CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES

November is National Adoption Month and on Friday, 21 children officially joined their new “forever families” to commemorate Harris County Adoption Day.

An Amber Alert has been issued for a missing 2-year-old boy believed to be with a 36-year-old woman.

The Department of Family and Protective Services has increasingly relied on housing foster kids in hotels when it can’t find them a home. In the 2022 fiscal year, after record staff turnover, more than 1 in 4 caseworkers had less than one year of experience.

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services’ investigations division has seen record-high staff turnover, with 4 in 10 investigators leaving their jobs in 2022.

Legislators also passed bills that will provide foster kids entering the troubled system with duffel bags or backpacks and those aging out of the system with help setting up bank accounts.

A U.S. district judge has long presided over a court case that found Texas’ foster care system unconstitutionally harms kids. Tuesday’s hearing was the first appearance by the state’s new team of defense attorneys.

A grandfather is in the Harris County Jail accused of leaving five of his grandchildren home without food or running air conditioning as temperatures reached triple digits on Monday.

The legislation came after The Refuge, a Bastrop foster care facility, hired a caretaker without knowing she had a history of sexual misconduct with children at a state juvenile facility. Coworkers also concealed evidence of the abuse, which further put the foster girls at harm.

Residential facilities did not refill medications in a timely manner, failed to follow psychiatric orders and, in several instances, violated state guidelines, court monitors documented after site inspections. The lawyer representing the foster kids said it could be “the tip of the iceberg.”

The upper chamber unanimously passed Senate Bill 182 after The Texas Tribune reported that a state-licensed foster care facility hired a caretaker whom the Texas Juvenile Justice Department previously fired for having inappropriate relationships with children.

Relative caregivers, like grandparents who want to keep kids out of foster care, usually get half as much state assistance as strangers who take in children.

News reports say three children have been killed and two other children wounded in an attack at a home in Texas on Friday afternoon.

Bills that would give relative caregivers more money have missed key deadlines to make it in front of the full House.

Child Protective Services is investigating claims made by a grandmother that her 8-year-old grandson was held down by a school staff member for nearly an hour.

Texas lawmakers and a federal judge say attorneys in the case against the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services should not hire lobbyists using funds won in court.

Most reports of child abuse or neglect turn out to be unfounded. But while under investigation, parents with little understanding of their rights or the process often make decisions that could impact the fate of their families.

The judge warned the state could be held in contempt of court for not following through with three mandates: youths not knowing their rights, not adequately responding to abuse allegations and still having too many children without placement.

In a fifth report tracking the state’s efforts to remedy its embattled foster care system, federal monitors documented persistent risks to Texas children ahead of next week’s court hearing.

Two girls in the care of Child Protective Services were allegedly sexually assaulted in October after sneaking out of a facility run by the state agency. Advocates say it’s a symptom of the Texas foster care systems’ problems.

Former DFPS commissioner Anne Heiligenstein was tapped by Abbott in June to serve as the agency’s executive deputy commissioner. Last month, she was out. Now she’s back.

The Texas Tribune spoke with LGBTQ voters, the parents of queer youth and advocates from across the state about what’s at stake for them this November.

The department is terminating the contract of Executive Deputy Commissioner Anne Heiligenstein, who was supposed to work until next June, amid a staffing crisis. The chief of staff for the agency’s top leader has also left.

Residential treatment centers are meant to be a last resort for children in the state’s care, reserved for those with histories of severe trauma caused by neglect or abuse.

Child Protective Services confirmed Monday it is investigating the death of a three-year-old boy from Liberty County after law enforcement ruled the circumstances surrounding his death as “suspicious.”

On a warm, summer night in El Campo, Shacondra Greely reads a story to her 12-year-old son Reagan.

Texas Department of Family and Protective Services leaders instructed employees to avoid written communications about the cases and barred low-level employees from handling the investigations, according to internal agency communications.

During Robert “Rich” Richman’s short tenure, he oversaw the investigation of parents who provide gender-affirming care to their transgender children and the mishandling of allegations of sex abuse at a foster care facility.

The agency investigated the family just five days prior to the girl’s death in 2020 after the child arrived at school with a black eye. That was one of four previous occurrences in which Texas DFPS investigated the family dating back to 2018 with cases in both Bexar County and Harris County.

The high court also raised questions about why the state opened these investigations in the first place, noting that the child welfare agency is not bound by directives from the governor.

