Unfortunately, in Texas …
Our foster care system still sucks. The massacre in Uvalde was the result of bad decisions and poor leadership. Ken Paxton flaunts his disrespect for the law. Unfortunately, in Texas, who cares?
(Welcome to my Life Its Ownself newsletter. Please support us by 1) hitting the Like button at the bottom of this installment, 2) subscribing to this newsletter, and 3) recommending it to others. Also, feel free to comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
But first, your moment of Zen … The newest Brewster County taxpayer.
Wednesday, January 24, 2024, 10:00 a.m.
Today I am introducing an occasional series, “Unfortunately, in Texas,” in which will I profile stories about people or problems that ought to be solvable but which, unfortunately, in Texas, are not.
SURPRISE! Texas Foster Care System Still Sucks
In the early days of Saturday Night Live, Chevy Chase had a running joke on the show’s weekly newscast, intoning: “This breaking news just in – Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!” I thought of that while reading the excellent Texas Monthly articleabout the Texas foster care system, which has been the subject of a court case since 2011.
The ironically-named Child Protective Services (CPS) division of the state’s massive Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) is responsible for the protection of approximately 20,000 children who have been removed from their families – hopefully temporarily. But it doesn’t work out that way – around half of them at any time are permanently in the state’s care, whether in family placements, group homes, or other arrangements.
A smaller group – called Children Without Placement (CWOP) – are not in any stable setting, bouncing from facility to facility, often because of emotional and behavioral needs that cannot be met in prosaic settings. Over the period from January through August 2023, 465 different kids were in CWOP, with an average of 62 children per night and an average of 32 nights per child.
A Texas Tribune story last November highlighted the chaotic conditions for CWOP children in Bell County:
One 14-year-old girl got pregnant and gave birth while in state care — only to have her baby taken into DFPS custody as well. A 16-year-old ran away from a motel in a stolen pickup and later died in a car crash. One 10-year-old girl was taken to the ground and handcuffed by police when her caretakers couldn’t handle her during a mental breakdown. A 14-year-old boy regularly smoked marijuana at a drug dealer’s nearby home. One 15-year-old said he had a gun hidden in the backyard and threatened to shoot a caseworker in the head. A teen girl got into a scuffle with a security guard, grabbed his gun and threw it on the floor.
A top-to-bottom reimagination of the foster care system is necessary. And that is especially challenging in Texas:
Marcia Lowry, another attorney for the children in this case, has spent decades arguing for child welfare reform across the country. In her experience, she says, states almost always eventually settle and work with her. “But in Texas there has been resistance from the first and resistance now,” she says, “and the amount of resistance is unusual.” And Texas has thrown more weight behind that resistance as the years have dragged on.
“But in Texas there has been resistance from the first and resistance now, and the amount of resistance is unusual.”
This week, the Texas Tribune reports that, in response to the ass-chewing DFPS got at a November hearing, it has trained or re-purposed about 30 caseworkers to focus on the CWOP population:
The staffing changes are designed to make it so that regular caseworkers aren’t expected to work overtime rotations to care for the children without placement. Those caseworkers have said those shifts were burdensome, sapped their morale and led to unsafe conditions for both the children and the workers. …
The new staff positions caring for children without placement have been filled by current or former caseworkers. Those workers will travel to locations across the state as needed depending on how many children are living in each place at any given time, officials said.
Two of the new positions started Monday, and more will start in the coming days, officials said. They will not have any other cases, allowing them to focus entirely on supervising the children in those temporary placements, officials said.
Unfortunately, in Texas, this is not going to make much difference and if it does, it will be temporary. This has been going on for 12 years, for Christ’s sake, and still the foster care system borders on disastrous. A wise man once told me, “Some problems are merely intractable, and some are intractable because we want them to be.”
DOJ Report: Uvalde Was a Failure from Top to Bottom
I have said multiple times that we, as a society, should burn in hell for what happened to the 19 kids and two teachers massacred in Uvalde in 2022. The only thing worse than the horrific tragedy of those murders has been the absolute lack of accountability for them. Maybe one or two police officers were fired, although they’re probably working somewhere else by now. The state’s gun safety policies have gotten worse in the wake of the massacre, not better, and that’s on all of us.
