CHILD PROTECTION

(AUSTIN, Texas)â€"Low-income children in Texas received an early Christmas present last week. On December 13, President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act into law, which increases investment in the Child Nutrition Programs: School Breakfast and Lunch, Women Infants and Children (WIC), which provides food benefits and nutrition counseling to new mothers and children with a nutritional risk, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), which reimburses day care providers and afterschool programs for the meals and snacks they serve to low-income children and seniors in their care.

The best way to reduce the number of children in foster care is to prevent child abuse and neglect from occurring in the first place. But this is easier said than done, especially in Texas where funding prevention has not been a priority. Even in this difficult economic environment, however, the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) can maximize the effect of the limited resources it has.

How to best regulate immigration and treat immigrantsâ€"both those lawfully and unlawfully hereâ€"are hotly debated questions. To promote responsible action, the center recently proposed a common-sense set of principles to secure our borders and reform our immigration system.1 Now we turn our attention to a much smaller issue, perhaps one on which consensus may be more readily reached: How should the United States deal with undocumented children who are here through no fault of their own and have suffered abuse or neglect? Using Texas as a case study, this paper looks at who these children are and discusses why a blanket policy to send them home will not work. It also discusses how to improve the process through which these children can obtain legal residency. Finally, this paper explains how federal immigration and child welfare law should be aligned to ensure our country acts responsibly and that the federal government provides the necessary financial support to the states to care for this vulnerable population.

When a child cannot remain safely at home, one option to prevent removal into foster care is for the parents to identify another home in which they agree the child can stay, which is referred to as a parental child safety placement. This type of placement can occur during the investigation stage, during the time the family is receiving family based safety services (FBSS), or both. Although the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has some policies regarding such placements, there are several areas that need greater detail to ensure that these placements are appropriate, that everyone understands their rights and responsibilities, and that the placements last no longer than necessary.

The new permanency care assistance program, which pays relatives who take permanent custody of a child in state care, is well intended. But due to federal and practical constraints, implementation may not go as planned. That is why the 2017 sunset provision is important. It allows sufficient time for the program to get up and running but provides an important “out” if the program does not achieve its intended goals.

CPPP senior policy analyst Jane Burstain delivered this testimony on the permanency care assistance program to the Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services.

More than one of every five Texas children, or nearly 1.5 million kids, lived in poverty during 2008â€"and when data from 2009 are compiled, that number is likely to increase to one of every four kids, according to a new analysis released Wednesday by First Focus and Brookings researcher Julia Isaacs. The increase in poor children is placing an even heavier burden on an already strained network of private charities and state agencies already reeling from the triple punch of inadequate funding, staffing shortages, and a broken eligibility system that withholds critical assistance to needy families.