Will big fines force Texas to fix its foster care system?

During the newest listening to in Texas’ decade-long foster care lawsuit, federal District Judge Janis Graham Jack once more threatened to maintain two state companies in contempt of court docket due to their continued failure to fix unsafe situations for foster care youngsters they’re supposed to shield.

We hope she does. Maybe solely fines will force Texas to act with extra urgency to flip issues round.

This is nobody’s most popular consequence. We are rooting for the success of the Department of Family and Protective Services, or DFPS, which is the company accountable for putting youngsters, and the Health and Human Services Commission, or HHSC, the company tasked with licensing foster care operations. We need their success as a result of youngsters’s security will depend on it.

And to the companies’ credit score, there was some enchancment. According to a latest report issued by federal screens appointed by Jack, state companies have proven progress in eliminating some threats to youngsters’s well-being and in boosting the regulatory oversight of licensed foster care amenities.

It’s not that nothing is being carried out to reform the state’s foster care system. The drawback is that the turnaround shouldn’t be taking place quick sufficient. In the meantime, Texas youngsters are getting harm. There are greater than 30,000 children within the care of the state.

One of the screens’ most alarming findings of their 209-page report filed this month is {that a} fourth of the 422 youngsters whose circumstances they reviewed had been sexually victimized or revictimized after coming into foster care.

“I don’t know what is an acceptable [rate], but 25 percent is not, ”Jack stated at a court docket listening to this week.

A subset of these youngsters who had been victimized — 27 of them — had been abused greater than as soon as. Almost half of the sexual abuse incidents that the screens reviewed occurred whereas the kid was a runaway from a foster care placement. Still, 36% of the incidents came about whereas the kid was in a licensed foster care setting. And chillingly, greater than a fourth of the sexual abuse perpetrators had been different youngsters in foster care.

That final knowledge level highlights one other main failure. According to the screens, fewer than half of the information of about 650 youngsters that they reviewed confirmed that caregivers had signed to attest that that they had acquired kinds that doc youngsters’s histories of being sexually abused or sexually aggressive.

Other breakdowns cited within the screens’ report: an ongoing scarcity of placements, insufficient background checks of foster care workers and lax therapy of foster care amenities out of compliance with state guidelines.

Is it any surprise that Jack is pissed off?

Our colleague Robert T. Garrett reported this week that DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters introduced the hiring of Anne Heiligenstein, a previous commissioner, as her No. 2. Masters made different strikes to shake up management on the company.

We are cautiously optimistic. The company has to change, and recent hires might assist it transfer ahead. But we had been additionally hopeful when Masters took over in late 2019, and DFPS continues to be struggling.

Children within the care of the state want greater than hope that issues will enhance. They want motion.