Tag: Texas Foster Care System

It was early July 2001, and Trish Virgil was going to make a lemon meringue pie. “In our family, 12 years old meant that you get to finally learn how to make homemade pies,” she says now, smiling.

When it comes to protecting children, Greg Abbott just doesn’t get it.

According to emails obtained by the Texas Tribune, Abbott took a personal interest in the January 2015 murder of a two-month old girl who had been removed from her mother by Child Protective Services and placed temporarily with a family friend. Justice Hull was drowned in a bowl of water by the family friend’s 14-year-old daughter, who told authorities she didn’t want her mom to adopt the child.

It’s been a turbulent year for the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). First there was the December court order by a federal judge in Corpus Christi – a sweeping and scathing order condemning what she called a “broken” foster care system, declaring it in violation of the Constitution and demanding a complete overhaul with a special master to be appointed to recommend fixes.

The state of Texas lost two intermediate battles Monday in its fight to block a federal judge’s efforts to reform a foster care system that she found has violated children’s civil rights by subjecting them to rampant neglect and abuse.

In December, a federal judge’s scathing ruling laid out the legal and moral case that Texas leaders must vastly improve the state’s foster care system to ensure children’s lives get better — not worse — when Child Protective Services removes them from unsafe homes.

Texas officials are fighting tooth and nail against court-ordered, potentially costly reforms to the state’s foster care system — a position that’s drawn fierce criticism from child welfare advocates.

It was early July 2001, and Trish Virgil was going to make a lemon meringue pie. “In our family, 12 years old meant that you get to finally learn how to make homemade pies,” she says now, smiling.

The state’s track record for its Child Protective Services is a tumultuous one. A couple of months ago, a series of stories were circulating around a massive federal lawsuit filed against the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services, which oversees foster care, adoption and daycare licensing in Texas.

Houston police found the 16-year-old foster child in a park in early November 2013, just a few days after she ran away from a residential treatment center in northwest Houston.

Last month a federal judge ordered Texas to clean up its foster care system. U.S. District Judge Janis Jack’s findings were scathing. She said that children in Texas’s long-term foster care have been subjected to “years of abuse [and] neglect.” She added that they had been systemically denied their civil rights,reports The Texas Tribune. In response, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has appealed the reforms ordered by the federal judge.