A state council that helps regulate behavioral health services and social work practice providers says it may need more support from the Texas Legislature to handle an influx of complaints.
The Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council, or BHEC, leadership said it has about 1,000 "pending" complaints — hundreds more than it received in past years. The top three complaints the BHEC receives are "standard of care violations, sexual misconduct and unlicensed practice," BHEC's executive director Darrel Spinks told the House Human Services Committee during a public hearing Tuesday.
"We are facing a pretty significant increase in the number of complaints we are receiving," Spinks said. "I will tell you from the get-go, we are not sure why."
BHEC oversees regulations of social work practice and behavioral health services within the state – including marriage and family therapy, psychology and counseling. Investigating and addressing complaints is a critical part of ensuring services are only being provided by "qualified and competent practitioners" that meet professional standards.
Spinks said the top three categories of complaints make up about half of the complaints the agency receives.
When state lawmakers asked for a breakdown of how many sexual misconduct complaints involved minors, Spinks said he wasn't sure if the agency's database tracks that information but said he might be able to provide the committee with a "good rough estimate."
Every year, Spinks said the workforce the agency oversees grows by about 5,000 licenses. He said the agency is doing what it can to increase and improve that workforce – but the complaints are posing a problem.
Spinks said it was "normal" for the council to receive about 600 complaints a year – until fiscal year 2025, when it received about 800. Now, he said BHEC expects to receive 1,000 complaints "in a given year."
"That is more than what we are used to carrying," Spinks said. "Really, we should not be carrying that many pending complaints, but the problem is you can only do so much with the 12 investigators and the six attorneys that we've got."
Spinks said BHEC expects to ask for more resources during the 2027 legislative session, mainly focused on hiring more attorneys.
"Candidly, the legal division is kind of where the bottleneck is," he said. "Because things get much slower when the lawyers have to start reviewing the file that the investigators have prepared."
Spinks said the agency also wants to mimic other state boards – like the state medical board – to address the high number of complaints.
The state medical board has a medical director and professional reviewers who help determine if complaints have any merit before it gets to the legal team.
"That's one of the things that we're going to be asking for," Spinks said, "so that, hopefully, we can keep frivolous complaints from clogging up the pipeline, if you will."
Abigail Ruhman is KERA's health reporter. Got a tip? Email Abigail at aruhman@kera.org.
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