There’s progress on a better child welfare system

There’s encouraging news from Austin about efforts to fix the state’s fractured child welfare system: Texas lawmakers are making progress.

Key issues are yet to be resolved — primarily (no surprise) about money. House and Senate bills (HB 6 and SB 11) are not yet ready for final votes.

But important understandings have been reached.

The highest hurdle so far has to do with the role private contractors will play in a revamped system. There was much concern earlier in the session that privatization would create incentives for these providers to keep kids trapped in the system to receive state financial subsidies.

Yet one of the greatest flaws of the current state-run system is that it is too big. Trying to find the right care for tens of thousands of kids across Texas and supervise the details of that care from Austin has put too many children at risk.

Gov. Greg Abbott reminded us in January that more than 100 children died last year in the Child Protective Services system.

The proposed solution is to divide the state into several regions and, over a period of years, turn supervision of child welfare cases in each region over to community nonprofits — a system referred to as “community-based care.”

ACH Child and Family Services has pioneered that concept in a seven-county area around Fort Worth under a 2014 state contract. ACH has built a much-improved system, recruiting foster homes and placing children in care, supervised by state caseworkers and the Department of Family and Protective Services.

The new system under consideration by lawmakers would put more case management responsibility in the hands of nonprofits like ACH, including working with the families of children under state care.

Just as in today’s system, courts would decide whether children are to be kept under state care or returned to their families. Some lawmakers want state caseworkers to supervise the community nonprofits on that decision, while others trust courts to act without that step.

If it helps avoid mistrust in the community-based model, keeping state caseworkers involved in that key custody step seems like a good choice.

This story was originally published April 25, 2017 at 5:59 PM with the headline "There’s progress on a better child welfare system."