As published by the Austin Monitor July 3, 2014. The original story (paywall) is reproduced here for portfolio purposes only.
Travis County spent $2,466,295 in private attorney’s fees during FY 2013 due to the rising number of child abuse and neglect legal cases filed in the region.
According to a joint report conducted by the County’s Justice and Public Safety Divisions, the number of cases has grown rapidly over the past six years. Due to the growing caseloads, County Executive Roger Jefferies told Travis County Commissioners Tuesday that attorneys with the Office of Child Representation and the Office of Parental Representation have maxed out the number of caseloads they can work.
That, in turn, has pushed cases and county money to private attorneys. Since FY 2008, private attorney expenditures have risen 56.8 percent from $1,572,326. The total expenditures on legal fees, going to attorney in each office and to private attorneys, has rise 53 percent since FY 2008. Expenditures for FY 2013 CPS cases total $4,048,837.
To keep cases within the two offices, Jefferies recommended Tuesday to add two full-time paralegal employees – one for each office – to the FY 2015 budget request.
The two offices provide legal services to low-income families involved in Child Protective Services child abuse and neglect legal cases, as mandated by Texas Family Code. The offices were partially funded through a state grant from FY 2009 to FY 2011. County budgeted money now funds all indigent expenses. The two new positions would cost a combined $132,259 per year and allow attorneys in each office to take on an estimated 50 more caseloads.
126th District Court Judge Darlene Byrne, who hears most CPS cases in the Travis County Civil Family Court, said the new employees would make a huge difference.
“By having OCR and OPR on the child welfare side (of the courtroom) we’ve raised the quality of true representation across the board,” Byrne said. “These two offices are closed to me. Every case assignment that comes through my door today will have to have a private attorney appointed, and it’s been this way for a while, simply because they are at maximum capacity.”
The money for the two positions was earmarked, or set aside in the allocated reserve budget, for the FY2014, but the Commissioner’s Court requested a cost driver report be completed before moving ahead with the positions, to gauge the impact of caseloads and expenditures.
The report looked at all indigent civil defense court cases from 2008 to 2013. This included juvenile cases, CPS mediations and cases involving contempt of court-ordered child support, but CPS legal cases were the main cost driver, accounting for 84 percent of all caseloads.
In 2009, when a state grant created the child and parent representation offices, Jefferies said Travis County had 1,777 confirmed abuse and neglect cases; in 2013, the number of cases rose to 2,645. Already for this fiscal year up to Feb. 2, 2014, there have been a confirmed 940 child abuse and neglect cases. In 2013, both offices had a combined 464 CPS cases assigned, up 61.7 percent from 2008 when they had 287 (before the creation of the two offices).
In Texas, the rate of confirmed victims of child abuse and neglect cases per 1,000 children in the state dropped considerably from FY 2009 to FY 2012, but it is on the rise again. In 2009, 10.5 out of 1,000 children had cases. In 2012 that number dropped 9.1 per 1,000 children. However, FY 2013 rose to 9.3 per 1,000 children, or 66,398 total confirmed abuse and neglect cases.
Jefferies said the rise in Travis County caseloads is due to an overall increased child population in Texas, increased economic distress and changes in child welfare laws. There’s an anticipated growth in caseloads in the future, but Jefferies told the Monitor he’d leave that to the statisticians, who’ve been hired as part of a proposed new civil courthouse plan.
The court took no action on the request Tuesday, but the two positions will be discussed when the draft budget comes up for discussion at the end of July.
“I wanted to point out the condition of our community and our children,” Byrne said during the Tuesday discussion. “When you walk out on the street, one in four children are living in poverty in our county that we think is so affluent. It’s just something that raises my concern about our children’s welfare in Travis County. I want them to have good quality representatives for the parents and the children.”