Child Protective Services Renewal

Renewal II

While SB 6 of the 79th Texas Legislature dealt mostly with investigation aspects of the protective services system, the second phase of DFPS Renewal focuses on other aspects of the child welfare system. As directed by the passage of SB 758 by the 80th Texas Legislature, the chief goals of this next phase of Renewal are to:

• Keep families together
• Reduce the length of time children remain in foster care; and
• Improve the quality and accountability of foster care.

Child Protective Services is involved in all three of these initiatives. SB 758 also repealed the requirement of SB 6 to outsource substitute care and case management services by 2011.

Keeping Families Together

CPS will increasingly engage families to ensure children can remain safely in their own homes by expanding family preservation services. This will improve outcomes for children and reduce the number of children entering foster care. To achieve this CPS will:

• Make Family Team Meetings (FTMs), a form of Family Group Decision Making (FGDM), available to families during an investigation to help prevent the removal of children. FTM conferences engage families in problem solving and negotiating strategies to achieve safety, permanency, and well-being for the children. 
• Lower family based safety services caseloads to meet policy requirements.
• National data shows that regular, meaningful contact in family based safety services (FBSS) cases is directly related to positive outcomes for children in these cases.
• Adding 348 FBSS staff, including 212 caseworkers, will decrease caseloads and help caseworkers provide higher quality services. Benefits include improved child safety, improved child and family well-being, as well as a reduction in removals and in the rate of foster care growth.
• Establish the Strengthen Families Through Enhanced In-home Support program to offset certain poverty-related factors. This program uses funds from the Texas Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to provide benefits and services to eligible families. The goal is help stabilize families to avoid removing children from the home or to speed the reunification of children with their families.

Components include monetary benefits with a maximum cumulative value of $250, and goods and services with a maximum cumulative amount of $3,000. These benefits and services would be provided to families at various times in the life of the case to help with meeting the child’s needs, maintaining the safety of the child, relieving the stress of the family and enhancing family strengths and functioning.

• Ensure adequate resources are available for purchased services for children and families prior to removal. Additional resources were made available for services that are critical in helping families keep their children safe at home such as homemaker services, drug testing, and assessment and treatment services. The additional resources were requested to keep pace with projected caseload growth.

Reducing Time Children Stay in Foster Care

To achieve this goal CPS is working to ensure services are realistic, accessible and available to children’s families.

• CPS is expanding the number of counties where Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) is practiced after removals to ensure a realistic plan of service and to increase placement with relatives.  Children benefiting from FGDM are more frequently placed with relatives, had shorter stays in foster care, and were more likely to return to their families compared to more traditional services.
• DFPS is expanding resources for purchased services for children and families that are designed to help reunite families. This includes counseling, therapy, and substance abuse treatment.
• CPS will lower substitute care caseloads to enabling caseworkers to see children in foster care more often. The addition of 501 conservatorship staff, including 372 caseworkers, will allow CPS to achieve monthly face-to-face contact with 90% of children in substitute care by 2011. Benefits include increased child safety and quicker permanency for children, more foster care diversions, and shorter stays for children in foster care.

CPS is taking a number of steps to achieve permanency in a timely manner. These include:

• Supporting kinship placements by hiring an additional 70 kinship workers to provide training and support services for relative caregivers.
• Increasing the use of a web-based client locator software tool and adding staff to perform searches centrally. Foster care diversions should result from this program expansion.
• Hiring additional attorneys and support staff to improve court services and speed up adoptions for children.

Improving the Quality and Accountability of Foster Care

• Substitute care workers are being equipped with Tablet PCs, the lightweight and versatile portable computers all CPS investigators received during the first phase of Renewal. This will facilitate timely and accurate data entry and improve the quality of assessments and decision-making in substitute care.  One-half of existing, and additional substitute care caseworkers by the end of the biennium, will receive Tablet PCs.
• DFPS is creating a Centralized Background Check unit, to which CPS will contribute staff. This will increase the speed, accuracy and consistency of background checks. Background checks have become increasingly complex, particularly the job of reviewing and interpreting criminal history records, positively identifying individuals and matching them to criminal and central registry histories, and offering due process to designated perpetrators of child abuse and neglect. The recently enacted federal Adam Walsh Child Protection Act requires an FBI criminal history fingerprint check for prospective foster and adoptive parents.
• CPS will expand Disproportionality sites in targeted communities across the state by hiring more specialists in this program to develop collaborative partnerships with community groups, agencies, faith-based organizations and other community organizations to provide culturally competent services to children and families of every race and ethnicity In Texas, African-American children are more likely to enter the child welfare system than those of other ethnicities.
• A statewide client services needs analysis will be conducted to identify service gaps and barriers to building foster care capacity. A strategic plan will be developed, as well as a process for ongoing data review and assessment. DFPS staff will reach out to potential providers of services, educating them about the complexity of the system, and providing training to both potential and existing providers.

Renewal I

Improving Services to Children

In 2004 several high-profile abuse and neglect cases ended in tragedy, focusing intense scrutiny on the state's Child Protective Services. At the Governor’s direction, the Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) investigated the CPS program and issued recommendations for reforming CPS.  CPS’ parent agency, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) responded by organizing 24 work-groups to lay the groundwork for reform, while awaiting direction and funding decisions from the Legislature.

