The Senate Health and Human Services (HHS) Committee considered a bill to reform the state agency charged with overseeing child welfare and managing the foster system. SB 11, by Committee Chair Dr. Charles Schwertner of Georgetown, would direct the Department of Family and Protective Services to create standards to transition to privately managed, non-profit service providers of the foster care system. This idea was tested in a pilot program in the North Texas region to positive results, and the state will now look at expanding that program state-wide.
Additionally, the bill would improve health care for foster kids, requiring a child get a full medical examination within three days of removal from an abusive situation and would create a pilot program to test the viability of a private non-profit case management system for the most sick or disabled foster kids. The HHS committee didn’t move this bill, and Schwertner said at the end of the meeting that he will continue to work with stakeholders to craft a good solution to fix foster and child protective services in Texas.
“We are going to work and work and work until we get this right,” he said.
Some things are too important to turned over to folk who just want to make a buck. Among these things is the foster care system for the children of the state of Texas. Republicans always want to monetize everything. They believe in creating what they call an “ownership society” through “trickle down” economics. The only problem is that “trickle down” does not trickle down. The current state legislature is run by Republicans. I wonder what is too precious to them to be sold for money. Evidently, they do not care about the quality of the foster care system because if they did, they would have put enough money into it for it to work before now. Now that it is apparent that it is not working and that it is in fact allowing abuse of many children, they want to “sell it”. Now, the company (that is in business to make money) that says it can do the job for the least amount of money will get the state contract(s) to run the foster care system. To the legislators, it will turn into another state business deal. The question will become one of gaining or losing money instead of caring for the children in foster care. So Texas will wind up with a foster care system that is worse than the one we had at first.