Children Come First in the Family Budget
OP-ED: By Senator Carlos I. Uresti
Legislators like to say that we should craft a state budget with the same care and fiscal responsibility we use when we are creating our family’s budget around the kitchen table. In my house, the basic needs of my children always come first. My duty as a parent, and as a father, is to insure they have everything they need to not only be safe, but to reach their full potential. The children of Texas are our children, they are our responsibility, and the Texas Legislature needs to put its priorities in order. Given enough support and resources, I believe children in the care of our state will become our future doctors, teachers, scientists, and community leaders. Right now, their opportunity to reach the ambitious goals we would set for our own children is virtually nonexistant.
On December 17th, U.S. District Judge Janis Jack of Corpus Christi wrote a scathing review of the Texas foster care system. The case, brought by an organization named Children’s Rights on behalf of several current foster care youth, alleges that caseworkers who are supposed to be reuniting families are overburdened with extremely high caseloads and that the state has relied on foster group homes which lack sufficient supervision. In her 255-page opinion, Judge Jack found that the state has been unconstitutionally negligent of its children in foster care. She wrote : “children often enter foster care at the Basic service level, are assigned a carousel of overburdened caseworkers, suffer abuse and neglect that is rarely confirmed or treated, are shuttled between placements— often inappropriate for their needs—throughout the State, are migrated through schools at a rate that makes academic achievement impossible, are medicated with psychotropic drugs, and then age out of foster care at the Intense service level, damaged, institutionalized, and unable to succeed as adults.”
The state has failed our children, and we must not let it continue. I have been advocating on behalf of survivors of child abuse and neglect my entire career. Along the way, I have found other advocates, other champions. The movement has grown. I have worked with my colleagues for child abuse prevention programs, and the efforts have yielded increased investments in evidence-based programs. I have filed bills and rider requests session after session to hire additional caseworkers and to pay the ones we currently have a competitive salary. During the 84th Legislative Session, we made substantial changes to caseworker compensation, training, and recruiting practices. The Department of Family and Protective Services has expanded evidence-based prevention programs, and they have begun focusing on building community relationships and cooperation. I continue to work closely with John Specia, and I believe the Department is open and transparent about the remaining challenges and improvements that need to be made. The Department has been stretched too thin for too many years. We have been taking steps in the right direction, when we should have been making leaps.
As we begin this new year, the Texas Legislature must take Judge Janis Jack’s ruling to heart and stand ready to take action. We must increase the number of permanency caseworkers to adequately meet our children’s needs. We need additional foster families and kinship placements, who are willing and able to house complete sibling sets, but we cannot expect them to voluntarily shoulder 100% of costs of raising these children. If a grandmother is able and willing to take in her grandchildren, we need to be there ready to help out with daycare and diapers. Our faith-based community has a long history of supporting children in foster care, but their efforts are often limited by their local resources and the wills of their congregations. We need more churches to take foster care children under their wings, to help provide wrap-around services, to be a stable community as the child navigates the difficult challenges of growing up without a traditional family structure. Many areas of the state are desperate for more CASA volunteers. These heroes in regular clothing go with children to court and speak up on behalf of the best interests of the foster care child to which they are assigned. Our CASA volunteers forge relationships with their foster care children, and they become a stable and consistent presence during turbulent times. The Texas Legislature, through the budgeting process, can make all of these programs and initiatives easier and better.
We have the ultimate resources and the responsibility to make sure that the children in foster care, our children, are provided with the resources they need to be successful adults. We have both a legal and a moral obligation to take care of these children. This isn’t rocket science; it’s paying for our priorities. It’s putting our kids first.
Sen. Uresti represents Senate District 19, which covers more than 35,000 square miles and contains all or part of 17 counties, two international ports of entry, eleven state parks, 51 school districts, 2700 miles of highways, and more than 23,000 producing oil and gas wells in both the Eagle Ford Shale and Permian Basin. The district is larger than 12 states and 82 Nations, and contains over one third of the Texas-Mexico border. Sen. Uresti is proud to serve on the Finance, Natural Resources & Economic Development, Health & Human Services, and Administration Committees.
