Texas lawmakers look for ways to better help abused children

It’s time for Texas to step up and do more to protect the state’s most vulnerable people.

That starts with reducing caseloads and boosting salaries for the people who investigate child abuse cases and recommend where those children should live, several local and state officials said Thursday.

“The problems are really huge,” Bruce Capehart, chair of the Child Protective Services Board for Tarrant County, told state lawmakers gathered in Fort Worth. “There will not be a quick or easy solution to all of this.

“But we simply must start.”

This is the latest move to improve the state’s embattled child welfare agency, Texas’ Child Protective Services, that has been under scrutiny for an increase in child abuse and death cases, caseworker turnover, children sleeping in state office buildings, even a court ruling that the foster care system in Texas is “broken.”

Top state officials earlier this year named new leaders to the state agency that oversees CPS and said improving the system geared to help abused children will be a top priority for the 85th Legislature.

On Thursday, the Texas House Committee on County Affairs, which hopes to make recommendations to the full Legislature next year on how to improve the system, listened to hours of suggestions during a hearing at the Tarrant County College Trinity River Campus.

Reports show there were 176,868 completed child abuse/neglect investigations in Texas, with 43,848 in the Arlington region, last year.

And those investigations led to 75,328 children — including 16,976 in the Arlington region, which covers more than a dozen counties including Tarrant, Dallas, Denton and Collin — being involved in cases opened last year, according to family and protective services statistics.

If the state could better retain CPS caseworkers, more children likely would receive quality help.

“Retention ... is one of the biggest issues that affects us,” said Cindy Williams, an assistant district attorney in Tarrant County. “This directly impacts our ability to find positive outcomes for children in court.

“The quality of the casework (CPS workers do) directly affects the cases.”

That’s why she worries that so many caseworkers are “very young” entry level staffers who take on stressful, dangerous jobs where lives literally hang in the balance.

The key to retention, she said, “is reducing stress on them and increasing their pay.”

Pay and cases

Some have said part of the problem is that case workers have too many cases.

Child Welfare League of America guidelines have suggested that caseworkers looking into neglect or abuse should have no more than 12 active cases a month. But most caseworkers have more than that, and at some agencies, “caseloads may exceed 40 and even 50 cases per worker,” the welfare agency has stated.

In Texas, the average caseload is about 17.9 cases per worker and staff turnover is about 23 percent, state statistics show.

The starting salary for a CPS worker is around $33,000, although there are added incentives for those who are Spanish speaking, have a masters degree in social work or have past experience in investigations.

Reports show an average CPS worker is likely to leave the job in less than three years, which brings a big impact because it takes thousands and thousands of dollars to train these employees.

“When we lose personnel, there’s a financial loss and an experience loss,” said state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington.

“Foster care system has a number of challenges,” said Kristene Blackstone, assistant commissioner of Child Protective Services at the Department of Family and Protective Services.

And the first year of a case worker’s employment, she said, is “critical.”

“It’s make or break.”

Tarrant solution?

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, chairs the committee. Tarrant County members on the committee are state Reps. Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth, Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, and Tinderholt.

The committee heard from Texans on a variety of other topics, ranging from jail standards to cyber security needs and policies.

But CPS issues took up the bulk of the more than six-hour hearing.

Many took time to praise a Tarrant County effort — ACH Child and Family Services, formerly known as All Church Home, which is a nonprofit company that contracts with the state to make lives better for foster children.

ACH is part of a state project that started in 2011 to localize foster care.

“We have a number of initiatives right now, ... but one of the biggest solutions with the best results so far is” having the state contract with ACH, Blackstone said.

ACH, which serves a seven-county region stretching from Tarrant to Palo Pinto to Somervell to Erath, has laid the groundwork to show how a company can make a difference in the community.

“The current status in Tarrant County is improvement,” Williams said. “This is a community effort. ACH, they are very trusted. People know they are in this for the right reason.”

Wayne Carson, chief executive officer of ACH, said he believes this is the right model for Texas.

“We contract with Austin and it’s our job to work with local providers to make sure” children are helped. “There’s a high level of accountability for us.”

This story was originally published August 4, 2016 at 5:41 PM with the headline "Texas lawmakers look for ways to better help abused children."