Family Tapestry ending state contract to provide foster care services in San Antonio
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The Children’s Shelter and one of its subsidiaries, Family Tapestry, is terminating a state contract to provide private foster care services. The decision came April 29 days before a court hearing last week that spotlighted problems with the nonprofits’ quality of care.William Luther /San Antonio Express-News
Hammered by federal court monitors in a long-running lawsuit against the state’s foster care system, a San Antonio nonprofit that provides services to foster children here told Texas officials that it wants out of its state contract.
The Children’s Shelter gave 60 days’ notice on April 29 that it plans to terminate its five-year contract, under which its child placement agency, Family Tapestry, handled such duties.
Federal judge defends her efforts to clean up Texas’ foster care system amid complaints from providers
Hearing comes as the number of children sleeping in CPS offices spikes and providers feel stung by a triple whammy of the pandemic, low state reimbursements and tougher enforcement.
A federal judge said Thursday her efforts to root out slipshod foster care operations in Texas was necessary, and she dismissed providers suggestions that her edicts are responsible for a current bed shortage. 2017 File Photo of art by foster children at Austin s Helping Hand Home.(Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)
6:10 PM on May 6, 2021 CDT
AUSTIN A federal judge is defending her efforts to root out slipshod foster care operations in Texas, saying providers who blame her edicts for a current bed shortage are mistaken.
AUSTIN Though the foster care system in Texas has been rocked by a growing shortage of beds and increasingly pointed critiques by a federal judge, leading providers are urging the GOP-led Legislature to double down on a regional privatization approach.
The private providers are advocating brisk rollout of “community-based care,” in which one non-state entity is ceded virtual control of a geographic region, even as citations and official rebukes pile up on the two nonprofits in charge of the push in San Antonio and Fort Worth.
Troubles are mounting in both cities, the only urban demonstrations so far of the community-based care model that is likely to be imposed on Dallas and Collin counties late next year assuming there are willing bidders.
Gov. Greg Abbott vows Texas will do ‘exactly’ what federal judge requires on foster care
The Republican governor said he and lawmakers will provide needed funding “to live up to” edicts for improvement by U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack.
Gov. Greg Abbott for the first time has pledged that Texas will do exactly what a federal judge presiding over a foster care lawsuit has ordered. He s also promised to try to win additional state funds for improvements. In 2017 file photo, a therapist at a respected Austin foster care facility works with a young girl.
AUSTIN Gov. Greg Abbott for the first time has pledged that Texas will do “exactly” what a federal judge presiding over a foster care lawsuit has ordered and that he and lawmakers will provide the funding “to live up to” her edicts.
Abbott Tells Agencies to Obey Federal Judge s Foster Care Edicts, Sidestep Big Fines We must do everything possible to protect children in the State’s permanent managing conservatorship from abuse and neglect, Abbott said By Robert T. Garrett - The Dallas Morning News •
Published January 6, 2021 •
Updated on January 6, 2021 at 12:02 pm
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Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered two state agencies to comply with a federal judge’s orders to improve Texas foster care and quickly, to “avoid unnecessary fines.”
On Dec. 23, five days after U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack found the state in contempt of court, Abbott instructed Cecile Erwin Young, head of the Health and Human Services Commission, and Jaime Masters, chief of the Department of Family and Protective Services, to scurry and meet the judge’s new deadlines.