Foster Care and Child Welfare Week in Review – April 17, 2023
Here are some news items from last week related to foster care, adoption, and child welfare that caught our eye:
Paul Yetter has outlasted 10 commissioners appointed to lead the two Texas agencies that oversee foster placements. He finally sees a glimmer of hope. In a recent report to the court, monitors overseeing state foster care progress were more encouraging than they have been in some time. Child Protective Services caseloads are lower. Investigations are more accurately identifying abusive situations and getting kids out of them.
Killeen police are continuing to respond to calls about criminal activity on Verbena Loop, where neighbors say a state-run “CPS watch home” continues to cause problems for the otherwise quiet, south Killeen neighborhood. The latest developments are part of a series of incidents that have neighbors on edge. A group of residents who live in the area are up in arms about the criminal presence around the home which is used by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to house juveniles in the foster care system.
A federal judge called Texas’ use of psychotropic drugs on foster children appalling and in violation of the state’s own standards. Speaking at a Wednesday hearing in the 12-year old federal foster care litigation, Judge Janis Jack said she was saddened by a report filed last month by court monitors on the use of psychotropic drugs in the Texas foster care system. The report filed last month was based on multi-day visits to 14 group homes, or residential treatment facilities. The judge pointed to details showing kids were overprescribed drugs, that medical logs showed some weren’t given drugs as scheduled, and to other numerous medication log errors.
U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack implored the state’s child welfare agency at a Wednesday court hearing to be quicker to take disciplinary action against residential facilities. Court monitors made site inspections at 14 residential facilities between December 2021 and December 2022. The inspections revealed a pattern in which staff mismanaged how medications are administered and several instances in which sexual abuse victims were placed in bedrooms with youth that have a history of sexual aggression.
Foster children who previously were victims of sexual abuse are being placed in bedrooms alongside youth flagged for histories of sexual aggression and the state is doing nothing about it, a federal judge said Wednesday. In a federal courthouse in Corpus Christi, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack said that, while Texas has shaped up in some areas over the past few years, it has been backsliding in other ways — with threats to children’s safety growing, not receding. The all-day court hearing included testimony that too many foster care children are prescribed four or more medications at one time without the necessary evaluations and assessments. Also, the state isn’t moving fast enough to reduce the number of children who are bunked in hotels and churches because they don’t have placements
Pregnant women and new mothers in Oklahoma have a new resource if they’re fighting addiction. With a desire for advocacy and change, organizers of the newly launched Oklahoma Parent-Child Assistance program hope to meet moms or expecting mothers where they’re at. Case managers do more than just work at the county jail. They’ll also come to your front door to meet you at home. Women in the program will become role models, staying close by for three years, through the recovery journey.
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