UPDATE: Medina questions need for state CPS
 
Robert T. Garrett/Reporter
TRAIL BLAZERS Politics Blog
The Dallas Morning News
Debra Medina

Wharton political activist Debra Medina has questioned whether Texas needs a state child welfare agency. Medina, a Republican candidate for governor, suggested over the weekend that the state perhaps hand off child-protection duties to local law enforcement agencies closer to the people.

That would mean abolishing Child Protective Services, which after suffering some budget cuts in the mid-1990s has grown rapidly under Gov. Rick Perry, in response to criticisms it was failing the state's most vulnerable youngsters and needed more caseworkers and support staff.

"Why is CPS a state agency? Could that be handled by the police department or sheriff's office?" Medina (above right/AP photo) said during a campaign stop in Wichita Falls on Saturday, according to a story in the Wichita Falls Times-Record News. Medina said child abuse is a criminal offense and those agencies know the community and the law.

"It's a discussion that can be had," she said.

UPDATE: Medina spokeswoman clarifies candidate's position. See the jump.

State law requires joint investigations by CPS and local law enforcement when a child may be at "immediate risk of physical or sexual abuse" that "could result in the death of or serious harm to the child." But CPS on its own handles the more frequent cases of low-grade, if chronic, neglect or abuse -- physical or emotional -- of youngsters.

Last year, CPS' 8,600 employees looked into 253,000 tips to its child-abuse hotline. Of them, 63 percent were "priority 2," meaning not of the most criticially urgent type. CPS has 72 hours to respond to them.

Does Medina really want police officers and sheriff's deputies to have to handle all of the 159,000 cases a year that fall into that "priority 2" category?

"No, but we need to restructure CPS away from an overreaching statewide entity to something that operates primarily on the local level and is accountable to local citizens," said Medina spokeswoman Gwen Walton.

This isn't the first time Medina has criticized CPS. In late January, she blasted its handling of a child sexual abuse investigation in 2008 at an Eldorado ranch owned by a polygamist sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She said 400 children were removed, based on "a prank call." CPS disagreed, saying the call -- hoax or not -- prompted on-site investigation by CPS workers and their findings led to the removals. The Austin Statesman rated Medina's claim half true in this truth test.
 
trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com
Originally published Mon, Mar 01, 2010
 
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