In 2005, the Texas Legislature acted swiftly by enacting Senate Bill 6, which instructed DFPS to improve the services it provide s to children, families, the elderly and adults with disabilities.

For the CPS program the primary goal was to conduct better investigations of abuse and neglect and ultimately provide better results for children and families who are CPS clients.

Strengthening Investigations:

• Hiring a Director of Investigations to oversee and direct the investigative functions of CPS
• Assigning complex CPS investigations to staff with experience in forensic investigations
• Hiring people with law enforcement experience as senior CPS investigators to improve investigations and to train other caseworkers on forensic techniques
• Restructuring CPS investigative units to pair one supervisor with every five caseworkers
• Incorporating the use of forensic medical assessment and telemedicine
• Equipping investigative caseworkers with tablet PCs, enabling them to do up-to-date, even real-time, investigation documentation and case consultation with experts and experienced staff
• Responding to high priority reports of abuse/neglect within 24 hours and to all others within 72 hours by September 2007
• Adding specialized screeners to prioritize abuse and neglect reports

Supporting Quality Casework:

• Caseload Reduction
• Reduce CPS caseloads from an average of 44 daily to an average of 33 by the end of the biennium, largely by adding 2,500 additional caseworkers, supervisors and support staff
• Increase salaries to attract and retain CPS caseworkers and supervisors
• Develop a caseworker replacement program to ensure caseworker vacancies are filled in a timely manner
• Casework Documentation
• Identifying investigative actions that impact child safety and documenting those actions in the child's file before the end of the next business day
• Hiring Subject Matter Experts to provide additional resources to caseworkers and supervisors

Improving Management and Accountability:

• Outsourcing Case Management and Substitute Care Services in order to allow CPS to focus on investigations
• Outsourcing of case management and substitute care services will be done in stages with the first region by December 31, 2007
• Outsourcing the second and third region by December 31, 2009
• Outsourcing the remaining regions by September 1, 2011, then allowing DFPS to provide substitute care and case management services only in emergency situations
• Transitioning to performance-based contracting, which focuses on the quality and outcomes of services and links contracting decisions such as payment, renewal, extension, and procurement to those outcomes and the quality of service provided
• Performance-based contracting improves accountability by requiring the entities from which DFPS purchases services to achieve a level of performance tied to client outcomes
• Performance-based contracting encourages contractors to deliver services in new and less restrictive ways so that they have greater opportunities to achieve expected outcomes
• In addition to better outcomes for families and children, performance-based contracting can lead to system improvements
• Enhanced Technology
• Exploring the use of technology to reduce workload, increasing accountability, and enhancing overall efficiency and effectiveness
• Restructuring CPS from five districts to nine regions

Improving Services:

• Revising and consolidating Child Care Licensing minimum standards for residential child-care facilities and child-placing agencies for the first time in 18 years
• Adding 20 Child Care Licensing employees to enhance oversight of licensed child-care facilities and to ensure that minimum standards violations are investigated promptly and thoroughly
• Adding another 60 staff to monitor Residential Child Care Facilities
• Granting CCL more power to deny a license based on the history of the applicant
• Prohibiting residential child-care employees from providing direct care or having direct access to a child in care before a background check is completed
• Requiring residential child-care facilities to have a drug-testing policy
• Improving Child Placements
• Promoting continuity of care for children in DFPS custody by providing financial assistance, additional support and services to relative caregivers
• Naming three relatives as possible caregivers in the event a court orders the removal of a child
• Performing background and criminal history checks on individuals who are identified as potential caregivers and determining the most appropriate substitute caregiver
• Addressing health and education
• Creating a comprehensive, coordinated health care deliver system for children in foster care
• Creating health and education passports to allow these critical records to travel with each foster child
• Expanding the Preparation for Adult Living Program
• Extending foster care eligibility and transition services to eligible foster youth up to age 22
• Purchasing more services that help families stay together and address the needs of removed children and their families
• Developing community-based prevention services for families at risk of child abuse

Building Community Partnerships:

• Working with Law Enforcement
• Working collaboratively with law enforcement to conduct joint investigations and incorporate the use of forensic methods for determining the occurrence of abuse and neglect
• Conducting joint training between CPS caseworkers and law enforcement whenever possible to improve the efficiency of child abuse investigations
• Promoting Cultural Awareness
• Delivering cultural competency training to all direct delivery CPS staff
• Studying and reporting to the Legislature the disproportionate representation of ethnic or racial groups in the CPS system

Preventing Maltreatment:

• Establishing an inter-agency council to collaborate on policies and report on ways to reduce abuse and neglect
• Establishing a family protection fee, collected when a couple files for divorce, with half of the going to the child abuse prevention trust fund and half to counties for prevention programs
• Funding for county child abuse prevention programs with fines assessed against persons convicted of certain sexual assault offenses
• Creating Drug-Related Initiatives
• Using the Family Drug Court Program to integrate substance abuse treatment services into child abuse/neglect cases, when necessary
• Establishing the Drug-Endangered Child Initiative to help protect children who are exposed to methamphetamine production.