By American-Statesman Editorial Board
Scathing reports and fines haven’t fixed it.
Even the weight of public shaming hasn’t fixed it.
Texas is still failing to protect some of the most vulnerable children and teens in its foster care system — youth who have been removed from abusive or neglectful homes, only to be abused or neglected by the state’s own providers.
Eleven more foster children died in the state’s care in the nine months ending April 30, as a decade-long court case over their care continued to grind on. Many of those deaths were avoidable, U.S. District Judge Janis Jack said at a court hearing this month.
“I actually am stunned by the noncompliance of the state,” said Jack, who has repeatedly ordered the state to improve its protections for foster kids. “But I keep being stunned every time we have one of these hearings.”
Texans should be stunned and outraged, too. It is long past time for our state leaders to fix the foster care system.
Jack has provided a detailed road map, with numerous orders requiring state officials to strengthen the oversight of residential facilities and ensure investigators quickly address allegations of abuse or neglect in foster homes, among other things. If residential facilities keep failing to meet state standards — as some have — officials must stop sending foster children to them.
Instead, warning signs have gone ignored. Regulatory officials ignored a Prairie Harbor facility’s history of 145 citations and allowed it to operate without meeting the minimum staff-to-children ratio. Caseworkers ignored the facility’s recent probationary status and sent a 14-year-old girl to live there. The facility ignored the 14-year-old girl’s complaints of leg pain for weeks, until a blood clot traveled from her leg to her lungs, killing her.
The girl is identified in court records only as K.C., her tragic death another indictment against a failing foster care system.