BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1623
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Date of Hearing: March 25, 2014
Counsel: Shaun Naidu
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY
Tom Ammiano, Chair
AB 1623 (Atkins) - As Amended: February 10, 2014
SUMMARY : Authorizes a local government or nonprofit
organization to establish a family justice center (FJC) to
assist crime victims, as specified. Specifically, this bill :
1)Authorizes a city, county, city and county, or community-based
nonprofit organization to establish FJCs to assist victims of
domestic violence, sexual assault, elder abuse, and human
trafficking to ensure victims of abuse are able to access all
needed services in one location.
2)Defines "family justice centers" as multiagency,
multidisciplinary service centers where public and private
agencies assign staff members to provide services to victims
of domestic violence, sexual assault, elder abuse, or human
trafficking 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.
3)Defines "abuse," "domestic violence," sexual assault," "elder
abuse," and "human trafficking" to have the same meanings as
those terms have in existing law, as specified.
4)Provides that staff members at a FJC may be comprised of, but
are not limited to, the following: law enforcement personnel;
medical personnel; victim-witness program personnel; domestic
violence shelter staff; community-based rape crisis, domestic
violence, and human trafficking advocates; social service
agency staff members; child welfare agency social workers;
county health department staff; city or county welfare and
public assistance workers; nonprofit agency counseling
professionals; civil legal service providers; supervised
volunteers from partner agencies; and, other professionals
providing services.
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5)Provides that nothing in the provisions of this bill is
intended to abrogate existing laws regarding privacy or
information sharing. Requires FJC staff to comply with the
laws governing their respective professions.
6)Prevents a FJC from denying crime victims services on the
grounds of criminal history. Prohibits criminal history
searches to be conducted of a victim at a FJC as a condition
of receiving services within a FJC without the victim's
written consent, unless the criminal history search is
pursuant to an active criminal investigation.
7)Provides that crime victims are not 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.
8)Requires each FJC to consult with specified relevant 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 center by survivors of violence and abuse
and community-based crime victim service providers and
advocates.
9)Requires each FJC to develop policies and procedures, in
collaboration with local community-based crime victim service
providers and local survivors of violence and abuse, to ensure
coordinated services are provided to victims and to enhance
the safety of victims and professionals at the center 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 professional, agency partners, or volunteers providing
services in the center.
10)Requires each FJC to maintain an informed client consent
policy and to be in compliance with all state and federal laws
protecting the confidentiality of the types of information and
documents that may be in a victim's file, including, but not
limited to, medical, legal, and victim counselor records.
11)Requires each FJC to have a designated privacy officer to
develop and oversee privacy policies and procedures consistent
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with state and federal privacy laws and the Fair Information
Practice Principles. Provides that at no time shall a victim
be required to sign a client consent form to share information
in order to access services.
12)Requires each FJC to inform the victim that information
shared with staff members at a FJC may, under certain
circumstances, be shared with law enforcement professionals.
Requires each FJC to obtain written acknowledgement that the
victim has been informed of this policy.
13)Provides that information obtained from victims in FJCs are
privileged and confidential to the extent it is protected from
disclosure under existing California or federal law and that
nothing in the provisions of this bill related to
confidentiality and client-authorized information sharing is
intended to change existing state law.
14)Provides that a victim's consent to share information
pursuant to the client consent policy shall not be construed
as a waiver of confidentiality or any privilege held by the
victim or family justice center professionals.
15)Provides that a victim's authorization for sharing
information within a FJC shall not be construed as a universal
waiver of any existing evidentiary privilege that makes
confidential any communications or documents between the
victim and any service provider. Prohibits the disclosure, to
any third party, of any oral or written communication or any
document authorized by the victim to be shared for the
purposes of enhancing safety and providing more effective and
efficient services to the victim, unless that third-party
disclosure is authorized by the victim, or required by other
state or federal law or by court order.
