Kids do better with family than in foster homes. Will Texas learn? | Opinion
A sign outside of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services office photographed Tuesday, May 3, 2016, in Dallas. Texas lawmakers took steps last year to buttress the state’s embattled foster care system by directing more than $173 million its way. And Gov. Greg Abbott showed constructive leadership more than a year ago when he finally shifted the state’s attitude in a decade-long federal lawsuit about foster care from resistance to cooperation.
But Texas is still not being aggressive enough to protect children in its supervision. The state has failed to treat kinship care — the placement of children with their own grandparents or other vetted relatives — as the policy priority that it should be. The state’s commitment to fixing the foster care mess was recently put to the test by a panel of independent experts who issued a series ofas part of an ongoing federal lawsuit. The Health and Human Services Commission and the Department of Family and Protective Services, the two state agencies tasked with overseeing the foster care system, hired a consultant to help them with technical expertise and agreed to create new positions to coordinate services and to find beds in safe settings.
But when it came to recommendations about improving support for relatives serving as foster caregivers, Texas’ response was tepid. For instance, while state officials said that they are implementing a plan to increase kinship care, they vacillated on a recommendation to create a pool of funds in each service region to help caregivers pay for needs beyond traditional therapy. Some caregivers told the panel of experts that they could use assistance with transportation and activities that get children to socialize in a positive environment. State officials said they need legislative approval for these funds.
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