Bill Caption

Relating to the administration of services provided by the Department of Family and Protective Services, including foster care, child protective, and prevention and early intervention services. 

Fiscal Notes

From the LBB: Estimated Two-year Net Impact to General Revenue Related Funds for SB 11, Committee Report 2nd House, Substituted: a negative impact of ($17,556,024) through the biennium ending August 31, 2019.

The bill would make no appropriation but could provide the legal basis for an appropriation of funds to implement the provisions of the bill.

Bill Analysis

1. Require the department to track repeated reports of abuse or neglect involving the same child or by the same alleged perpetrator and group together reports involving different children in the same household; would require the department to use geographic risk mapping to identify areas with high risk of child maltreatment and fatalities and use prevention and early intervention services in those areas.
2. Require the department (or single source contractor in an area with community based services) to give notice of a placement change of a child not later than 24 hours after the change to the managed care organization that provides services to the child under the STAR health program and would require the managed care organization to give notice of the change to the child’s primary care physician before the end of the second business day after the organization receives notification from the department.
3. Require the department to ensure that a child taken into the conservatorship of the department for more than three business days is provided with a medical examination not later than three days after being taken into the conservatorship of the state.
4. Require personnel from each CPS region in which community based care has not been implemented to make a foster care capacity needs plan on the availability of providers to provide community-based foster care services, and to work with child-placing agencies to implement the single child plan of service model.
5. Transfers case management and family reunification support services to the single source continuum contractor giving services to families in each catchment area.
6. Require that for a single source continuum contractor to be eligible to contract with HHSC they must be a nonprofit entity with an organizational mission focused on child welfare or a governmental entity and require the contractor to maintain minimum liability insurance coverage
7. Outline required contract provisions for contracts with single source continuum contractors including allowing the department to impose financial penalties for failing to meet specified performance outcomes and award financial incentives for exceeding specified performance outcomes
8. Require the department to develop a review process to review the performance of single-source continuum contractors and their ability to meet requirements and provide case-management service for clients, establish a division of the Department of Family and Protective Services to oversee vendor quality and monitor contract adherence of case management services vendors.
9. Establish a pilot program to find ways to improve service delivery by the department by contracting with other entities
10. Establish the office of data analytics in the Department of Family and Protective Services to look into employment trends and evaluate the effectiveness of employee retention efforts.
11. Establishes procedure for the department to investigate child abuse, neglect, and exploitation

Vote Recommendation Notes

This bill moves the system towards more community based services and provides methods for keeping workers and single source continuum contractors accountable for any mistakes, as well as beginning pilot programs in order to see what reforms to the system would be most successful. The bill would make the system more efficient and effective by moving to more community based services, since those in their communities know better what the needs of their community are, and would use their resources more efficiently than a blanket policy from the state. The foster care system is in dire need of reform, and this bill is a good start. This bill supports our limited government principle because those things which government is required to do, it should do efficiently and effectively; we therefore support this bill.