Texas struggles to get new foster care system off the ground

AUSTIN — Texas lawmakers shared their frustration Monday as the state’s plan to place foster care in the hands of local communities stalled.

For more than a decade, Texas has been working on a foster care overhaul that would move care of children from state operations to a Community-Based Care (CBC) system.

Proponents say it would allow communities to draw on local strengths and resources to provide for the needs of children and their families. Ideally, this would also mean that children under state care would be able to stay in or near their home, receive services at the local level and return back to those communities.

But the process to implement the change remains slow.

But managers of nonprofit organizations who wish to implement CBC in their regions say lack of clear communication and data transparency has made the task near impossible.

“It’s very frustrating to listen to. I can only imagine what it's like to live through it,” said state Rep. Candy Nobel, after nonprofit organizations described difficulties in launching programs within the current structure.

“I just have been struck with each subsequent testimony, that we have not somehow done a roadmap that we can follow to success,” Nobel said. “This is for our children, and so if we take nothing else away today, then as a state, that roadmap needs to be clear on how you achieve success and how we move through these processes.”

Specifically, local child care leaders said several barriers have stopped the progression of providing services. 

Bogged down by unclear answers and misdirection, providers said they are frustrated by the miscommunication between the Department of Child Protective Services, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and the Office of Community-Based Care Transition, all of which are working to launch the program.

The state began to move toward a CBC format as early as 2010, but there has been a more concerted effort over the last three years with the creation of the transition office whose sole responsibility is to help get programs off the ground.

Even so, only a handful of the state’s 11 designated CBC regions have started the transition process. And state leaders have a goal of a complete conversion by 2029.

“We want innovation, we want simplification, and it's every single minute it should be about the children and not about our processes and procedures, and that's the thing I guess that's frustrated me today,” Nobel said. “It feels like we've added government red tape to a process.”

State Rep. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, said the testimony proved there “have been some failings on the part of the state to align the intent of the legislature with the implementation.”

In order for a region to transition into CBC, the state contracts with a single provider known as Single Source Continuum Contractors. Those contractors develop a network of services and provide foster care placement services and expand on those services over three stages. During the first two states, DFPS begins to transition children from its care to SSCC care. In total, it could take an SCC up to 40 months between submitting an application and reaching the third stage, per the DFPS website.

Providers told state lawmakers that initially things were moving along particularly with the establishment of the transition office, until it wasn’t.

Director of the Office of Community-Based Care Transition Theresa “Trisha” Thomas said when she arrived there was a learning curve that led to some slow down, adding that the office still had “a lot to figure out” but was on target to complete the transition by 2029.

Thomas added that since the office was put in place, it has not awarded a contract but has helped SSCCs move from stage 1 to stage 2.

DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters, who took the role in December 2019, acknowledged communication failures, adding that the complaints presented to the lawmakers have not been communicated to her. She also said that since taking the role, she has made the CBC transition a top priority and will continue to do so.

“To anyone who thinks I am not supportive of this, that is false,” Masters said. “ It is important … and there is nothing being held up here, but this is a complicated system. There is nothing simple about how to run the child welfare system because of all the oversight for all the different funding streams and everything involved.”

She added: “I will not tolerate putting up roadblocks that don't need to be and we will move things efficiently that need to be.”