AUSTIN, Texas — In a recent court brief, more than a dozen current and former employees of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services warned that continuing to abide by Gov. Greg Abbott's directive to treat gender-affirming medical care as potential child abuse would push the agency past "the brink of collapse."
According to a report from KVUE's news partners at the Austin American-Statesman, an "unprecedented" number of DFPS employees have quit since the directive was announced in February.
"For an agency already struggling, and often failing, to protect Texas children, the stakes are too high to ignore, according to the current and former employees, many of them supervisors and managers," wrote Chuck Lindell of the Statesman.
The report states that employees have already been stretched beyond their resources and are unable to fully help children in the system who are victims of abuse or neglect.
"The great mass of DFPS employees did not choose the child welfare profession to break up loving families who, with no ill motive, malice, or negligence toward their child, are simply following medical advice and administering medicine under a doctor’s supervision," the legal brief states.
Read the Statesman's full report here.
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