State officials have been working to improve child protection and foster care in Texas since a federal judge declared the system broken in December 2015, citing overloaded case workers and children sleeping in offices due to lack of beds. Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation at the end of May that provided an additional $509 million in funding for Child Protective Services and foster care providers, bringing the total budget for the 2018-19 biennium to $3.5 billion. He also made a plea to faith-based organizations to provide more support to local CPS offices, including mentorships and 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. “We see the problems we have, and we know we can’t just depend on our Legislature,” said Josie Jones, community initiatives specialist with the state Department of Family and Protective Services. “We have to depend on our community also.” New approach DFPS has always made an effort to work with churches and community organizations, but a key difference to the new approach is focusing on ways for people to be involved aside from fostering or adopting children, said Ashley Smalls, a faith-based specialist with DFPS. Mentoring, donating clothes and helping with parenting or life skills classes are all ways people can help, Smalls said. “We understand that not everybody wants to be a foster parent,” Smalls said. “There are other ways that you can become involved.” Rep. Kevin Roberts, R-Spring, authored House Bill 871 in the regular  session to make it easier for agencies to work with nonprofit and faith-based organizations. It became law on Sept. 1 and is designed to help families in need, in order to prevent more children from entering the foster care system Roberts said. The law allows nonprofit and faith-based organizations to reach out to communities to make parents aware of preventive services their organization offers, including parenting lessons and classes on child development, Roberts said. The law also enables host families identified by nonprofit and faith-based organizations to provide temporary guardianship for a child while his or her parents are unable to care for the child, Roberts said. DFPS runs the same background checks on temporary host families as it does on foster families to ensure the child is going to a safe environment. Although the host family will take care of the child’s day-to-day needs, including decisions about school and healthcare, the child’s parents always maintain full custody and guardianship, he said. After the temporary care period is over—which Roberts said can last up to six months—the child returns home to his or her family unless a further temporary period is agreed upon. 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. “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 ... do. Helping foster children helps everybody.”