Editor’s note: To protect their identities, the names of the children in this story have been changed.
Shaking off the fog of exhaustion, Courtney Craig shuffled up the stairs of her condo and slowly opened the door to her bedroom. “Alexa,” she said, “play the 1978 Spider-Man theme song.”
In seconds, her 3-year-old son, Elijah, was jumping on her bed, where he had slept a few restless hours with his hands clutching her hair to make sure she didn’t leave.
As Elijah danced in his Spider-Man underwear and launched imaginary webs from his palms, Courtney’s 2-year-old daughter, Zoe, padded out of a bedroom down the hall and rubbed her eyes. “Good morning, bubby,” Courtney said. “Time to get dressed.”
A logjam schedule of therapies, school drop-offs and pickups, work, and a few inevitable meltdowns awaited. Hair needed to be combed, milk poured, bags packed, and matching shoes located in the next 20 minutes to make it out the door on time, or as close to it as possible. Courtney has grown accustomed to the morning chaos and barrage of appointments since opening her 900-square-foot home to foster children in 2020. On this July day, though, the 42-year-old shouldered it all not as a foster parent but a mother.
A week earlier, Courtney stood in a Dallas courtroom before a judge who declared that the two small children clinging to her neck were forever hers to care for. Dressed in coordinated red outfits, Elijah and Zoe wriggled in Courtney’s arms as she took a vow of motherhood.
“You do understand that the moment this paperwork is signed you have all the same rights and duties as any other parent, isn’t that right?” her attorney said, standing in front of Judge Cheryl Lee Shannon’s bench.
“Yes,” said Courtney while she swayed to soothe the restless children on her hips.
That court date came three and a half years after Elijah was placed in Courtney’s home as a malnourished baby who screamed most hours of the day and vomited the rest. His baby sister, weighing 6 pounds at 6 weeks old, joined them a little over a year later. The adoption hearing held the promise of a new beginning for Elijah and Zoe, who had been through much in their short, unsettled lives. For Courtney, it marked an end to what she said was a yearslong nightmare due to a system that failed to protect her children and shattered her well-being. Negligence on the part of Empower, the private contractor in charge of foster care cases in the Dallas area, led to the loss of their state benefits, Courtney said, and put Elijah and Zoe in dangerous situations that compounded their trauma.
In July, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services determined Empower, which the state put in charge of foster care in nine North Texas counties in March 2024, was unfit for the job. The decision to terminate its contract came four months after DFPS was made receiver over Empower. The company had failed to remedy serious safety concerns documented by the state, and two infants died under its watch.
As the state begins to transition Child Protective Services cases in the Dallas area from Empower’s management to two new private contractors, parents like Courtney are living with the fallout of what went wrong.
Courtney woke on a Friday morning in January 2023 to missed calls and a voicemail asking if she would take in a 3-month-old boy as her next foster placement. The baby had just been found under an overpass near Fair Park in a short-sleeved onesie, she was told. She had already fostered three children and felt she could take on the responsibilities of an infant again, so she said yes. Two hours later, a CPS case worker knocked on her door and handed her a single bottle of formula, a pacifier, and Elijah, who weighed barely 10 pounds.
Born with drugs in his system, Elijah writhed as his body struggled to keep down milk, Courtney said. She shuttled him between a volley of medical appointments to try to identify the cause of his endless screams, and to address emerging developmental delays. Having been a school counselor, Courtney said she knew how critical it was to get him the therapies he needed as quickly as possible, and soon he was in physical therapy, occupational therapy, feeding therapy, speech therapy, and Early Childhood Intervention. As the months went by, his little face grew round, his crying eased, and he began to hit developmental milestones. One year into Elijah’s case, Courtney tried to file for custody of the boy she had quickly grown to love, but the judge extended his case for another six months, which meant she couldn’t intervene.
In February 2024, Courtney received another phone call, this time asking if she would take in Elijah’s newborn sister. She agreed, but social workers at Empower, which had just taken over CPS case management, told her they couldn’t find the child. The biological mother, whom case workers hadn’t known was pregnant, left the hospital with the baby against doctors’ orders. Several weeks later, Zoe was located and brought to Courtney’s door at 3:45 a.m. on a Saturday. A month and a half old, she weighed less than most babies do at birth.
She’s the tiniest human I’ve ever seen in my life, Courtney thought as she looked down at Zoe swallowed up by the pink car seat she arrived in.
