There are a lot of misconceptions about the foster care system, its goals and how it works. Before I share the stories of the foster care alumni that I interviewed, I wanted to start with a high-level primer on how the foster care system currently works in Texas - because while there are similarities, the foster care system varies from state to state. To do this, I spoke with my friend and co-founder of a new foster care agency, Hannah. 

In 2017, Hannah lost her apartment and was laid off from her job at a foster care agency as a result of Hurricane Harvey. For the next two years, Hannah lived at her parents’ house to save money and dedicated all of her time to founding a new foster care agency that would be different. It would provide wrap-around support for both the children in care and their foster families. 

Hannah’s first experience with the foster care system came in college. 

“When I was in college, my practicum was working for a domestic adoption agency,” Hannah said. “All I did was adoptions. I was really excited and was very naive. I had this idea in my head. I was like, ‘I can't wait to work with these women who have been trying to conceive and can't, and they want to expand their family.’ I remember telling that to the adoption staff there. And they're like, ‘I want you to also think about the birth mothers that are having to make this decision.’” 

Hannah continued, “In my privileged upbringing, I never even thought to consider what it would be like to not have your child in your home. I really developed a compassion for the mothers and what they were going through in their lives that they were choosing [adoption] for their child. It humbled me to view a different part of the world than I grew up in, and it ignited a passion to help these women and to help that community as best as I could.”

In her career, Hannah has worked at a therapeutic boarding school for teenage girls, at the state’s department of aging and disability services, as a social worker at a foster care agency, and most recently, as a co-founder of a foster care agency. 

While a child can enter foster care for a variety of reasons, the process for entering the system is generally the same. 

First, a concern about the child’s biological home is usually called into the Texas Abuse Hotline, which is run by the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). It could be about the condition of the child’s home, concerns regarding the way a child looks, or something the child said. Next, DFPS launches an investigation to determine if the child is in imminent danger. This investigation could include interviewing the children who live in the home and viewing the home to see the child’s surroundings. 

“Recently, Texas passed a law that the child must be in imminent danger to actually remove the child from the home,” Hannah said. “If they're not [in imminent danger], they can stay in the home. Then, the family is given a plan to work through, or the child is removed from the home.”

If DFPS determines the child is in imminent danger, the child and their siblings are removed from the home and a placement broadcast is issued to all contractors throughout the state that are licensed to place foster children. 

“[The broadcast] just gives the child's name, date of birth, their age, their sex, any behaviors that they know of, and any other information that would be helpful,” Hannah said. “We typically don't get a lot [of info], especially if a child is coming into foster care [for the first time]. Once the broadcast comes through and we have a match, [meaning] we have a family that's interested in that demographic or that fits their home, we'll call the home and ask them if they would be interested.” 

“They can tell us ‘yes' or ‘no’,” she said. “And if they say ‘yes,’ we call back the DFPS placement unit, and we say, ‘Hey, we have a home.’ We submit their home study, and DFPS makes the final determination. Through that, the child is then placed in the home and monitored through our nonprofit agency. We do home case management for the child, and we communicate directly with Child Protective Services (CPS)  in the care of the child.”

During the time the child is in the foster home, the state reimburses the foster family and the foster care agency at a daily rate. This rate is determined based on the anticipated level of service the state thinks the child will need. There are three typical leveling specifications for a child - basic, moderate and specialized - and each has a rate associated with it. 

• A child requiring “basic service” has no major issues or medical needs. For “basic service,” the foster family receives around $24 to $27 a day, and the agency receives around $20 a day. 

• A child requiring “moderate service,” may have additional supervision or medical needs. Examples of this could include: a child who may struggle with aggression, or a child who has regular seizures or other health issues. For “moderate service,” the foster family receives around $45 a day and the agency receives around $40. 

• A child requiring “specialized service” has intense medical or behavioral needs. An example of this is a child who has cancer and needs additional supervision for their chemo treatments. For “specialized service,” the foster family receives around $56 a day and the agency receives around $50. 

There are also rates for “intense service” and “intense plus service,” as well as different rates for residential treatment centers and group homes. 

Children in foster care also receive paid health care through Medicaid. However, Medicaid doesn’t cover everything the child will need. And it’s easy to see that in many cases the amount of money given to the foster families won’t be enough to cover their needs. And the amount of money given to foster care agencies won’t be enough to provide adequate care and support. 

“It doesn't add up,” Hannah said. “I used to work at a previous foster care agency that only employed based on the children that they placed. The problem with that is there's no benefit for helping a child decrease their level. Either you want to continue to place specialized children, or you want to keep them at that level. You have a reverse effect of, ‘Well, if I keep them at a specialized level, I'll continue to get that money.’ So there could even be paper padding, and the foster parent notes can be a bit high. Those are people we try to weed out at the very beginning, but it's kind of human inclination to be like, ‘Well, I've been working with this child who is specialized, and I've done all of this hard work to get them down to a basic or moderate level, and my reward is less money and less services.’”

She continued, “It's this backward mindset that we're trying to navigate and to prevent our families and our staff from suffering because of it. We have to solicit additional sources of income to support the additional services that we provide. We apply for a lot of grants, mostly for specific things; like our post-adoption [care]. A lot of our counseling services are also funded by a grant because that's not covered through our DFPS contract. As a nonprofit, we also rely on donations from the community, from friends and family.”

Through donations and grants, the agency that Hannah founded is able to offer services that agencies who run on state funding alone cannot. 

