If Texas won’t fix a child foster care system that remains dangerously broken after two decades of neglect, the federal government should step up pressure to comply with their recommendations for reform or take the task out of Texas’ hands.
We reach this conclusion after the latest Texas foster care debacle, this one involving possible sex trafficking of young girls at a Bastrop foster home. It’s been 11 years since children’s advocates filed a still-ongoing lawsuit against the state Department of Family Protective Services, and six years since a federal judge appointed special monitors to oversee the foster care system and recommend changes. But monumental problems persist, requiring drastic, long-overdue action.
The state is still failing to find adequate placements for the growing number of children who need a home in Texas. It has routinely shipped some of these children to unlicensed out-of-state foster homes, sometimes putting them in dangerous situations. It has lost track of kids in the system. Overwhelmed case workers are quitting in droves. Instead of adhering to court rulings aimed at improving the system, the state resists, having now spent at least $10 million fighting the rulings on appeal.
Continued failure at the highest levels of state government to make sweeping reforms is why we support U.S. District Court Judge Janis Jack’s call for a federal criminal inquiry in Bastrop. Jack has also threatened to hold the Department of Family and Protective Services in contempt of court for a third time and impose stiff fines if the agency doesn’t make significant improvement. If that’s what it takes to force reform, she should do it. Federal monitors assigned by Jack in 2016 to supervise the Texas foster care system should step up pressure on the state to comply with their recommendations.
Additional money budgeted by the Texas Legislature in the past five years has helped provide more services for children in foster care, but the state still isn’t keeping up with demand for beds. Lawmakers should tap part of a projected $25 billion state budget surplus this year to create more safe housing for the growing number of children — now totaling more than 10,000 — in long-term foster care. But money alone can’t fix the state’s failing foster care system. That will also require policy reform.
In March, Texans learned that an employee at the Refuge Ranch, a state-contracted shelter for young female sex-trafficking victims in Bastrop, was accused of obtaining nude photos of two girls who lived there, then selling the images and using the proceeds to buy them drugs and booze. After a shelter employee reported the staffer, it took eight calls over six weeks before the state temporarily shut the shelter down and began investigating.
The sordid saga unfolding 30 miles east of Austin is infuriating but sadly, not all that surprising. The Texas Department of Family Protective Services routinely fails to keep vulnerable children in foster care safe. More than 100 children have died in Texas’ long-term foster care system in the past two years. Hundreds of Texas foster kids slept in state offices, churches or other makeshift living spaces last year because there aren’t enough beds in foster homes.
Some foster care advocates and the lead attorney suing the state told our board last week that allowing a court-appointed receiver to take control of the foster care system should also be on the table, but only as a last resort. They would prefer Texas put its own house in order.
We understand their reasoning, but if the state doesn’t demonstrate that it will do so — and soon — then federal receivership is warranted.
When news of the Bastrop allegations became public on March 8, Gov. Greg Abbott shut the shelter down and ordered the Texas Rangers to investigate. Just six days later, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McGraw asserted in a letter to Abbott that a preliminary investigation found no evidence that Refuge Ranch residents were sexually abused or trafficked at the facility. Abbott took to Twitter to complain that “many people jumped to false conclusions.”
It now appears Abbott, who is running for reelection, and his top law enforcement official are the ones who may have jumped to false conclusions. The federally appointed court monitors in charge of foster care oversight in Texas conducted their own investigation and in a March 28 court filing said “evidence strongly suggests” that McGraw’s finding of no violations “was, at best, premature.” The monitors determined that recurring managerial lapses at the shelter had led to “serious risks to child safety.” They also found that Texas Rangers had failed to interview one of the shelter residents involved in the alleged nude photos incident.
Paul Yetter, a Houston lawyer who has waged a nearly two-decade, pro-bono class action legal battle to force Texas to overhaul its foster care system, condemned Abbott’s tweet.
“These kinds of comments — that nothing happened here — are exactly the opposite of the widely-known evidence,” Yetter told our board. “For them to say nothing happened is shameful.”
On March 30, Jack said she would request a federal investigation in Bastrop, asking the U.S. Attorney for the western district, Ashley C. Hoff, to determine whether child pornography was produced and distributed at Refuge Ranch, and if it would qualify as sex trafficking. Jack also wants to know if obstruction of justice occurred. We strongly support her request and urge Hoff to address it as quickly as possible.
During a daylong court hearing in January, an exasperated Jack apologized for heaping scorn on state foster care officials during testy exchanges about the ongoing lawsuit, “Sorry I act so angry,” Jack said at that hearing. “It’s actually because I am angry.”
Anyone who cares about the welfare of vulnerable children should be angry about decades of foster care mismanagement, too. Abbott last month expressed outrage at the Bastrop incident and frequently talks about “Texas values.” But how do Texas values align with a foster care system that leaves vulnerable children in harm’s way? Over the past five years, the Texas Legislature has approved more than a half-billion dollars to address this crisis. The money helps, but it would be more effective if the governor would demand major policy changes to ensure the taxpayers’ money would be better spent to improve a foster care system in utter and shameful disarray.
Austin American-Statesman