Three months after Courtney took in Zoe and shortly before Elijah’s time in foster care reached 18 months, Empower asked the judge to send both children to live with a family member. Courtney had serious concerns about the decision, which she shared with all parties in the case including the Empower case worker and supervisor.
She was concerned that the family member, who had her own CPS history, had not been adequately informed about what she was agreeing to. There was no transition plan for the children, which was especially alarming for Elijah, who had bonded closely with Courtney and screamed when anything around him changed. The family member with whom he was going to live had visited Elijah only a couple times in the year and a half he was in Courtney’s home and had never kept the children overnight.
Elijah had been in this family member’s care before. Courtney learned through court documents that, prior to entering the foster system, he was sent to live with her as part of a CPS-recommended safety plan after being struck in the head during a domestic disturbance while living with his biological mother. The family member soon decided she could no longer care for him and left him at an unknown house where his mother had last been seen. Weeks later, police found him under a Dallas overpass while responding to another domestic altercation involving his mother. He was then put into foster care.
Courtney shared these concerns with Elijah’s case worker, who had taken over his case weeks earlier. At least five other workers had managed the case before her. According to Courtney, the case worker told her she had not read Elijah’s file and didn’t know what she was referring to. The family member had passed a drug test and was therefore Empower’s preferred placement, she told Courtney.
When asked about Elijah and Zoe’s time in the foster system, a spokesperson for DFPS, which handles media requests for Empower as part of its role as receiver over the company, said the agency cannot comment on specific cases.
In June 2024, after a judge signed off on the decision following a special hearing, Elijah and Zoe left Courtney’s home to live with the family member. Elijah’s case was closed, and Zoe’s was soon to follow. Courtney sent them off with suitcases of clothes, boxes of all their toys, every piece of baby gear she thought they’d need, and a 3-ring binder of their medical histories. She prayed they’d be OK. Hours later, at 1 a.m., she received a text message from the family member asking where Elijah was supposed to sleep and whether he should share the infant bassinet with Zoe.
Courtney texted the Empower case worker to ask if she was aware the family member did not have proper beds for the children. “This is absolutely horrifying. The bassinet has a weight limit and can flip over and also [Zoe] is a baby,” Courtney wrote her. “I’m so freaking worried about these kids.”
The case worker responded the following day. “I feel like an idiot for not asking about a crib,” she said. “I was not aware she didn’t have one.”
“CPS used to check for beds before they even approved a home,” Courtney replied. “I guess Empower is different.”
Three weeks later, Courtney said the family member contacted her and asked if she would take Elijah back. Empower had not informed her of Elijah’s physical and developmental needs, she told Courtney. She said she didn’t understand that she had taken permanent custody of him, or that she was considered an unlicensed home, which meant the kids were disqualified for state benefits like Medicaid and in-state college tuition. She said she was told Courtney didn’t want the children but realized that wasn’t true when she saw the baby books Courtney made them.
Horrified, Courtney explained to the family member that she told Empower and the attorneys months earlier that she loved the children and would gladly keep both in her care through adoption or conservatorship. But she could only do so now with formal court approval.
The situation was unfolding the way Courtney feared and warned Empower it would. She agonized over the uncertainty in which Elijah and Zoe were living and vowed to never put herself in that position again.
“Empower was so actively harming children that I closed my foster home,” Courtney said. “I simply could not serve as a foster parent under Empower and remain quiet about what was occurring.”
Six months after the siblings left Courtney’s home, the family member called again in a panic.
“I can’t do it anymore,” she told Courtney. She said she was going to leave the kids with their biological mother — despite having a protective order against her — if Courtney did not come and take them. Courtney, who was out of town for New Year’s, consulted an attorney and rushed back to Texas. Elijah and Zoe were given to her in a Staples parking lot along with two bags of jarred baby food and socks.
After consulting a lawyer, Courtney faced an impossible decision — put the kids back in the system that had already failed them or pursue a private adoption and forgo their state benefits.
She chose the latter, funding the costly process through her savings and her father’s financial support.
While she waited the required six months before she could file for adoption, she assumed full responsibilities of Elijah and Zoe without state assistance. She re-purchased clothes and toys, resumed their therapy appointments, and worked to make their lives as normal as possible. She tried to manage Elijah’s fears that she would leave him again while quietly coping with her own daily anxiety that they could be taken from her care at any moment since she wasn’t their legal guardian.
