Texas lawmakers fired up about state CPS and foster care woes

[TexasTowelie]

Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Hank Whitman took another verbal shellacking on Monday as Senate Finance Committee members grilled him about his budget requests.

In a scene reminiscent of a similar hearing in October, lawmakers expressed dismay that the troubled agency was still struggling to see hundreds of endangered Texas children even after receiving $150 million in emergency funding. Whitman and other DFPS officials tried to justify their budget requests for the two-year fiscal cycle and defended their use of emergency funding, which included hiring more caseworkers and bringing in law enforcement support to help find missing kids.

Causing the most tension among lawmakers was Whitman's admission that even with law enforcement help, every day between 400 and 450 "priority-one" kids — children who are 6 years old and younger — had not seen a caseworker within 24 hours.

For example, as of Jan. 30, the agency has not had face-to-face contact with 482 priority-one children statewide, according to agency documents. Among these children, caseworkers have attempted to see 220 of them.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2017/01/30/texas-lawmakers-fired-about-state-cps-and-foster-c/

[metroins]

1. Management in DFPS is very negative

It's a numbers driven agency with negative reinforcement.

Didn't hit your numbers? Get chastised.

DFPS needs a more positive, less number driven atmosphere which will promote quality social work. The benefits will be lower turnover, quality investigations and family based services.

The 12k raise for all employees helped, but there are so many vacant positions that case loads haven't gone down. Turnover is killing the agency and it's due to management at the state office and upper management in the regionals.

[Phoenix61]

2. I was a CPS investigator in Alabama many years ago

At that time it was pretty good. They had lost a federal class action lawsuit and there was federal oversight of the state program. Workers had to have a masters in social work so we had some idea what we were getting into. It was still crazy stressful due to the case load size.