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By Lomi Kriel
San Antonio Express-News
Friday, February 04, 2005
Bill to overhaul kid agency is filed
AUSTIN — The state's flailing Child Protective Services would be overhauled to provide lighter caseloads and improved training for caseworkers and a new and separate investigation division under a Senate bill aired Thursday.
On the same day that child advocates and law enforcement officials testified at a hearing on the proposal, a similar measure was filed by Rep. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, former chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee.
Gov. Rick Perry called reform of the agency an emergency issue after more than 500 children in the state died of abuse or neglect over a two-and-a-half-year period ending last May. Of those, at least 137 were investigated by the agency, which failed to take appropriate action in two-thirds of those cases.
One of the highest-profile cases involved a San Antonio girl, 5-year-old Daisy Perales, who was hospitalized in late November for head trauma, bruises, a previously fractured rib, a lacerated spleen and malnutrition. Since 1998, the child agency had investigated her family seven times.
"If ever an issue deserves emergency status, this is it," said Sen. Jane Nelson, a Republican from Lewisville who chairs the Senate Health and Human Services Committee and filed the reform proposal, Senate Bill 6.
Experts and even agency investigators themselves have said the problem lies in the number of families they must juggle at one time, an average of 74 compared to the 12 to 15 cases recommended by the Child Welfare League of America.
In 1998, when then-Gov. George W. Bush first declared the child welfare system in crisis, investigators handled caseloads of 24 families.
Nelson's bill doesn't specify a caseload limit, but a plan by the Health and Human Services Commission calls for a 40 percent reduction, to 45 cases, by 2007.
The reduction could be accomplished achieved by giving investigators greater resources, including more supervision, better technology and additional staff to help with paperwork, said Anne Heiligenstein, deputy executive commissioner for social services at the commission.
"We believe this is an achievable work load," she said.
But Texas investigators already handle far more cases than those in other states, said F. Scott McCown, a former state district judge who now heads the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an organization that advocates for the rights of poor Texans.
"The situation in the field is very bleak," he said. "If we can get to 45, that's a big step forward, but we need to be at 25."
McCown praised much of the committee's proposals, including the creation of a separate investigative unit and increased penalties for those who either don't cooperate with the child protection agency or submit false reports.
But unless there are enough people to do the basic job, McCown said, those proposals alone won't work.
Currently it takes 24 hours for investigators to respond to cases of "imminent risk." It takes 10 days for all other cases, Heiligenstein said, and under the commission's plan, that could be reduced to 72 hours.
McCown called that a "false promise" without more investigators.
Uresti said his proposal is very similar to Nelson's, adding that he looked forward to working with the Senate and his successor in the House panel, Rep. Susanna Gratia Hupp, R-Lampasas.
He said he didn't know if his proposal stood much chance of passing the panel but said he was confident he would be involved in the process.
"I'm just hoping at the end of the day, the product reforms Child Protective Services and that we fixed the problems we talked about," he said.