© 2010 The Associated Press
May 14, 2010, 9:43AM

AUSTIN, Texas — The Department of Family and Protective Services will try to persuade more relatives of abused and neglected children in Texas to take in the youngsters as the foster care rolls grow.

Commissioner Anne Heiligenstein, who testified Thursday before the House Human Services Committee, also says about 500 Texas children have been in foster care for at least a decade. Each, on average, has been in nine homes or treatment centers.

"If you think of that disruption to the child, it's pretty horrific," she said.

Child Protective Services spokesman Patrick Crimmins says Texas in January paid for foster care for 15,696 children. The state had budgeted for 14,586 youths, according to Crimmins. CPS is overseen by the department.

Child welfare authorities partly attribute the increase to families strained by the recession.

The Dallas Morning News reported Friday that CPS is more inclined to remove children from homes, after some high-profile child deaths and as agency workers and state judges got used to a federal appeals court's 2008 order tightening child-removal procedures.

"We are seeing an increase," said Heiligenstein.

A new federally backed program, starting Sept. 1, will pay relatives who agree to be licensed as foster parents more money to care for the youths, according to Heiligenstein.

Under the permanency care assistance program, Texas will make monthly payments of $400 per child, or $545 if the child has serious problems, to relatives after they have been the youngsters' foster parents for six months, the commissioner said. That is less than the usual foster care payment of $674 per child per month, but Heiligenstein said the court case would be closed, giving peace of mind to both the children and their caretaker relatives.

She recently convened a group of judges, foster-care providers and child advocates to discuss how to overhaul the foster-care reimbursement system, so the state pays when children become healthier, not sicker.

Information from: The Dallas Morning News, http://www.dallasnews.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7005041.html

Emphasis added by H4K Editor