In October 2025, after the children’s biological mother was served adoption papers, the family member asked to have the kids for a visit for the first time since handing them over to her. Courtney had to accommodate the request because the family member was still their legal conservator, but she worried for their safety. She choked back tears as she hugged Elijah and Zoe. She repeated the promise she made to them each day since taking them in: “I’ll always fight for you and I’ll love you forever.”
As Courtney feared, the family member did not return the children. For six agonizing days, Courtney didn’t know where they were. She woke up to a call at 2 a.m. asking her to pick Elijah and Zoe up at a hospital. The family member had been in the car with them when she experienced a physical and mental health crisis and had to be hospitalized. Courtney picked up the children and two weeks later was granted temporary conservatorship by the court. Nine months later, the adoptions were finalized.
Because the children’s cases had been closed and they were not adopted directly from the system, Courtney said, they were ineligible for the state benefits granted to foster kids. She also does not qualify for the assistance provided to foster parents who adopt. Courtney has requested that DFPS review the children’s cases in hopes that some of their benefits can be restored.
“Empower robbed both kids of the benefits they deserve,” she said. “I won’t stop until justice and equity and healing for both these kids occurs.”
But more detrimental than the loss of benefits, she said, is the trauma.
She contends that Empower’s decisions endangered Elijah and Zoe and significantly deepened their existing emotional wounds. Their attachment disorders are more severe, their separation anxiety more acute, and their behaviors more challenging because of preventable trauma. Elijah, who has still never slept through the night, suffers from regular nightmares. Zoe, who never got the chance to bond with anyone during her infancy, craves connection from everyone, even strangers in the grocery store.
“Empower didn’t do what needed to be done to make sure the kids were safe,” Courtney said. “Negligence usually doesn’t happen because one big decision went wrong. It happens because there’s a series of 25 little things that they don’t see as connected that they ignore. And it’s all of those little things that stack up that result in kids dying or getting hurt.”
In response to questions about Courtney’s concerns, a DFPS spokesperson said “placement and custody decisions should ultimately be guided by the child’s best interest, their connection to family, and the court’s determinations.”
One recent morning, Courtney zipped Elijah into the Spider-Man suit he insisted on wearing over his clothes and plopped a cowboy hat on his head for western day at summer camp. She took him to his weekly occupational therapy before dropping Zoe off at daycare. Then, she faced the hardest part of the day, the recurring reminder that the system designed to protect Elijah let him down.
She parked in front of his school and braced herself for tears, his and hers. Since Elijah first left her home in 2024, he has struggled with crippling fear that she will leave and never come back, something Zoe was spared by her age. Those fears exploded into debilitating anxiety after he and his sister vanished for six days, and now every goodbye is laden with dread.
“I don’t want to do it,” Elijah said, holding onto Courtney. “I’m scared.”
“Every morning you’re so brave,” she said.
“I’m not brave,” he cried. “I want to stay with you.”
“You,” Courtney said, fighting back her own tears, “are my brave boy.”
The Texas Legislature privatized foster care in 2017 by implementing a community-based contractor model intended to improve outcomes for foster children by keeping them closer to home and placing them with someone familiar whenever possible. Those priorities remain in place today. In its 2026 Annual Plan, DFPS said increasing the number of children placed with kinship caregivers, who are relatives or close family friends, is one of its goals in order to reduce trauma for children.
Previously, extended family members and family friends were often not explored as placements despite directives that state case workers investigate every possible kinship option, said Rhonda Hunter, chair of the Dallas County Child Welfare Board and a former Dallas County district judge. As a result, children were unnecessarily sent to live with strangers.
“There were family members out there that were not even being considered or looked into who could have taken in children,” said Hunter. “The push to kinship is not necessarily a negative thing if it’s done properly.”
However, Hunter said, considering the documented issues with Empower’s management, like inadequately trained and overloaded case workers, it is likely placements were not always thoroughly evaluated, especially in drawn-out cases.
Under Texas law, CPS cases must be resolved within 12 months unless a six-month extension is filed. When a CPS case reaches 18 months, Hunter said, it is past time to have a properly vetted plan in place.
“When you get to the 18-month mark, you are done with this case,” Hunter said. “You have to face the issue or get off the pot. Excuse my language, but the case is over.”
