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, child placing agencies, congregations, 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. DFPS also funds local foster parent associations to help them educate, train, and retain foster and adoptive parents.
DFPS has also been expanding the community's role to meet the challenges of serving children in foster care. With Community Based Care (CBC), a single 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.
CBC includes both foster care and relative or “kinship” care. CBC gives the contractor sole responsibility for case management – rather than sharing that responsibility with DFPS.
Faith-Based Efforts
DFPS partners with faith-based communities of all denominations and religious affiliations to:
- To promote positive outcomes for children and families.
- Enhance the well-being of children by shortening their stay in the foster care system.
- Decrease the time for children to achieve permanency.
- Improve community relationships.
The child welfare system alone cannot meet the needs of children and families. DFPS provides information to local congregations about the needs of children and families in their area and local congregations decide what type of ministries they want to develop. Learn more about the Texas Faith-Based Model on the DFPS website.