AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ Texas Child Protective Services is sending investigators to the Austin and Midland-Odessa areas to help those offices work through backlogs of cases created by understaffing.
Officials say staff shortages in the investigative branches of CPS have been problems in both regions since the fall.
CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins tells The Dallas Morning News that even after the help from other regions, there remain about 1,000 cases in Travis County that have gone at least six months without being investigated. The number in the Midland-Odessa area is about 500.
But Crimmins says that in the two labor-shortage areas, all “priority one” allegations of child maltreatment that must be investigated within 24 hours “are cleared out.”
Crimmins says the agency has redoubled efforts to hire and retain workers.
(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)