Teen Dies In CPS Custody As House Committee Considers Privatizing More Child Welfare Functions

[TexasTowelie]

Monday morning, members of the House Committee on Human Services took up a couple of bills concerning the state’s child welfare agency and foster care system.

One of those pieces of legislation is House Bill 6.

-snip-

Under this new model, instead of a state CPS worker managing a foster child’s case – that role would be filled by a social worker at a private group or nonprofit.

The hearing comes on the heels of the death of a 15-year-old foster girl. She had been staying at a CPS office in the Houston-area because the state couldn’t find a private provider to take her case, and place her in a foster home. The foster girl was struck and killed by a car early Sunday after she and another girl fled the CPS office. The teenagers had run away from the office 10 hours earlier. The Dallas Morning News reports that this is the first time a child who was in the care of the state died while staying at a CPS office.

Read more: http://www.texasstandard.org/stories/teen-dies-in-cps-custody-as-house-committee-considers-privatizing-more-child-welfare-functions/

[janterry]

1. I don't know where to start

I've worked as a case manager (years ago, for DMH). The approach they are suggesting is a complete misunderstanding of what a case manager does and how the state can manage contracts. When case management is run by a private company (and I've seen that done, too) - they often wind up managing themselves. For example, the case manager will work for the same vendor that provides, for instance, therapy.

This gives the case manager no power over the therapist. They essentially just look to see that treatment is provided, but they have no authority over the service quality. When I worked for DMH, we monitored the programs themselves, to see that they delivered the kind of treatment we thought our clients needed. I could place my client with a different program (even a different therapist) if a different program was more capable of working with my client - or had other services that the client needed.

Moreover, when we decided that we needed a young adult residential program - we helped design the RFP. The program saw themselves as responsive to us not just because we helped negotiate the RFP - but because we were an arm of the state.

They worked for us.

We even contracted for some very imaginative treatment choices. We noticed patterns and trends and could ask that providers meet those needs.

Frankly, CPS could have much higher case loads IF they had good programs in place. Part of the CPS gig is that the workers wind up spending a day with a kid in their car or in their office while they beg and borrow to find a program for them to spend the night (emergency placements). Moreover, if you have a marginal family that has a difficult dynamic - you feel really comfortable if they have an in home treatment team (from a private vendor) visiting the family 3 times a week. You don't need to be in emergency mode for that family, they have a lot of people looking in on them and helping.

CPS is at wits end because they don't have enough treatment services (bed space, treatment space, program space). Shoot - even family respite care.

So, TLDR version is this:

CPS isn't the problem. The services that they contract for aren't either. It's that they don't have enough services on any given day to respond to the needs of their population.