AUSTIN, Texas — More than a decade into an ongoing lawsuit over Texas' foster care system, a federal judge says the state is still failing the children placed in its care.
In a hearing last week, Judge Janis Jack threatened to again hit Texas Child Protective Services with fines or hold the agency in contempt of court — something she’s already done twice.
A report released by court-appointed monitors found that children were being placed in substandard group homes, both in Texas and out-of-state. In one example, a facility in Michigan housing Texas kids was without a door and had no heat for over 24 hours, despite the temperature being below freezing.
“What we have right now is a situation where the state just failed to plan ahead,” said Paul Yetter, the lead attorney representing the children, in an interview on Capital Tonight. “There was a number of unsafe facilities that they closed, which was a good thing. Yet they didn’t replace them with safe facilities. It’s not an answer to send our children out of state to other facilities that have tremendous problems themselves.”
Jack also ripped into CPS for other failings, like not being able to track all the kids in their care and a low COVID-19 vaccination rate amongst the children. It came out in court that only 25% of kids in care are vaccinated against the virus, with agency officials saying they encourage vaccinations — but don’t require them.
“Instead of having these children get vaccines that will keep them safe from the virus, the state is basically leaving it up in the air,” said Yetter. “From our perspective that’s completely unacceptable. You wouldn’t fail to vaccinate a child for mumps or whooping cough. The virus can be just as deadly, we all know that.”
Yetter also said that these issues can’t be solved with money alone.
“It’s about leadership, it’s about better use of the funds,” he said. “The leadership between the two main agencies have been at odds, [so] the funds they are getting are being wasted. And some of the funds they could be getting from the federal government are sitting idle, because the state is not doing what it needs to do to get those funds.”
The problems plaguing Texas' foster care system have been the subject of federal court fights for a decade. Yetter says that there have been some positive developments, but more needs to be done.
“What the governor, and the legislature, and the heads of these agencies need to do is finally say, enough is enough,” said Yetter. “We’re going to fix the system. We’re going to keep the children safe, and we’re going to do it going forward.”