Bill Text: CA SB1091 | 2021-2022 | Regular Session | Amended
Bill Title: Family finding and engagement.
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 1-0)
Status: (Engrossed - Dead) 2022-07-29 - August 3 set for first hearing canceled at the request of author. [SB1091 Detail]
Download: California-2021-SB1091-Amended.html
|
Amended
IN
Senate
March 21, 2022 |
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE—
2021–2022 REGULAR SESSION
Senate Bill
No. 1091
| Introduced by Senator Hurtado |
February 16, 2022 |
An act to add Section 309.5 16002.7 to the Welfare and Institutions Code, relating to juveniles.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
SB 1091, as amended, Hurtado.
Family finding and engagement.
Existing law requires the State Department of Social services to allocate certain funds through contracts with community-based providers or entities or through local assistance allocations to counties or Indian tribes that support new or expanded programs, services, practices, and training that builds system capacity and ensures the provision of a high-quality continuum of care that is designed to support foster children in the least restrictive setting that is consistent with a child’s permanency plan. Existing law requires recipients of those funds to use the funds for specified purposes, one of which may be building system capacity for intensive, child-specific recruitment, family finding and engagement, and support programs for children with complex needs.
This bill would specify that funds appropriated by the Legislature for the purposes
of the bill shall be available to fund family finding and engagement techniques to find permanent families and relationship for foster children. The bill would require the department to use those funds to fund contracts with community-based organizations or entities, provide local assistance allocations to counties and Indian tribes, or both, to support new or expanded family finding and engagement programs. The bill would require entities receiving these funds to collect data to track outcomes and show the impact of family finding and engagement. The bill would also require the department to convene a collaborative leadership team to develop certain recommendations relating to family finding and engagement.
Digest Key
Vote: MAJORITY Appropriation: NO Fiscal Committee: YES Local Program: NOBill Text
The people of the State of California do enact as follows:
SECTION 1.
Section 16002.7 is added to the Welfare and Institutions Code, to read:16002.7.
(a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(1) According to the State Department of Social Services, there are 12,237 foster children under 17 years of age who have been in out-of-home foster care for 24 months or longer, who are not living with a relative, for whom reunification is no longer the case plan, and who have not been placed with a family who is in the process of adopting them or assuming guardianship over them.
(2) Data from the California Child Welfare Indicators Project shows
that in October 2021, the total number of all children in foster care for 24 months or longer, including foster children 18 years of age and older and foster children living with relatives, was 27,475, or 46 percent of all children in foster care.
(3) A significant amount of research has documented the overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minority populations in the child welfare system when compared with their representation in the general population.
(4) Children of color are more likely to experience multiple placements, less likely to be reunited with their birth families, more likely to experience group care, less likely to establish a permanent placement, and more likely to experience poor social, behavioral, and educational outcomes.
(5) Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ+) young people are overrepresented in foster care, where they are more likely to experience discrimination, abuse, neglect, and the risk of harm. A 2019 study found that 30.4 percent of
children in foster care identify as LGBTQ+ and 5 percent identify as transgender and according to the study, LGBTQ+ children are more likely to suffer from consistent harassment and abuse in foster care.
(6) The intersection between race and sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression (SOGIE) exacerbates the lack of permanency and the disproportionate representation of these two populations. Family finding and engagement is necessary to offset the historical and ongoing negative experiences of children of color and children who identify as LGBTQ+ and to find permanent families and relationships and to prioritize, as soon as possible, these efforts, especially for those who are in foster care for longer than 24 months.
(7) Research shows that family
finding and engagement is important because it does all of the following:
(A) Reduces the number of children experiencing maltreatment while in care and after exiting care.
(B) Reduces the length of stay in foster care.
(C) Increases the number of children in less-restrictive placement settings and placement with siblings.
(D) Increases the number of children with permanent, legal placements with family members.
(E) Increases the number of children with meaningful, enduring relationships with family that will support them throughout their life.
