We strive to protect the integrity of the parent child relationship against outside forces seeking to interfere with parental responsibility.
This includes reforming Child Protective Services to protect innocent families from traumatic investigations and removal of children. Since 2015, FFP’s team has been the leading architects of CPS reform in Texas, passing historic legislative CPS reforms in 2015, 2017, and 2021.
We have also been the vanguards in Austin watching for and blocking every attempt to subject Texas families to new and unnecessary intrusions by CPS into their lives and have brought national attention to the abuses of the CPS system through high-profile cases such as the Tutt family case and the Pardo family case.
In Texas, CPS is tasked with the incredibly important goal of protecting vulnerable children from abuse and neglect. However, because of nearly unrestrained power in the family courts and poor management, CPS has often become the source of trauma for many children, rather than their protector from trauma. By ensuring that CPS is focused on cases where children are actually in danger and by ensuring the minimum due process protections for families are built into the system, we can better protect Texas children and families from the trauma caused by unjust removals and also protect Texas children from the horrors of actual abuse and neglect.
However, defending the right of families to raise their children requires more than CPS reform. FFP’s team accomplishes this goal by protecting against the usurpation of parental rights from non-parents who may disagree with a parent’s legitimate religious, conscientious, or personal decisions regarding how to raise and train their child.
Parent’s have a fundamental, constitutional right to raise and make decisions for their children. A third party, or even a judge, who disagrees with that parent over their parenting style does not have the right to overrule the parent merely on the basis of that disagreement.
Sadly, many trial courts in Texas have forgotten this timeless truth.
A comprehensive study of appellate court cases in Texas by FFP’s team revealed that among all TX appellate opinions dealing with these constitutional rules between 2000-2019, appellate courts found that the trial courts had misapplied these rules and failed to protect parental rights 43% of the time. In mandamus opinions (an appellate review of a temporary order from the trial court), the rules had been misapplied 78% of the time.
These numbers show a systematic disregard for the constitutional rights of parents among lower courts in Texas, rights that have more than 100 year of clear protection under US Constitutional case law.