DALLAS — The private child welfare collaborative that the State of Texas has hired to manage foster care in nine North Texas counties is bringing in help to better manage the organization.
Multiple people who work for EMPOWER sent tips to WFAA that EMPOWER's Senior Vice President, Dr. Linda Garcia, announced that she would be shifting her focus to community engagement during a staff meeting in late May. The whistleblowers said they began receiving emails and meeting invitations from Randy Neff, who is the senior vice president of a different private contractor, shortly after that announcement.
In a statement, EMPOWER said "To best serve the children and families of North Texas, EMPOWER recently made improvements to our leadership structure. We are investing more resources to ensure a smooth and ongoing transition from DFPS."
In its statement, EMPOWER confirmed that Dr. Garcia "will focus her efforts on community collaborations and engagement" while Neff "will provide programmatic support."
Neff was named senior vice president of 2Ingage, which is the organization that contracts with the state to manage foster care in 30 counties west of DFW, last April. 2Ingage is owned by TFI, which is the same Kanas-based company that owns EMPOWER. Dr. Garcia was also the senior vice president of 2Ingage before she assumed the role with EMPOWER.
"These improvements will enable us to leverage our collective strengths, ensuring that we continue to meet and exceed the needs of our community," EMPOWER stated.
The move comes amidst ongoing criticism from current and former EMPOWER staff who have been outspoken about high caseloads, long shifts to supervise children without placement and witnessing children staying in hotels and EMPOWER offices after they were told that wouldn't happen.
Officials in Dallas County, where a vast majority of the children in EMPOWER's care come from, also expressed concerns about a lack of communication and collaboration with the organization.
While WFAA has struggled to get direct answers from EMPOWER about the concerns of the community and its staff, the results of an open records request reveal that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) also received concerns and directed EMPOWER to create a detailed plan to address them.
According to records obtained in that request, a contract manager with DFPS emailed Shirley Dwyer, the CEO of EMPOWER's parent company, on April 19 - less than two months after EMPOWER fully took over foster care case management in Dallas, Collin, Ellis, Navarro, Rockwall, Kaufman, Hunt, Grayson and Fannin Counties.
In the email, DFPS notified EMPOWER that it needed to create what's called a Continuous Quality Improvement Plan to "address contract compliance" in five areas:
- Extended time periods of children in EMPOWER offices and unnecessary transportation of children
- Caseload requirements
- Court hearing attendance, knowledge of child placement information, and face-to-face contact with children in care
- Home visits for children in kinship care
- Compliance with placement of children with providers that are on heightened monitoring
In its email, DFPS details dates and instances where the department received reports that EMPOWER violated its contract with the state, including two dates that DFPS stated, "Children remained in EMPOWER offices for extended periods of time without placement." DPFS reminded EMPOWER in its letter, "Under no circumstances may the child or youth temporarily stay overnight in a DFPS office."
DFPS also wrote that in mid-March 63 caseworkers had more cases than the 17 maximum cases, which is a cap set by a federal judge.
Additionally, the department detailed complaints from judges that "EMPOWER staff are missing court hearings, dressing unprofessionally for court appearances, have not had face-to-face contact with children, and when attending court, do so with little to no knowledge about the case and in some instances unaware of the location or details of the Child’s placement."
EMPOWER provided a written response to each of the compliance areas and included detailed plans, including timeframes and quality assurance measures for each area.
In its responses, EMPOWER wrote that supervisors and other necessary staff attended court hearings as required in March and did not receive a response when they asked about specific staff that were not in compliance.
EMPOWER's response also stated that it implemented training and sought clarification on the proper protocol for managing and documenting children who don't have placements.
A bulk of EMPOWER's plan, including detailed timelines for each caseworker, focused on a robust hiring campaign to bring on more staff to alleviate caseloads for current caseworkers and provide training and support to make sure those employees are serving children in compliance with state requirements.
This week, in a statement, EMPOWER said its permanency case manager and permanency support worker positions are filled.
"Many of the challenges we've faced have largely been due to early and unanticipated staff turnover," EMPOWER said in its statement. "Our increased efforts in re-staffing to build a robust, attentive team have been extremely successful."
WFAA also asked EMPOWER specifically about allegations that children in their care went months without seeing their caseworkers face-to-face after a leaked internal document showing more than 200 children who had not been seen by a caseworker in at least three months.
On July 3, EMPOWER wrote: "During these types of transitions, transferring approximately 2,057 children and 142 case managers for case management services, it is not unusual to identify gaps in data reporting. We are confident that we have visited the children in our care and that the data will reflect this once those gaps are addressed. As of today, we believe 98% of eligible youth have had documented visits and are confident the data will show all eligible children have been visited in the next 30 days."
DFPS accepted EMPOWER's improvement plan on June 19, writing that "Failure to maintain compliance may serve as grounds for additional or more formal Remedies under the Contract as stated in Exhibit B UTC Section 10 Interventions, Contingencies, Termination, and Transition."