(b) Funds appropriated by the Legislature for the purpose of this section shall be available to fund family finding and engagement techniques to find permanent families and relationships for foster children, focusing on those foster children under 17 years of age who have been in out-of-home foster care for 24 months or longer, who are not living with a relative, for whom reunification is no longer the case plan, and who have not been placed with a family who is in the process of adopting them or assuming guardianship over them.
(c) The State Department of Social Services shall use the funds described in subdivision (b) to fund contracts with community-based organizations or entities, to provide local assistance allocations to counties and Indian tribes, or both, to support new or expanded family finding and engagement programs. Funding
provided pursuant to this section shall be used to supplement, expand, or create new family finding and engagement programs and shall not be used to supplant existing funding for family finding and engagement programs.
(d) The funds described in this section may be used for, but are not limited to being used for, any of the following activities:
(1) Training on how to perform family finding and engagement tasks.
(2) Identifying and locating all grandparents, parents of a sibling of the child if the parent has legal custody of the sibling, adult siblings, adult relatives, suggested relatives, and supportive adults.
(3) Exploring relationships from the child’s past by
reviewing case notes and court records from all counties where the child has been placed in out-of-home care.
(4) Asking the child in an age-appropriate manner about family, consistent with the child’s best interest.
(5) Anytime reunification services have ended for the child’s parent, reconsidering developing a relationship with a parent who was previously unable to care for the child.
(6) Developing a network of people committed to supporting the child indefinitely, regardless of whether or not the child is in an out-of-home placement, and determining who will be the primary sources of guidance, parental love, and lifelong support.
(7) Using internet and
social media tools to engage in family finding and engagement.
(8) Enabling the social worker, child, or both, to call, email, and visit identified family.
(9) Engaging family, including by assisting the social worker, child, or both, to travel to identified family or information sources and attend family reunions.
(10) Creating genograms for each child that present a picture of the child’s family relationships and history.
(11) Using a private investigator to locate family, as needed.
(12) Creating an engagement strategy for each person who has been identified through family finding and engagement
activities and preparing the child and identified family about expectations from the relationship.
(13) Engaging the child and family team in family finding and engagement.
(14) Using a strengths-based approach to engage family in a problem-solving process to assist families in organizing their collective resources to care for and support a child, including, but not limited to, by developing safety plans, providing babysitting, providing transportation, and assisting the child to engage in recreational activities.
(15) Helping the child with unresolved grief and loss.
(16) Preparing the child for adoption, guardianship, reunification, or permanent
relationships by focusing on meeting their mental health, physical health, and educational needs and ensuring that they have safe peer and adult relationships.
(17) Preparing the family for the child to be placed with them, which may include assessing the family’s need for housing, including the family’s need to move to a larger dwelling, beds, clothes, furniture, and rent.
(18) Providing discretionary funds to cover unexpected costs or costs that are not covered by mental health or child welfare funds.
(19) Therapeutic interventions to aid in healing the child’s family relationships to ameliorate the child’s isolation and disconnection.
(20) Ensuring
that the child has consistent love and support from the people they care about and who care about them.
(e) The department shall require entities receiving funds described in this section to collect data to track outcomes and show the impact of family finding and engagement on the lives of children and families.
(f) The department shall convene a collaborative leadership team to make recommendations to ensure that new family finding and engagement programs and best practices for those programs are utilized in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems and to ensure that obstacles are addressed and removed within each system and between systems. The leadership team shall include, but not be limited to, representatives from all of the following groups:
(1) County child welfare and county probation departments.
(2) Judges and attorneys representing children under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court.
(3) Current and former foster children.
(4) Community-based organizations that provide foster care, adoption, and mental health services.
(5) Permanency experts.
(6) Parents who have successfully reunified with a child.
(7) Relatives, guardians, resource parents, adoptive parents, and advocacy organizations.
(g) For the purposes of this section, “family” means a relative, family member, or any other adult that is important to the child.
