Working with Partners
CPS works with many partners to protect children from abuse and neglect and provide services to children and their families. Some of those partners include foster parents, childplacing agencies, CASA volunteers, child welfare boards, law enforcement agencies, children's advocacy centers, health and human services agencies, and various providers and community partners.
Foster Parents and Other Providers
Foster parents, private child-placing agencies, residential treatment centers, and other providers work with CPS to care for and support children. DFPS also supplies funds to the Texas Council on Adoptable Children and the Texas Foster Family Association to support foster and adoptive parents and to local foster parent associations to help them educate, train, and retain foster and adoptive parents.
DFPS has been expanding the community's role to meet the challenges of serving children in foster care through Foster Care Redesign, now known as Community-Based Care. Under Community-Based Care, a single source continuum contractor is responsible for building foster care capacity and a network of providers, engaging the community to help, placing children in foster care, and coordinating and delivering services to children in foster care and their families.
In 2017, the Texas Legislature directed DFPS to expand this model and rename it Community-Based Care. It includes both foster care and relative or "kinship" placements. Community-Based Care gives the contractor sole responsibility for case management – rather than sharing that responsibility with DFPS. CPS will contract for a single source continuum contractor in four additional catchment areas through 2019.
Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA)
CASA volunteers are court-appointed advocates for children in CPS cases. They are independent voices for children and an important part of the legal process that helps ensure children's best interests are served.