The FLDS children are no longer at the coliseum in San Angelo. They’re now mostly in group foster care centers in spots across Texas. Details keep coming out from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (http://www.dfps.state.tx.us/). The latest is that at least 41 of the children have had broken bones in the past and that some young boys may have been sexually abused.

 

The level of frustration is growing for some of the attorneys for the children involved. In Texas, when a child is taken away from their parents, an attorney is assigned to that child to represent their interests. Some of the ad litems have reported difficulty in figuring out where their child has been placed. I heard from one ad litem that, before the children were moved from San Angelo, she safety-pinned a business card on her young client’s dress so she’d have a way for the foster family to contact her. Another complaint has been that the ad litems can’t figure out which case worker is representing their child. TX DFPS says it created an email list to “easily communicate” with the ad litems, but talk to some of the attorneys and they’ll tell you communication with DFPS is anything but easy.

 

Understand, in a typical case, a parent is given a path to regain their children. If it’s a drug addicted mother, for example, the mother must prove she’s off drugs and is taking steps to give her child a safe home environment. In the meantime, the child is most often placed in the care of extended family, which is obviously not an option here. What will eventually happen in this case? Will the mothers of these children (assuming DNA results prove maternity) be offered a path to be reconciled with their children? If so, what would that path look like?

 

In Texas, child welfare cases have to be resolved within a year– at most, 18 months if an extension is granted. That means the child either goes back to the parent, is adopted (again, many times by extended family) or stays in state custody- permanently. So all of the questions that are swirling around now about the FLDS case cannot continue indefinitely. The clock is ticking.