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Texas Senator Rodney Ellis is not happy about what 11 News Investigates discovered at the state’s Children’s Protective Services agency: Case after case of at-risk African-American children left in dangerous situations.

“Being an African American, I was incensed! It simply gave me a bad feeling deep down inside,” Ellis said.

It’s cases like that of one mother who admitted using marijuana weekly and using cocaine and smoking crack the very day before giving birth that have Ellis talking. Instead of removing the cocaine-positive child, CPS gave the baby back to the mother on a promise she’d check into a drug treatment center.  She never did.

Cases like that are a part of a CPS project studying “disproportionality,” the high percentage of African American children in the child welfare system.

The program was intended to help black children and their families, but Senator Ellis questions whether the agency is leaving black children in harm’s way to keep the numbers down. 

“There’s enough evidence to send an alarm up,” Ellis said. “I’m going to ask CPS to come into my office and explain to me what they’re doing, why they’re doing it.”

But those cases are only the beginning.

AP

11 News Investigates discovered CPS may be failing thousands of children of all races by just not getting there in time.

We’re talking about Priority One cases – life-threatening situations in which state law requires an investigation be launched within 24 hours.

But we found cases of sexual abuse taking 248 days to investigate … Physical abuse cases, 233 days … Neglectful supervision, 214 days.

In these cases, it took months for the agency just to make contact with the child.

“Completely unacceptable,” Randy Burton said. “We’re talking gross negligence.”

Burton is a former prosecutor and head of the advocacy group Justice for Children.

He calls these cases “ticking time bombs,” because every day that goes on, the risk goes up.

“Little children are going to be sexually abused again, and little children are going to be beaten with coat hangers again,” Burton said.

So what is CPS’ explanation for the delays?

In some cases, the caseworker simply left the agency, but the files weren’t passed on.

At other times, it was a supervisor’s lack of follow-through.

Other times, CPS said they had “no way to know” what happened, or had “no good explanation” for the delays.

“CPS has dropped the ball,” Burton said. “These are first-degree felony crimes.”

And they are potential crimes with critical evidence to gather.

“Can you imagine trying to collect the evidence from a murder or robbery, two or three weeks or two or three months after the fact?” Burton said. “The evidence is going to go down the toilet.”

As a result, he said, prosecutors cannot build a case in court against child abusers. 

So what does CPS have to say about all of this?

“It is not acceptable, and we are holding staff accountable for it,” Joyce James, Assistant Commissioner of Children’s Protective Services, said.

“Who is minding the store in some of these cases? Seven months to see a sexual abuse alleged victim? I’m not making any excuses for that,” James said.

A CPS publication from 2005 shows that in more than 5,100 cases, the agency failed to meet the 24-hour response rule. 

The numbers stayed virtually the same this past year, but the agency disagrees.

“Are you numbers wrong that you are publishing? Yes they are,” James said.

James said that when her agency reviewed a small sample of those 5,000 cases, CPS did make quick contact.

“The error was in our data entry system, as well as in our documentation,” James said.

Now Texas Senator Kyle Janek wonders how anyone could trust CPS’ claims.

“At the end of the day, I want to know is the data reliable?” he said. “If you mishandled some of that data, how do we know that some of the ones that are coded as having been seen in a timely fashion were not?”

Janek also notes that no one can ever forget who is at risk in these cases.

“That’s a child. It is not acceptable for these cases to fall through the crack,” he said.