Summary: Probably one of those topics you skim the title and move on. (If so, say a prayer of thanksgiving for your family and friends.) However, to the 190 children in foster care in Parker County, this is the only issue, a life issue. So, the least we can do as citizens is to get educated on the foster care needs and foster care options in Parker County.
Latest Update: 08 December 2023; posted 10 April, 2023
Foster Care in Parker County
Probably one of those topics you skim the title and move on. (If so, say a prayer of thanksgiving for your family and friends.) However, to the 190 children in foster care in Parker County, this is the only issue, a life issue. So, the least we can do as citizens is to get educated on the foster care needs and foster care options in Parker County.
Updated Friday, 08 December, 2023
• Fulfilling a Foster Child’s Christmas Wish: The Christmas Wish Project in North Texas, The Texan, 07 December 2023 In North Texas, one group of volunteers tries to give the “best Christmas possible” to foster children.
Updated Tuesday, 05 December, 2023
• Judge considers holding state in contempt a third time over foster care conditions, The Texas Tribune, 04 December 2023. U.S. District Judge Janis Jack on Monday considers whether state’s foster care agency has made progress caring for most vulnerable children or should be held in contempt for the third time in an ongoing 2011 lawsuit.
Updated Tuesday, 07 November, 2023
• Sex trafficking, drugs and assault: Texas foster kids and caseworkers face chaos in rental houses and hotels, The Texas Tribune, 06 November 2023. A report from Department of Family and Protective Services watchdogs paints a picture of a roughshod safety-net system that is unprepared to protect its youthful charges from predators and unable to keep them from endangering themselves.
Updated Tuesday, 26 September, 2023
• One-third of Texas foster care caseworkers left their jobs last year as the agency continued putting kids in hotels, The Texas Tribune, 26 September 2023, Excerpt. The Department of Family and Protective Services has increasingly relied on housing foster kids in hotels when it can’t find them a home. In the 2022 fiscal year, after record staff turnover, more than 1 in 4 caseworkers had less than one year of experience.
Updated Friday, 01 September, 2023
• Pilot program provides creative ways to find families for foster children, Fort Worth Report, 22 July 2023
• New Texas laws favor parents in child abuse investigations as legislators try to limit number of kids in foster care, The Texas Tribune, 29 June 2023
• Judge admonishes Texas foster care officials, saying they don’t properly monitor facilities housing kids, The Texas Tribune, 27 June 2023
• Across Texas, a slow and sputtered rollout of foster care privatization. The Texas Tribune, 31 May 2023 Excerpts. Lawmakers were assured that outsourcing management of foster care services would fix the state’s troubled child welfare agency. But the rollout of the new model, set to be completed by 2029, has been complicated by setbacks. Under the new community-based care model, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services divided the state up into regions and must hire third-party contractors for each region. It’s then up to these third-party contractors to place foster care children in residential facilities or find foster parents.
• Texas lawmakers move to close foster care hiring loopholes and expand rights of parents facing investigations, The Texas Tribune, 01 June 2023 Excepts. Bills that would give relative caregivers more money have missed key deadlines to make it in front of the full House.
Texas lawmakers closed hiring loopholes and increased legal protections for parents facing child abuse investigations in attempts to improve the state’s troubled child welfare agency during the regular legislative session that ended May 29. They chose not to use state funds to increase payments for relatives who care for foster kids, but they do want to use federal funds, if a proposed program gets created, to pay those caretakers more money.
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has struggled to care for the nearly 20,000 kids in its custody who have been removed from their parents’ homes. The agency can’t find placements with foster families, relative caregivers or residential facilities for all of the kids in its care
Originally posted Monday, 10 April, 2023
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has assigned Parker County to DFPS Home > Child Protection > Foster Care > Community-Based Care > Foster Care Region 3B.
About Region 3B Metroplex West
The Metroplex West area, previously known as Region 3b, is comprised of Palo Pinto, Parker, Tarrant, Erath, Hood, Somervell, and Johnson counties near Fort Worth.
The Single Source Continuum Contractor (SSCC) for this area is Our Community Our Kids (OCOK). Visit the Our Community Our Kids (OCOK) website to learn about them.
"Our Community Our Kids‘ (OCOK) organizational design leverages the strengths of community providers to best meet the needs of children, youth, and families in our catchment area. Through a contract with the State of Texas, OCOK is expanding Community-Based Care (CBC) into Region 3b, which comprises Erath, Hood, Johnson, Palo Pinto, Parker, Somervell, and Tarrant counties.
"CBC is a new way of providing foster care services that gives local communities the flexibility and authority to improve the system. OCOK provides case management and family services that enable children to safely achieve permanency in their own home, with relatives, or through adoption."
OCOK Location Parker County
300 S. Main St, Suites 100 & 205
Weatherford, TX 76086
Phone: 682.290.2026
Fax: 817.977.6355
KIDS COUNT data center: A project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation
Children in foster care (age 17 and under) Texas and Parker County
Research
• Texas’ foster care system is plagued with problems. Here’s how lawmakers want to fix it. The Texas Tribune, 26 April 2023
• New Report Shows Texas Foster Care System Still Falling Short, Texas Standard, 10 May 2021, Excerpt. At least 23 children have died in foster care since 2019; many are also sleeping in state offices rather than in foster homes.
• Reforming Texas’ Foster Care System, Office of Texas Governor, 31 May 2017
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