The state of Texas contracts with private organizations to help place and supervise children in foster homes. Those contractors do more than process paperwork. They are part of the chain of responsibility that is supposed to make sure a child in state custody is safe, visited, seen and heard.
In September 2026, Texas auditors identified serious failures at two of those organizations. One, Ascension Child and Family Services, had inadequate financial records, weak oversight of expenditures and failures to carry out or document required monitoring of children in foster homes. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services terminated Ascension’s contract effective that month, citing noncompliance.
The other, Faith 2 Faith Foster Care and Adoption, had its own financial-process weaknesses and did not submit a required fiscal 2025 cost report. Although auditors said it conducted the required quarterly foster-home visits, it failed to consistently observe and document the full information mandated by state standards.
The findings appear in a September 22, 2026, report from the Texas State Auditor’s Office, On-site Financial Audits of Selected Residential Foster Care Contractors (Report 27-002). They place a basic question back before Texas taxpayers and families: Who checks the organizations paid to check on foster homes?
Contractors with public responsibilities
When a court places children in government custody, the state does not escape its responsibility by hiring an outside company to carry out part of the work. A foster-care contractor may be responsible for recruiting homes, supporting placements, monitoring conditions and documenting contacts. The activities can be divided among government agencies, private providers and individual foster parents, but a child’s need for a safe home is not divided.
That is why state standards require both reliable financial processes and ongoing foster-home monitoring. An agency that cannot show where its money went invites questions about whether the resources were used for the services intended. A provider that cannot show required visits or documentation invites a more urgent question: did anyone recognize when a child needed help?
The Texas auditor identified priority concerns in both categories for Ascension. Its recordkeeping was deficient, its expenditure oversight inadequate and its fiscal processes insufficiently standardized. The agency did not submit a required cost report for fiscal 2025. Auditors said its records could not demonstrate financial health or compliance with the Health and Human Services Commission’s minimum standards for child-placing agencies.
It also failed to consistently conduct visits with children in its foster homes or document all the information required by state standards. The published audit summary does not establish that every child assigned to Ascension went unvisited or that a particular child suffered harm because of a missed contact. It does establish that the contractor failed to meet a basic oversight obligation.
The distinction should not diminish the finding. In a foster-care system, monitoring is not a ceremonial exercise. Visiting a child, documenting observations and following up on concerns are among the few routine opportunities for someone outside the household to notice danger.
Financial records are a child-safety issue
Financial auditing can sound remote from the lived experience of a child placed away from home. It is not.
The state pays private contractors because it expects defined work to be performed and verifiable standards to be met. If the contractor has no adequate system to track expenditures, cannot produce required cost reports or lacks evidence that it remains financially sound, regulators have less ability to determine whether the organization can fulfill its responsibilities.
For Ascension, auditors described a significant lack of standardized financial processes, inadequate oversight of spending and operations, and missing evidence to demonstrate compliance. The agency’s contract termination is a consequential action, but it comes after problems severe enough to be documented in a state audit.
Texas families are routinely required to document their conduct, participation in services and progress toward court-ordered goals. The organizations funded to supervise their children should not receive a more forgiving standard for their own reporting obligations.
That does not mean every accounting error is fraud, and the state auditor’s summary should not be rewritten as a finding of intentional theft. The concern is about control: whether a contractor entrusted with children and public funding can prove it is functioning as required.
Visits that cannot be taken for granted
The monitoring findings are the most immediately concerning part of the Ascension audit. Auditors said the organization did not consistently visit children in its foster families’ care and did not consistently observe and document what the standards required.
There is a reason those standards exist. A child may be reluctant to report abuse in the presence of a caregiver. Young children may be unable to articulate what is happening. Some children in foster care have moved repeatedly, lost trust in adults, or learned that raising concerns does not always produce change.
The system’s answer is supposed to be independent contact, careful observation and an established mechanism to escalate risk. A visit is not proof a child is safe, but the absence of a visit or its documentation removes one layer of protection.
Texas has already endured a long-running federal lawsuit over its foster care system. In October 2026, state officials went to court asking to end federal monitoring, citing more than $320 million in reforms and oversight spending since 2019. Lawyers representing children argued important safety work remained unfinished. The Texas Tribune reported that court monitors had expressed significant concern about foster children being placed in homes with histories of abuse, neglect or exploitation.
The contractor audit is a separate report about specific agencies, not proof that those same homes appeared in the federal lawsuit’s findings. Yet both sets of records raise a common question: can Texas consistently identify and act on safety problems in the private network on which it relies?
A second contractor faced financial and monitoring weaknesses
The same state audit examined Faith 2 Faith Foster Care and Adoption. Its findings were not identical to Ascension’s.
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Auditors said Faith 2 Faith had inadequate financial processes, insufficient support for expenditures and noncompliance with cost reporting, audit and cash reserve requirements. These failings increased the risk that it would not operate on a sound financial basis.
On foster-home visits, the report gave Faith 2 Faith credit for conducting quarterly supervisory contacts as required. The weakness was in whether it consistently observed and documented all the required information during those visits.
