Written by Michael Thervil
Just about every day you hear about how some kid somewhere is either being abused, neglected, or trafficked in Texas and abroad. But what you don't hear is how bad the Texas department of family and protective services and other state-based child protection custody services across the country are failing to protect the children under their care. Many people are blaming the issue on the fact that the state of Texas, like any other state, only has a finite number of resources for the children under their care. Moreover, there are some people out there that feel that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and others are failing to protect children by failing to provide the funds necessary for the children under their care.
These issues being pointed out here and more are most certainly true. But the real reason we are saying that TXDFPS is in the business of failing children in their care is because the program that they are running lacks hardly any real consequences and repercussions to truly “correct” the children for the often-severe behavioral problems and mental health issues of the children under their care. What we mean by this is that the caregivers that work in state regulated facilities lack the authority to force a child to go to school or to practice basic housekeeping (bed making and age-appropriate chores). Even more than that, the caregivers of these children have no authority to stop a child from doing things such as leaving the facility, also known as going absent without leave or “AWOL”.
Keep in mind that the type of children in TXDFPS’s care we’re talking about are not retarded. Furthermore, when you look at the trajectory of this long-term it trend, most of these unrehabilitated children will more than likely end up in either a wheelchair, death, or prison cell. With the state spending anywhere between $200 to $1,000 a day or more for each child in care and they’re still failing to rehabilitate most of these kids, why should any Texas taxpayer continue to pay for the state of Texas's failure to rehabilitate these kids when it’s most likely that the kids in their care will not become productive members of society but instead their most likely to become future adults in prison?
Photo by Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Another issue that adds injury to the social blight that is called TXDFPS, is that a child under the care of Texas has the ability to leave their facility at will if over the age of 13 - even if they are considered to be a part of the “at-risk” population of children the state of Texas is paying for. The lack of a way to control a minor under state care opens them up to a whole host of problems that many can't bear. From the possibility of sex trafficking and other forms of child exploitation to illegal drug and alcohol use, to crimes of theft and violence, there seems to be no end to what kind of problems this unprotected population of minors can and often find themselves in. Keep in mind that many of these minors have often-severe behavioral and mental health issues that can serve as a catalysis for not only their demise but the demise of the tax paying Texan.
Another reason it’s said that TXDFPS is failing to protect the children in their care is because there’s no real structure with any relative consequences and success that the children under their care can immediately process that will serve as a motivating factor in aiding them to change their behavior. From the children in their care verbally cursing out staff, to physically assaulting staff, to children spitting on you, to children that are early age sexual predators, to children that have become so hardened that it seems that there's nothing that the state of Texas can do to curb their violent behavior, that is of course until their 18 years of age. By then it's way too late, as that's when law-enforcement comes into the picture. Then the game changes and it's at that point that they get dealt with like any other adult on the streets of Texas by law-enforcement.
By that time, it didn't matter if they took their doctor prescribed medications or not. It's either a TASER, billy club (ASP baton), or worse - getting gunned down because they’ve been conditioned to think that law-enforcement is going to handle them as if they were still children within TXDFPS care. Keep in mind that the average armed citizen on the streets of Texas will never care if one of these kids that grew up in the custody of TXDFPS and has had their medication or not. Thus, if one of them becomes violent as an adult (and even as a minor in some cases), they will be met with force up to including deadly force. If TXDFPS don't change their game plan from “sunshine and rainbows” to either a boot camp or military school type application; more and more children under their care will continue to be lost.
Commenti