Is CPS Adequately Staffed?

I recently read an article entitled “State agency doesn’t have enough workers to protect abused kids” written by the Editorial Board from the Austin American Statesman published Saturday, September 22, 2012. The source being the Austin American Statesman is known to be a credible source for information and news. This article was from the opinion section of the news stories, so that fact may drop its credibility slightly. Generally it means the story is just that, an opinion of the author. The author has to keep the reader’s attention by showing how negligent the state has been in other counties as well. This may have the effect of making the problem appear worse than it truly is.

The intended audience is the “layman” or similar families that are being over looked. It is focused on the regular people that care about children and their welfare.

The argument was well thought out and has strong supporting evidence to back up its claim of the state not having enough workers. The basic argument is that the state Child Protective Service Agency also known as CPS “doesn’t have enough workers to protect abused kids.” The assumption that the argument relies on is that the audience is aware of what CPS actually does in these delinquent cases. There is a brief description given but there is obvious background information that we, the public, are not aware of. The author may have withheld the information to show the CPS as being capable of doing this tedious job but it’s actually more involved than we, the audience, are currently aware of.

The values this article holds are children and family. The author deems these values as important and expects the local government to take care of these two groups. These important terms are very clear and precise for the audience to grab ahold of. The author was smart to make these terms precise and to the point, leading the audience to become locked into the article because it keeps them persuaded. It is an interesting topic, mainly because the general public has similar values when it comes to protecting abused children.

The argument is supported with hard facts that CPS has a huge “backlog” of delinquent cases. The author successfully gives the audience evidence of why the title is legit and doesn’t leave much room to question the claim’s authenticity. These facts and evidence can be verified by researching CPS cases. The author also used a quote from a spokesman for CPS to get the support on what is considered a “delinquent case.” The author does a good job to cover all the bases to the claim.

The argument is successful because it convinced me that the state of Texas really doesn’t have adequate staff for handling the many delinquent cases the CPS office currently has. It changed my mind because I believed that such an agency as the CPS would be fully and competently staffed due to their type of work involving abused children. Accepting this argument doesn’t change my current beliefs, it only confirms my belief that there are children in this state that need help. This made a huge difference on my understanding of the way the political world works. I generally believed that the state and its local government would want to go above and beyond making sure they are staffed and prepared for the children we, as a community, must protect. Children are our future and we must do all we can to keep them safe.