This is an important reporting distinction. It would be inaccurate to tell readers Faith 2 Faith simply never visited children. The evidence points to inadequate completeness and consistency of monitoring, not an across-the-board failure to conduct visits.
The proper question for the agency is what corrected records and processes now demonstrate that children receive the oversight envisioned by the standards. If a visit occurs but required safety observations are omitted, the system still loses part of the information it needs to assess the placement.
Contract termination is not the end of the story
Ascension’s contract termination is one form of accountability, but it is not the entire answer. Ending a contract can prevent continued spending under a deficient arrangement. It does not, by itself, tell the public what happened to every child the contractor served, whether missed monitoring contacts were reconstructed, or whether problems were reported to licensing and child-protection authorities when warranted.
Before declaring the matter resolved, state leaders should be able to answer practical questions: How many children’s placements did Ascension oversee during the period in question? Which visits were missed or inadequately documented? Were any safety allegations involved? Who assumed responsibility for affected homes after termination? Were foster families notified of oversight changes? Were there any disruptions to needed services?
The available summary of the September audit does not answer all those questions. They are reporting leads, not established findings, and require the full audit, state records and responses from agencies to resolve.
The system’s obligation is continuity. A child’s safety plan should not become harder to follow because a contractor exits the market or a new agency takes over. If the public does not see how transitions are handled, the most consequential part of a termination—the effect on children—remains invisible.
Follow the money, but follow the child further
The audit also matters because it illustrates the limits of treating financial oversight and child safety as separate government functions.
State auditors examined fiscal processes and foster-home monitoring together. That combination makes sense. Public funding does not protect children simply by being allocated; the money must translate into actual visits, trained staff, appropriately monitored homes and documented responses to danger.
Texas’ broader reform debate has featured substantial spending figures. State leaders have pointed to millions devoted to staffing, training and federal monitors, while children’s lawyers have said court-ordered improvements remain incomplete. A figure on an appropriations sheet does not tell a parent whether their child was visited last month or whether a serious complaint was investigated.
An audit of individual contractors offers a smaller, more concrete measure. Did the organization keep reliable records? Could auditors verify expenditures? Did staff carry out required visits? Was the information needed to protect children recorded? In the cases reviewed, the answers were troubling enough to produce priority findings and a contract termination.
The existence of a private provider should never turn accountability into a game of referrals between agencies. If government has the authority to remove a child and then pays another organization to supervise that child’s placement, government remains answerable for the results.
What happens next
The September audit provides a basis for additional public scrutiny. The state should establish what corrective actions Faith 2 Faith completed, whether Ascension’s former placements received continuity-of-care reviews and whether the contractual standards and monitoring systems changed after the deficiencies were identified.
The strongest follow-up would include records showing not only that agencies revised policies, but that children were seen, foster homes were reassessed where necessary, required documentation was completed and deficiencies were independently verified as corrected.
Texas also needs to make these findings intelligible to families. A contractor’s quarterly financial report may be available to regulators, but parents often struggle to discover which organization actually supervises their child, who is responsible for a missed visit or where to file a complaint outside the agency’s own management structure.
Greater transparency should include the chain of responsibility: the individual worker, supervising agency, licensing regulator and state department ultimately accountable for the placement.
A higher standard for institutions taking care of other people’s children
There is an asymmetry at the heart of child welfare oversight. Parents can face invasive investigations and have their children removed based on alleged failures to supervise or maintain a safe environment. Meanwhile, contractors serving children in government care can operate behind layers of administration that make their own deficiencies difficult for the public to see.
The Texas audit does not prove criminal misconduct at Ascension or Faith 2 Faith, nor does it establish that every child in their network was unsafe. What it does show is that agencies paid to supervise foster placements had serious weaknesses in the very financial controls and monitoring systems meant to establish accountability.
One contractor lost its DFPS contract. The other was told its controls and documentation were inadequate. For families whose children were placed under those contractors’ oversight, the more important question is whether the lessons will outlast the audit.
State custody is a promise that children will be safer, not simply transferred. Texas cannot fulfill that promise without knowing who is watching the homes—and who is watching the watchers.
Key facts
- Audit: Texas State Auditor’s Office, Report 27-002, On-site Financial Audits of Selected Residential Foster Care Contractors, September 22, 2026.
- Ascension: Deficient financial records, missing required cost reporting, and inconsistent foster-home visits and documentation.
- State response: DFPS terminated Ascension’s contract effective September 2026, citing noncompliance.
- Faith 2 Faith: Financial weaknesses and incomplete monitoring documentation; auditors acknowledged required quarterly visits occurred.
- Context: Texas simultaneously sought an end to federal foster-care monitoring in separate litigation.
- Important distinction: The public audit summary establishes compliance failures, not criminal fraud or specific child injuries.
Sources and research trail
- Primary source: Texas State Auditor’s Office — Report 27-002, September 22, 2026.
- The Texas Tribune — More than $320M in foster care reforms and oversight, enough to end court monitoring, state tells court, October 20, 2026.
- The Texas Tribune — Texas seeks dismissal of 15-year-old foster care lawsuit, October 20, 2026.
- FAN — Foster Care System Problems — suggested related resource.
- FAN — Foster Care Research — suggested internal link; verify individual statistics before reusing.
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