'Make a difference': Texas panel promotes community-based programs as future of foster care

With Texas' foster care system in crisis and facing a critical moment, the Lone Star State’s most vulnerable children are in increasing peril. A recent panel discussion examined what state leaders and ordinary citizens can do to assist them.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) partnered with the Texas Black Caucus Foundation and the Texas Alliance of Child and Family Services to discuss the challenges facing the system and possible solutions. Andrew Brown, a TPPF distinguished senior fellow of child and family policy, served as moderator.

Panelists included Katie Olse, CEO of the Texas Alliance for Child and Family Services, Stacy Johnson, the founder and CEO of Central Texas Table of Grace and state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio). They agreed that community-based care can play a crucial role in helping kids who desperately need support and guidance.

Brown opened the meeting, which was switched to a livestream due to winter weather, with a rundown on the challenges facing the system.

“If you follow the news, you’re likely aware that the Texas foster care system is facing a critical moment as it continues to struggle with finding safe, stable placements for children,” he said. “And into this space, in the wake of COVID-19, the state lost more than 1,000 beds for foster children, leading to a dramatic spike in the number of children who entered the system without a place to go. Between August 2020 and July 2021, the number of what is known as Children Without Placement, or CWOP for short, skyrocketed from 47 to 416. That's a 785% increase.

“These children, who are often older or require more specialized care, are spending more and more time sleeping in offices, hotel rooms and unlicensed temporary placement,” Brown said. “While the CWOP numbers are beginning to come down, they still remain unacceptably high. Adding to the complexity, the state remains under a decade-old federal lawsuit stemming from unsafe conditions in the system and poor treatment of children.”

He said the state has been ordered to comply with a number of remedial measures, including heightened oversight of foster care providers. The legislature has enacted “sweeping reforms” to transform the state’s foster care system, injecting billions of dollars into the system over the last several years, Brown said.

Lujan, a former deputy sheriff and firefighter, brings special insights to this discussion. He and Freda, his wife of 37 years, have five sons, three adopted.

He said the last two boys they adopted were brothers, ages 12 and 14, whom they had worked with through the CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) program. He and his wife fell in love with the brothers and visited them monthly as they awaited an adoption process to be completed. 

The night before the TPPF event, all his sons were home for their mother’s birthday and engaged in a loud, spirited ping-pong tournament. Freda tried to get them to quiet down, but Lujan said he considered it a blessing.

“I love that. All the boys are at home,” he said.

Olse is raising a son and also familiar with a home filled with noise, energy and chaos.

“It's a wonderful thing but I don't get a lot of time," she said. "I have a busy, hectic household. I worked within the public agencies, Health and Human Services and the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) for a number of years and got to see the kind of inner workings of the agencies that are charged with leading the system, and I have great admiration for the work that they do."

Johnson also has a personal perspective.

“I grew up in foster care and I had an interesting experience after being in 10 different foster homes," she said. "I actually asked my social worker if I could go into a group home because I was just getting sick of being moved around and going from place to place and never knowing what was next. I asked my caseworker, ‘If I do my chores and I follow the rules, I can just stay at a group home, right?’ And she says, ‘Oh, Stace, I don’t think that you want to go into a group home. There's a lot of rules. You're not going to be able to be a normal kid. You know, I just don’t think that's a good idea.’”

But Johnson was determined. She moved to a group home in California and told a therapist she wanted to be legally emancipated.

The therapist bought her the book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens.” She says his belief in her, along with that book, changed her life.

“He was only in my life for under a year. But he made a huge difference in my life, and I believe that that was the catalyst for my success later in life,” Johnson said. 

A complex issue

Olse discussed how the foster care system wound up in such a difficult position. It’s been a long process, she said, and a highly complex one.

“The DFPS is the state agency that oversees the child welfare system; they operate a call center, they investigate allegations of abuse and neglect,” she said. “They identify if families need more intervention, such as foster care. And they also operate a contract arm for primary prevention and also do adoptions. But the agency doesn't actually deliver many services. 

“Texas has been privatized for many years, which means that the state agency contracts with community-based nonprofits to deliver services across the whole continuum,” Olse said. “Traditionally, those have been hundreds of contracts managed out of the department’s headquarters here in Austin." 

The amount of foster care capacity in areas of the state varies on local matters such as zoning issues, church activities, the presence of private funding and even universities that really do a lot of work to churn out skilled and qualified caseworkers.

“The foster care system is really complex and constantly evolving, and it should be. We’re learning every day,” Olse said. “And there’s new research every day about how to serve children that have experienced trauma. And it’s imperfect.”

Olse mentioned two tragic child abuse incidents in San Antonio “that have caused us all to really be reflective on what we may be missing. And we want to err on the side of caution.”

The key is increased capacity for kids, and that will take money and dedicated, trained people.

“To grow that kind of capacity takes time and resources," she said. "And the legislature has been responsive to the resources, but it also requires an environment that is conducive to innovation and growth. 

“Peering into the crystal ball here, I can anticipate that the path we're on is that we have to shift our services to meet the needs of children," she added. "There are organizations out there that are committed to this work, but may not have the therapeutic chops, if you will, to be able to meet the needs of the highest-needs kids in the system."

