“[This] is something that the elected leaders of Texas really need to stay and lead on, because we have children in this state that the state has determined they are going to accept responsibility for, but the state does not care for them,” she said to the Observer. “We have a critical shortage of families willing to step up and be foster parents."
Johnson says that in Texas, children, often separated from their siblings, have been forced to sleep wherever the state can accommodate them.
“Texas has been under Republican control for 30 years, and we have the worst foster care system in the entire country. We have kids sleeping in offices because we don't have adequate housing,” she said. “We haven't created opportunities for the broadest amount of people to serve as foster parents.”
Johnson, a former advocate for Dallas Court Appointed Special Advocates (Dallas CASA), a nonprofit serving children in protective care, says one of the greatest hurdles in recruiting foster parents is the upfront costs. While a federal tax-credit system is in place for long-term foster families, those who provide emergency shelter, often on short notice, do not benefit from a similar initiative.
“It's expensive to care for kids, and it's extra expensive to care for kids that are not your own,” she said. “So we want to create as many opportunities for families to help these most vulnerable children be safe and stable and try to get through some very traumatic times.”
The lawmaker says this bill is her bid to move the needle toward addressing the financial pitfalls within the foster care system. But she still can’t explain exactly why the “disaster” of a system has yet to be amended by Texas Republicans who are operating in the black.
“It's outrageous what the state is doing, especially given this huge budget surplus that we have,” she said. “It's not like Texas doesn't have the money to fund it. It's that Republicans don't have the will to fund it. It's outrageous that we are leaving [behind] these vulnerable kids.”
The Catastrophic Privatization of Foster Care
In 2017, the Texas legislature passed the torch of responsibility for the foster care system, opting to privatize the system through contracts. The transition of power is a phased system, one that is in the middle stages in the region, including Dallas. In North Texas, there was a single bidder, Empower, and now the organization is responsible for the care of thousands of foster children.According to Kathleen LaValle, CEO of Dallas CASA, the goal of privatization was to rectify significant pain points within the foster care system. This would primarily involve keeping children in the general vicinity of their original home instead of placing them in the soonest open home, which could be in an entirely separate region, but the plan has fallen short.
“One of the obvious heartbreaks of the foster care system is that it frequently results in the separation of siblings,” she said. “For siblings who experience trauma, being separated from a younger brother or sister who they really cared for and feel responsible for is devastating.”
The first phase of the plan, which began in 2023 in North Texas, involved overseeing foster care placements. Phase two began on March 1, 2024, when Empower took control of all case management, but LaValle says the contractor has not fulfilled its promises.
“It turned out that the estimates [Empower made for available case managers] were way off the mark, and a very small percentage relative to what had been predicted actually showed up on March 1,” she said. “And then very quickly thereafter, many of those who Empower did employ ended up resigning because they came into an environment where there were far fewer caseworkers than expected.”
This resulted in large initial caseloads and progressed to a near 100% turnover rate reported by Empower.
“This is a management crisis,” said LaValle.
She says organizations like Dallas CASA had no choice but to step in and provide as much care as possible for the children slipping through the cracks of an irreparably broken system.
“What happened for Dallas County specifically was other stakeholders had to step up, and Dallas CASA was one of those playing a significant role,” she said. “What we began to see almost immediately was responsibilities that would typically belong to a caseworker for the state agency, and now a private contractor, were not being fulfilled.”
LaValle said many of the caseworkers Empower delivered had limited to no experience working within child welfare, and were completely unprepared for the sensitive situations of the foster care system. The worst of the unpreparedness manifested in courtrooms, when case managers missed hearings, leaving children in the foster care system longer than necessary.
“Certainly from a Dallas CASA assignment perspective, we saw our assignments lasting longer than they traditionally would because of these repeat resets of hearings, delaying, getting to that point of being able to approve the court, being able to approve a permanency plan and close the case,” she said.
LaValle says the privatization of the foster care system started with good intentions, but failure to meet expectations has disproportionately affected the innocent children within the system. While the tragedies persist and the circumstances of the system have yet to improve as North Texas approaches the third transitional phase to fully privatized care, Johnson is still trying to improve foster care at the federal level, hoping for a trickle-down effect.
“We don't pay our CPS workers sufficiently,” the congresswoman said. “We don't fund CPS in the state. We have an incredible turnover of employment in that position because the state of Texas and Republicans in Texas have consistently abdicated their responsibility to these kids. And it's reprehensible and it's unconscionable and it's immoral.”
