AUSTIN — The recent death of a foster child in a treatment center in Fort Bend County and allegations of restraints being used on foster kids at another Houston-area facility have prompted the federal judge overseeing Texas foster care to demand records to be turned over to her special masters.
U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack also flashed with anger Friday that, according to her masters, her order for 24-hour awake supervision in large foster homes and institutions continues to be ignored by some providers.
That may lead to another contempt hearing, Jack warned, according to a transcript of a Friday conference call that was released Monday.
The hearing was called after Attorney General Ken Paxton asked Jack to unseal the invoices of her two special masters, or monitors, to the state.
Jack did so but defended the monitors’ work as essential because of state failings.
Paxton spokesman Alejandro Garcia, however, said Paxton is disappointed Jack didn’t agree to make the monitors detail more about their “exorbitant” charges so the state and the court can “limit fees to those reasonably necessary to carry out the monitors’ duties.”
Jack, though, dressed down state lawyers Friday, saying the state will have an opportunity to challenge the monitors’ findings “at the appropriate time.” But their methods and movements will be known — at least, in advance — only to the court, said Jack, who has accused the state of recalcitrance in doggedly resisting her orders.
“You’re not monitoring the monitors,” she said. “I am.”
The disclosures of a death in foster care, under circumstances that are being probed, and alleged misuse of restraints and slapping and punching of children centered on the Houston region. But events there are of keen interest to child advocates in North Texas.
Severely traumatized foster children from the Dallas-Fort Worth area often are sent to the Houston area — as well as Austin and San Antonio — because there are few residential treatment centers in North Texas.
Child fatality
On Feb. 9, a 14-year-old girl in state custody who resided at the Prairie Harbor Residential Treatment Center in Wallis collapsed from a pulmonary embolism and died, according to an order Jack issued Friday. Among other things, it required the state within 24 hours to provide to her two court-appointed monitors all paperwork on the girl’s death.
Jack also demanded officials instantly turn over all records of any investigations since last summer, when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals finally upheld certain of her findings, overturning others. The state didn’t appeal.
Jack said she and plaintiffs only learned of the girl’s death because of special master Deborah Fowler’s “diligence.”
In an interview, Paul Yetter of Houston, a lawyer for about 11,000 children in long-term foster care, said court monitors and plaintiffs’ lawyers have questions about whether the girl’s life might have been saved if outcries she made about pain in a leg were heeded.
About two weeks before the girl collapsed, she and one of her roommates separately reported her discomfort to two different Prairie Harbor staff members but nothing was done, Yetter said.
Prairie Harbor owner Rich DuBroc, chief operating officer Anthony Hurst and executive director Alexandria Pritchard did not respond to requests for comment.
“I can’t comment,” said Department of Family and Protective Services spokesman Patrick Crimmins. “Each abuse-neglect investigation is thorough and any relevant information is considered, including from witness interviews.”
Yetter, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, said Fowler learned of the fatality while scouring high-priority tips to the child-abuse hotline in Austin.
“She was reviewing ‘P1s,’ and this popped up,” recalled Yetter, referring to a Priority 1 designation the state’s hotline gives to the most urgent reports.
In 2017, Prairie Harbor was twice cited for failing to provide prompt medical care to foster children, according to the state Health and Human Services Commission’s website on residential child care providers’ history of compliance with state minimum standards.
Last year, the center had 12 high risk standards violations, including a staff member — since dismissed — having sex with a child in care. Other citations alleged kids were ridiculed by staff members, caregivers were on their cellphones and not watching the youngsters, and “a child obtained a lighter from an unattended bag and started a fire in the restroom,” according to the commission’s website.
Restraints
Several children at A Fresh Start Treatment Center in Houston complained to monitors — who made an unannounced visit at nearly midnight one day last week — of use of unapproved restraints, Jack’s order said.
They “included holding their arms over their heads with arms crossed causing their heads to be forced forward, which the children reported result[ed] in at least one child passing out,” the judge wrote. The unapproved technique made it hard to breathe, she quoted the children as telling the monitors.
The youngsters also spoke of being slapped, punched and slammed against a wall by the center’s staff members, Jack wrote.
In the past five years, A Fresh Start Treatment Center has been cited for 28 high-risk violations of minimum standards, including several for improper use of restraints, according to the commission’s website.
Jack questioned the treatment center’s operations, saying “it took approximately 15 minutes for someone to answer the door and allow entrance. This delay bolsters the children’s reports that nighttime staff sleep, they are not awake.”
Attempts by email and phone to reach Angel Vanterpool and Reginald Minnieweather, administrators at A Fresh Start, which has two campuses, were unsuccessful.
Last fall, the state paid $150,000 in fines after Jack held the department in contempt for not requiring large foster homes and institutions to have 24-hour awake supervision. On Friday, Jack said that may change.
“It has now come to my attention through the incredible efforts of the monitors that many of these facilities … do not have 24-hour awake supervision even subsequent to the contempt hearing,” the judge said.
“The public should know that these monitoring expenses could have been used to provide services to these children but instead are necessitated by the defendants’ refusal to safeguard these children,” Jack said.
Since July 31, the masters have billed the state for nearly $3.2 million. Master Kevin Ryan and his firm Public Catalyst of Iselin, N.J., have been paid almost $1.83 million. Over the same period, the protective services department paid Fowler and her Austin-based group, Texas Appleseed, nearly $1.36 million.
They soon will have 31 full- or part-time employees or consultants, Jack noted. They’ve visited 24 facilities, interviewed more than 150 children and are doing an “incredible job,” said Jack, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton.
She excoriated state protective-services officials for “gross negligence,” “indifference” and “lack of care and attention for these children” for many years.
Crimmins, the department spokesman, declined to respond.
Paxton spokesman Garcia, though, said the state’s top lawyer, a Republican, will keep watching out for taxpayers.
“We are disappointed … that the court rejected the state’s request to obtain additional information about the bills and limit fees to those reasonably necessary to carry out the monitors’ duties,” he said in a written statement. “Both are required to protect Texas taxpayers and the integrity of the process.”
