SAN ANTONIO – Texas is making it easier for relatives to adopt children within their own families through a major overhaul of kinship adoption rules announced by Gov. Greg Abbott.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission is eliminating 195 requirements while maintaining 55 essential rules focused on child safety, a move aimed at streamlining the process for family members who are already caring for children in need of permanent homes.
“This is a very, very good thing. It’s always the goal to keep children within family,” said Bexar County Children’s Court Judge Charles Montemayor, who believes these changes are long overdue.
The streamlined regulations include several significant modifications:
Housing inspections will now focus primarily on health and safety concerns rather than administrative paperwork
Reduction in unnecessary training requirements for kinship foster parents
Simplified paperwork requirements for over-the-counter medications
“By the actions taken by the government, we can now work further with family members where we can put the children with family members they know, with an environment they’re familiar with,” Montemayor explained.
Currently, approximately 40% of youth in Texas foster care are placed with family members. State officials hope these regulatory changes will increase that percentage, providing more children with familiar and stable family environments.
Montemayor emphasizes the importance of timely placement with family members.
“We have to act in the best interest of the child for that child’s life not to be squandered,” said Montemayor. “And so, we work very hard to ensure that their childhood is preserved, and again, hopefully with family.”
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