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Ursula Christian, the CPS caseworker who thought about quitting after receiving orders to spend weekends at the CPS office on Chimney Rock, decided to stay after she transferred to an adoption preparation unit. The duties are similar, but now she has a caseload of about 40.
Still, some cases put on top of her pile are too much to bear, including that of 16-year-old Melissa Flores. Melissa's mother was a crack addict, her father in prison. She had wanted to find an adoptive family when she entered the CPS system nine years earlier, but as she got older, that dream died.Shortly before Christian switched units, she visited Melissa at her group home. Then, on July 11, the girl called Christian and said she had run away. Melissa had just celebrated her 17th birthday and wanted Christian to know she was doing fine.
Three days later, Christian received another phone call. The girl was dead, found in an apartment courtyard in southwest Houston. She had been shot in the back of the head.
Christian had to visit the morgue and identify the girl, had to select a casket, had to choose how Melissa would wear her hair and pick out Melissa's dress for the burial. On the morning of the small service, Christian arrived early to place some plants and flowers around the girl's gravesite.
"There are so many things mandated by the state. So many things, so many due dates," Christian says. "You're doing all you can...to maintain your sanity just to eat lunch."
Maria and Rafael were also having a hard time staying sane. They felt CPS had determined their guilt without sufficient evidence. Maria wanted her attorney to fight harder to have the case dismissed because of the hair follicle test.
"I think it's unfair the way they have done me," Maria says. "They just took my kids because they think I'm some kind of drug addict."
Maria's attorney, Ralph Alvarez, told her that she needed to be patient and complete each step of the plan that CPS had outlined for her and Rafael. Maria needed to participate in a psychological evaluation, a substance abuse treatment program, individual counseling, couples counseling and parenting classes. Rafael was urged to attend a drug program, individual counseling, couples counseling and parenting classes.
Rafael took the agency's plan as an indictment of him as a father. "I feel like they're bullshitting me," Rafael says. "You're messing with someone's life." The family's caseworker told them it would take at least a year before they could think about getting the kids back.
Rafael's boss at HydroChem had understood him missing work for the first couple of court dates, but Rafael feared that the numerous parenting classes and counseling sessions in upcoming months would hurt his good standing with his boss. It all would certainly hurt his paycheck.
Maria and Rafael's caseworker and attorney told them to be careful. If they failed to comply with the CPS plan — miss a parenting class or counseling session or get in trouble with the law — the agency could use that as another reason to keep the kids.
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The outcry for CPS reform came up again in the state legislature this year. Child advocacy groups urged lawmakers to reduce the amount of work for caseworkers to balance the one-sided approach of 2005.
Some money was earmarked, but only enough to lower the average caseload from about 48 to 43. Reformers squawked that legislators had bigger mouths than guts.
Madeline McClure, director of the Dallas-based nonprofit TexProtects, prepared a report for members of the committee charged with fixing CPS.
"No matter what other reforms are enacted," McClure wrote, "...all are wasted costs and worthless if we cannot retain our No. 1 asset: our workforce."
McClure suggests that salaries must rise to keep caseworkers and investigators. The average starting salary is $28,740. McClure says that many workers leave CPS for jobs in teaching, where they can make about $10,000 more a year and have a summer vacation.
"You probably need to pay them $100,000 a year to keep them there," McClure says, "but at least a salary that's comparable to a teacher. Probably even a small premium."
Texas should also require that investigators or caseworkers have a bachelor's degree in a human service or behavioral science field, McClure says. Texas is one of eight states without that requirement.
"You can't teach someone empathy in two hours as part of an afternoon training session," McClure says.
Lawmakers in Delaware started requiring the degree about ten years ago, during their reform of the state's CPS equivalent, the Delaware Children's Department.
In the late 1990s, children in Delaware died at a rate similar to children in Texas. Employee turnover within the Children's Department neared 50 percent. The caseloads were enormous.
A string of high-profile child deaths led Delaware lawmakers to push reform. They dumped money in the system, allotting enough funds to cap caseloads at 18. The results have been astonishing, says Joseph Smack, a spokesman for the Children's Department.