A four-day-old baby was taken from his mother and kept at the Bexar County Courthouse last month, before Child Protective Services or the District Attorney’s Office were involved in the case, records obtained by KSAT Investigates show.

Texas Department of Family and Protective Services says that educators are acting as the first line of defense against child abuse, with reports to the agency’s hotline rising each school year when students return to class.

San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones joined the 6 O’Clock News on Tuesday for the Q&A segment to discuss Project Marvel transparency and her plans to address the city’s budget deficit.

The Young Women’s Leadership Academy Primary has re-launched an investigation into reports of sexual assault, SAISD said Wednesday in a letter sent to parents.

New data from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services indicates a significant improvement in child welfare, with a 50% reduction in the number of children removed from their homes over the past two years.

When Valerie Tellez’s family ended up in the CPS system, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to say things would get better. But with recent legislation, Tellez was empowered to make changes that needed to be made in her home while keeping her 5-year-old son, Diego, by her side.

Years of work passing legislation aimed at saving children from abuse and fixing a broken foster care system is finally starting to pay off.

A vehicle struck and split a CPS utility pole in South San Antonio.

CPS Energy on Saturday hosted its 24th annual Kids Fish Day at Calaveras Lake.

A San Antonio mom says she was battling addiction when Texas CPS showed up at her door and took her daughter away. Less than a year later and a lot of work, the mom was reunited with her daughter, thanks to the Bexar County Early Childhood Court program.

To improve the safety of aging transmission lines, CPS Energy will implement new electric wires in the southeast area of San Antonio near US Highway 181 and Loop 410.

At the height of an ongoing dearth in transformers bottlenecking real estate development in San Antonio, CPS Energy found itself having to send back a portion of a shipment it received in January due to quality concerns.

A report revealing serious problems with the Texas CPS removal process is the basis of a new bill that was recently filed in the Legislature, which would require far more extensive training for CPS case workers.

This week, CPS is hosting a meeting asking for the San Antonio community’s input about the city’s future energy endeavors.

Terrence Harper has been sentenced to 99 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of injury to a child for the 2018 beating of his 4-month-old son Trace.

Nearly 20% of CPS Energy customers have overdue bills, and the total cost of outstanding charges has grown since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

A Child Protective Services case worker was forced to resign this summer, days after police in San Marcos found a juvenile runaway at her home.

CPS Energy wants community input on planning San Antonio’s energy future.

The Travis County Sheriff’s Office is asking for help locating a 17-year-old who ran away from CPS custody in San Antonio.

In 2001, then 5-year-old Nicholas Plaza disappeared. As his case unfolded, a series of lies and abuse were uncovered, Erica and Leigh dissect the details of the case many around San Antonio have never forgotten.

CPS energy has postponed a project in Southwest San Antonio due to severe weather concerns, the utility announced Sunday.

The newest report for child fatalities brings bitter sweet news for children in our state, 199 Texas children died in 2021, the number dropped when compared to previous years. The number of children who died by child abuse in Bexar County did not change from 13.

On the heels of two child deaths in San Antonio, allegedly from abuse, KSAT is taking a look at new laws passed last year that affect abuse and Child Protective Services cases.

Although this week’s strong cold front won’t be as extreme as last year's freeze, families should still prepare.

Although this year’s winter weather hasn’t been near as impactful as last year’s, San Antonio officials aren’t hesitating when it comes to preparedness.

A car crash in Helotes left three people with serious injuries and hundreds without electricity temporarily.

District 2 teams up with CPS Energy and host Utility Assistance Fair amid disconnections

A man accused of fatally shooting a pregnant woman in front of her two children in a San Antonio motel room has been formally charged with capital murder of multiple persons.

This episode examines how a state foster care system with 15,000 children is supposed to work, the ways it’s currently failing and what you can do to help.

A couple experiencing homelessness is hoping their good deed inspires people to help others in any circumstance. This comes after they spent 12 hours watching over three young children who San Antonio police say were abandoned by their mother.

Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 1578 into law last week, which focuses on situations where the child's injury might actually be a medical illness.

The law mandates CPS investigators to verbally remind people under investigation they have the right to record conversations and appeal investigation results.

Two weeks before a deadly winter storm hit San Antonio, killing a still untold number of people, CPS Energy had become ‘seriously past due’ on bills for its customized weather platform, records obtained by the KSAT 12 Defenders confirm.

A San Antonio mother accused of killing one of her children could have access to the other one if a local judge grants permanent custody to the father, according to an attorney representing the second child, who is 11 months old.

CPS customers are bracing themselves for the next financial brunt.

As a flurry of bills were being discussed at the Texas Legislature last week, even state representatives were forced to acknowledge our current foster care quandary: how do you continue to streamline and privatize the system while also increasing oversight of it?

Multiple representatives from CPS Energy have pushed back on the notion that they were ill-equipped to forecast storms. AdMoreno said last week the utility also uses public sources like the National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio and local newscasts. RELATED: CPS Energy faces $1 billion bill for winter weather power crisisA CPS Energy vehicle. (KSAT)DTN’s vice president of weather operations, Renny Vandewege, told the Defenders via telephone Friday CPS uses a customized version of the company’s weather platform, WeatherSentry. And while DTN employs a significant number of meteorologists, Vandewege did not know if communication between DTN and CPS increased as the storm approached Texas.

