15 foster kids taken out of homes

Removal comes after sweep of residences once managed by Mesa

Robert T. Garrett

Dallas Morning News

A state sweep of foster homes managed by a now-closed private agency has resulted in the removal of 15 children from eight of the homes, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said Friday.

Patrick Crimmins said he could not provide the homes' locations or detail why the children needed to be removed. He did say that state foster care standards had been violated in the eight homes.

Also Online Police: Foster mom delayed helping girl All the homes were recruited by Harker Heights-based Mesa Family Services Inc., which placed children on a contract with the state. Three children have suffered violent deaths in former Mesa homes since August 2005 – including 6-year-old Katherine Frances last month in DeSoto.

About 250 children still live in 126 former Mesa homes. Mesa relinquished its child-placing license last year after coming under state scrutiny.

Mr. Crimmins said Child Protective Services and Child Care Licensing officials who recently visited all of the homes had other worries about the children they removed.

State workers cited "concerns about family dynamics – for example, the relationships between foster children and biological children" in the homes from which children were removed, he said. Some homes were in poor physical condition, he said.

The department's investigators have urged Austin-based Therapeutic Family Life, which last fall took over almost all of the former Mesa homes, to close 12 of them, Mr. Crimmins said. The reasons include unspecified violation of minimum standards, major financial problems and lack of cooperation with state officials, he said.

The state has completed about two-thirds of the national criminal background checks it promised to conduct on each of the 390 people 14 years old and older who live in former Mesa foster homes.

"We have results back on 248 of those individuals, and ... there are 17 convictions on 13 individuals," Mr. Crimmins said.

Two foster parents had been convicted of carrying a weapon. Other past crimes included theft, drunken driving, disorderly conduct and marijuana possession.

E-mail rtgarrett@dallasnews.com