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A federal judge is fining Texas $100,000 per day for routinely neglecting to adequately investigate allegations of abuse and neglect raised by children in the state’s struggling foster care system.
U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack in Corpus Christi ruled Monday that the Texas Health and Human Services agency has shown contempt of her orders to fix the way the state investigates complaints by children in its care.
This is the third such contempt finding in a case that began with a 2011 lawsuit over foster care conditions at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the child welfare arm of HHS.
Lawyers for the state have previously said that while there is always room for improvement, state officials have sufficiently complied with the court’s remedial orders.
The state has also argued that the court monitors haven’t reviewed a large enough sample size of children to make sweeping conclusions.
The fines levied against Texas will be lifted when the state can demonstrate that its investigations are in compliance. A hearing is set for late June.
Since 2019, court-appointed monitors have released periodic reports on DFPS progress toward eliminating threats to the foster children’s safety.
A January report cited progress in staff training, but continued weaknesses in responding to investigations into abuse and neglect allegations, including those made by children. Monitors also said children aren’t told how to report sexual abuse and the state hasn’t proved that it has properly trained its caseworkers to identify potential victims.
In one case, plaintiffs say, a girl was left in the same residential facility for a year while 12 separate investigations piled up around allegations that she had been raped by a worker there. The girl remained exposed to that worker until she was “dumped in an emergency room, alone, with her jaw broken in two places,” the judge said. The facility was eventually shut down by the state.
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