16)Provides that an individual staff member, volunteer, or
agency that has victim information governed by the provisions
of this bill shall not be required to disclose that
information unless the victim has authorized the disclosure or
it is otherwise required by other state or federal law or by
court order.
17)Provides that disclosure of information authorized by the
victim in a FJC, made for the purposes of clinical assessment,
risk assessment, safety planning, or service delivery, is not
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a waiver of any specified privilege or confidentiality
provision, the lawyer-client privilege, the physician-patient
privilege, the psychotherapist-patient privilege, the sexual
assault counselor-victim privilege, or the domestic violence
counselor-victim privilege.
18)Requires each FJC to maintain a formal training program with
mandatory training for all staff members, volunteers, and
agency professionals of at least 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.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Authorizes a program for interagency domestic violence death
review teams, composed of professionals such as coroners,
forensic pathologists, prosecutors, domestic violence center
staff members, county health department staff, county health
department staff, child abuse agency staff members and others.
Allows each organization to share with other members of the
team information in its possession concerning the victim who
is the subject of the review or any person who was in contact
with the victim and any other information deemed by the
organization to be pertinent to the review. 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. (Pen. Code, § 11163.3.)
2)Mandates the Attorney General, subject to available funding,
to work with the state domestic violence coalition 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. States that the protocol be
designed to facilitate communication among persons who perform
autopsies and the various persons and agencies involved in
domestic violence cases so that incidents of domestic violence
and deaths related to domestic violence are recognized and
surviving nonoffending family and household members and
domestic partners receive the appropriate services. (Pen.
Code, § 11163.4.)
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3)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. (Pen. Code, § 11174.34.)
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS :
1)Author's Statement : According to the author, "Family justice
centers are one-stop resource centers that have quickly become
a best practice model in California and are now serving over
14,000 victims each year. This model works by bringing
together specialized resources in one location to provide
better and more convenient services to victims and their
children. Medical help, advocacy, counseling, law enforcement
and other services are available in one location at Family
Justice Centers.
2)"This approach reduces the number of places a victim must
travel to in order to get help and it also prevents them from
having to tell their story over and over again. For a person
who is already facing a traumatic experience, this integrated
approach can mean the difference between seeking help and just
giving up and accepting the abuse.
"Assembly Bill 1623 will implement the recommendations of the
study, ensure that the privacy of victims is protected, and
that a bright line is maintained between services for the
victim and the criminal justice system."
3)Background : According to the background information provided
by the author, "A Family Justice Center is a multi-agency,
multi-disciplinary collaborative service model where victims
of sexual abuse, domestic violence and certain other crimes
can go to receive services. The model is based on the
co-location of a multi-agency, multi-disciplinary team of
professionals who work together under one roof to provide
coordinated services to victims of family violence.
"Clients of Family Justice Centers can often tell their story
only once instead of going from agency to agency and starting
from scratch each time. The idea is to reduce barriers to
getting help.
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"The first Family Justice Center was created in San Diego in
2002 after 12 years of successful co-location of law
enforcement and domestic violence service providers inside the
San Diego City Attorney's Office. Since then, seventeen Family
Justice Centers have been opened in California, and six more
are currently in development."
4)Pilot Project & Report : In 2011, the Legislature enacted a
pilot project to establish family justice centers in San
Diego, Anaheim, Alameda County, and Sonoma County. (Chapter
262, Statutes of 2011 (SB 557).) The two-year pilot project
was in place through January 1, 2014 and required an
evaluation of the 4 centers to be reported to the Legislature,
with the report including, among other things, subjective and
objective measurements of the impacts of co-located
multiagency services on victims and their children, barriers
to receiving needed services, and any recommended best
practices and model protocols.
