TEXAS
Progress in protective services
A joint push by Texas' protective services agencies and foster-care contractors to help the 20 most troubled teens in state care has sharply reduced how frequently they're sent to mental hospitals and new foster placements, officials say.
Half are living in the same residential treatment center they were in early last year, when the project began, said Joyce James, deputy commissioner of the Department of Family and Protective Services. A third of the original 20 have not "bounced" to a new placement or been readmitted to a psychiatric hospital, James said Friday. "That's phenomenal when you look at the history of the youth that we're talking about," she said.
Some cycled through as many as 40 placements after Child Protective Services removed them from abusive and neglectful homes. All had been in psychiatric hospitals at least three times.
Three years ago, the department ordered CPS caseworkers to spend the night with as many as 160 very troubled children each month in state offices or hotels because foster care providers refused to take them. The providers, mostly nonprofit child-placing agencies, were worried about legal liability. Some cited fear of losing a state license. Also, at the time, CPS' sister agency, Child Care Licensing, created a stir by adopting stricter "minimum standards," some of which the contractors said were unnecessary.
More inspections
Under pressure from the Legislature over the deaths of three
foster children in North Texas in 15 months, the licensing division
inspected foster homes and treatment centers more often and issued more
notices of deficiencies, sometimes for what the vendors called trivial
violations.
Both sides, though, report that relations have warmed since regulators and contractors began to collaborate in the "top 20 work group." The effort, begun last year under new Protective Services Commissioner Anne Heiligenstein, includes monthly meetings of top officials and CEOs of large child-placing agencies. "It's forcing us all to realize that we've got to pay more attention to the individual child – and not just to the whole system," said Curt Mooney, president and CEO of DePelchin Children's Center, a Houston-based foster care contractor.
Mooney, a member of the work group, said it has saved the state hundreds of thousands of dollars by reducing psychiatric hospital stays "for those 20 children." James said savings have been significant, though the amount hasn't been assessed.
Seven of the original 20 children have found permanent placements. Three were reunited with their birth families, two were placed in foster homes and two others will be permanent residents of facilities for the mentally disabled, she said. The work will go on, however, James said. "We've added some more kids," so the group still concentrates on 20, she said.
She estimated that among the state's 16,500 foster children, about 200 have roughly the same histories of trouble – running away, mutilating themselves or rebelling in other ways, forcing new placements and hospital stays.
Greater trust
Mooney said contractors have more trust that they will not be
punished by Child Care Licensing or the department's contracting
division for taking a high-risk youth. In return, he said, the private
agencies have agreed to always accept back a troubled child who's had to
go to the psychiatric hospital. Before last year, vendors sometimes
would refuse, he said. Also, agencies have vowed to pass along more
information about children before handoffs, if transfers between
agencies must occur.
Robert T. Garrett
18 July 2010
