BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SB 557
Page 1
Date of Hearing: June 28, 2011
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON JUDICIARY
Mike Feuer, Chair
SB 557 (Kehoe) - As Amended: June 15, 2011
PROPOSED CONSENT (As Proposed to be Amended)
SENATE VOTE : 39-0
SUBJECT : FAMILY JUSTICE CENTERS
KEY ISSUE : IN ORDER TO BETTER HELP VICTIMS OF ABUSE, SHOULD A
PRIVATELY FUNDED, TWO-YEAR STUDY BE MADE OF FOUR FAMILY JUSTICE
CENTERS IN CALIFORNIA?
FISCAL EFFECT : As currently in print this bill is keyed
non-fiscal.
SYNOPSIS
The Family Justice Center (FJC) model, first developed in
California in 2002 in San Diego, establishes a coordinated,
single-point-of-access center offering comprehensive services
for victims of domestic violence, thereby reducing the number of
locations a victim must visit in order to receive critical
services and improving access to those services. This bill,
sponsored by the National Family Justice Center Alliance,
authorizes, until January 1, 2014, the creation and evaluation
of four FJCs to assist victims of domestic violence, sexual
assault, stalking, cyberstalking, cyberbullying, human
trafficking, and elder or dependent adult abuse. The required,
independent evaluation is due to the Legislature by January 1,
2013.
To address concerns that had been raised about confidentiality
of information and privacy protection, this bill includes a
number of provisions requiring informed consent, limiting the
sharing of information between FJC partner organizations and
requiring proper training of all FJC staff and volunteers. As a
result of these amendments, there is no longer any opposition to
this bill, as proposed to be amended. This bill unanimously
passed the Assembly Public Safety Committee last week.
SUMMARY : Authorizes, until January 1, 2014, the creation and
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evaluation of four FJCs to assist victims of domestic violence,
sexual assault, stalking, cyberstalking, cyberbullying, human
trafficking, and elder or dependent adult abuse. Specifically,
this bill :
1)Allows, until January 1, 2014, the cities of San Diego and
Anaheim, and the counties of Alameda and Sonoma to establish
multi-agency, multi-disciplinary FJCs to assist victims of
domestic violence, officer-involved domestic violence, sexual
assault, elder or dependent adult abuse, stalking,
cyberstalking, cyberbullying, or human trafficking, as defined
and depending on the availability of services, to ensure
victims of abuse are able to access all needed services in one
location in order to enhance victim safety, increase offender
accountability and improve services to victims.
2)Defines a "family justice center" as a multi-agency,
multi-disciplinary service center where public and private
agencies assign staff members to provide services to victims
of crime from one location in order to reduce the number of
times victims must tell their story, reduce the number of
places victims must go to for help, and increase access to
services and support for victims and their children. Provides
that staff members may be either full-time or part-time and
may be comprised of, but are not limited to, the following:
a) Law enforcement personnel;
b) Medical personnel;
c) Victim-witness program personnel;
d) Domestic violence shelter staff;
e) Community-based rape crisis, domestic violence, and
human trafficking advocates;
f) Staff from social service agencies, child welfare
agencies and county health departments;
g) City or county welfare and public assistance workers;
h) Nonprofit agency counseling professionals;
i) Civil legal service providers;
j) Supervised volunteers from partner agencies; and
aa) Other professionals providing services
3)Provides that victims of crime shall not be required to
participate in the criminal justice system or cooperate with
law enforcement in order to receive counseling, medical care,
or other services at a FJC.
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4)Provides that victims of crime shall not be denied services on
the grounds of criminal history. Provides that no criminal
history search shall be conducted of a victim at a FJC without
the victim's written consent, unless the criminal history
search is pursuant to an active criminal investigation.
5)Requires each FJC to consult with domestic violence, sexual
assault, elder or dependent adult abuse, stalking,
cyberstalking, cyberbullying, and human trafficking agencies
in partnership with survivors of violence and abuse and their
advocates, in the operations process of the FJC, and to
establish procedures for the ongoing input, feedback, and
evaluation of the FJC by survivors of violence and abuse and
community-based crime victim service providers and advocates.
