The Texas foster care system is improving but cases where children are improperly supervised, exposing them to injuries and even death continue, according to documents filed in the long-running federal lawsuit on Monday.
Under a court order born from a 15-year-old lawsuit over the state’s troubled foster care system, court-appointed monitors have been regularly producing comprehensive reports — 11 of them released publicly so far — on whether the state is implementing several ordered improvements.
The latest three, released on Monday, cover a period from 2023 through 2024. Monitors found that overall wait times for callers to the abuse hotline decreased, more than 82% of caseloads involving children in permanent foster care remained within a manageable threshold of 14-to-17 children per worker and “significant” progress has been made into the investigations of foster care providers.
The monitors reported that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which together with the Health and Human Services Commission are defendants in the 2011 lawsuit, had a “strong” performance when it came to keeping caseloads within those standards. It also praised the agency for the fact that nearly all caseworkers with at least one child’s case had completed the required training.
“The court monitor reports show that Texas foster care is a system in transition,” attorney Paul Yetter, the attorney for Texas foster care children, said in a statement. “The state has made great progress in many areas but has real issues in others. The court reforms have made children safer. But the improvements have to be lasting.”
The monitors detail multiple issues with troubled foster homes, saying in one report that they had “significant concerns” with the system putting foster children in homes that had histories of abuse, neglect or exploitation. In particular, they pointed to foster homes where children alleged they had unexplained bruises, another where a foster father pointed a gun at children to discipline them, and a home with a troubled history that only closed after DFPS found that the foster parent neglected a child who died from a fentanyl overdose.
The monitors say they are concerned that HHSC allows homes to stay open if the child placing agency, private organizations that the state contracts with to find homes for foster children, disagrees with the closure. They also note some homes reopened under a new child placing agency after HHSC had previously recommended that they close.
The monitors also called out a facility that placed children in prolonged isolation for days and even weeks and two children who were placed with a provider after it had been placed on a “disallowance” list because of safety concerns.
Then there was the 2024 case of an 11-year-old child identified as “O.R” whose death inside a Greenville movie theater occurred after the child complained for hours he was in pain, before the foster care outing. That case was first reported by the Texas Tribune more than a year ago. An internal DPFS investigation found that eight caretakers who were responsible for his care, were negligent.
“In particular, private providers need to meet the same high standards, but some of them are falling short,” Yetter, the plaintiffs’ attorney said. “There’s still work to be done.”
The monitors noted that of “particular concern” was the subpar caseload performance of private contractors who now oversee the care and placement of foster care children in three regions: the St. Francis in the Panhandle, 4Kids4Families in East Texas and Empower in Dallas, which in March was placed back under state oversight. All three had caseloads that fell above the 14-to-17 children per worker ratio.
Problems with completing investigations into the most serious abuse allegations continue to dog DFPS. Among the investigations included improper supervision that resulted in one 17-year-old girl who had been sexually trafficked from walking away from their foster care placement. The teen was later found on a busy road. The monitors also noted that all too frequently foster parents were not briefed about a child’s sexual behavior history and aggression problems.
Several incidents of child “elopement” or children leaving a foster care placement were documented including one involving an intellectually disabled child. Other reports of inadequate supervision included one group of children getting access and driving a company van and another slipping away from a foster home through a garage to meet an adult they had met on an online dating app. And there were multiple reports to monitors of foster care parents hitting their own biological children while caring for foster children and some who struck foster care children in their care.
HHSC and DFPS did not immediately return requests for comment.
The documents released Monday are the first comprehensive look inside the case since it was transferred to U.S. District Judge Randy Crane in McAllen.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a motion from Yetter’s team to reconsider the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in late 2024 to remove U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack from overseeing the lawsuit.
Jack, who had held the state in contempt three times for failing to fix the Texas foster care system, was removed by a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit after displaying a “highly antagonistic demeanor” toward the state agency defendants in the case.
The removal of Jack occurred a year after the attorney general’s office hired private attorneys to help lead the state’s defense. That team is led by prominent appellate attorney Allyson Ho, who is the wife of 5th Circuit Judge James Ho.
Allyson Ho did not immediately respond to The Texas Tribune’s request for comment on the monitor reports.
Also last week, the state’s defense team filed a motion that has been sealed.
Because the motion is sealed it is not clear what the state is asking for, whether to modify or end the expensive lawsuit. By 2024, more than $150 million had been spent on remedial fixes to the foster care system, according to state attorneys. That’s in addition to the millions paid to monitor the state’s foster care system.
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