DALLAS —
On Friday, EMPOWER, a private company contracted by the state, will fully takeover managing the foster care system for nine North Texas counties.
This will be the second phase of the transition to Community-Based Care, which is the state’s term for private foster care, for Dallas, Collin, Ellis, Rockwall, Kaufman, Hunt, Fannin and Navarro Counties. In this phase, EMPOWER, will assume full case management and placement responsibility for all of the children in the region who have been removed from their homes because of abuse and neglect and are in the state’s custody.
Transitioning to a private system
In the first phase, which went into effect Sept. 1, 2023, EMPOWER took over administrative payments to the child placing agencies and other providers that had had been contracted by the state to provide placement services for foster children. EMPOWER also began placing children who entered the state’s custody after Sept. 1.
The self-titled “child welfare collaborative” is a network made up of large nonprofit organizations that have been providing foster care, adoption, residential treatment and behavioral health services for vulnerable children in North Texas for decades. Those organization, which have historically been contracted by the state of Texas, will now operate under EMPOWER’s umbrella organization.
Community-Based Care, or CBC, was introduced by Texas lawmakers as a solution to the legacy state-run foster care system that’s historically been plagued with problems and is currently tied up in a 13-year-long legal battle in which a federal judge ruled that the State of Texas was violating the constitutional rights of foster care children by placing them in a systemically dangerous system.
The goal of CBC is for non-profit organizations to provide placement and care options to foster children on a localized, region-by-region basis.
Region 3E
Region 3E is the largest region the state has transitioned to private care.
“We’re responsible for 2,000 children on any given day whereas the state is responsible for over 10,000 children on any given day,” EMPOWER Senior Vice President Linda Garcia said. “I feel really confident that community-based care is the right thing to do because we are able to concentrate on paying attention to the children that are in this community.”
Garcia said the state has been moving children to EMPOWER’s care in groups. Last September, the first month of EMPOWER’S first phase, Dr. Garcia said more than 300 children in paid foster care were transitioned to the company’s care as well as 112 children who had been newly removed from their homes. Each month since, groups of a few hundred have been transitioned.
The last group to be moved over, Garcia said, will be children who are living with family and loved ones and children living in specialized living situations. She said that group will be moved over by March 1, when Phase 2 goes into effect.
However, while the process of transitioning the children to the new system, one of the greatest concerns about the process from critics of CBC is about EMPOWER’s ability to recruit and retain the experienced Child Protective Services workers who have historically worked for the state.
Staffing Concerns
Last year, DFPS told WFAA that 450 of the state’s more than 700 jobs in Region 3E would be moved to EMPOWER, meaning that the people in those positions would have to either go to work for EMPOWER or find other jobs.
One caseworker, with nearly 20 years of experience with DFPS, said going private is a major change for herself and her colleagues.
“I know there are some people who are forcing themselves to be positive about it because it’s one of those ‘I’m going to go into this with a positive mindset and hope for the best’, but I don’t know anyone who is genuinely excited,” she said.
The woman said she and her colleagues have been attending town hall-style informational meetings hosted by EMPOWER to prepare for the transition, but it has not improved confidence in the system for her or coworkers she’s spoken with.
“It’s hard to put faith in it when it comes from EMPOWER because they’ve broken every promise that they’ve made to us,” she said.
The caseworkers and other DFPS employees are planning to start working for EMPOWER on March 1 told WFAA that they are taking great financial losses by moving to EMPOWER.
“We were told that we’d get pay and benefits that were comparable to what we’d get with the state and that did not happen,” the caseworker said. “It is because of the insurance. Right now, the state pays for our insurance. EMPOWER, sometimes they’re matching workers’ pay. Sometimes they’re offering less, and then we have to pay for our own insurance."
In her case, the base pay was matched, but she said she’s taking a financial hit of about $13,000 in insurance payments.
“For some workers, that is going to be a destroying factor,” she said.
A supervisor with more than 20 years of experience with the department told WFAA that she is going to work for EMPOWER because she feels like she doesn’t have a choice. She said that she’s accumulated multiple months work of paid sick time that she will lose and won’t be compensated for.
“The people that are going are doing it because they want to stay with their kids,” the caseworker said. “Some are going for the money because they don’t have any better options.”
When EMPOWER entered its first phase of this transition last September, both Garcia and leaders with the state admitted that the transition was going to be difficult for staff who have grown accustomed to state pay and benefits. They also admitted it wasn’t likely a private nonprofit would be able to compete with state compensation for every employee.
For Garcia, it’s still a high priority.
“We have been busy trying to recruit the Department of Family and Protective Services caseworkers, to task them to come over to us,” Garcia said. “That’s been weekly rounds of interviews and trying to get them to come over to us.”
