The Department of Family and Protective Services has housed Texas children in a home where police have been called 800 times this year, one without a functioning front door, homes without beds in the rooms and food in the refrigerator, and hotels where drug deals can be viewed from the child’s room and where sex workers roam.
Multiple witnesses appeared in a federal courtroom in Dallas, where they described the scenes of children without placement — or CWOP. A judge is contemplating contempt fines or a federal takeover of parts of the state’s child welfare system.
The CWOP program has been characterized by federal court monitors as one that uses unlicensed and unsafe places to hold children who have nowhere else to go. Youth can be any age but are predominantly older and/or have higher needs.
“I walked in [to a house] there was a pregnant 12-year-old smoking. There was somebody else, another child, smoking pot,” said Lindsey Dionne, an attorney who has represented more than 70 CWOP children.
Unlicensed placements in Texas have continued despite an expert panel’s recommendations to address the issue two years ago. Children throughout the state spend days in these locations that lack programs, education and services.
“The children are out running the streets,” said Julie Pennington, an attorney who has represented several children in CWOP.
Children without things to do often walk off from the locations, while Child Protective Service workers and security guards look on, unable to stop them.
One of Dionne's clients was young enough where she had never been on a date or kissed another person. All that changed after she entered and then fled an unlicensed placement. Shortly after she was trafficked for sex.
“And she was assaulted. Since then, she's been [sexually] assaulted at least 30 times by 30 different people,” she said.
Dionne testified that one of her clients was trafficked for sex from a CWOP location and brought to Miami. She was found and brought back and put right back into CWOP. Then another child from the same CWOP location was trafficked to Miami, suggesting an organized effort to target these youth.
The state has previously been accused of using hotels for CWOP in prostitution hot spots. The situation caused alarm among judges in Central Texas, who called a meeting with senior DFPS staff. According to Dionne, lawyers and judges made them well aware of the problem with trafficking, and several confirmed the many problems with CWOP. A follow up letter from an administrator did not address the concerns about trafficking and hotels in a meaningful way, according to those present.
Dionne previously worked for the state as a contractor who made minimum standards violation determinations about child welfare placements.
“They would be shut down immediately,” she said when asked what happened if they were licensed placements.
U.S. District Judge Janice Jack made reference to the lack of progress on the CWOP issue, criticizing how a state the size of Texas, with the amount of money it has, cannot end CWOP. She wasn’t alone.
“It’s despicable,” said Viola Miller, a child welfare expert who has run state systems in Kentucky and Tennessee and consulted elsewhere. “I’ve never seen anything less safe.”