Lujan admitted the two child deaths in Bexar County understandably “gets everybody riled up.” But he said the decline in available capacity for foster kids will make matters worse, not better.

“And I started thinking about that and I’ll share something with you," he said. "If you come to my house any day in the week and you see the way I interact with my children, you're going to say, 'That’s a model home,’ but you come the next week to my house and we have issues going on, you're going to say, ‘Man, we’ve got to take those kids away,’ you know, because these are families are dynamic, people are people.”

Lujan said facilities and people are afraid of being judged based on one incident or one problem.

“Let’s get it better,” he said. “And that’s better than abuse and neglect.”

Brown said in recent years, a movement toward a “punitive approach” for foster care providers has added stress to the system.

“The kids who get removed are punished when they act out," he said. "The foster care providers are punished if they aren’t doing everything exactly perfectly or if they have mistakes. What’s hopeful is when you look across the country and you look toward where child welfare is progressing, due in large part to the federal Family First Act, there’s a cultural change moving toward being more supportive and helping families and helping the people who are involved in this system actually do the job well and be creative about the casework." 

Trauma’s impact

Johnson said it’s important to remember that the children in the system have suffered from tremendous trauma and are deeply affected by it.

“The hard part is going to be telling you about without crying," she said. "And these kids are so special. First of all, they're not here through any fault of their own in this system, and they’ve experienced trauma that some of us couldn't even begin to imagine. Sometimes there are some extra needs and some behaviors and things like that. But ultimately, these are children who need to be cared for, and trauma-informed care is something that we can all learn about, even if we’re not in child welfare." 

Johnson said she remains in touch with the first child whom she worked with in a shelter.

“I call him my first born because he was my first kid who came in and I still talked to so many of my kids," she said. "There’s just so many wonderful stories of these kids who have come through their adversity and been able to still have a good life and be able to succeed at things.” 

Johnson quoted motivational speaker Josh Shipp, a former foster child, who said that every child is one caring adult away from being a success story or a statistic.

“I think that’s so true because just having one caring adult in their life can make such a big difference for these kids,” she said. “It’s not just about their behavior and the things that they’ve experienced. Once we learn how to care for these kids properly and we understand where they’re coming from, we can see who they really are and that it’s not just behavior. We can see them for who they are.”

Olse said in most cases, no matter how terrible the home environment is, most kids want to remain with family.

“We have to listen to these kids, these young people," she said. "They know. They have the answers. If you ask them, they say they want to go home. They want to go live with their family or their grandparents, or they want to go to college, or they want to get a job."

She said but children in the system are there because they have been abused or neglected and a judge has ordered it.

“And so just understanding that these kids have very special needs that need to be cared for in a trauma-informed way," Olse said. "And that is a model for truly understanding how trauma manifests for the children, and how to handle these children." 

Lujan said even though he had raised two boys, he found some things surprising.

“I went in the closet one time, and they were hoarding snacks, and I'm thinking, ‘Why do you hoard snacks? Put it in the pantry, get any time you want it,'" he recalled. "But they were just accustomed because they didn't know where they were going to get it. They spent so many years in foster cares, all these different things.”

He called on all Texas churches to establish a child welfare ministry, noting that people can donate money or provide respite care.

“We’ll move the needle and we’ll have an impact on this,” Lujan said.

Johnson said when Central Texas Table of Grace has an emergency shelter, kids were supposed to be there for 90 days maximum.  Yet many were there for six months or more, so they added programs to help kids adapt and evolve.

“We do a lot of these things. Now I'm looking at the changing climate and how can we help with the kids that don't have placement,” she said. “How can we increase our capacity? What can we do? And the community is such a big part of that. There hasn’t been a year that’s gone by that I didn't have to raise more than $300,000 for that year. And the community comes through on that every single year.”

Olse said community nonprofits are making a great difference, finding creative solutions to care for children, including increased use of technology and data. Brown agreed and said recent studies have backed that up.

Lujan was asked about priorities for child welfare during the 2023 legislative session. He said he envisions a two-pronged approach, with churches teaming with the legislature to provide the funding for homes and care foster kids so desperately need.

The panelists were asked how individual Texans can step up and be part of the solution.

“There is something for everybody,” Johnson said. “From the smallest, tiniest thing as far as bringing a package of toilet paper to a child welfare organization to actually mentoring a child, there are so many opportunities.”

She said when the Texas Public Policy Foundation did a Christmas gift drive and got some Christmas presents and some things off of the wish list, it was a “huge help.”

Lujan implored people to get involved.

“I want to encourage you if you’re a faith-based person, yet your church doesn’t seem to be involved,” he said. “Call me, call my office, especially if you’re in Bezar County, because I'll go over there and help, because we need to have every church doing this. It’s good not just for the children that are being served, but it’s good for us that are serving. We need to step up. We need to do these things.”

Despite all the challenges, Olse said she was optimistic about the future.

“Absolutely. Yeah, I am," she said. "And I know this sounds a little saccharine, but I get to see the work. I get to see it firsthand.”

Johnson agreed.

“I am absolutely optimistic," she said. "I actually started a new program for kids aging out of foster care about a year ago called Grace365. We have 10 kids in that program now. I feel so optimistic, especially with this new program, because I always told myself if I could just help one, it was worth it. And we’re helping more than one."