U.S. District Judge Janis Jack has ordered Texas Health and Human Services officials to pay $100,000 per day in fines for routinely neglecting investigations into allegations of abuse and neglect by children in the state’s foster care system.
It is the third time the state has been held in contempt of court orders since a 2011 lawsuit was filed about foster care conditions in the care of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the child welfare arm of HHS.
According to the 427-page decision, the agency was previously ordered to fix the way the state investigates complaints by children in its care the contempt of court due to the “continued recalcitrance” to conduct thorough, accurate and timely abuse, neglect, and exploitation investigations by the agency’s Provider Investigations unit(PI), which investigates those allegations.
“As demonstrated by the stories of the children and PI’s failure to take any action to remedy the egregious flaws identified by the Monitors, PI represents a significant, systemic failure that increases the risk of serious harm [to the children].”
The fines levied against Texas will be lifted when the state can demonstrate that its investigations are in compli- ance. A hearing on the matter is set for late June.
Jack made her first ruling condemning the state foster care system in 2015, and three years later, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Since then, she’s ordered several fixes over the years and continuously criticized the state for not complying with her orders.
Since 2019, DFPS has been under the supervision of court-appointed monitors who have released periodic reports on Texas’ progress toward eliminating threats to children’s safety in the foster care system.
At the center of the battle are the roughly 9,000 children in permanent state custody, removed from their homes due to circumstances that can include abuse at home, or complex health needs that parents are unable to manage without help, or the loss of their family caregivers.
Testimony during a series of hearings earlier this year and late last year zeroed in on the poor quality and backlog of investigations into complaints of sexual abuse reported by children in state care who have intellectual or developmental disabilities, such as autism, fetal-alcohol syndrome, and Down syndrome.
According to the court monitors, children in the state’s care are not informed how to report sexual abuse. Also, the state also has not been able to prove that it has properly trained its caseworkers on how to identify potential victims of sexual abuse.