6)Requires each FJC to develop policies and procedures, in
collaboration with crime victim service providers and
survivors of violence or abuse, to ensure coordinated services
are provided to victims and to enhance the safety of victims
and professionals at a FJC who participate in affiliated
survivor-centered support or advocacy groups. Requires each
FJC to maintain a formal client feedback, complaint, and input
process to address client concerns about services provided or
the conduct of any FJC professionals, agency partners, or
volunteers providing services in a FJC.
7)Requires each FJC to maintain an informed client consent
policy that must be in compliance with all state and federal
laws protecting confidentiality, as provided. Provides that
at no time shall a victim be required to sign a client consent
form to share information in order to access services.
Requires each FJC to inform the victim that information shared
with FJC staff may be shared with law enforcement, as
provided, and requires each FJC to obtain a written
acknowledgment that the victim has been informed of this
policy. Provides that information obtained from victims in
FJCs is privileged and confidential to the extent it is
protected under state law. States that a victim's consent to
share information pursuant to a consent policy shall not be
construed as a waiver of confidentiality or any privilege held
by the victim or FJC professionals.
8)Requires the National Family Justice Center Alliance, with
private funds, to contract with an independent organization to
conduct an evaluation and prepare a report on the four pilot
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centers. Requires the independent organization conducting the
evaluation to submit the report first to the Office of Privacy
Protection and the National Family Justice Center Alliance for
review and comment, and then, by January 1, 2013, to the
Assembly and Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committees.
Allows the National Family Justice Center Alliance to include
any recommendations for statewide legislation, best practices,
and model policies and procedures in the comments submitted to
the independent evaluation organization and the Legislature.
Requires the independent organization to consult with
specified groups in developing evaluation criteria, which
shall include, but not be limited to:
a) The number of clients served, number of children served,
reasons for seeking services at the FJC, services utilized,
and number of returning clients;
b) Filing, conviction, and dismissal rates for misdemeanor
and felony criminal cases handled at the FJC;
c) Subjective and objective measurements of the impacts of
co-located multi-agency services for victims and their
children related to safety, empowerment, and mental and
emotional well-being and comparison data from victims, if
any, on their access to services outside the FJC model;
d) Barriers, if any, to receiving needed services including
access to services based on immigration status, criminal
history, or substance abuse/mental health issues and
potential ways to mitigate any identified hurdles to
accessing needed services;
e) Whether privacy, immigration status, or other barriers
prevented victims from utilizing a FJC and, if so,
recommendations to improve utilization rates;
f) Compliance by the four pilot FJCs, with the service
delivery requirements set forth in #s 3-7, above; and
g) Recommended best practices and model protocols, if any.
9)Requires each FJC to maintain a formal training program with
mandatory training for all staff members, volunteers, and
agency professionals of not less than eight hours per year on
subjects including, but not limited to, privileges and
confidentiality, information sharing, risk assessment, safety
planning, victim advocacy and high-risk case response.
10)Establishes a sunset date of January 1, 2014.
EXISTING LAW :
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1) Declares, under the California Constitution, that the
right to privacy is an inalienable right. (California
Constitution, Article I, Section 1.)
2) Requires, under the federal Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act of 1996, that medical information be
kept confidential unless authorized by the patient. Allows
for disclosure to law enforcement personnel for specified
purposes. (Pub. Law 104-191; 45 CFR 160, 164.)
3) Provides for the establishment of community-based
domestic violence victim shelters and services. (Welfare &
Institutions Code Sections 18290-18309.5.)
4) Provides that a victim has a privilege to refuse to
disclose, and to prevent another from disclosing, a
confidential communication between the victim and a sexual
assault counselor, a domestic violence counselor or a human
trafficking caseworker. (Evidence Code Section 1035 et seq.)
5) Provides for the California Emergency Management Agency
to provide grants to proposed and existing child sexual
exploitation and child sexual abuse victim counseling centers
and prevention programs, including programs for minor victims
of human trafficking. (Penal Code Section 13837.)
6) Provides that child protective services agencies, law
enforcement, prosecution, child abuse and domestic violence
experts, and community-based organizations serving abused
children and victims of domestic violence shall develop, in
collaboration with one another, protocols as to how law
enforcement and child welfare agencies will cooperate in their
response to incidents of domestic violence in homes in which a
child resides. (Penal Code Section 13732.)
