Children in Foster Care

Rising number of child deaths in foster care 1

This entry was posted in CPS on by

It seems it is almost once a month nowadays I hear that another child has died while in foster care. Between September 2011, and August 2013, the number of foster children who died from abuse or neglect while in care rose from two per year, to eight per year1. That’s a staggering increase if that trend holds up. Obviously, in such small numbers, its possible we are simply looking at a statistical variation, however, these are not freak occurrences. From my perspective, this raises some questions in regards to both licensing standards as well as the eyes on the ground in these cases.

As with most things, this is somewhat of a divided issue for me, because the more difficult you make it for people to become foster placements, the more good placements you might be eliminating from the pool. Additionally, it isn’t as though there is an excess of supply in this arena anyway, in fact quite the opposite. To a certain extent, when placing children, it is often somewhat of a “pick the best of what options exist” and if there are only a handful of bad options, you grit your teeth and cross your fingers and hope for the best.

In my opinion, however, this isn’t good enough for Texas children. This is not an area where a simple passing grade should be “good enough”, this should be an area we as a state strive to excel at. Obviously, some of the issue is a lack of funding, but the problem goes deeper than that. The best type of home for children is a foster home that is as close to a “real” home as possible, however, the supply of these quite simply does not meet the demand. Larger group homes pick up much of the slack here, but they often run into problems as frequently they are profit driven, and not focused on the best interests of the children.

The best solution here may be more direct involvement on the part of the state. The amount the state pays out through contracts is already pretty extensive and regulation of the private market here seems difficult. If the state ran their own group homes, or better yet, smaller home environments, then it would be much easier to regulate and much less variability in the level of care between one home and the next.

Regardless of the specific solution, though, it seems clear that SOMETHING needs to be done.

 

 

  1. Increase in foster child deaths prompts safety plan

 

The following two tabs change content below.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Timothy Hutton

Mr. Hutton is a Divorce and Custody Lawyer based out of Round Rock, TX. His background is with child psychology at Arizona State University where he received a B.S. in 2006, and he continued this by working with the Children’s Right’s Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law where he received his J.D. in 2009. Throughout his practice, he has been a strong proponent of utilizing modern technology to improve his practice and the representation of his clients. He currently is the technology chair of CAFA of Travis County and is committed to improving and modernizing the practice of law in Texas. If you have any questions you can contact him at attorney@okohlaw.us

Leave a Reply

One thought on “Rising number of child deaths in foster care”

  • Cynthia

    I see you share interesting content here, you can earn some extra
    money, your website has big potential, for the monetizing method,
    just search in google – K2 advices how to monetize a website