on hold in November. That’s where it stands. “The
department is waiting further instruction [on privatization] from the
Legislature,” James told the House committee.

Meanwhile, CPS child placement remains a shambles. James conceded after
a question from Austin Democrat Elliott Naishtat that the foster care
system is so overwhelmed at times that CPS can’t find a temporary
residence for some kids. Instead, the kids stay with CPS caseworkers in
their offices for three and four days. There was a stunned silence in
the room. Here was the agency lawmakers had famously fixed last session
admitting that foster kids are sleeping on couches in state offices.

A few minutes later, Scott McCown testified before the committee and
explained why CPS sometimes stashes kids on office sofas. McCown is a
former state district judge and heads the Center for Public Policy
Priorities, an Austin-based policy shop. The problem with CPS, McCown
told the committee, is lack of resources.

Texas ranks 47th nationally in per-capita funding for child protective
services. Just to reach the national average—not the top, just the
average—Texas would have to spend $2 billion more every two years.
(That’s nearly 10 times the ballyhooed $250 million increase from 2005).
With too little cash in the system, CPS can’t recruit enough foster care
providers. A shortage of safe places to house kids forces CPS to work
with just about any company available, no matter how shady their record.
Worse yet, meager state funding also means CPS has a shortage of
caseworkers and other oversight staff to monitor how kids are treated in
foster homes and treatment facilities.

Then McCown got to his main point: The solution to these problems is
more state funding, not more privatization. He said privatizing the
remaining 20 percent of foster care services that the state now provides
accomplishes nothing and wouldn’t save any money. The 20 percent of kids
the state places in foster care account for the majority of adoptions in
Texas. Moreover, the logistics of shuttering state-run foster care and
shifting the kids to private firms would, in fact, cost money, roughly
$17 million in state funds, McCown said.

Beyond that, privatizing the jobs of CPS caseworkers is “what the
private providers were able to talk the Legislature into, and I hope you
will revisit,” McCown said. Private companies can offer some valuable
services, he added, but should “Joe’s Foster Care” decide what happens
to Texas’ abused kids? “Do you want to say that a private company will
decide if a child goes home or not?” he asked. McCown offered an
analogy: If an overworked shepherd is looking after too many sheep, you
hire more shepherds. “You don’t say, this shepherd is doing a bad job,
losing some sheep, let’s hire the wolf.”

At that point, an annoyed Chairman Rose spoke up. “I’ve agreed with most
of what you’ve said today. I don’t know that I’d compare the private
providers to the wolf.”

“Yes,” McCown said. “This Mesa Family Services home that was shut down,
I would compare to the wolf.”

McCown recommended that the Legislature allow CPS to privatize certain
services when that makes sense, but not to mandate privatizing CPS case
workers. A bill filed by Naishtat (HB 1361) would make CPS’
privatization optional.

Sen. Nelson also has a foster care reform bill. Her proposal would beef
up state oversight of foster care homes like Mesa, but it would also
follow through on some of the privatization from 2005. Nelson’s bill, as
filed, would privatize all foster care services, and it would initiate a
pilot program to privatize 10 percent of CPS caseworkers.

For their part, private foster care companies—the wolves, in McCown’s
view—are lobbying hard for more business from CPS. Recently defeated
state Rep. Toby Goodman, the Arlington Republican who helped write much
of the privatization language in the 2005 bill, is now lobbying for its
main beneficiary: Providence Service Corp., a large, Arizona-based
foster care company that last year bid on the initial CPS contract in
San Antonio. Goodman and daughter Christie have reportedly been shopping
a bill to lawmakers this session that would establish a fully privatized
foster care system—including privatized caseworkers—in the San Antonio
area as a pilot program. Whether Goodman’s proposals make it into
Nelson’s bill remains to be seen—it may come up for a hearing in Senate
committee in early March.

Upon filing her CPS bill in early February, Nelson said in a statement,
“We are clearly not where the Legislature intended two years after
passing SB 6.” Indeed, the question remains: Will the Legislature’s
continued experiments on the state’s foster care system make it better
or worse?

CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NATIONAL
SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WIRETAPING PROGRAM....

BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...
 




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