(upbeat music)
-: Welcome to another edition
of Conversations with CASA,
a monthly blog produced by Texas CASA
examining issues and trends
in the child welfare system.
My name is Vicki Spriggs.
I'm the CEO of Texas CASA and we're filming
on location at our offices.
Our guest today is Brandy Howard.
Brandy is a foster youth attorney
with Disability Rights Texas.
In that role she often serves
as co-attorney ad litem, an advocate for youth
with disabilities in the areas
of disability and education.
Prior to joining Disability Rights Texas,
Brandy served as a supervising attorney
for the Texas Advocacy Project
where she represented victims of sexual assault
and intimate partner violence in family law cases.
As a prosecutor in Williamson County,
Brandy represented DSPS in removal cases.
Additionally, Brandy is a licensed foster parent
and served as a CASA volunteer in Houston.
Brandy, thank you for joining us today.
-: Thank you for having me.
-: I know you had a ARD before coming over today
which is the essence of your work.
So let me ask you to explain a little bit
about the role of Disability Rights
and the type of legal work you perform for children
in the child protection system.
-: Vicki, so Disability Rights Texas
is a federally mandated protection advocacy agency.
There is a Disability Rights in every state.
We are, we have a broad array of services that we provide
for people with disabilities, free legal services.
We have advocates and attorneys on staff
and we we help with issues
relating to employment,
access to transportation, housing.
We help with voter rights issues,
access to Social Security benefits,
access to medical services, and healthcare advocacy.
So we have a broad array.
As for the foster youth team that I'm on,
we represent children in foster care with disabilities
across the state of Texas.
Our children are placed all over Texas.
The attorneys on my team serve
in the Austin and Central Texas region and we also serve
in the Harris County region but our children
are all over the state of Texas placed.
I have one in Lubbock right now, very far away from me.
We've served over 800 foster youth since we've had this team
which we started in 2009.
We primarily advocate for issues
relating to community reintegration after children
have been placed in institutions, mental health access
to medical services or treatment,
and as well as education.
We are usually, as you mentioned before,
serving in a co-attorney ad litem role
where we're just basically advocating
for disability and education,
advocating for those issues in the school systems
or in the court system.
We also deal with Medicaid.
Superior Health is the managed care organization
here in Texas that manages the medical insurance,
health insurance for our youth and foster care
and so we're often dealing with them
and even in administrative hearing capacities.
So we are doing very hard work for our children.
Some of our children are in institutions across the state
far far from their home, original home
and we're advocating for them every day.
-: Mmm, wow, quite the job.
So how large is your team, Brandi?
You mentioned the team and Texas is a large state
and there's a lot that you all do.
How large is your team?
-: We do a lot with very little,
I mean, very few people.
So we have, I serve in the, myself and another person,
Richard Lovato, serve the Austin Central Texas area.
So Hays County, Caldwell County,
Williamson County, Travis County.
I have a case in Hidalgo County
that I'm working on right now.
I'm trying to think.
I have another case...
I think it's, it's, I can't remember the county,
but it's somewhere far west.
And so and then we have two attorneys
in the Harris County area that serve
in the Harris County courts there.
They have a larger case load because Harris County
has a lot more children that are placed in care there.
I also, we are working on getting
some more additional supports in place,
but that's it just four of us really
and we have a legal support staff and that's it.
-: It's incredible because you all do an incredible job.
You come at this from an interesting perspective.
You are an adoptive parent if I read that correctly
in your intro and you've been a CASA volunteer.
How does that or does it impact your work
and how you see your work for Disability Rights Texas?
-: Well, I am a licensed foster parent.
I have adopted two kids out of the foster care system
and I was a child, we were called child advocates
in the Harris County area.
But it just, with all the training
that, well, one thing is that I've gotten a lot of training
on how to be a suitable placement,
to provide a safe, nurturing, warm home
for children that are coming,
that were and are coming into our home.
And so I've learned a lot about just the workings
of the standards that are required
for these homes to have, the guidelines for discipline,
psychotropic medications, what are the rules
that foster families have to follow regarding that.
What DFPS or Department of Family and Protective Services
requires or believes children should have
in order to heal from the trauma that they've experienced.
I know personally from having, you know,
foster child come into my home from sleeping
in a DSPS office and coming with just the clothes
on his back how hard it is for these children
to be ripped from their families and everything
that they know and to come to some stranger's house
and have to be expected to be
the best well-behaved children, you know, or child.
So I have a lot of empathy.
I know that, you know, these children
need to be in nurturing warm homes not in institutions
if we're really expecting them to heal.
They need stability and so that's
kind of where I'm coming from when I am advocating
for my children, my clients, that I have.
I'm wanting them to be out of these institutions
in a home with intensive mental health services
wrapped around that child and the family
that they're living with.
I also understand the importance of being connected
to family or siblings and so I'm usually pushing
for sibling visits or finding some,
going back and doing some kind of Seneca search
to find family members that are out there
a fictive kin or friends of the family that could step in
and reconnect and build a healthy relationship
'cause a lot of our clients
they've been moved around so much they don't know
what a healthy relationship looks like and so.
So that's very important When I'm working.
I'm always asking, you know, where's the sibling,
when can we have visits, you know,
have you all done a Seneca search,
have you all searched for family members?
Let's go back and look if you've already done,
come back and, you know, do it again
if we've done it prior too.