WFAA submitted an open records request with DFPS for data on what the people in the 450 jobs going to EMPOWER were choosing to do.
From February 2023, which is when the state awarded EMPOWER its contract, to January 8 of this year, 123 staff members opted to go to EMPOWER, 14 retired, 15 people transferred to other state agencies and 71 transferred within DFPS.
The state did not provide the number of people who resigned, despite that being part of the requested for information. The state also did not respond to follow-up questions about the more than 200 positions that were not accounted for in the data provided.
EMPOWER said Wednesday that it’s hired 339 new staff members for its second stage, with “around 250” started in March 1. Of those 339 positions, EMPOWER said 147 of the people hired are caseworkers and 34 of them are support staff hired to assist caseworkers.
The company said it still has 75 open positions to fill.
“It’s extremely important for us to have all these individuals with this experience,” Garcia said. “They know their cases. They know the children. They know the families. They know the community.”
The caseworker who spoke with WFAA said she is concerned about EMPOWER filling positions with people who are less experienced.
“We don’t know who’s training the new people coming to EMPOWER,” she said. “We don’t know what training they’re receiving. Kids will run away when they don’t feel cared for. Worse things can happen when they don’t feel cared for.”
Garcia said training programs are in place for new staff. She said EMPOWER is hiring for “every supportive position you can think of”.
The caseworker who spoke with WFAA for this story said that she already has more cases than the state recommends per caseworker, and she has already received an additional case from a unit where both the supervisor and caseworker have left the department. She is concerned that caseworkers will see higher caseloads as people choose to either not go to EMPOWER, or to leave shortly after the transition.
Dr. Garcia said EMPOWER is working to prepare for that possibility.
“What we want to do is over hire just in case because sometimes life changes for these case workers,” Garcia said. “They may decide they want to remain in the region or they make go somewhere else.”
Placing Children
In addition to compensation and hiring concerns, caseworkers who spoke with WFAA said they are already noticing children being placed in homes and facilities that are outside of Region 3E.
“Community-Based Care is supposed to be about keeping your kids in their community, and they’re not,” a caseworker said. “I’ve had kids go out of region...I’ve had two that have gone out of region just this year just since December.”
Dr. Garcia admitted that more than half of the providers that EMPOWER has brought into its network are outside of the nine counties of Region 3E.
"I’ve got 160 in our network but, of that, probably about 60 of them are within the counties in our region,” Garcia said.
Caseworkers said that’s “another broken promise” from EMPOWER.
“They flat out said ‘We are not going to place kids out of region,’” a caseworker said.
One of the state’s performance measures for EMPOWER is the percentage of children who are placed within 50 miles of their home.
“They can be not in the region and within 50 miles,” Garcia said.
What’s Next? Will it work?
EMPOWER will be required to report to DFPS in a number of performance measures and will have to meet certain standards in order to maintain its contract with the state.
“I’ve seen improvement in the system every since community-based care was launched in 2013," Garcia said. “I’ve had the luxury to be in the system from 2013 on, and community-based care has a way to target the problem and really work.”
Garcia was in a leadership position with Our Community Our Kids (OCOK) when the organization was awarded the state’s first contract to privatize foster care in Region 3W which is made up of Tarrant, Parker, Hood, Johnson, Somervell, Palo Pinto and Erath Counties. In April, OCOK will add children in Denton, Wise and Cookie Counties to its care.
However, some of the caseworkers who spoke with WFAA said they are concerned about how the system will work in Dallas County.
“It’s too big,” a caseworker said. “Fannin, Navarro, Ellis...maybe they’ll succeed with them, but I don’t know anybody that has a hope for success in Dallas.”
Despite CBC being in place for more than a decade in the western part of North Texas, she said many caseworkers are weary after watching it fail in in the San Antonio area. In 2021, just about two years after the state awarded a contract to The Children’s Shelter to takeover foster care in Bexar County, the organization cancelled its contract with the state after the state opened an investigation into a number of issues including violent episodes, sexual assaults and lack of supervision for kids.
“A lot of workers are expecting it kind of go the way Bexar Count went where the outlying counties are able to stay under a company, but the major metropolitan areas was not,” a caseworker said.
She said none of the colleagues she’s spoken with expect privatized care to be a success in Region 3E -- but they want to be proven wrong.
“We want EMPOWER to succeed,” a caseworker said. “We know the system is broken. We know the department’s not the best parents...we want EMPOWER to be the solution to our problems.”
When asked how the public will know if CBC works for this region, Garcia said the reports EMPOWER will provide to the state and the community will make it clear.
“The data will speak for itself,” Garcia said.