Texas CPS refuses to remove homeschool parents from abuse registry after dismissing case

The Christian Post
Homeschool parents in Texas are still fighting to get their names removed from the state’s child abuse registry seven months after the state’s child protective services agency dismissed their case and returned their 4-year-old son.
Daniel and Ashley Pardo are appealing a decision last month by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to refuse their request for the agency to ensure that their names are removed from the Child Abuse and Neglect Registry.
The case against them began after a doctor reached out to DFPS with concerns that the parents were seeking unnecessary medical treatment for their son even though the doctor had never met the family in person.
The family’s advocacy team at the Texas Home School Coalitionarguedthat the DFPS failed to meet the legal requirements needed for an emergency removal and failed to inform the parents about the meeting in which they were punished for not attending.
Last December, the agency dropped its five-months long case against the family and a Kaufman County Judgesigned an order ending the agency’s case against the family.
But over half-a-year since the case’s dismissal, Ashley and Daniel Pardo still find themselves listed on the state’s child abuse registry.
According to Texas Home School Coalition Public Policy Director Jeremy Newman, the DFPS agency in late June denied a request from the family to change a determination they made in the family’s case file that is causing the parents to be named on the list.
According to Newman, being placed on the child abuse list can make it more difficult to find jobs, secure housing, and can prevent them from being able to do certain types of volunteer work.
“There are a couple of different ones they could put in there. The one that gets you on the registry is if they put in ‘reason to believe.’ It means that there is reason to believe that abuse or neglect took place. If they put that in your file, it automatically places you on the child abuse registry.”
According to DFPS, an individual might be included in the registry when an investigation results in dispositions of either “reason to believe” or “confirmed.”
“An individual will not clear the central registry check if that individual is an alleged perpetrator in an open child abuse or neglect investigation being conducted by DFPS,” reads anarticlein a background-check handbook produced by DFPS.
Newman said it’s common for DFPS to make such a determination against families and for families to challenge the determination once their case is over.
Alpha-Phonics Blog Editor Note: In the article you are reading we are not made aware of the underlying reasons why Drake Pardo was removed from his home. This other article better explains the reasons why Drake was removed from his home in the first place.
“It’s also pretty common for CPS to overturn that for families,” he said. “The interesting thing here is that cases end a lot of different ways. Very few cases ended the way that the Pardos’ case ended, where parties mutually agreed that the case should be over and CPS argued to the court that the case should be dismissed because they now felt comfortable with Drake being left at home with his parents and with them making joint medical decisions. But after that, the family still finds themselves on the abuse registry.”
According to THSC, DFPS has the sole authority to place families on the registry and does not need consent from a judge. The agency can do so regardless of whether a parent has been found guilty of abuse or neglect.

Last year, The Houston Chronicle/NBC News published a series of investigative articles highlighting a Texas “legal and medical system that sometimes struggles to differentiate accidental injuries from abuse.”
The news outlets analyzed 40 cases in Texas and interviewed 75 attorneys, doctors as well as two dozen current and former CPS employees.
“Under this system, children are sometimes taken from seemingly caring parents, while others are left in situations that, in rare cases, turn out to be deadly,” an NBC News report from September 2019reads. “Parents managed to regain custody in most of the cases reviewed by reporters, in some instances after additional medical findings or reports from outside experts raised doubts about the initial abuse determination.”
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