I'm always asking for ways that we can keep our children
in the community without having them institutionalized
in a residential treatment center or psychiatric hospital.
But what can we do or what can the court order,
what kind of services can be put in place
so that they can remain in the community?
'Cause I am, I personally know that children
that have, you know, a lot of emotional weight
that they're bearing from all the trauma
that they've experienced and being stripped
from their families and all,
that they know are not gonna be the, you know,
best well-behaved children.
They're gonna have behavioral problems
and we need to be able, as a community,
and as the CPS system to be able to provide them
with what they need, which is a home,
a warm and nurturing home with stability.
So I'm constantly advocating for that.
-: Super, I'd like to applaud, but it's inappropriate
so I'll ask you this question instead.
You do medical advocacy and you,
as you were talking just now,
talked about the issue of psychotropic meds.
And one of the issues that constantly confronts us
is the issue of the over medication
of these young people.
How do, is that an issue
that Disability Rights Texas
would pick up and then what what do you do,
what do you do?
-: Well, we, the children, or these clients that we have
or just children in general in CPS care
they are being, you know, they are tracking
their medications and the court reports
is presented to the court and to the other parties.
So we do, we are looking at what medications
they are on and are they within the parameters
set out in the policies
through the psychotropic medication
utilization review policies that are put in place by DSPS.
So we are tracking that.
I have myself and my colleagues have requested review
of the psychotropic medications
that are being prescribed
to our clients that we feel that they're not
within the parameters we have requested
that review to be done.
We are, I am personally asking
for alternative types of therapy to be put in place
because what I often see is that these children
are on these all of these different medications
and it's not helping the behaviors.
The behaviors are still in place
and so they're on all these medications
but it's not really addressing the issue that is before us
which is behavioral acting out or aggression at school
or at home.
And so I have a client right now where I'm asking
for a review because specifically she is not,
excuse me, benefiting from the medications she's on.
So what I see a lot of times is we'll have children
that are acting out behaviorally
and they're on all these psychotropic medications
such as mood stabilizers and I don't see
much improvement in their mood.
They're still having outbursts, anger outbursts,
or tantrums and that's more going to deal with,
you know, are they receiving
the appropriate therapeutic services
that they're needing.
A lot of our children have these complex traumas
that they've experienced from being moved and moved
and moved to all of these different places,
stripped away from their parents in addition to the abuse
and neglect that they've experienced.
So why are we giving them just the basic cookie cutter
kind of therapy?
We should be looking
at some more trauma-informed therapy modalities.
And so I'm often asking for that, too,
to address the behavior instead of just putting them
on medications that it's not really working.
-: Brandy there were so many issues
in what you just said so I think I'd like
to ask a joint kind of combined question.
'Cause you talked about psychotropic meds.
We talked about older youth transitioning out.
Can you just put those two together if you will
and talk about the challenges that you see
with youth transitioning out and maybe the challenges
that you see with mental health issues with children
and sometimes it's the older youth transitioning out
with mental health issues.
So can you talk about that ball of wax I just handed you?
(chuckles) Thank you. -: Yes, yes, thank you.
So what we're seeing across the state
or in the counties that we're serving
and the kids being placed across the state
in these psychiatric hospitals or institutions
because of behavioral issues.
And so what we're seeing
is that there's not enough therapeutic foster homes
or foster homes suitable to deal with these behaviors
or trained and so we see instead of the parties
or DFPS putting in place
wraparound mental health services
and then the issues with Superior Health
not being able to provide those mental health services
in a timely and an effective way,
we see a lot of our children being placed
across the state in residential treatment centers.
These facilities are not, I feel,
and my colleagues feel, are not equipped
to deal with the complex trauma that we're seeing
in our youth in foster care.
So they're often, you know, their behaviors are worsening
or not improving and they've been in these places
for years and they're moved
from a residential treatment center
to residential treatment center and we're not seeing
very much progress and improvement in treatment.
And so what we see is we have these youth that have been
in these institutions for most of their time in care,
foster care, and they're aging out and they don't know,
they don't have any independent living skills,
they don't know about their mental health record
or medical records, they don't have access to that.
They don't have a Social Security card,
a copy of their IDs.
They don't have any vocational rehab training services.
They're, the education that we are often seeing
provided at these institutions are through charter schools
that don't provide a whole lot of electives
where our youth can identify a field or career
that they want to pursue.
And they've never had the opportunity
to obtain driver's education or even work a job.
And so when they're stepping out into the community
without transitioning down into a home setting
and it is very scary.
Often our youth in these congregate-like facilities
are being abused or sexually abused
by other children or staff.
And so we see a lot of damage being done there too.
We have youth that we have, were helped
that have been in psychiatric hospitals for months
waiting on CPS or DSPS to find placement for them.
They're ready to be discharged
and they're just waiting for placement.
They are not getting education services
while there because the school districts
are not finding them like they're supposed to
and the psychiatric hospitals are definitely
not reaching out to the school districts.
So they're sitting in psychiatric hospitals
waiting for placement, not getting education services.
-: Brandy, I hate to cut you off but we've run out of time.
I definitely want to have you back
because there was so much in this last piece
especially the piece about the sexual abuse of children
who have mental health or physical health impairments
in these RTCS because we know their abuse rate
is much higher than for other children
in the foster care system, which should be zero,
but it's not.
But this is a reality we have to talk about some more.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
-: Thank you.
-: And thank you for joining us.
We'll see you next time at Conversations with CASA.
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