A federal judge in Houston opens a multiday hearing Tuesday on whether Texas has done enough to fix its foster care system to be released from federal court supervision, the first public hearing in two years in a class-action suit now 15 years old, The Texas Tribune reported.
U.S. District Judge Randy Crane will weigh the state's request to end the case, which was filed in 2011 on behalf of children in long-term state care. Since 2018, monitors appointed by the court have visited placements across Texas and published reports on living conditions, caseworker loads and deaths of children in care.
The system now serves about 6,800 children in long-term care and costs $4.9 billion, according to the Tribune.
The state's case
Private attorneys the Department of Family and Protective Services hired to seek dismissal say the agency has largely met the court's requirements. "It's time to return Texas's foster-care system to Texas," they wrote in recent filings. "The State has earned that result."
The most recent monitor reports cited by the Tribune show shorter waits for callers to the state abuse hotline, more than 82% of caseworkers handling children in permanent care within a target of 14 to 17 cases, and what monitors called significant progress on probes of foster care providers.
The state also points to its handling of EMPOWER, one of its largest contractors, which oversaw about 3,000 children across Dallas County and seven others until DFPS fired it this summer.
The agency's lawyers say the state found the contractor's failures, stepped in within two days and had visited almost all of the contractor's children within six weeks, which they called proof the system now works.