7) Authorizes a program for interagency domestic violence
death review teams. Allows each organization to share with
other members of the team information in its possession
concerning the victim. States that any information shared by
an organization with other members of a team is confidential,
but permits the disclosure to members of the team of any
information deemed confidential, privileged or prohibited from
disclosure by any other statute, as specified. (Penal Code
Section 11163.3.)
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8) Allows the Attorney General to work with various agencies
and groups to develop a protocol for the development and
implementation of interagency domestic violence death review
teams for use by counties, which shall include relevant
procedures for both urban and rural counties. (Penal Code
Section 11163.5.)
9) Authorizes the Department of Justice, with the
cooperation of specified organizations and agencies, to
coordinate and integrate state and local efforts to address
fatal child abuse and neglect, and to create a body of
information to prevent child abuse. (Penal Code Section
11174.34.)
COMMENTS : The FJC model was originally developed in San Diego,
which opened a center in 2002. The idea behind the FJC model is
to create a coordinated, single-point-of-access center offering
comprehensive services for victims of domestic violence, thereby
reducing the number of locations a victim must visit in order to
receive critical services. The United States Department of
Justice, through its Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), has
identified the FJC model as a best practice in the field of
domestic violence. According to the OVW, documented and public
FJC outcomes include a reduction in the rate of homicide;
increased victim safety; improved offender prosecution; reduced
fear and anxiety for victims and their children; increased
efficiency among service providers through the provision of
collaborative victims; and increased community support for the
provision of services to victims and their children. (Casey
Gwinn and Gael Strack, Hope for Hurting Families: Creating
Family Justice Centers Across America, Volcano Press, 2006.)
There are currently fifteen FJCs in California and over seventy
centers in the United States.
This bill, sponsored by the National Family Justice Center
Alliance, authorizes, until January 1, 2014, the creation and
evaluation of four FJCs to assist victims of domestic violence,
sexual assault, stalking, cyberstalking, cyberbullying, human
trafficking, and elder or dependent adult abuse.
In support of the bill, the author writes:
Family Justice Centers have been identified as a "best
practice" by the U.S. Department of Justice and involved
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collaboration among public and private, non-profit agencies
providing intervention and prevention services to address
domestic violence, sexual assault, and other forms of abuse.
While the composition of Centers vary by community, the
general concept of providing all the services for victims
under one roof has been identified as an effective approach to
increase safety and offender accountability by avoiding the
need for victims to travel from agency to agency, telling
their story over and over in order to receive help. There now
have fifteen such Centers in California and fifteen more in
early stages of planning. The Family Justice Center Alliance
is the umbrella organization for Family Justice Centers in
California and around the United States and gathers
non-identifying, aggregate data from existing Centers to
document outcomes and impacts of this multi-disciplinary
model. In order to ensure that victims receive the same level
of service and privacy protections, there need to be statewide
standards for the Family Justice Center model.
Independent Evaluation to be Done of Four FJCs : FJCs offer
victims of crime, generally domestic violence victims, a single
place to turn to for help. While FJCs have existed in
California for nearly a decade and are expanding throughout the
state, there has yet to be a comprehensive study on their
operations. This bill remedies the lack of information by
requiring that the National Family Justice Center Alliance, with
private funds, contract with an independent organization to
conduct an evaluation and prepare a report on FJCs in San Diego
and Anaheim, as well as in Alameda and Sonoma Counties. In
order to ensure that the study is comprehensive, the bill
requires the evaluator to consult with the four FJCs, the
National Family Justice Center Alliance, victims group,
community-based crime victim service provider representatives,
including one person recommended by the federally recognized
state domestic violence coalition, privacy rights organizations
and other relevant stakeholders in developing evaluation
criteria.
The bill sets out some of the criteria that must be evaluated,
including specified outcome measures, such as clients served and
conviction and dismissal rates; and subjective and objective
measurements on the impacts of co-located services for victims
related to safety, empowerment, and well-being, as well as
comparison data from victims on their access to services outside
the FJC model. The bill also requires an evaluation of the
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barriers, if any, to receiving needed services, based on
immigration status, criminal history, substance abuse/mental
health issues or privacy concerns, and ways to mitigate such
barriers. Finally, the evaluator is to review compliance of the
FJCs with required confidentiality and privacy standards,
discussed below.
