CHILD PROTECTION

It’s difficult to separate the thought of children from the spirit of the season. So full of hope and happiness, children truly embody the magic of the holidays. But for the nearly 28,000 Texas kids who will spend the holidays in foster care, the season is not so bright.

Aimee Blanchard, a 2002 graduate of The University of Texas School of Law, went to law school to become a child welfare attorney. She even spent a year working with abused and neglected children at the Children’s Rights Clinic, a hands-on clinic at UT. As a student attorney representing the legal interests of child clients, Ms. Blanchard did a lot of things that practicing lawyers doâ€" interviewing clients, developing legal strategies for her cases, and arguing her clients’ positions in the courtroom.

Too many of the nearly 28,000 kids in Texas’ foster care system (and the over 500,000 foster children nationwide) lack stable legal representation and are voiceless in the court proceedings that profoundly affect their lives. A first-ever study of children’s attorneys reveals why: many lawyers cannot afford to enter or remain in this low-paying practice area due to overwhelming student loan debt. Over two-thirds (68%) of lawyers surveyed owe at least $50,000 in student loan debt and nearly a quarter (24%) owe $75,000 or more.

CPPP is the Texas partner of Home at Last: Moving Children in Foster Care to Safe, Permanent Families (HAL), an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts. HAL is a national and state public education and outreach campaign about the recommendations to enhance federal financing and court oversight of child welfare cases made by the blue-ribbon Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care. HAL focuses on the court recommendationsâ€"facilitating better and timelier court decisions related to children’s safety, permanence, and well-being. You can learn more about the Pew Commission’s work and recommendations at www.pewfostercare.org.

The following presentations were given at the Houston KIDS COUNT Conference on Children, a half-day conference on children's issues in the wake of the 79th Legislative Session.

To answer how child protection fared this session, one must study both the final appropriations bills and Senate Bill 6.

The Texas House has just passed legislation to have private corporations take over the job of ensuring the safety of our abused children and getting them into permanent homes. The proposed legislation calls for firing about 1,700 Child Protective Services caseworkers.

In their different versions of Senate Bill 6, both the Senate and the House require the Department of Family and Protective Services to discontinue its foster and adoption units and outsource all foster care and adoption services. The Senate and the House differ, however, with regard to privatizing case management. The Senate authorizes a regional pilot to test the concept. The House mandates statewide implementation. The conference committee will have to choose between these two approaches.

The House made significant changes to Senate Bill 6. In introducing those changes, Chairman Hupp said that the Senate plan did not go far enough. In our judgment, the reverse is true. The House plan goes too far by turning over children in the legal care of the state to private companies. We hope that the Senate can prevail on the House in conference to move toward the Senate plan.

Strengthening child protection is critically important. This call to action advises you about what is happening and what you can do to make your voice heard.

CPPP's analysis of where the House and Senate bills stand as of April 15, before the full House vote. Read Call to Action for Child Protection for complete details.

In an earlier brief, we analyzed privatization of case management. This brief compares CPS performance in Texas to the three states favorably cited by HHSC that have made the greatest use of privatization. Based on this comparison, this brief argues that the Senate proposal to pilot privatization is the only prudent course.

This policy brief analyzes privatizing case management. The brief recommends that before the state privatizes case management, it pilot the concept, perhaps seeking a federal Title IV-E waiver to use federal funds in a demonstration project.

Today, the Governor and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission released a long-awaited report on changes that should be made to child protective services (CPS) to safeguard the state's six million children from abuse or neglect.