The evaluation, conducted by an independent organization,
revealed that crime victims benefitted from 5 "supports to
access" recovery services from co-located multiservice
agencies. The victim benefits include the following:
a) "It was easy for survivors to come to Family Justice
Centers (according to survivors themselves)."
b) "High quality service provision including knowledgeable
and friendly [FJC] staff, survivors' ability to get
specialized help, and fast effective service coordination."
c)
"Survivors felt supported including feeling encouraged,
welcomed, protected, safe and comfortable."
d) "Helpful referral sources that were knowledgeable such
as staff at court, a shelter, or police, which was then
linked to a smooth transition into [FJC] services."
e)"Other helpful qualities of [FJC] such as not turning anyone
away and having food available."
(EMT Associates, Inc., Final Evaluation Results: Phase II
California Family Justice Initiative: Statewide Evaluation:
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Executive Summary for Legislative Report (May 2013) p. 5-6
(hereafter FJC Report Executive Summary).)
In addition to advantages afforded to crime victims, the
co-location of services offered by FJCs showed to be
beneficial to partner agencies as well. These benefits
include staffing structure, shared larger goals, how cases
were handled, networking services, team approach, and
inter-agency relationships. (FJC Report Executive Summary at
p. 6.)
Additionally, the pilot project revealed that there are a
total of 37 individual barriers that crime victims encounter
in attempting to access recovery services. When organized
into thematic categories, these barriers, from most-commonly
noted to least-commonly noted, are (i) emotional-personal
barriers, (ii) no barriers, (iii) not knowing/not being aware
of the FJC, (iv) program-level barriers, and (v) bureaucratic
barriers. (FJC Report Executive Summary at p. 7.)
The most common barrier in the emotional-personal barriers
category is the fear of victims to go to FJCs. Twenty-five
percent of victims felt afraid to go to centers and indicated
several reasons for their apprehension, including fear of law
enforcement at FJCs, fear due to their undocumented status,
and fear about their children being examined for child abuse
and possibly being taken away by child protective services.
(EMT Associates, Inc., Final Evaluation Results: Phase II
California Family Justice Initiative: Statewide Evaluation:
Legislative Report (May 2013) p. 115 (hereafter FJC Report).)
Examples of program-level barriers identified included
difficulty with accommodating victims' schedules for FJC
activities and various issues with victims and partner agency
staff perception of law enforcement procedure (e.g., some
victims felt that the "police were not on my side"). (Id. at
p. 9, 119.) The report also found that FJCs did not have "a
written acknowledgement specific to when they would share
information with law enforcement as a separate document from
their general consent documents," as the centers "did not
share information with law enforcement without first
discussing it with the victim, and proceeding (or not) based
on a conversation directly with the victim." (FJC Report at
p. 133.) Given the demonstrated fear that crime victims have
with law enforcement involvement, and the obstacle to
accessing recovery service that this fear presents, the author
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(statutorily) or FJCs (administratively) may wish to address
this concern.
Additionally, this committee may wish to explore if FJCs have
strengthened their outreach to Latino victims, as one study
found a notable lack awareness of available community
resources among Latino victims when compared to non-Latino
victims and that access to formal resources was less common
for Latino victims. (FJC Report Executive Summary at p. 10.)
In concluding the evaluation, the report authors made a number
of recommendations for future practice. Included among them
were recommendations related to improve data systems. They
are as follows:
a) "Consider creating a uniform 'codebook' that identifies
a short list of data elements and how they are defined that
all [FJCs] can collaboratively develop, design, and
collect."
b) "Document 'reasons for seeking services' and 'services
received.'"
c) "Identify a common list of services."
d) "Consider creating a data sharing warehouse in which
regular brief but detailed de-identified aggregated report
data from [FJCs] can be regularly submitted for comparison
and review."
(FJC Report Executive Summary at p. 14.)
5)Drafting Oversight : SB 557, which established the pilot
project FJCs, included "victims of domestic violence,
officer-involved domestic violence, sexual assault, elder or
dependent adult abuse, stalking, cyberstalking, cyberbullying,
and human trafficking" within the group of individuals that
FJCs would assist. This bill has pared the list of people
assisted by FJCs to "victims of domestic violence, sexual
assault, elder abuse, and human trafficking." In speaking to
the author's office and the bill sponsor, it appears that
leaving dependent adult abuse victims out of this bill was an
oversight. Consequently, if and when this bill is next
amended, the author may wish to include dependent adult abuse
victims to the list of individuals serviced by FJCs to remedy
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this oversight.