The evaluation report is to be submitted to the Office of
Privacy Protection and the National Family Justice Center
Alliance for review and comment, and then, by January 1, 2013,
to the Assembly and Senate Judiciary and Public Safety
Committees. Both the evaluator and the bill's sponsor, the
National Family Justice Center Alliance, may include any
recommendations, best practices and model protocols in the
materials submitted to the Legislature.
Pilot FJCs May Offer Services to a Broad Range of Victims : FJCs
have traditionally provided services to victims of domestic
violence. This bill expands the potential victims served by
allowing, but not requiring, the four pilot FJCs to offer
assistance to victims of sexual assault, elder or dependent
adult abuse, stalking, cyberstalking, cyberbullying, and human
trafficking, in addition to domestic violence. It will be
helpful to learn whether any of the pilot FJCs afforded services
to this broad range of victim groups and, if so, what were the
utilization rates by the various groups.
Confidentiality and Privacy Concerns Addressed in Latest
Amendments to the Bill : This bill allows for some sharing of
crime victims' information with and by staff members and other
FJC professionals. Victims of sexual assault and other victims
of crime serviced by FJCs will often provide personal health
information or undergo counseling or medical examinations which
would fall under medical privacy laws and privilege laws.
California law provides that confidential communications between
victims and sexual assault counselors, domestic violence
counselors, and human trafficking caseworkers are privileged
communications that may be disclosed upon consent by the victim,
or under circumstances where a court orders disclosure of
information as relevant evidence for a related criminal
proceeding if the court determines that the probative value
outweighs the effect on the victim, the counseling relationship
and the counseling services. (Evidence Code Section 1035 et
seq.)
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Under the federal Health Insurance Portability Act of 1996
(HIPAA) medical records and other personal health information
are confidential, subject to specified exceptions and
procedures. (Pub. Law 104-191; 45 CFR Pts. 160, 164.) Under
HIPAA, covered entities may disclose protected health
information to law enforcement officials for specified law
enforcement purposes, such as court orders, to identify suspects
or witnesses, to find missing persons, information about a crime
victim, notice of death and related matters.
As this bill has worked its way through the Legislature, various
groups have raised concerns about the confidentiality of
information shared with FJC partners, particularly the criminal
justice partners. To address those concerns, the bill contains
a number of provisions designed to both safeguard information
and ensure that victims using the FJC understand how information
may be shared between FJC member staff. Under this bill, as
proposed to be amended, each FJC must maintain an informed
client consent policy that is in compliance with all state and
federal laws protecting the victim's confidentiality, and
develop privacy policies and procedures consistent with state
and federal privacy laws and the Fair Information Practice
Principals.
Each FJC must also inform victims that information shared with
staff members at a FJC may, under limited circumstances, be
shared with law enforcement professionals and must obtain
written acknowledgment that the victims have been informed of
this policy. The bill specifies that information obtained from
victims is privileged and confidential to the extent it is
protected from disclosure under existing California law, and a
victim's consent to share information cannot be construed as a
waiver of confidentiality or any privilege held by the victim or
the FJC staff.
Additionally, this bill prohibits searching a victim's criminal
history without the written consent of the victim, unless the
search is pursuant to an active criminal investigation.
Finally, each FJC is required to maintain a formal mandatory
training program for all staff members, volunteers, and agency
professionals on, among other things, privilege, confidentiality
and information sharing.
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This Bill Seeks to Encourage Collaboration Between Stakeholders :
The objective of an FJC is to bring all victim services
together under one roof to provide enhanced assistance to
victims. In order for those various public and private groups
to work together optimally, collaboration and coordination is
key. This bill seeks to enhance that collaboration. First, as
discussed above, interested stakeholders will participate with
the pilot evaluator in developing the evaluation criteria.
Second, each of the four FJCs must consult with community-based
victims' organizations, as well as the victims themselves and
their advocates, in the operations process of the FJCs.
Finally, the FJCs must establish procedures for ongoing input,
feedback, and evaluation of the FJCs by victims, advocates and
service providers, along with a complaint process. These
required lines of communication should help improve not only the
collaboration among the various stakeholders, but also the
services delivered to victims.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support (to the bill as proposed to be amended)
National Family Justice Center Alliance (sponsor)
Disability Rights California
Solano County Board of Supervisors
One individual
Opposition (to the bill as proposed to be amended)
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Leora Gershenzon / JUD. / (916) 319-2334