The Child Protective Services office at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services in Austin on Nov. 14, 2019., The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
The kids are “literally calling all the shots,” which makes the environment “dangerous for not just the kids but also the caseworkers,” said Myko Gedutis, vice president of the Texas State Employees Union, which represents DFPS caseworkers and other current and retired state employees. DFPS spokesperson Patrick Crimmins declined to publicly comment on specific incidents involving the kids in their care, but described “daily, intensive” efforts by the agency to reduce the number of children without placement and improve the environment at all of the rentals, apartments, church homes and hotels.
For those who are still without placement, the agency is continuously seeking more capacity to better meet the needs of these kids, including expanding the agency’s temporary emergency placement program and strengthening support for family members who agree to foster children. Many of them are believed to have been victims of sex trafficking before or during their time in state custody. More than a quarter of the children who wind up in temporary houses or hotels were released from a psychiatric hospital within the previous 24 hours, the October report says.
The report’s words and photos of the Bell County homes depict dirty, run-down, flophouse-style living conditions. Sheets are pinned up over windows on bare walls riddled with holes. Mattresses are strewn around the rooms, dirty clothes and dishes are piled up, threadbare carpets are stained and streaked with filth. In others, door jambs are broken and plaster chunks lie on the floor next to kids’ beds.
The homes and hotels sprinkled across the state have no permanent staff assigned to them. The children are supervised in rotating shifts by overloaded caseworkers who have scant training in restraint or de-escalation and no authority to enforce curfews or house rules, school attendance or medical regimens.
The 14-year-old girl offering to “pimp her out” was at one point found in her own room after midnight “in a small bra and men’s underwear when she was talking with older man making sexual gestures and telling him she was going to perform certain sex acts,” the report said.