Broken System
A lawsuit alleges that 12,000 kids trapped in foster care with little chance of getting out are being exposed to abuse and neglect, shuttled around the state and denied health services.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |Twelve years ago, Texas Child Protective Services took 11-year-old Ashley Gallardo and her younger brothers from their home because workers believed they were not safe there.
Photo courtesy of ShaeShae says she moved 52 times in eight years of foster care.Details
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The State of Texas was never able to find her a better home.
After a stint in an emergency shelter, Gallardo and her brothers were separated and sent to foster homes in different parts of the state.
Then, after three years of bouncing around foster homes, she was told she'd be moving to a foster home in Mullen, only about 20 minutes away from her brothers' home. She was ecstatic.
Today, the 23-year-old Gallardo still remembers what her new foster mother said to her, and how it was only a matter of time before she would be separated from her brothers again: "If you think that you're going to mess with my husband, you better think again."
Apparently, the woman had heard about what happened at Gallardo's last foster home, in Star, which was this: Gallardo told her caseworker that her foster father tried to rape her.
She didn't last long there. Then it was on to a foster home in Austin, where, she says, she and her foster siblings slept in a bedroom locked from the outside. They had to knock when they wanted to leave. There were cameras in the corners, but she was never sure if they were actually on.
After that, she moved to another emergency shelter and another home, where she just watched the clock until she turned 18 and aged out of the system.
Gallardo was trapped in a foster care system that's been broken for years, despite admonitions and warnings from state agencies. With each new investigation, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which oversees Child Protective Services, promised change. It never came.
Which is why, last March, a New York-based child advocacy group called Children's Rights sued Governor Rick Perry and state foster care officials on behalf of the approximately 12,000 children in the system's Permanent Managing Conservatorship program.
Children's Rights is claiming what official reports have indicated for years: that CPS does little to find permanent placement for kids in PMC, and that once the department sticks a kid in PMC, he or she is virtually forgotten.
According to the suit, roughly 500 children had been in state custody for more than ten years as of May 2010. Children's Rights also points to a 2006 Texas Comptroller's report that, while these children have been removed from abusive and neglectful homes, a child in state care "was statistically four times more likely to die than a child in the state's general population."
The suit alleges that CPS harms children in PMC by:
• exposing them to abuse and neglect by substandard providers;
• separating them from siblings, significant family members and their communities;
• failing to provide them with necessary mental health services;
• inflicting emotional harm by moving them too often; and
• severe mismanagement and understaffing, leading to a lack of caseworker visitation.
These problems are even reflected in a 2010 state-commissioned study of how the courts treat kids in PMC. Judges interviewed for the report complained of CPS caseworkers, prosecutors and attorneys ad litem often being unprepared for six-month court hearings. The report also stated that due in large part to a high caseworker turnover rate, these children typically have more than one caseworker.
While these children are in CPS care, the state is required to ensure their safety and well-being by actively seeking permanent homes for them. By failing to do so, CPS has subjected them to "permanent harm on an ongoing basis, in violation of their legal rights."
Children's Rights calls for "special expert panels" to review all PMC kids who have been moved more than four times, and all those who've been in PMC for two years, to ensure their needs are being met. The organization is also demanding that children be placed only in nationally accredited homes and facilities.
Yet the suit doesn't state who should be on those expert panels, or how they should be appointed. And it's similarly vague on how the state is supposed to meet its demands of finding permanent placement in a timely manner.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of what officials and other players in the world of family services say is a complete redesign of the foster system, and that a lawsuit now will only impede the process. CPS officials say they have a plan — for real — this time. They say the lawsuit would only do more harm than good.
But in 2010, the state's Adoption Review Committee said the same thing — of the foster system itself.
"There is increasing evidence to show that our foster care system is sometimes doing more harm to our children than good," the committee reported.
To better understand just how broken the state foster care system is — and has been for ages — wrap your head around this: In November 2010, while DFPS was getting ready to roll out its redesign, which was going to show everyone how the system would no longer be deplorable, staff members at a residential treatment center called Daystar beat a 16-year-old boy, hogtied him and threw him in a closet to slowly asphyxiate to death.
Tuesday 7 June 2011
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