“Somebody is not getting the urgency of this,” U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack said when threatening a contempt-of-court order. “I know that you all say you understand the urgency, but this is just not happening.”
At the Friday court hearing, the judge admonished the state for not making children aware of their rights and for not taking adequate action over reports of abuse.
The report notes that the state’s child welfare agency also did not take appropriate action to protect kids in about 58% of cases where the agency suspected maltreatment or abuse. Jack also blasted the state for continuing to have children without placement, when the state cannot find a suitable placement for that child, requiring the Department of Family and Protective Services to provide temporary emergency care until a placement can be secured. Children without placement are more likely to have complex behavioral and mental health needs. The average number of children without placement went from 80 children per night in 2021 to 60 children per night in 2022.
Jack first ruled in 2015 that Texas has violated the constitutional rights of foster children to be free from an unreasonable risk of harm, saying that children “often age out of care more damaged than when they entered.” Kinship care is a type of placement that a panel of child welfare experts said DFPS was underutilizing in a list of recommendations of foster care system fixes filed to the court last year. Evidence shows children placed with kin or family members experience increased stability, improved well-being and behavioral health outcomes and higher levels of permanency than children placed with strangers.
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