State Leaders on Atrocious Child Welfare System: Dont Blame Us!

[TexasTowelie]

The Texas Legislature oversees a lot of important and meaningful programs — poorly, more often than not — but when dead children come into the picture, the situation feels different. Texas’ terrible school finance system and mismanagement of Medicaid affect millions of people, but those are complicated issues. Few things symbolize a broken state government like the image of a sexually abused child left to linger in a dangerous home because a tip got lost among overworked caseworkers.

The cascading scandals surrounding the Texas Department of Family Protective Services (DFPS) speak for themselves: More than 2,800 children at high risk of being abused or neglected have gone for weeks without being seen by state employees, and 171 kids have died just in the last two years while under state care, sometimes from stomach-churning circumstances. So when it came time for top elected officials to discuss fixes in the child welfare system, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and his chief budget writer, state Senator Jane Nelson, sought to make one thing crystal clear: It’s not their fault.

For years, Child Protective Services (CPS), overseen by DFPS, has been starved of funding and barely functional at best. Caseworkers are paid peanuts for emotionally exhausting work, turnover is extremely high, and employees lack support and direction. And ever since 2004, when legislators forced CPS through a big, messy restructuring and cut the agency’s budget significantly, the legislative hand has been unsteady.

But if the child welfare system is screwed up, Patrick said in a statement, that’s the agency’s fault. “I share Senator Nelson’s frustration with {DFPS},” he said, “and I support her demand that DFPS provide us with immediate answers regarding these children.” He was shocked to learn that the agency “is unable to move through their backlog and protect these at-risk children despite a 85 percent increase in funding since 2006-2007.”

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-child-welfare-broken/

[Ilsa]

1. Dead kids, and they shrug.

"His (Patrick's) proffered solution is to farm out more of the state’s responsibilities to churches. Hey, charity is cheap."

The problem is most churches are struggling to get by with the charity work they are currently doing, and church membership is stagnant. That stagnation becomes a positive feedback loop where fewer people want to get signed up via church membership to do even more. The churches can't handle it all, and frankly, most aren't "professionally" equipped to handle these problems.

Abbott, Patrick, and the rest of that majority are selfish assholes.