The House Select Committee on Child Protection has published their Interim Report to the 84th Legislature. See below for interim charges assigned to the committee and recommendations related to those charges:
Interim Charges
Monitor the ongoing efforts of the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), the work of the Protect Our Kids Commission and the National Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities, and any relevant Sunset Commission recommendations.
Assess the efficacy of ongoing prevention and early intervention efforts that target resources to families at-risk.
Consider ways to encourage consistent, transparent, and timely review of abuse and neglect fatalities.
Monitor ongoing efforts to stabilize the CPS workforce, placing specific emphasis on improving the work environment, enhancing the quality of supervision, and addressing the unique challenges facing different regions of the state.
Suggest improvements to the screening, assessment, training, and support of potential foster and kinship families.
Evaluate the ability of children and youth within the system to report maltreatment.
Monitor ongoing efforts to enhance the use of data to improve outcomes.
Consider strategies to ensure better coordination and collaboration among local agencies, faith-based organizations, the private sector, non-profits, and law enforcement to reduce the incidence of abuse and neglect fatalities.
Recommendations
Prevention and Early Intervention
- DFPS should explore the use of evaluative indicators associated with clients served through Prevention & Early Intervention programs who are found to have subsequent confirmed cases with Child Protective Services to support efforts to provide the most intensive services targeted to the highest risk clients.
- DFPS should include strategies in their annual updates to the Senate Committee on Finance, Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, House Committee on Appropriations and the House Committee on Human Services to expand the HIP and HOPES preventative projects to additional areas and populations identified as high risk.
- The Department of State Health Services (DSHS) should identify opportunities to improve the report by Child Fatality Review Teams while monitoring the impact of services gaps in areas without teams.
- DFPS and DSHS should collaborate to identify additional funding opportunities to address individual and community-level factors that contribute to parental substance abuse and domestic violence.
Investigation
- DFPS should improve tracking Child Protective Services investigations in IMPACT by using a broader family model that seamlessly links other cases to the current household composition including sibling groups, paramours, and relatives. The Department should consider extending the retention rate of records to improve child safety.
- DFPS should track the incidence of subsequent investigations and use of agency services for children involved in ‘unable-to-determine’ Child Protective Services cases.
- DFPS should strengthen location efforts for children labeled as missing who are alleged victims with an open CPS investigation and those who are under the direct supervision of DFPS, including children in foster care and Family Based Safety Services (FBSS). The Department should also expand the Children's Advocacy Centers of Texas pilot program with Statewide Intake and law enforcement in order to safeguard cases from being overlooked in the system.
Workforce
- DFPS should extend caseworker retention strategies to include timely annual reviews and merit-based advancement opportunities.
- DFPS should pilot a differential salary for Child Protective Services caseworkers based on the local job market, the extent to which caseworker salaries meet the cost-of-living expenses, and other factors related to location.
- DFPS should expand caseworker co-location with Child Advocacy Centers that has been shown to support caseworker retention.
- DFPS should implement recommendations made by various stakeholders to restructure tasks of caseworkers in a manner that maintains child safety, maximizes time spent with the child, acknowledges workload over caseload, and better reflects the ability to successfully manage workload.
- DFPS should track higher education indicators that assist in evaluating worker retention by the type of degree held and participation in the Title IV-E University Degree and Stipend Program. The committee supports additional opportunities for caseworkers to receive student loan repayment assistance.
Information Sharing
- The committee supports ongoing efforts of DFPS to modernize the IMPACT database that will advance transparency for stakeholders involved in the care of foster children while reducing discrepancies that lead to duplicative or erroneous record keeping.
- DFPS should consider extending read-only access to IMPACT for Child Placing Agency caseworkers and coordinators in fiscal years 2016 and 2017.
- DFPS should bridge components of IMPACT and CLASS databases to improve the investigative abilities of Residential Child Care Licensing and Child Protective Services to respond in a timely manner to complaints of abuse and/or neglect made by children in care.
- The committee supports the DFPS initiative to simplify the policies and procedures manual that can be easily employed by caseworkers.
- DFPS should strengthen efforts associated with the Texas Faith Based Model by evaluating the cost-effectiveness of the Care Portal in meeting the local needs of children and families through direct services provided by the faith community.
- DFPS should implement recommendations made by the Internal Audit Division to phasein implementation of a revised risk assessment tool that utilizes empirically-driven predictive analytics to monitor contracts across DFPS offices and Child Placing Agencies.
Assessment and Screening of Providers
- The RCCL division of DFPS should conduct a study of the types of curriculum used for and the number of hours of pre-service training provided to foster parents for all Child Placing Agencies.
- DFPS should review providers who deliver online training to potentially increase the availability of training opportunities for current and prospective foster parents. DFPS should also expand its efforts to target and recruit all types of foster care providers.
- DFPS should consider including an annual home study update for all approved foster homes in its Minimum Standards for Child Placing Agencies.
- DFPS should educate all qualifying kinship care providers about the licensing requirements associated with pursuing verification as a kinship care provider compared to a foster parent provider.
- The committee supports the inclusion of a mandatory self-care module for prospective foster parents in pre-service and annual training that addresses the potential effects of caregiving on the family and recommendations to maintain household stability including respite care and stress relief techniques. The Department should also evaluate the impact of reimbursement for part-time day care to certain foster and kinship providers.
Normalcy and Child Rights
- DFPS should ensure adequate staff in order to use Family Team Meetings more frequently to engage the family in making critical decisions regarding the placement of a child. The Department should also expand permanency roundtables and make them available earlier in the process to support better collaboration among foster families, biological families and providers, and to improve coordination of service plans.
- DFPS should amend the Preparation for Adult Living Program guidelines to extend mandatory college preparation services to youth beginning at age 14.
- DFPS should strengthen its support system for youth in the foster care system and the inclusion of youth in its decision-making processes related to normalcy.
- DFPS should define the “prudent parent standard” to promote the decision-making ability of caseworkers and foster parents. It should also assess cultural competency training of caseworkers and other direct care providers.
- DFPS should consider procedural and content revisions related to the Foster Care Bill of Rights. It should promote different methods of explaining the rights to the foster child, including technology solutions for ongoing communication.
- The committee recommends DFPS establish policies to ensure the autonomy of the Office of Consumer Affairs (OCA) and to make the office more available to youth and children in foster care. The agency should have a dedicated staff person within OCA based in Houston to make regular visits with youth residing in Residential Treatment Centers.
- DFPS should improve caseworker accountability by amending the Services to Children in Substitute Care section of the CPS handbook to include reporting monthly face-to-face visits with children in foster care.
