Texas Child Removals To Increase According To Soothsayers

It absolutely amazes me how individuals such as Jane Burstain can make predictions of judicial determinations with no empirical methodology.  She must be a soothsayer.

Eligibility for entrance into foster care is based upon an order from the court. If one is able to forecast the rate of rulings on removal of children and placement into foster care, this would leave the reader wondering if there is even due process in court proceedings.

Next, there is no mention of the national policy trends under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Tier III Federal Medicaid funding increase which allows for more services and resources to be provided to individuals...so there will not be a need for removals. The national trend that has reduced the rate of removal of children and placement into foster care is based on the declassification of poverty being considered as grounds for removal.

Statements such as this only further the position I take that these child welfare administrators and policymakers fail to come into federal compliance, justifying the ability to predict increases in the rate of removal of children.

Rise expected in number of Texas children in foster care this year

AUSTIN – Although Texas has followed the national trend in putting fewer children in foster care in the past few years, the numbers apparently are about to go back up.

In Texas, 26,686 children and young adults were in the care of the Department of Family and Protective Services as of Sept. 30, the last day of the federal fiscal year. That was a 5 percent decrease from a year earlier, according to federal statistics.

Jane Burstain, senior policy analyst at the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income Texans, said removals of Texas children from their homes declined from 2005 to 2009 after the Legislature added more child abuse investigators and required them to work harder to keep children in their homes.

"It was not that there were fewer cases coming in the door – there were actually more – but a smaller percentage of cases would result in removal," she said.

This year, "removals have spiked," Burstain said. So has the removal rate, she said. Of the new cases opened so that mistreated children and their families could receive services, 23 percent between September and June resulted in removals, up from 19 percent the previous year.  TRANSLATION: Policymakers have not created any new Medicaid policy proposals to expand eligibility to resources and services traditionally only accessible in a foster care removal.

Last spring, department chief Anne Heiligenstein told lawmakers that the number of children in paid foster care is rising after several years of decreases. TRANSLATION: Economic stresses on child placing agencies have looked to new ways of creating jobs to keep their doors open.

Officials attributed the increase partly to economic stresses on families. TRANSLATION: Poverty.

Robert T. Garrett,
Austin Bureau