SAN ANTONIO – Years of work passing legislation aimed at saving children from abuse and fixing a broken foster care system is finally starting to pay off.
The main chunk of recent legislation began in 2021, including a few particular laws changing the way CPS investigators are trained and changing the definition of neglect.
New numbers from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services show a continued downward trend for home removals and child deaths.
For two years now, the number of kids removed from their homes is down by around 50%.
The number of child deaths from abuse and neglect is also down for the third year in a row.
Carrie Wilcoxson, a former CPS investigator and current consultant for local families, said 2024 is the lowest she has ever seen at 99 child deaths.
“The average range is 150 to 200,” she said.
Wilcoxson has written several laws over the past few years that many advocates believe have contributed to those numbers finally coming down.
Back in 2017, Wilcoxson drafted a bill that mandated a triage assessment to close cases 60 days or older with no prior history.
The bill was sponsored by former Sen. Carlos Uresti and was intended to allow investigators to clear caseloads so they could focus on cases of greater need.
In the years following, other experts drafted important legislation that, combined with Wilcoxson’s legislation, have made a difference.
One of those was a law drafted in 2021 authored and sponsored by Rep. James Frank to change the legal definition of neglect.
The purpose was to weed out the very mild cases that could instead be solved by helping a family with financial or other resources, giving time to focus on more serious cases and not overwhelm the system.
“Neglect often is associated with a family’s financial inability to provide enough for a child and increase stressors for families,” Wilcoxson said.
Plugging a family into help and local resources has shown that certain families are able to improve their circumstances and stay together without removals. While at the time it was slightly controversial, Wilcoxson said these recent downward trends prove it’s working.
Another law believed to have had a major impact on the newest numbers was Wilcoxson’s from 2023.
The law updated training standards for CPS investigators, making it “less about human resource matters and more on established investigative procedures and standards.”
For the first time, the law mandated training for investigators to provide available local resources to a family immediately, versus waiting three or four months for a case to transfer to the Family Based Safety Services department.
More proof of the work’s success lies in San Antonio and Bexar County’s child abuse ranking.
For many years, the local region has ranked in the top three when it comes to the number of child abuse cases and deaths.
Now, that ranking has dropped to four or five.
Wilcoxson said while that may not seem like a large decrease, it is a huge deal in terms of lives saved and less system overload.
Wilcoxson said the bottom line is quality over quantity. She believes these laws have begun to lift the load on the CPS system quicker than expected.
All the recent laws combined have allowed workers to use manpower and resources to target the serious cases, so those critical children don’t fall through the cracks.
She also said the new changes allow communities to stop using foster care as the primary resource for intervention and instead use community resources to keep more families together.
Wilcoxson said these continued trends give her hope for the future.
To see full DFPS statistics about removals and fatality reports, click the link here.
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