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Senate Finance reviews DFPS budget and community‑based care rollout; members press on kinship, CWAP and capacity
Summary
Lawmakers questioned Department of Family and Protective Services leaders about community‑based care rollout, foster‑care caseload trends, kinship payments, and children‑without‑placement reductions. DFPS described improved worker retention and falling investigation caseloads but warned oversight and transition staffing needs remain.
The Senate Finance Committee heard a Legislative Budget Board review and a departmental presentation on the Department of Family and Protective Services’ 2026‑27 budget and continuing transitions to the community‑based care (CBC) model for foster‑care case management.
LBB analyst Andrea Nikic summarized the DFPS pattern and the agency’s CBC rollout. LBB noted the transfer of prevention and early intervention programs to HHSC (per Senate Bill 24), a recommended net reduction in DFPS FTEs tied chiefly to plant‑offs when conservatorship responsibilities move to SSCC contractors, and expansion funding to roll CBC into additional regions and stages.
Commissioner Stephanie Muth told senators the agency is seeing measurable operational improvements after multi‑year pay investments and business‑process changes. "Our worker safety team was engaged in 729 different incidents," Muth said in a broader remark about staff workloads, and she praised staff who continue to show up in difficult roles. The agency reported lower statewide intake hold times, sharp improvements in statewide intake turnover (down from 15.2% to 7.5%), and reduced investigation caseloads and average case closure times since the 2022 baseline.
On foster care and kinship, senators pressed DFPS to build on kinship placement. LBB displayed that, on the sample month cited in the hearing, 15,666 children were in care; DFPS emphasized that placements are increasingly concentrated in family‑like settings and that kinship care (including recent unlicensed kinship payment increases) is an important strategy to keep children in community settings.
Senators and the commissioner discussed children without placement (CWAP), a set of older youth whose needs have made placement difficult. DFPS and LBB said CWAP counts had been falling from their earlier high points but still represented older youth with high clinical needs; committee members asked how the department coordinates behavioral‑health placements and whether HHSC capacity and waiver funding could be better aligned to reduce CWAP.
Community‑based care rollout was a central topic. DFPS told the committee that more than half the state’s foster population is now served by SSCC contractors and that four contractors have reached outcome‑driven stage 3. Committee members pressed DFPS about two regions that received no bids (Region 9 — Permian/Concho Valley — and Region 10 — El Paso area) and asked whether rate setting should move from legacy formulae to a cost‑report basis so payments reflect providers’ actual costs as the system matures.
Senators also asked for follow‑up on DFPS workforce and oversight. DFPS supported an approach that would preserve enough state expertise to oversee contractors and to be ready to assume operations in an emergency or when a contractor fails to meet standards; commissioners recommended targeted funding for quality review staff and to smooth transitions. No formal votes were taken; the committee requested additional FTE lists, regional rollout schedules and more detail on how kinship licensing and daycare assistance will be implemented.
