In Texas, on any given day, more than 3,400 children who are on the radar of the state’s Child Protective Services because of potential abuse or neglect hadn’t been seen by a caseworker.

On an average day, nearly 700 unseen children are at risk of abuse or neglect that could result in death or serious harm.

Those sobering stats are courtesy of a recent Dallas Morning News investigation.

Those are terrifying numbers that speak to a system in total chaos. Mississippi’s system, while maybe not as bad, shares many of the same problems that plague Texas.

“Extreme workloads, rapid employee turnover, inept leaders and low pay have left investigators and caseworkers unable to simply check in on thousands of the most vulnerable Texans,” the author wrote.

It’s an accurate picture. I was once part of that chaotic system, employed as a caseworker in Houston.  Each month, I was required to visit the children on my caseload, ensure that they were safe in the foster or group home they were living in, ensure that they were developing as they should — both physically and emotionally, testify at court hearings as to what the child’s best interest was, transport those children to doctor’s appointments and therapy appointments, and arrange and supervise visits with the children and the parents who wanted to get them back.

On top of that, I conducted home studies and made recommendations on whether potential foster parents were fit to take children, I transported children to their adoptive homes, I re-located children from foster home to foster home, I stood before judges and made the state’s recommendations on what the child’s future should look like, and I made sure parents were attending mandatory drug screenings and parenting classes. My actions and decisions had life-long consequences for children and parents.

I did all this with little experience and training for about $30,000 a year. I had good intentions, but I was a miserable failure in the job. To my knowledge, no child on my caseload was abused or neglected because I failed to check on them. No child on my caseload was sent back to parents who abused them again, as far as I know.

But simply surviving — or not being abused again — can’t be the definition of a successful experience for a child who has been abused or neglected so badly that the state has to take custody. I don’t know if those children were afraid of foster parents, or so scared of being in a strange place that they cried themselves to sleep at night. I had no way of knowing how emotionally scarring the experience of living with strangers was. If the children were old enough, I could ask them. But I was just another stranger in their lives; why would they open up to me?

I interviewed foster parents and asked how the children were doing. But they could lie to me. Some foster parents see children as sources of income, and take the children in the way a business takes on new customers.

Sometimes, there was no foster home to take a child to — or at least not one you felt good  dropping a child at. Emergency foster shelters aren’t fun places, but sometimes that was the only bed available. Sometimes, caseworkers stayed at the office with a child because there was no place to take him.

To their credit, my co-workers were kind, loving people who simply wanted to help abused children. But there was too much work, too many children, and too little time.

When I left the agency, the children on my caseload were simply given to the remaining team members. I provided a summary of each child’s situation and what my recommendations were before leaving. My co-workers had to trust my assessment and immediately testify in court using my casefiles, without any real knowledge of the case and without ever seeing the child.

I had to do the same thing when I first started and new cases were assigned to me. My first court hearing was a disaster. I didn’t know what to say, who to speak to or even where to go in the courthouse. I had never met the child I was testifying about. I stammered through that first hearing and prayed that I hadn’t messed up. Testifying in court came easier as I got more experience, and I eventually was confident enough to argue with the judge and the attorney if I disagreed with a particular decision.  But sadly, my opinions were largely ignored.

The state’s goal is family reunification, but sometimes that’s not what’s best for the child. But when a judge sees that a child has been in three different foster homes in the past six months, and knows that the system is struggling to adequately care for the child, reunification is often the better option — even if the parent is still struggling.

As a society, we have to resolve to improve the situation in Texas, Mississippi and every other state. It will take more state funding to pay case workers more, more state funding to hire more caseworkers and more training and education for those that are hired. It will take more people opening their homes to abused or neglected children. It will take more non-profits and churches reaching out to help parents who are struggling before the abuse or neglect occurs. And once it does, it will take forgiveness from the same groups so they can continue to help those struggling parents as they work to get their children back.

There’s no quick fix, but it will take more than an army of caseworkers. Government isn’t capable of solving all of society’s problems, and a failing Children’s Protective Services is proof of that.

 

Luke Horton is the publisher of the Daily Leader.