The court-appointed watchdogs expressed concern after learning that a caretaker accused of exploiting children at a state-licensed facility in Bastrop had been previously fired from a state juvenile justice facility for misconduct.

State records show Iesha Greene was fired in 2020 from a state juvenile facility for having inappropriate relationships with children. The Refuge said it was aware of her previous work there, but it never requested her publicly available personnel records.

Candidates hardly ever talk about improving the safety net for kids — unless the holes in the safety net have become big enough to get the attention of voters.

Other investigators don’t want to follow an order they believe harms families but worry about the impact of a mass employee exodus on the state’s most vulnerable children.

Most of the deaths were attributed to “preexisting medical conditions” or abuse suffered before the children entered the system, according to the DFPS report. The numbers are on par with those reported in previous years.

U.S. District Judge Janis Jack said she is seeking a federal criminal investigation into allegations that children were sexually abused and trafficked at The Refuge, a state-licensed foster care shelter for victims of sex trafficking.

Brooke Crowder said The Refuge is working to incorporate a deeper employee screening process with the help of a company recommended by the governor’s and attorney general’s offices.

The temporary injunction was issued as part of a lawsuit brought on behalf of parents being investigated by child welfare workers for letting their transgender teenager access gender-affirming health care.

The former child care investigations director said there are agency-wide communication issues that led to a breakdown in relaying key information, but two of his staff members are the ones who suffered the consequences.

It was also revealed at a special Texas Senate committee meeting that the Texas foster care worker who allegedly sold nude pictures of girls is also accused of dating a child trafficker.

An attorney representing foster care children in a suit against Texas said Department of Public Safety director Steve McCraw’s conclusion that there was no evidence of sexual abuse despite the investigation into the photos was “both surprising and extremely troubling.”

The Refuge, which closed Friday, said it fired an employee accused of coercing the victims to sell nude photos as soon as it found out. The Bastrop-based shelter has not addressed the other eight staff members also accused of causing harm to the girls.

In this week’s episode, Matthew speaks with Eleanor and Sneha about Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive to open child abuse investigations into families providing gender-affirming care for their children.

The Department of Family and Protective Services has been under federal court monitoring for over a decade for violating the civil rights of kids in foster care. Now, the short-staffed agency has to investigate parents who provide their children with gender-affirming care.

The children were sexually abused and neglected while at The Refuge, a facility located in Bastrop contracted by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, according to a report from a current employee.

Citing potential criminal penalties, Texas Children’s Hospital will no longer provide hormone therapy to transgender patients.

A Texas judge was scheduled to consider a statewide injunction on investigations of parents over obtaining gender-affirming care. The appeal now puts the hearing on hold.

Here are things to know for Friday, Feb. 25:

A 12-page child fatality report shows Child Protective Services was involved, at multiple points, in the life of a family that included an 8-year-old boy whose corpse was found among his living siblings back in October 2021.

As Texas’ long-running struggle to find enough placements for foster care children persists, more than 100 kids were sent out of state last year.

Following a string of high-profile child abuse cases in the Houston area, child advocates argue Texas needs to change its priorities when it comes to providing a safety net for abused and neglected children.

The state’s foster care system has been dangerous to children and embarrassing to the state for years. But with state officials constantly chasing other issues, it’s still suffering from neglect.

The federal judge overseeing the decadelong lawsuit against Texas for conditions in its foster care system cut this week’s hearing short. She proposed all parties involved, including the governor, “cut to the chase” to identify solutions.

Increased oversight and lack of funding mean hundreds of children spend their nights in hotels and churches and on office floors.

December 12, 2019, was an important day in the future of two little girls, the court was to decide who would have legal custody of them.

Child safety advocates expressed concern Friday that incidents of child abuse and neglect are up statewide, despite what they say has been a lack of data due to the pandemic.

DAISETTA, Texas – The parents of a 1-year-old girl who was found dead in a neighbor’s pool in Liberty County have been arrested, according to the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office. It was initially reported that the child was found in the family’s pool but it was later discovered that the child was in the neighbor’s pool. On Wednesday morning, the parents, Londell Laviene and Bonnie Tarrant, were charged with interfering with public duties and also with resisting arrest. Both were placed in the Liberty County jail. AdChild Protective Services and their fatality investigation unit is also investigating the incident because the parents had another child drown in 2015 in Liberty County.