Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation at the end of May that provided an additional $509 million in funding for CPS and foster care providers statewide, bringing the total budget for the 2018-19 biennium to $3.5 billion. On top of that, he made a plea to faith-based organizations to provide more support to local CPS offices, including mentorships and providing places for children to sleep.
In Harris County, officials have been reaching out to churches to try to build new partnerships with the goal of filling a variety of needs. Each year more than 29,000 children are involved with CPS in Harris County.
“One of the things we’re doing now is reaching out to the faith-based community to see who may have room so they can house some of our children so they’re not spending the night in our offices,” said Josie Jones, community initiatives specialist with the state Department of Family and Protective Services. “We see the problems we have, and we know we can’t just depend on our legislature. We have to depend on our community also.”
According to Ashley Smalls, faith-based specialist with DFPS, part of the outreach process involves learning how each church operates and—if they are willing to help—walking them through how they can adjust their facilities to make them conducive for children to be temporarily housed.
A new approach
DFPS has always made an effort to partner with churches and community organizations, but a key difference to the new approach is focusing on other ways for people to be involved aside from fostering or adopting children, Smalls said.
Mentoring, donating items such as clothing and helping with other activities such as parenting or life skills classes are all ways people can help, Smalls said. The department is also seeking business owners who could provide opportunities to youth who are aging out of the system to gain work experience, she said.
“We understand that not everybody wants to be a foster parent,” Smalls said. “There are other ways that you can become involved and used the gifts and talents you have to be able to help our children.”
Finding beds
The two-year budget adopted by Texas lawmakers this session—set to take effect Sept. 1—includes an additional $95 million to reimburse foster care families and other foster care providers, which is expected to increase total bed capacity across the system.
Statewide, 84 foster children were without placement for two or more nights in May, up from 65 in March, according to DFPS reports.
In Harris County, officials said they have managed to keep children from having to sleep in offices over the summer for the most part. However, Jones said officials will get a better picture of how things are improving once school starts back up.
“Lately we haven’t been having kids sleeping in offices or in our youth service center unless they just recently came into care, but we tend to not have as many children without placement when school is out,” Jones said. “So it’s hard to tell if it’s because it’s summertime or because more communities are getting involved and we have more places for the kids.”
Ambassadors to the community
Smalls and Jones both described faith-based organizations as ambassadors who play a key role in getting information out to the community and encouraging others to get involved.
“We know what [people] see in the news, but we want the community to see exactly what our caseworkers do on a daily basis,” Jones said. “We have some very hardworking, dedicated workers out there doing a lot for our community to keep our children safe.”
The main message right now is that when communities prioritize helping foster children, everyone benefits, Jones said.
“All hands on deck; that’s what we want,” she said. “It’s not just the work we do, but also the work the community can help us to do. You can make it better for society. Helping foster children helps everybody.”
