Troubled foster children from Dallas are often shipped far from home, state official says 11:49 AM CT
12:11 PM CDT on Wednesday, June 30, 2010
AUSTIN — The most distressed foster children in state care too often are sent far from their home counties, especially if they’re from North Texas, the state’s top protective services official said today.
The Dallas-Fort Worth region is home to only six of the 66 residential treatment centers that are under contract with the state to care for abused and neglected youngsters, Anne Heiligenstein told a Texas House panel.
Half of the centers are in greater Houston, probably because it has no zoning, while “Dallas is pretty rigorous in terms of zoning, as are neighborhood organizations,” said Heiligenstein, commissioner of the Department of Family and Protective Services.
Scattered availability of treatment center beds unnecessarily complicates the lives of already troubled youth, she said.
“We have a large number of children from all around the state who have to go far from their parents, far from their schools [and] far from their teachers that perhaps they had a good connection with, just to receive services,” she told the House Human Services Committee.
Currently, almost 1,600 youths – or about 10 percent of all Texas
