Foster Care and Child Welfare Week in Review – March 13, 2023
Here are some news items from last week related to foster care, adoption, and child welfare that caught our eye:
Three recently retired employees of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services’ Child Protective Services (CPS) arm said the agency’s operations are a mess — and have been for decades. Employees who once loved their careers have become burned out from low pay, high caseload expectations and emotional stresses that can last a lifetime. A group of kids, called “children without placement,” have no parents, no foster family and no facility that will take them because their behavioral issues are too severe. Their day-and-night care, these former CPS workers said, falls to CPS employees — and not necessarily experienced caseworkers.
It’s now been almost two months since the Midland Police Department found an unidentified teen in an alley of Shandon Ave. and Ward St. in Midland. According to the City of Midland, he is still in the custody of Child Protective Services (CPS) but has been moved from Midland. As for where he’s been moved to that is unknown at this time. CPS says he is in state custody and has been placed at a home that is meeting his needs.
Saint Francis Ministries has opened a new facility to better serve children on the South Plains. The organization cares for kids in the Texas foster care system. Today, it celebrated the grand opening of a facility that is the first of its kind in Texas, and it’s right here in Lubbock. The residential treatment center is the first Texas facility based on the qualified residential treatment program model. According to Saint Francis CEO William Clark, the center will provide 21 additional beds for children in foster care from more than 40 counties.
Texas still has a shortage of foster care beds — ones that are licensed and don’t put children and Child Protective Services workers at risk of harm, even death. Each night in January, an average of four dozen kids were “children without placements,” according to the Department of Family and Protective Services. Through the month’s 31 days, 171 different children spent at least two consecutive nights in makeshift, unlicensed facilities. That’s a 59% decrease from the 416 children without placements, or CWOPs, recorded in July 2021 — a record. The state’s pouring money to induce providers in its heavily privatized foster care system to take in the most difficult and traumatized youngsters.
Jesus Silva, 49, of Beverly Hills, is being held at the McLennan County Jail after he was accused of sexually abusing a girl at a foster home. The Beverly Hills Police Department was notified by Child Protective Services on Feb. 8 about a report of possible sexual abuse at a resident foster home located within its jurisdiction. Police officers took Silva into custody on March 1, for allegedly fondling, in a sexual manner, a foster child under the age of 10 at the home. The Beverly Hills Police Department, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and Family Protective Services are working to identify other potential victims.
A mother was arrested in Italy, Texas, after she allegedly stabbed three of her children to death and and injured two more of her children Friday, sources told WFAA. Child Protective Services confirmed to WFAA that all five children were siblings. Sources with CPS told WFAA that Hall allegedly stabbed her children when a CPS worker, who suspected Hall was having unsupervised visitations with her children, arrived at the scene to check on her unannounced. The caseworker determined children should be removed from a residence south of Dallas on Friday, just before three of them were found dead and two injured. The children had been previously placed by CPS under the guardianship of another relative.
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