“At previous places that I’ve worked, we found that it's incredibly important to support the family that has the child at the time,” Hannah said. “That’s going to benefit the child in their future.” 

“We’ve also seen the benefits of crisis intervention,” she said, “and we have an on-call number that [families] can call twenty-four seven if there's a behavioral crisis. Sometimes there are cases where we know a child is triggered by bedtime or by getting ready for school, so we’ll also plan to come to their home an hour earlier than they wake up and be there just in case.” 

She continued, “We also have our own counseling staff. One of the biggest issues in foster care is disruptions, or when something happens in the home. It's typically behavior-related, but the foster family says, ‘I can't do this anymore.’ And the child has to move. Research shows that with a child moving again, and again, and again - sometimes 12 or 14 times during care - their likelihood of a positive outcome decreases. We found that having our own counselors [helps] prevent disruption.” 

The agency also rolled out a new post-adoption support program for foster families who adopt the child who has been in their home. Historically, families receive little support after a child is adopted. 

“Adoption can be a trigger for foster kids because that's another final thing,” Hannah said. “They were ripped from their biological family to come into foster care, and now contact [with their biological family] is completely shut off. It's a loss, and they have to go through a stage of grieving the family and the life that would have been. And this new one, in most cases, is very uncomfortable. It's different. It's doing things you've never done before. It's very unknown.” 

The agency created the post-adoption support program based on a need they were seeing. 

“We were seeing so many referrals that would say, ‘This child had been adopted from foster care and is now entering back into the system,’” Hannah said. “That's either because the adoptive family gave them back, or they themselves went through a CPS investigation and had to be on a service plan, or the child was in danger. We were seeing it so much more, and we were like, ‘What is going on?’ So we found the need to fill.  

She continued, “When you add any person into your home, it's going to change the way things are typically done. Adding a child can affect your marriage. It can affect your relationships with your family, your relationships with your current biological children. [Post-adoption care] really is meant to help every member of the family.”

However, it’s important to note that adoption is generally not the goal or desired outcome of foster care, which is a common misconception. The goal of foster care is generally for the child to return safely to their biological family and home.

“The [biological] family is going through the process of trying to get the child back,” Hannah said. “[They are] going through the whole thing with CPS. They have a plan that they have to work. There's certain goals that these biological families have to meet and a service plan that they have to work through. Sometimes it’s clean drug tests for a year, or it's trying to find a job to support your family or getting stable housing.” 

She continued, “Typically every month or every quarter, they go before the court and give a status update of where the parent is at that stage. [For adoption to occur], it has to get to the point where the service plan has not been met, the goals are continually not being met, or a foster family or a kinship family can intervene in the child's case. And then it can go to a trial hearing about the rights for this child.”

But even when everything works as it was meant to and the child is reunified with their family, there can also be negative outcomes. Some attribute this to the lack of support that families receive once their child returns.

“CPS is required to do a couple of check-ins, but the support is no longer there, unless someone is going out of their way to continue to do that,” Hannah said. “There are resources that are available to families, but if you don't know where that is or you don't have someone that's checking in, it's like you're caught up. 

She continued, “We know a family who had their children taken back. They were living with their father who was elderly at the time, and once he passed, she didn't have anyone else. She got her kids back, and she was with them, but she didn't have a driver's license. She couldn't drive to work unless she was taking the bus. And if the child was sick, she couldn't do anything but stay home and miss work. There was no option for daycare because that costs a lot of money. And if you can't pay for it, then you're the [only] other option if you don't have someone else that's helping you. So you're supported through the process, and then kind of dropped.”

Aging out of foster care, as an adult, is often associated with negative outcomes as well. While states have made a concerted effort to provide more support in recent years, there is still a gap in unmet need. 

“When I was case manager, I worked with teens and had them plan their future without being adopted,” Hannah said. “I’d say, ‘What are you going to do?’ And they'd ask, ‘Can you tell me what I'm supposed to do?’ They don't know. It's so big and confusing. That permanency is difficult to find for our teens. Unfortunately, a lot of statistics for children who age out of care are not great. The majority are homeless, and the majority go to prison. The majority end up in similar situations that they came out of.”

She continued, “We're helping our teens learn independent living skills to help negate those negative outcomes that can come forward. Like - Let's work on getting you established in a community. Let's work on building community skills. Let's work on building social skills and skills for any kind of independent living situation, so you don't feel so overwhelmed that it's going to happen. They're going to be overwhelmed anyway, but [at least] you have something to fall back on.”

Before a child is in foster care, when they are in care, and after they leave, it seems obvious that we can be doing more to support families. 

So what is one thing that Hannah wishes people knew about foster care?

“I think the biggest thing is [understanding all] the things that can put a child in foster care,” Hannah said. “It's not always just abuse. It's not always just neglect. Sometimes it's because a family member passed away. I mean, there are so many different reasons. I wish they would understand that.”

She continued, “Every time I hear a family has lost their rights to a child… I have this conflict in my mind of, ‘This child lost a mother, but they're gaining a family. But this mother lost a child; there is no bittersweet [feeling] for her. There is no bittersweet for the father who lost his rights.’” 

“I can think, ‘Oh thank goodness we don't lose this child. They stay with us, and they stay in our community,’” she said. “But a family lost all legal rights to their child. It's a conflict that I deal with almost on a daily basis of, ‘How do we put ourselves out of this job?’ Because foster care is an answer to something broken. When we fix it, we don't need to be here anymore. Our mission is to make ourselves no longer needed.”