Austin News

A recent university report shows that Texas' move to a community-based child foster care system needs improvement, and one analyst said the paper provides detailed recommendations for changes. 

The report was written by Eugene Wang, an associate professor with Texas Tech University College of Human Services, and was commissioned by the Texas Legislature in 2017 to review the process of the state's community-based foster care implementation.

The report concluded that Texas Department of Family and Protective Services' implementation of community-based care is too centralized. 

"CBC effort is central-office-centric, despite wide variation among regions ... central office has also been more heavily involved in day-to-day operational decisions than regional offices or local communities," the report states. 

The report indicated there is poor organization, and Wang also made several other recommendations.

Andrew Brown, director of the Center for Families and Children at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told Austin News that the report was "part of a budget provision where the Legislature wanted a third party to assess" the system in the state. "The idea was, let's learn," Brown said and to "check in and see if the implementation is proceeding well."

Brown said the work done by the local communities has been commendable. "They are doing really good work....the model is doing exactly what it was meant to do," he said. 

However, he cited a "slow rollout from by the department," referring to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and the process is not currently being used throughout the state. 

Brown noted that community-based is to "customize to regions across the state" and the department was "using a cookie-cutter approach," one of the major problems in Texas. 

"There is really no one-size-fits-all model in Texas," he said, adding that communities need to be allowed to customize their approach to child welfare.

"We need to let go a little bit more and find the right organizations," Brown said. "Those organizations will then be able to facilitate the process."

He said DFPS will have to answer why it received the report in November 2020 and only released it in mid-March. However, he did express disappointment in the department's response to it. DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters has pushed back against Wang's 115-page report.

Brown said that Masters, "from my interactions with her---she's a change agent. She has inherited a very bad job," Brown added. 

He said her job is to clean up the failures of the past and that "community-based is the future," the direction where the entire country will be heading. 

Brown said Wang was in the field, and getting honest feedback and the report was meant to "help us learn as we're implementing." 

"For them to be defensive, it is counterproductive," Brown said. "I found the report to be pretty detailed. He made very clear recommendations for change."  

According to Brown, community-based care will strengthen families and will product "better outcomes for kids and families. This model of foster care allows Texas to determine how the most vulnerable in our community" are cared for, Brown said. 

He believes Texas can be a model for other states as well.

Brown, who submitted testimony recently to the Texas Senate Finance Committee, indicated that the considerable amount of work that has gone into addressing deficiencies in the state's foster care system is "bearing fruit." 

He has written a research paper on community-based care. A recent poll commissioned by the Texas Public Policy Foundation found that 76% of Texans support community-based foster care, up from 62% the previous year.

"As we analyzed the poll results, we found the largest increases in support between March 2020 and February 2021 came from regions of the state where community-based care is operating," Brown said in testimony to the Texas Senate. "This suggests that Texans not only support the model on its own merits, but that their support increases when they see it in action in their own communities."