After observing foster-kid caseworkers—often inadequately trained, overwhelmed, and tardy to proceedings—during about 40 court hearings in Dallas County this month, it was no surprise the state acknowledged in a court filing Monday that children are in peril.

Since the nonprofit Empower won the contract in February 2023 to provide case management services for nine local counties, including Dallas and Collin, its systemic failures have created what the legal filing calls “an imminent danger to the children under conservatorship.” The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services cites the deaths of two children and hospitalization of a third as among the reasons for a court to appoint an outside receiver to oversee Empower’s work on behalf of kids living in foster care in those counties. 

“DFPS has determined that these conditions jeopardize child health, safety, and welfare,” the petition reads. A hearing is set for 2 p.m. today to begin considering the state’s request to seek receivership.

According to the filing, the children who died were three weeks old and two months old; the age of the hospitalized juvenile was not disclosed, nor were the counties where the incidents occurred. No cases of the magnitude detailed by the state came to light during my time in a Dallas County courtroom. But in at least half of the proceedings I watched, Empower fell short of meeting educational, medical, or therapeutic needs and of offering appropriate services to the children’s caregivers, whether that be a foster home or kinship placement. 

Small but pernicious problems emerged each day I sat in Judge Delia Gonzales’ Child Protection and Permanency Court at the George Allen Courts Building in downtown Dallas. Gonzales’ questions to caseworkers revealed months-long gaps without action on vital items such as securing birth certificates or foster-home licenses. Her queries about the status of crucial paperwork led to prolonged silences as caseworkers and their supervisors searched their phones for records. 

Hearings often turned into tutorials delivered by the judge to Empower employees on how to process forms or where to secure benefits. Other times Gonzales and her staff tried to troubleshoot problems that should have been resolved before the court date. When all else failed, the judge issued formal orders to ensure a caseworker provided options for basic services that families had repeatedly asked the contractor to help with. She ruled several times that “no reasonable effort” had been made on a case, which can delay Empower’s access to federal funds.

To a casual observer, the hearings can resemble a bureaucratic morass. But every question has a deep purpose. In each case, Gonzales was trying to suss out whether the child’s needs are being met, which is the key responsibility for case managers. At stake are the lives of abused and neglected children and teens in North Texas who, through no fault of their own, wound up in a system that teeters between artificial and traumatizing. 

Shifting from state-run foster care to a community-based model was the Texas Legislature’s 2017 answer to a long-broken system, which included kids sleeping in hotels or CPS offices because state caseworkers had no other options. The privatization effort, which legislators believed would help rehome kids more quickly, began rolling out in phases across the state since the law passed. In addition to Dallas and Collin, Empower, whose parent company is Kansas-based The Family Initiative, also has taken over case management in Ellis, Fannin, Grayson, Hunt, Kaufman, Navarro, and Rockwall counties.

Monday’s petition seeking receivership says Empower’s continued failures come despite the state providing 17 improvement plans since March 2024 that included “untimely reporting, unsafe transport, unmet measures, and contract breaches.” The state ordered two corrective action plans in 2025 and 2026 for caseload failures, late court reports, undocumented visits, and two judicial contempt findings. 

The state’s narrative ties the two deaths and hospitalization to significant oversights by Empower caseworkers. The most recent occurred just over two weeks ago, on March 3, when a two-month-old was declared dead from what the state describes as “intentional injuries.” Caseworkers had allowed the child and a two-year-old sibling to be returned to their abusive parents without proper follow-ups or safety assessments, the filing alleges. 

Another incident involved a newborn who was allowed to return home with parents who had a history of abusing the baby’s infant sibling, who had already been removed from their custody. The child was born on Nov. 1, 2024 and died on Nov. 24, 2024. In the third anecdote, a child’s case was passed between five different caseworkers and the boy’s issue with a medication was not documented in the case record. When the child had to be hospitalized with chest pain and pneumonia, suspected to be caused by lupus, Empower authorized doctors to treat the boy with the drug that should have been flagged on the case file. 

Empower’s shortcomings were among the reasons lawmakers last year passed legislation aimed at shoring up accountability and transparency in the program, including putting in place the receivership provision the Texas Attorney General’s Office invoked this week in its filing on behalf of the Department of Family and Protective Services. Additionally, the Department of Family and Protective Services, which is under “sunset” performance evaluations this year, cited the overall community-based care effort as a major issue in its own self-eval. 

To determine how these concerns play out in the lives of children and caregivers, I sat in on more than three dozen cases this month in Gonzales’ courtroom. From her bench, she oversees cases in Dallas County involving about 400 children whom the state has placed in the permanent custody of Child Protective Services after determining they can’t live safely with their parents or guardians. While the state retains oversight of the foster care system and its contractors, Empower is responsible for the day-to-day management of the children and their cases across much of North Texas.

The shortcomings I witnessed throughout my court visits occurred as recently as last Thursday, March 12. (The court is not in session this week due to spring break.)

