A recent report written by a Texas Tech University professor reviewed the progress of the state moving to community-based foster care and made recommendations for improvement. One analyst says the problem with the system is that it is too rigid and needs to be less bureaucratic to serve children.
A report written by associate professor Eugene Wang of Texas Tech University College of Human Services was commissioned by the Texas Legislature in 2017. It sought to evaluate the state's transition of its foster care system to a community-based one in which private and nonprofit local charities will be given primary responsibility for foster care children in their communities.
The report identified many deficiencies in the state's rollout, including that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services implementation was too centralized, there was poor organization, and that a lack of transparency and accountability existed.
"The problems with foster care in Texas are not people problems, they are systems problems. DFPS caseworkers, child-serving non-profits, foster parents, and other community stakeholders are passionate about doing right by kids," Brandon Logan, executive director of One Accord for Kids, told the Midland Times. "Unfortunately the 'system' is too rigid to effectively serve children and those who care about them. The point of CBC [community-based care] is to de-bureaucratize the 'system' by increasing local authority and accountability."
Logan explained the history of child welfare and federal funding, which led to an increased role of the state in child welfare care, and the move back to community-based care.
"In 1962 the federal government began funding state child welfare services," he said. "Prior to this communities [churches, civic groups, nonprofits] were heavily involved in caring for children experiencing poverty and mistreatment and helping the families struggling to care for them. Federal funding increased the role of the state and pushed out many of the informal community institutions doing this work. The overall goal of CBC is to return to communities the moral responsibility for stabilizing families and safeguarding children."
In Texas the governor and state child-serving agencies were sued in 2011, and in 2015 a federal judge ruled that the state's foster care system was "broken" and had been for decades, according to Logan.
"In 2017, the Texas Legislature and governor responded to the lawsuit's findings by reforming DFPS and localizing the care and coordination of foster care services in a community-based system of care," he said. "Unfortunately, the pace and particulars of the implementation were left to DFPS, which was in the position of overseeing its own demise. Therefore, the Legislature also ordered an ongoing, independent evaluation of DFPS's efforts to successfully implement CBC. DFPS hired Texas Tech University to perform the evaluation."
Since then, DFPS has started the community-based care transition in four of 16 regions, but implementation is not complete in any of those regions, Logan said.
"In the rural regions [including Abilene/Wichita Falls and Lubbock/Amarillo], DFPS awarded the CBC contracts to contractors based in Kansas," he said. "DFPS does not compare the outcomes of the four CBC regions to the other 12 regions it still manages. However, it does compare the performance of CBC regions against that region's performance in the two years prior to implementation. Even this early in the transition, CBC contractors are performing at or better than DFPS on key metrics like keeping foster children closer to home and reducing moves."
The report noted Wang's inability to get information from DFPS.
"The evaluator noted that DFPS limited his ability to effectively perform the evaluation," Logan said. "He said, 'DFPS was either unable or unwilling to share some information necessary to meet some of the legislatively authorized evaluation requirements,' The evaluation lists 'egregious" examples DFPS's unwillingness to share information with the evaluator."
In addition, the report "found that DFPS lacked a strategic framework, making implementation efforts random, chaotic and trial-and-error. The evaluator recommends that DFPS create a structured, strategic logic model to operationalize CBC rollout," Logan said. "The evaluation also found that, despite the name, CBC isn't actually community-based. DFPS continues to dictate day-to-day decisions to communities, rather than partner with communities to allow them to innovate and succeed. The evaluator recommends transferring authority and autonomy away from Austin to communities to ensure CBC is truly community-driven."
For CBC to succeed, several barriers need to be removed including an "insufficient and antiquated state data system, inaccurate funding models, and ambiguous contract language," Logan said. "The result was a one-sided relationship that transferred too much financial and operational risk from the state to communities."
Logan said the evaluation concluded that the CBC implementation is too central-office centric and it should be refocused and driven by local communities.
"The top recommendations were to reduce the role of DFPS state office," He said. "Also to increase the authority and autonomy of local communities to care for their foster children; to increase transparency and accountability over CBC rollout by involving independent oversight of DFPS, and to correct CBC funding formulas to ensure a full transfer of taxpayer resources away from the agency to the local community."
Wang's report was completed in November 2020 and not released until mid-March, and Logan said the report's distribution was "very unusual." He said past third-party reports on CBC have been posted on DFPS's website to its "external reports" section within days of their receipt. However, this report was placed in its "news archives" section on March 12, 2021, and backdated to November 2020.
In addition DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters wrote a memo responding to the evaluation once it was published on its website.
"It is interesting to note that, unlike other external reports of CBC, this evaluation was critical of DFPS efforts and offered recommendations that would prompt extensive changes in the way DFPS does business," Logan said. "It is also interesting that Masters wrote a memo responding to the report on Jan. 28, 2021, six weeks before DFPS released the report publicly."
He said only DFPS knows why the report was held four months before its release.
Logan said Masters "attempted to minimize the impact of the evaluation through a memo raising three issues with the report. The evaluation report spans more than 100 pages and resulted from more than 100 interviews with local stakeholders. It details a laundry list of problems with DFPS implementation and recommendations to solve those problems. Nevertheless, the commissioner claims it lacks sufficient information for DFPS to take action."
Logan said Texas' transition to CBC is the right approach and DFPS should not try to do it alone.
"A community-driven foster care model that entrusts communities to care for children who cannot remain safely at home, strengthen families, and create a local safety net is the right approach for a state as large and diverse as Texas," Logan said. "Decisions cannot be made in Austin but must be made in the communities where children and families live."