Attorneys of Hoelscher Gebbia Cepeda PLLC walking

A Child’s Rights: What Is the Role of Child Protective Services in Texas?

04/04/19

What Is the Role of Child Protective Services?

Are you considering calling child protective services — or have they been investigating you? What is the role of CPS? We help you understand CPS better here.

Keyword(s): child protective services

The reputation of CPS rarely lines up with reality.

If Hollywood is to be believed, Child Protective Services falls into one of two camps:

Either they ride in ready to save the day for neglected and abused children, throwing off snappy one-liners as they bring abusers to justice. Or, they are heartless bearecrats, running an ineffective operation that does more harm than good.

And depending on which side of CPS you find yourself, you may fully agree with one of the two.

The truth is more muddled.

And if you’ve never dealt with CPS personally, you may be getting all your information via rumor and anecdote, which can lead to all kinds of confusion.

So what exactly is CPS? What is the role they play in the justice system? And what can you expect from them if you are involved in an investigation? Let’s take a look.

What are Child Protective Serives?

Child Protective Services at the most basic, is a simple government agency. They are typically integrated at least partically into the Department of Families and Children or the Department of Health and Human Services.

CPS is a state department, funded by state taxes, and overseen by state statutes. This means that laws and ordinances vary state to state. So expereinces with child protecticve services in Kansas do not necessariily transfer to the experience in Texas.

What is the Role of CPS in Texas? (501)

The promary role of CPS is to protect children.

In a perfect world, caregivers would always provdide care to their children with love and warmth. Unfortunatly, we live in a world rife with issues that contribute heavily to child abuse and neglect.

Teh job of CPS is to ensure that all children are well taken care of in their home environments, and to intervene if they are not.

What Do CPS Workers Do?

The job of a CPS employee is complex and multi-faceted.

When we think of a CPS worker, the image in most peoples minds is of a social worker.

Social workers are specially trained in issues that affect family units and communties. This expertise allows them to work with families to resolve issues that may have led to family seperation.

Which leads to the question of what exactly

When are Child Protective Serives Called? (668)

What to Expect from a CPS Investigation (835)

Conclusion (1000)