When the first case was called that day, the Empower caseworker wasn’t present; her supervisor told Gonzales, “she’s running late. I don’t know why.” The snag in this case, which involved a 10-month-old baby placed with a foster family who is interested in her eventual adoption, was Empower’s inability to secure a “delayed birth certificate” and track down family members of the deceased biological mother.

The supervisor assured Gonzales she had personal knowledge on this case and described what had been done so far. Another Empower staffer, who also claimed to know “first-hand information,” tried to clear up discrepancies. When the caseworker arrived 10 minutes later, she provided a different version of the status of outstanding items. Bottom line: Necessary steps hadn’t been taken. 

“There’s no reason for why I forgot,” the caseworker told the judge. “I did know I was supposed to do it.”

After almost 30 minutes of questions, Gonzales ordered the team to return in two weeks with answers.

Two of the morning’s remaining four cases moved relatively smoothly; the other two were problematic. During a case involving a preschooler with hearing difficulties, Gonzales learned the caseworker would not be on hand and the supervisor scheduled to stand in hadn’t arrived. While they waited, the judge talked with other legal representatives on hand to advocate for the child as well as the boy’s grandfather, whose home he is living in through a kinship placement arrangement. Determining Empower had not done enough to help the family acquire a hearing device for the child, Gonzales told the grandfather, “We need to help you get moving on that hearing help,” and again asked Empower’s court liaison why the supervisor isn’t here.

“I don’t know,” she said. At 10:45 a.m., 15 minutes after the scheduled start time, Gonzales ended the proceedings. When the supervisor arrived minutes later, she  approached the bench to ask Gonzales if the case could be dismissed. “Not at all,” Gonzales said. “If our families aren’t equipped with services, we aren’t letting these cases go.”  

The breakdown in the morning’s final hearing was perhaps the most stupefying of the many missteps I observed over the two weeks. The case involved a 1-year-old with developmental issues due to narcotics exposure while in the womb; the foster family already adopted the child’s biological brother and was seeking custody of the second child.

Empower had for months failed to provide the necessary “redacted file,” which allows the foster placement to see the child’s case history. At issue, the caseworker said, was that the contractor’s IT department had not provided a necessary password to her team. Gonzales had heard enough. “This sounds like an Empower problem. You have 10 minutes. Go and make some phone calls.” Otherwise, she said, she’d order an Empower executive to travel from Kansas to her courtroom to resolve the problem.

Fifteen minutes later, the team reported they had the password and would get the file to the family.

Two years ago this month, when the state handed Empower the biggest responsibility—management of all individual cases in North Texas’ nine-county Region 3E, also called Metroplex East—no one expected the contractor to replace a state system bureaucracy without a sizable learning curve. But Monday’s filing argues that the contractor is failing children and needs strong oversight as quickly as possible. 

During the hearing today, Judge Monica Purdy, of the 95th Civil District Court, will begin to consider the state’s request to appoint George Cannata, currently the state Child Protective Services region director over 19 counties in North and Northwest Texas, as receiver. According to a biography provided in the petition, Cannata has nearly three decades of experience as a child welfare case manager. The state is seeking a 90-day period for the receivership but can file “multiple” additional requests for 60-day extensions.

“Receivership is a contractual action available to DFPS when safety concerns are identified,” Audrey O’Neill, commissioner of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, wrote Monday in an email to local stakeholders.

O’Neill said in her email that receivership will provide a structured process to assess operations, provide support where needed, and develop contingency plans to help ensure continuity of services for children and families. The petition notes that receivership is “reserved for dire circumstances where no adequate alternative exists to protect the public interest.” 

Contacted about the state’s request for receivership, Empower emailed this statement:

In an interview with Empower’s court liaison Amber Cleek last week, prior to the receivership announcement, she said, “I like to believe that everyone is doing their job to the best of their ability.” Cleek, who transferred to the contractor after working as a caseworker for the state, acknowledged “it was rough in the beginning, but I think it was rough because change is always rough.”

Empower has tried to improve outcomes by reducing the number of people who appear in Gonzales’ courtroom, Cleek said. That number is now 30 to 45 regular caseworkers and supervisors.

Documentation is also a challenge, as are the complexity of the various reports assessing a child’s strengths and needs, she said. “That’s a challenge for most caseworkers. Plus this is very fast-paced. And it’s pretty emotional.” 

Indeed, Judge Gonzales’ courtroom is a cacophony of discordant emotions. A toddler’s giggles as she pets the visiting therapy dog; a school-age boy’s giddy exclamation when he found the prized golden egg hidden near the jury box; a teenager’s goofy recitation to Gonzales about “girl drama” at her foster-care home. Alongside these innocent faces, adults gathered in front of the judge’s bench, often with grim reports on developmental delays, an upcoming retina surgery, and older siblings who ran away from their residential treatment center. 

Today, in another George Allen courtroom, the state will request oversight of Empower’s work with children in the nine North Texas counties where it operates. The egregious lapses alleged in the Department of Family and Protective Services petition also raise a question that the Texas Legislature, which put the community-based model into place, must confront: Have third-party contractors improved the lives of foster children or placed them at greater risk?

Sharon Grigsby is the co-founder and senior writer of The Lab Report. [email protected].

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