If placement options haven’t been thoroughly investigated before then, Hunter said, it can lead to hurried decisions made with incomplete information.
Foster parents like Anthony and Brittany Gonzales said they believe children who were in their care are now living in an unsafe situation because Empower did not adequately evaluate placement options.
The couple decided to open their Anna home to foster children in 2025 after years of fertility struggles. Their first foster child, Theo, was a 1-year-old boy who came to them last September after being removed from his home for neglect and starvation. He weighed just 10 pounds and had a kidney condition when he entered the system at 7 months old.
Anthony, 33, and Brittany, 40, patiently worked through Theo’s trauma, food insecurity, and health issues while learning how to be parents. Their PTO days were consumed by medical and behavioral appointments, but they agreed to take in the boy’s baby sister, Sophie, too.
As they navigated the foster care system for the first time, they were shocked by what they described as a lack of professionalism from case workers. On one occasion, a worker asked them to install a car seat because she didn’t know how. On another, a case worker left before a parent returned their child to Anthony and Brittany after a supervised visit. Case workers were also frequently late or missed appointments altogether, they said.
Throughout Theo’s case, which was filed in Collin County, they said the Empower case worker told them things were on track for a judge to terminate parental rights and hoped the couple was willing to adopt. In June, Anthony and Brittany were alarmed when Sophie, whose case was filed in Dallas County, was being placed on “monitored return” — a 6-month period in which reunification with a parent is tested before becoming permanent. A case worker previously told them the parent, who had a history of domestic violence, became so explosively angry at her during a visit that she had to cut it short. Also, there were questions about the parent’s living arrangement and employment.
The couple said they were told by Empower staff that although a Dallas judge decided to send Sophie to live with a parent, Theo would stay with them. Their concerns about the parent had not changed. But two weeks later, as Theo’s case neared 18 months, Anthony and Brittany said they were told paperwork had been filed for him to also be placed with the parent on monitored return.
Anthony and Brittany said they were alarmed and confused by the decision. The parent had known anger issues. And the parent, when asked in court ahead of monitored return being granted, could not convey Theo’s medical needs or the care required.
When asked about the Gonzales’ concerns, a spokesperson for DFPS again noted the agency can’t comment on specific cases but wrote in an email, “Empower assesses the child’s needs and places the child only with providers that have the staffing, qualifications, supervision, and resources necessary to safely meet those needs.” The spokesperson also said “placements must have a trained medical consenter when required and be able to coordinate the medical, behavioral health, and specialized services identified.”
Anthony, who observed Theo’s court hearing, said he was shocked to hear Empower staff tell the judge they had no concerns about the decision when they had repeatedly voiced them to him and Brittany. “I think somewhere along the line they convinced themselves it was OK,” Anthony said. “It was absolutely devastating.”
After Theo left their home, the couple hired an attorney to intervene. During discovery, they saw the parent’s psychological evaluation. It showed a low score for empathy, they said, and noted that the parent would be a risk to young children. They also learned that Empower found an unsecured firearm in the parent’s home when they dropped Sophie off to live there and didn’t ensure that it was secured for two weeks.
“If you are a foster home and you have an unsecured firearm that’s not locked up, you are probably going to lose your license,” Anthony said.
The Gonzales’ were unable to legally intervene because the child had not been in their home full time for 12 months, they said. They now live with daily worry for the children they grew to love.
“We want families to be reunited. It’s not that we didn’t sign up for that. But we didn’t sign up for them to go back to unsafe situations,” Anthony said. “It’s put us in a really rough position.”
They considered closing down their foster home because of the negligence they saw and the voicelessness they felt, but ultimately they decided to keep accepting placements.
“If they run off all the good families by the way they operate, the only thing that will be left are people who possibly do it for the wrong reasons,” Anthony said. “So we really had to sit with that.”
They’re hopeful things will improve with new contractors taking over CPS case management in the coming months, but they will forever be haunted by what they experienced. Weeks after saying goodbye to the boy they raised for nearly a year, they cried as they moved his crib out of their guest room and assembled two twin beds, one with Super Mario bedding and the other with pink flowers. A 4-year-old and 6-year-old, who had been living at an emergency shelter, needed a home.
“We’ve given up on the system,” Anthony said, “but not on children.”
Claire Ballor is a staff writer for The Lab Report. claire@labreportdallas.com.