(Attorney General Merrick Garland views one of the murals honoring the children killed in the Uvalde Massacre. Photo: POOL/Via REUTERS)
Last Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland came to Uvalde to release a “Critical Incident Review” of the Uvalde Massacre prepared by the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).
“The victims and survivors of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School deserved better,” said Attorney General Garland. “The law enforcement response at Robb Elementary on May 24th, 2022 — and the response by officials in the hours and days after — was a failure. Because of failed leadership, training, and policies, 33 students and three of their teachers — many of whom had been shot — were trapped in a room with an active shooter for over an hour as law enforcement officials remained outside. We hope to honor the victims and survivors by working together to try to prevent anything like this from happening again, here or anywhere.”
The report describes cascading failures of leadership, communications, intelligence and planning that contributed to the carnage, but the bottom line was a failure of courage.
The report describes a frustrated officer yelling, “What the [REDACTED] are we waiting for?” and being ordered to stand down and reprimanded. Just kidding! – nothing like that happened. They were all 391 of them in on it – the waiting, the dawdling, the passing the buck.
The report contains pages of recommendations, all derived from evidence-based best practices. Unfortunately, in Texas, very little is going to happen. The massacre did not happen because no one knew what to do; instead, they failed to do their duty. Do we really think the state and local officials overseeing those officers are going to do anything?
I was pleased to see that a grand jury has been empaneled to review the report and its conclusions, with the possibility that it may hand down indictments. But I am not holding my breath.
Ken Paxton Tries to Wiggle His Way Out of Accountability – Again
Sometimes Ken Paxton is a shy man. He prefers to hide on the floor of his wife’s truck to evade process servers, or to delay the trial on his securities fraud charges for eight years so he does not have to testify. He also wrangled a sweetheart deal from Dan Patrick to not testify during his own impeachment, possibly because the public might become suspicious with his rote invocation of the Fifth Amendment.
In other ways, he is bold and forthright. When last we visited with him, he was vowing retribution on all those who had the temerity to impeach him last May. He never denied or countered the accusations, letting his defense team sow confusion with statements like, “There’s no such thing as a coincidence in Austin,” whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.
Anyway, Paxton was chagrined to discover that his Senate acquittal, helped along by a $3 million bribe to Dan Patrick, was not the end of the matter. The whistleblowers who started the whole thing wanted to continue the litigation that had been suspended during the impeachment. And, worst of all, they wanted to depose him.
Paxton appealed a judge’s decision to order depositions. He even filed a legally specious lawsuit in an adjoining county. All to no avail. Once the Texas Supreme Court ordered him to sit for the deposition, he seemed trapped.
Unfortunately, in Texas, Ken Paxton did not become the most corrupt attorney general in state history by lacking imagination. Last Thursday, he announced that he would no longer contest the facts of the lawsuit, conceding all the terrible things the whistleblowers were saying about him.
In return, of course, he wanted to cancel any depositions the whistleblowers wanted of him. To their credit, the whistleblowers said, “No, thanks.” The judge in the case says the depositions are still on. They are currently scheduled for early February, although Paxton is sure to try additional legal moves to quash them.
In other news … Donald Trump surprised the world by winning the New Hampshire primary last night, a week after the crushed the Iowa caucuses. Nikki Haley, the last (wo)man standing, has vowed to fight on to South Carolina, where she was governor and is on favorable territory. But not everyone thinks that’s true.
Have a nice week!
Thank you for your dedicated writing and updates. The Uvalde news, which came really as no surprise, was gutwrenching and I honestly try not to think too hard about Uvalde at all because that same day I had gone to my kid's end of school year party and shudder to think "what if".
Thanks for these stories, depressing as they are. Every time I read things like this, a naive portion of my brain says “This MUST be the tipping point where people rise up and say ‘NO MORE.’” But that never happens in Texas, does it?
On more joyous news, congratulations on your new status as a Brewster County homeowner and taxpayer. Is this a full-time move, or is this just your summer manse?