The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) is responsible for investigating charges of abuse, neglect or exploitation of children, elderly adults and adults with disabilities. Prior to its creation in 2004, the agency had been called the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services (DPRS). According to federal judge Janis Graham Jack, the Texas DFPS is "a system where rape, abuse, psychotropic medication, and instability are the norm". According to the

Texas Attorney General The Texas attorney general is the chief legal officer
of the

, DFPS is neither a juvenile nor an adult criminal justice agency. The

Texas Juvenile Justice Department The Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) is a state agency in Texas, headquartered in the Braker H Complex in Austin. It was created on December 1, 2011, replacing the Texas Youth Commission and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission. Histor ...

is the state juvenile justice agency, while the

Texas Department of Criminal Justice The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a department of the government of the U.S. state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails, ...

is the adult justice agency. The agency is headquartered at the John H. Winters Human Services Center at 701 West 51st Street in

Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

Mandate

The DFPS undertakes five major tasks: *Adult protective services *Child protective services *Child care licensing *Prevention and early intervention *Statewide intake

History

It was created effective February 1, 2004 by House Bill 2292 of the 78th

Texas Legislature The Texas Legislature is the state legislature of the US state of Texas. It is a bicameral body composed of a 31-member Senate and a 150-member House of Representatives. The state legislature meets at the Capitol in Austin. It is a powerful ...

(2003) as the first new agency in a major reorganization of Texas's health and human services system. The change was made to help "consolidate organizational structures and functions, eliminate duplicative administrative systems, and streamline processes and procedures that guide the delivery of health and human services to Texans."

Comptroller findings

DFPS has a documented history of issues with children placed in its care. A 2004 report by Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn was very critical of the Texas foster care system. A follow-up statement with continued criticisms of the Texas foster care system was made in 2006 by the Comptroller and renewed a request to have the governor create a Family and Protective Services Crisis Management Team. The Comptroller stated that in fiscal 2003, 2004 and 2005, respectively 30, 38 and 48 foster children died in the state's care. The number of foster children in the state's care increased 24 percent to 32,474 in Fiscal 2005, while the number of deaths increased 60 percent. Compared to the general population, a child is four times more likely to die in the Texas foster care system. In 2004, about 100 children were treated for poisoning from medications; 63 were treated for rape that occurred while under state care including four-year-old twin boys, and 142 children gave birth. A 12-year-old boy died in December 2005, suffocated while being restrained from behind by an employee of the facility. Another died May 30, after drowning in a creek during a bicycle outing. A three-year-old was treated for poisoning from an atypical, mind-altering anti-psychotic drug. The Comptroller's office also found significant financial problems in a 2005 audit of DFPS.

YFZ Ranch FLDS raid

Gene Grounds of Victim Relief Ministries reported no hysteria or crying children from children removed from the ranch. He commended CPS workers as exhibiting compassion, professionalism and caring concern. John Kight, chairman of an organization that provided mental health workers to assist

FLDS The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church) is a religious sect of the fundamentalist Mormon denominations whose members practice polygamy. The fundamentalist Mormon movement emerged in the early 20th century, ...

children and mothers from the

YFZ Ranch The YFZ Ranch, or Yearning for Zion Ranch, was a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) community of as many as 700 people, located near Eldorado in Schleicher County, Texas, United States. In April 2014, the State o ...

recounted to the Texas governor's office that DFPS' Child Protective Services had seemed out of control at the temporary shelters, describing "how abusive CPS was and how they've trampled all over their rights." One of the workers who assisted at the shelter remarked that "wonderful loving women and children are being treated like convicts in a concentration camp by the state of Texas".
Some quotes found in two of the original affidavits linked to from this article titled
"This incident... is not what America or Texas stands for."
an
"Even the simplest request was discounted."
Another wrote "I have never seen women and children treated this poorly, not to mention their civil rights being disregarded in this manner" after assisting at the emergency shelter. "The CPS workers were openly rude to the mothers and children, yelled at them for tryin to wave to friends.. threatened them with arrest if they did not stop waving" Workers took notes on everything the "guests" said. Some compared it to a prison or

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

. By contrast, one worker noted the children were "amazingly clean, happy, healthy, energetic, well behaved and self-confident," while the mothers were "consistently calm, patient and loving with their children." Ultimately, both the Court of Appeals for the Third District and the Texas Supreme Court found that CPS improperly removed all the children and ordered them returned to their parents. Caregivers who were previously forbidden to discuss conditions working with CPS later produced unsigned written reports expressed anger at the CPS traumatizing the children, and for disregarding rights of mothers who appeared to be parents of healthy, well-behaved children. CPS threatened some workers with arrest, and the entire mental health support was dismissed the second week due to being "too compassionate." Workers believed poor sanitary conditions at the shelter allowed respiratory infections and chicken pox to spread. After being removed from the temporary shelters the FLDS children were placed in 16 group shelters and foster homes. Minors with children were sent to the Seton Home in San Antonio, older boys to Cal Farley's Boys Ranch in Amarillo. Some parents stated on the Today Show that they were unable to visit their boys due to a shortage of CPS staff. Newspapers released names of facilities caring for the FLDS children that have requested donations of specific items, help or cash.

2011 lawsuit

The DFPS has also been the subject of a recent lawsuit alleging, among other complaints, that foster children are inappropriately placed in restrictive institutional settings. In 2011, Children's Rights, a New York-based national advocacy group working to reform child welfare systems, filed a federal

class action A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class actio ...

lawsuit in the

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas The United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas (in case citations, S.D. Tex.) is the federal district court with jurisdiction over the southeastern part of Texas. The court's headquarters is in Houston, Texas and has six ad ...

alleging the DFPS routinely fails to either return children who've been in foster care at least a year safely to their families or to find them safe, appropriate, and permanent new families.PLAINTIFFS’ ORIGINAL COMPLAINT FOR INJUNCTIVE AND DECLARATORY RELIEF AND REQUEST FOR CLASS ACTION
M.D. v. Perry (S.D. Tex. 2011) They also claim that after approximately one year, or a maximum of 18 months, without successfully reunifying children with their birth families or finding them adoptive homes, children become permanent wards of the state, a status known as "permanent managing conservatorship" (PMC), and that after entering this permanent foster care status, many children have little hope for stable, permanent families and instead are shuffled between a variety of foster and institutional placements that are poorly supervised by the state.

Notes

External links

Official website

DFPS Eldorado (YFZ Ranch) information page

Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation Reporting System
run by the DFPS
Texas Foster Care and Adoption , Buckner International
{{authority control Family and Protective Services, Texas Department of Child welfare Child welfare in the United States Child abuse in the United States