6)Argument in Support : As stated by the National Justice Center
Alliance , "AB1623 will provide a definition of multi-agency
teams that work with cases of family violence, sexual assault,
elder abuse, and stalking. AB1623 also seeks to make clear
that when a victim of abuse authorizes the short-term sharing
of information among system professionals seeking to help her
that she is not providing a universal waiver of her
confidentiality rights related to existing privileges under
California law. This protection is crucial to ensure and honor
a victim's confidentiality rights during the process of
providing safety services to the victim and her children.
Today, there are 17 Family Justice Centers in California and 6
more Centers will open in 2014.
"The California Family Justice Center Evaluation Study
authorized by the Legislature in 2011 (SB 557 - Kehoe) clearly
calls for this permanent legislation to address the potential
confidentiality issues and access to justice issues which may
arise in Family Justice Centers without state law AB 1623 will
provide."
7)Argument in Opposition : The American Civil Liberties Union of
California urges the author to "continue to consider the
[language below] that would require informed consent for the
use of information provided by a victim in a court proceeding
(unless it's a mandated reporter situation). Our concern is
that victims should be asked before their information is used
in a court proceeding because it is easy for someone in a
stressful situation to forget that their information may be
provided to a law enforcement officer when they're talking
with a social worker or housing expert. Victims may have very
legitimate reason-including their safety and the safety of
their children-for not wanting information they have shared to
be used in a court proceeding. Here's a mock up of the
language we've suggested. The language in the last sentence
is similar to proposed language by the Senate Public Safety
Committee analysis to SB 678 (2011), page 9."
Section 13750(h)(2) Each family justice center is
required to inform the victim that information
shared with staff members at a family justice center
may, under certain circumstances, be shared with law
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enforcement professionals. Each family justice
center shall obtain written acknowledgement that the
victim has been informed of this policy. obtain
written informed consent from the victim before
sharing information obtained from the victim with
any staff member, unless the staff member of the
family justice center is a mandated reporter and is
required to report the specific incident or
incidents. Information obtained from the victim
shall not be admissible in any criminal, civil, or
juvenile court proceeding, unless the victim gives
written informed consent for use in the specific
proceeding or it is information that triggered a
report by a mandated reporter.
8)Prior Legislation :
a) SB 557 (Kehoe), Chapter 262, Statutes of 2011,
authorized the cities of San Diego and Anaheim and the
counties of Alameda and Sonoma to create a two-year pilot
project to establish family justice centers to assist
specified victims of crimes.
b) SB 733 (Leno), of the 2009-10 Legislative Session, would
have authorized the California Victims Compensation and
Government Claims Board (CVCGCB) to evaluate applications
and award grants totaling up to $3 million to
multi-disciplinary trauma recovery centers that provide
specified services to and resources for crime victims. SB
733 was vetoed by the Governor.
c) SB 1669 (Leno), of the 2007-08 Legislative Session,
would have required the CVCGCB to administer a program and
award grants up to $3 million per year from Restitution
Fund monies for trauma centers. AB 1669 was vetoed by the
Governor.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
American Academy of Pediatrics, California
California Association for Health Services at Home
California Catholic Conference
California Coalition Against Sexual Assault
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California Law Enforcement Association of Records Supervisors
California Probation, Parole and Correctional Association
Chief Probation Officers of California
National Family Justice Center Alliance
Sacramento County District Attorney's Office
San Diego County District Attorney's Office
San Diego Family Justice Center VOICES Committee
San Diego Police Department
Opposition
American Civil Liberties Union of California
Analysis Prepared by : Shaun Naidu / PUB. S. / (916) 319-3744