Although we've had some positive stories about the courts getting heavily involved in trying to clean up CPS corruption in the Houston area, sadly Dallas "Child Protective" "Services" (CPS) remains in crisis, and not much is really happening to fix the problems that are CULTURE-RELATED, not truly resource-related, as some are (as always) claiming. The situation in Dallas County has been brewing for two decades, but reached true crisis levels a couple years ago, when about half the caseworkers in the county quit during a three-month span in the early part of 2016.
WFAA, an ABC affiliate, made a solid effort at reporting on the crisis at that time of the walkouts regarding the reasons for all the turnover, interviewing several of the former workers, and compiling this report:
As you can see just by perusing this story, the real reason for all these workers quitting was stress...not from the job itself, per se, but from the lack of supervisory support and/or ineffective, or counter-effective, leadership. Yes, the high case loads were a major proximal factor, but those clearly stem from a "culture" problem within Dallas CPS causing high turnover rates, which in turn results in high case loads for those caseworkers that remain.
As is often the case in stories like this one, you get what little hard truth the reporters are willing to give you (or admit to) buried at the end of the article. Here is an excerpt:
"September 3, 2015 was the day that Thomas decided to call it quits. She was working a case with a 7-year-old child and a 2-month old infant. She had met with the family and found a suitable family member willing to take the children. Thomas says a supervisor decided without even seeing the children that the children should instead be removed and placed in foster care. Thomas was practically speechless.
“I had met with this family,” Thomas said. “I had seen this child, both at home and at school. She was doing very well in school. She had a very good relationship with her mom. She had a new baby brother that she was crazy about. In that instant, I had to tell them that all work that we’ve worked through to find an appropriate caregiver, no, the children need to go into foster care. In that moment, the seven year old stood up and looked at her mom and said, ‘You’re going to let her take me away from her.' The mom losses it. The infant starts crying.”
Thomas had to call her own parents and ask them to take care of her own 7-year-old daughter. 'I said, 'I’m not going to be home anytime soon,' Thomas said. "My mom, she’s upset. She says, ‘Akaiya, you really should quit this job. It’s just too much. You have a kid.' And I was like, ‘I know. Tell my daughter I love her and I’ll see her a little bit and a little bit didn’t come. It was all night. Overnight.’” Thomas spent the night in a CPS office with the two children. The infant cried for much of the night. The supervisor, who had overruled her plan, didn’t offer any assistance. Caseworkers describe being forced to neglect their own children, their own family. “They have to choose their job over their children,” Thomas said. “You can’t just get up in the middle of a case and say, ‘Oh, it’s past 5 o’clock..."
There you have it...THIS IS WHAT THE CRISIS IS REALLY ALL ABOUT...Supervisors who want kids in foster care rather than kept with extended families--as they are required to prefer by law. AND...that is where the crisis really deepens, because despite what the ABC investigation covers in the link above, the bigger crisis in the Dallas area--indeed, across Texas--is in the foster care system, as bad as the caseworker issues are.
This link contains a chronological series of articles all about that greater crisis-- to which that supervisor thought these kids should be exposed:
The decision by CPS to hire special untrained workers to just go around and do an "I see you" check on each foster child once per month (as also required by law) is stirring some controversy. Of course, these people have no idea what is really going on with these kids, don't always get alone with the kids to make sure they are really safe, and aren't going to necessarily get the information from kids who are scared (and possibly being abused) as their actual caseworkers-- who often have a long history with the children-- might get.
This mirrors the decision by Dallas CPS to start hiring caseworkers who do not have a four-year degree--let alone a four-year social work degree. The decline in quality just to up the numbers of eyes is as controversial as is the "I see you" workers they are hiring to work in the CPS contractor field.
To her credit, one Clinton-appointed federal judge is doing what she can to put the pressure on CPS supervisors to stop doing what's best for them, and to do what she thinks is best for the foster children. Here is a link all about that from The Dallas Morning News:
Judge Jack may not understand that the entire culture of CPS is the real problem, but at least she has issued orders which will make it harder for supervisors to shift children to private contractors (where supervision is lowest, and potential for trafficking the highest.) Here is an excerpt from the link above:
"Under her order, Texas also would have to rapidly improve regulation of private entities that provide most foster care. And it would have to greatly expand the capabilities of the state's child-welfare databases. They must afford caregivers and protectors of the children access to real-time information about safety threats and emotional, physical and educational problems, according to Jack."
(Judge Janis Graham Jack. Photo courtesy of healthimpactnews.com.)
Sadly, a three-judge appeals panel is breathing down Jack's back as she breathes down the necks of the Texas legislators involved in CPS reform efforts. That panel seems bent on reigning in Jack, not so much on helping children, so any real reform in the Dallas CPS culture is not likely to come even from the outrage of a federal judge.
The bottom line, of course, is that CPS DOES NOT CARE ABOUT THE LAW or the intent of the Texas Legislature. Again, they are going to push kids into the corrupted and troubled foster care system, when perfectly family-oriented options are available. And why?
FOLLOW THE MONEY.
That's, as always, where the answers are.