When the 1975 Child Welfare Licensing Act passed in Texas, child-serving agencies were divided. The Act empowered the state’s Human Resources Department to issue licenses and enforce the minimum standards. Some were glad to see the State getting involved with the professionalization of the field and more uniformity across operations when it came to health and safety. Although the act didn’t empower the state to implement programming changes, some providers saw this as the beginning of the end for the separation of church and state.
In 1977 during the 65th Texas Legislature, Representative Kenneth Vaughan introduced House Bill 900. It offered faith-based operations a way out.
There was huge support for the bill.
HB 900 and its Senate companion proposed to exempt religious organizations from the Child Care Licensing Act. And it would have given them the option to accept licensing if they wished. Because the Act wouldn’t exempt these organizations from all state and local regulations, it also said that the Department could investigate violations to the Standards and report them to the local authority.
In their first full legislative session as an organization, the members of Texas Alliance of Licensed Children’s Services (TALCS) were already faced with a political fight. With a mixture of member-types opposing the bill, the network felt the bill opened children and youth in care up to lower standards or sufficient protection without the regulations that come with licensure.
Raising the Standards
In a 1977 TALCS executive committee meeting, Dean Davis, retained legal counsel for the association at the time, said that the struggle over House Bill 900 established the influence of the association in the state. It “demonstrated that TALCS has many friends in the legislature.”
The association sent five members to speak in the House Committee on Health and Welfare and several more to the Committee on State Affairs to oppose the bill.
In addition to a hope of maintaining Old Testament discipline methods, many providers who spoke in support of the bill were most concerned about the costs associated with operating under the regulations required to obtain and maintain licensure (such as training for staff, record keeping, changes to their facilities, etc.). But these concerns were shared by the TALCS members who, religious or not, had the same financial models and faced the same standards.
The bill eeked out of the House with a narrow majority after several amendments but lingered and wilted in the Senate State Affairs Committee. The 65th Session was an achievement for the Association. It represented an opportunity to take a stance on a high standard of care for children and youth entering a system with a limited format. The session was also the association’s first as a unified voice of likeminded providers.
Today, TACFS utilizes a non-adversarial approach to legislative advocacy. We work cooperatively to support and refine legislation that promotes our collective work.
Terry Marcus Henry, Comment, Church-State Conflict under the Texas Child Care Licensing Act: A TenYear History, 39 SW L.J. 1049 (1986) https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol39/iss5/5
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