In 2022, the number of youths in foster care in Texas reached 21,691. Though this number is an improvement by over six thousand since 2021, Texas still has the third highest state numbers of youths in the foster system.
Texas has gone to great lengths while trying to fix the lingering problem with the foster care system. The state is focusing on the money it needs to divvy out to extended/substitute family of children who take them in while also adjusting the requirements for due process in the presence of a Child Protective Services case, and all of this is important to fix for the future. But these changes alone are not enough to mold the system needed to further help keep our children safe, off the streets, and in a warm bed where they do not have to grow up rough, in what seems a grim existence.
The youth in this country are the most important asset to this country as every new generation has changed our world in some way but children in the foster system are not given this opportunity. Kids who enter these types of constructs are either poorly treated or just shuffled through the system until it is time for them to go. More than 20,000 youth left foster care in 2020 without reuniting with their parents or having another permanent family home. Eighteen may be the age you are legal to vote, and many other things, but we throw these young adults who are still very much children into a world that is mostly unknown to them that does not have any sympathy.
The issue of premature reunification is just as bad. These situations lead to constant re-entry to the system or worse. Those who re-enter are more prone to end up in prison down the line and the way the prison system works, it should be on the minds of all that we need to further aid these kids through life until things work out. These kids need to be given a chance, that is the bottom line. The issues in this system are plenty for sure, but the changes Texas is making despite minor in the grand scheme could be the beginning of that chance.