SAN ANTONIO – CPS Energy and its customers could be facing a $1 billion bill for February’s weather-related power crisis, though utility officials say they are doing what they can to protect customers. Gold-Williams said CPS would pursue regulatory assistance and help from elected officials to avoid customers shouldering that load. And then we will use every other tool in our toolbox to work to get this cost down,” Gold-Williams said. AdGold-Williams has previously said CPS would look to spread the cost to customers out over 10 years or more. AdTrustees also voted Monday to order an independent review of CPS’s preparedness, communication, and response regarding the power crisis.

San Antonio – Dozens of irate CPS Energy customers gave the utility’s top brass a piece of their minds during the first CPS Board of Trustees meeting since last week’s controlled outages. At the peak of the utility’s controlled outages strategy, there were about 372,000 customers without power. Among other complaints, they also criticized the utility’s forced outages that left some people without any power for multiple days. The amount CPS pays for fuel is typically rolled into customers’ bills over a 45 to 60-day period. “I do very much understand how customers don’t want to pay anything associated with the storm,” Gold-Williams said during the meeting.

CPS Energy CEO Paula Gold-Williams is scheduled to give a report on the “New Unprecedented Texas/San Antonio Energy Market Event” at the 1 p.m. Monday meeting. AdThe amount CPS pays for fuel is typically rolled into customers’ bills over a 45 to 60-day period, Gold-Williams told reporters on Friday. CPS officials have said that at the peak of the forced outages, which were meant to preserve the larger Texas power grid, there were about 372,000 CPS customers without power. Greg Abbott also held a phone conference with state leaders Saturday to discuss how the state could help reduce the burden of high energy bills following the power crisis. MEETING INFORMATIONThe CPS Energy Board of Trustees meeting will be held 1 p.m. Monday by telephone and live-streamed online.

KIRBY, Texas – EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated residents in the Kirby area hadn’t had power since Thursday. As snow came down again Thursday morning, most - but not all- CPS customers had their power restored. With the forced outage strategy CPS had been following to keep the Texas grid stable suspended, close to 99% of customers had power again. In an area near Binz-Engleman and Ackerman Roads in Kirby, a CPS outage map showed nearly 1,300 customers without power since Tuesday night - though several residents told KSAT they hadn’t had power since Tuesday morning. “We were yelling and screaming and saying, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’ We offered to go get them some coffee.

We need the electricity, but we need the water too, and there’s no way for us to dialyze,” Allen said. AdThe effects of the winter storm on the electrical grid this week have CPS Energy and other Texas energy providers overwhelmed. CPS Energy President and CEO Paula Gold-Williams said the energy supply during the winter storm couldn’t meet the demand. She said a third of the system would not be taking down as it’s a critical circuit. Concerns about SAWS pumps taken off the critical circuit have dialysis patients like Allen in distress with no access to water.

SAN ANTONIO – As Lea Ann Tinney shivered through a Monday without power inside her home in the Government Hill neighborhood, she consulted a CPS Energy power outage map that stated only six customers in her 78208 zip code were affected. Tinney then walked outside and counted at least five other homes that were without power at that very moment. Gold-Williams and a utility spokesman defended CPS’s response to the winter storm, pointing out that it was a significant weather event followed by a prolonged period of freezing temperatures. “CPS Energy is going to continue to analyze its performance, how we did, what else we could do, but there are just natural limitations to the system that normally works extremely well 360 days a year,” Gold-Williams said. A utility spokesman said Tuesday afternoon that it had advised customers to begin conserving energy usage as early as last Wednesday, ahead of the storm that hit Sunday night.

SAN ANTONIO – False stereotypes about foster kids being troubled or difficult are keeping children from the futures they deserve. As KSAT has reported, research shows it’s even harder for foster children of color. Hispanic, Black children wait longer to be adopted in Bexar County, experts sayThose stereotypes are even worse for foster children of color. To extinguish that fear, Keyes holds workshops every quarter with other churches, welfare organizations, foster kids, future foster families and advocates like Hernandez. “I want you to know, you’re going through so many placements, so many homes, so much right now.

SAN ANTONIO – Throughout the child welfare sector, experts say children of color have worse outcomes in the system when it comes to placement and adoption. Simmons, who sits on the Texas Advisory Committee on Promoting Adoption of Minority Children, said in Bexar County, Hispanic children wait the longest for adoption, followed closely by Black children. The extreme disparities have experts like Simmons reviewing parts of the system in desperate need of change. “Right now, the State of Texas has done a really great job of engaging with kinship programs reducing disparities for Black and Hispanic children,” Simmons said. Their adopted boys are Hispanic and Black, the two specific types of children that have historically and currently need adoption the most.

Since 1989, real estate agent Zenobia Coverson was a fairy godmother for children in the foster care system that she called “the forgotten children.”Throughout the year, Coverson would fill about 700 gift baskets and wrapped gifts for distribution to children in the CPS foster care program. CPS caseworker Mary Lou Rodriguez was there as the doors to The Forgotten Child storage unit were opened. Rodriguez was able to pick out gifts for children under her guidance. Eleanor Salazar, a CPS caseworker, said foster children generally don’t have high expectations for the holidays. CPS is looking for brand new gifts for children ages infant to older teenagers.

LEON VALLEY, Texas – A CPS Energy bucket truck that was stolen from a Leon Valley gas station on Bandera Road Friday morning has been recovered, CPS officials said. CPS Energy officials said the company is working closely with the San Antonio Police Department on the investigation.