BILL ANALYSIS Ó SB 1460 Page 1 SENATE THIRD READING SB 1460 (Human Services Committee) As Amended August 4, 2014 Majority vote SENATE VOTE :37-0 HUMAN SERVICES 6-0 APPROPRIATIONS 17-0 ----------------------------------------------------------------- |Ayes:|Stone, Maienschein, |Ayes:|Gatto, Bigelow, | | |Ammiano, | |Bocanegra, Bradford, Ian | | |Ian Calderon, Garcia, | |Calderon, Campos, | | |Lowenthal | |Donnelly, Eggman, Gomez, | | | | |Holden, Jones, Linder, | | | | |Pan, Quirk, | | | | |Ridley-Thomas, Wagner, | | | | |Weber | |-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------| | | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY : Makes various changes to child welfare statute to bring it into compliance with specified federal acts. This bill is a Senate Human Services Committee bill that brings California's child welfare laws into compliance with federal laws and regulations regarding the Multi Ethnic Placement Act (MEPA), the Federal Parent Locator Service (FPLS), the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008, the Adam Walsh Act, tribal child welfare, resource family approval, and others. Specifically, this bill: 1)Requires county recruitment of potential foster parents to include diligent efforts to recruit individuals who reflect the ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity of foster children. 2)Provides a county child welfare agency or county probation department may request and receive a relative's name, social security number, most recent address, telephone number, place of employment, or other contact information to identify, locate and notify relatives of children who are the subject of juvenile court proceedings, including all grandparents, adult siblings, and other adult relatives of the child as specified. SB 1460 Page 2 3)Requires a probation officer to explain why siblings are not placed together and what efforts the probation officer is making to place the siblings together or why making those efforts would be contrary to the safety and well-being of any of the siblings. 4)Provides a ward's attorney and the attorney for the siblings of the ward be notified by the placement agency if there is a need for a change in placement that will result in the separation of siblings currently placed together. 5)Allows additional counties to participate in the early implementation of the "resource family" pilot project regarding new standards for foster homes. Provides a federal criminal offender record check be received for all adults residing in a resource family home as a condition of approval and makes other technical and conforming changes regarding resource families. 6)Allows tribes to receive criminal history and child abuse information from Department of Justice (DOJ) and establishes the requirements for tribes to complete the approval for tribal foster homes. Authorizes DOJ to charge a fee for providing this information to the tribe. 7)Provides for the transfer of Indian child case records from a county to tribal jurisdiction. FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee: 1)Negligible costs to the Department of Social Services. 2)On-going, likely non-reimbursable, costs in the range of $15,000 to county probation departments for duties regarding sibling placements. Proposition 30, passed by the voters in November 2012, eliminated potential mandate funding liability for any new program or higher level of service provided by counties related to realigned programs. COMMENTS : This is a Senate Human Services Committee bill that implements various non-controversial state compliance issues regarding the MEPA, the FPLS, the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and the Adam Walsh Act. SB 1460 Page 3 California statute must comply with federal requirements pertaining to child welfare in order to ensure the uninterrupted flow of California's Title IV-E allocation for child welfare services, which is over $1 billion annually. This bill implements necessary changes to statute identified by the California Department of Social Services. The Multi Ethnic Placement Act (Public Law (P.L.) 103-382): MEPA requires states to have an identifiable process in place to diligently recruit potential foster parents and adoptive parents that reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of children in the state for whom foster and adoptive homes are needed. State statute authorizes counties to operate recruitment programs to ensure an adequate number of foster homes are available to meet their child welfare placement needs. However, statute does not address the recruitment of foster families who reflect the diversity of children for whom foster homes are needed nor requires the diligent recruitment of adoptive homes at all. According to CDSS, the federal government has specifically inquired as to what California will do to meet the requirements of the MEPA. This bill explicitly requires that an agency that recruits foster and adoptive parents undertake diligent efforts to ensure that recruitments reflect the diversity of the children needing placement. FPLS is a national automated service provided by the Office of Child Support Enforcement to help states locate custodial and noncustodial parents for child support and to establish, modify and enforce child support obligations. The FPLS and its state-level counterpart, the California Parent Locator Service (CPLS) provides access to a parent's address, employment, income, assets, and social security number information. Family find requirements: Pursuant to the federal Fostering Connections Act, AB 1751 (Pan), Chapter 637, Statutes of 2012, allowed county child welfare departments and county probation departments to access the FPLS and CPLS for the purpose of locating a child's non-custodial parent. However, this authority did not extend to finding other relatives of a child, as provided for under federal law (45 Code of Federal Regulations 302.35). This bill permits the FPLS and CPLS to be used in the identification and notification of relatives of a SB 1460 Page 4 child who is the subject of a juvenile court proceeding. Additionally, this bill authorizes child welfare agencies and county probation to access the information for this purpose. The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-351) requires states to make diligent efforts to place siblings in out-of-home care together, unless doing so would be detrimental to the health and safety of one of the siblings. State statute was revised to conform to this provision, however the changes failed to clearly state that probation officers are also required to make these efforts as required by federal law. Because, in practice, probation officers follow the same procedures as social workers for placing children in foster care and federal law makes no distinction between children in the care and custody of a county child welfare department and children in the care and custody of a county probation department, this bill explicitly applies the federal requirements to probation officers. AB 1751 allowed county child welfare departments and county probation departments to access the FPLS and CPLS for the purpose of locating a child's non-custodial parent. However, this authority did not extend to finding other relatives of a child, as provided for under federal law. Adam Walsh Act (P.L. 109-248): The Adam Walsh Act requires a fingerprint check of a national criminal records database as well as a check from the state child abuse and neglect registries before any prospective foster or adoptive parent may be approved for placement of a child. Current state statute regarding caregiver background checks as part of the Resource Family Approval (RFA) process for foster care and adoptive placements require that state criminal history information be received and processed for clearance prior to approval. However, as a result of the previously slow process time for the federal records check, the RFA background check process merely requires the federal check be submitted, and does not require that the results be received, prior to approval. This is in conflict with federal law. Additionally, federal response times to background check requests have since significantly improved. To comply with the requirements of the Adam Walsh Act, this bill provides that approval as a resource family can be granted only SB 1460 Page 5 after federal criminal history information is received. The RFA Program was initially authorized pursuant to AB 340 (Hancock), Chapter 464 Statutes of 2007, and was further implemented through SB 1013 (Budget and Fiscal Review Committee), Chapter 35, Statutes of 2012. Tribal Child Welfare: The ICWA requires that Indian children be placed first in a foster home of the child's tribe. With the exception of the criminal background standards, existing federal and state law allows tribes to approve foster homes based on tribal rather than state standards. Existing state law does not allow tribes to receive criminal background and child abuse information from DOJ for the purpose approving foster homes unless they have a Title IV-E agreement (only two of 113 have an agreement). Therefore, in order to approve a tribal home, the tribe must request the state or county review the criminal background information and provide a clearance or denial. Because this is done only on a child-specific basis, after a child is removed, when tribal children are removed they must be placed somewhere else while the approval process is completed for a tribal family. As a result, counties cannot comply with federal ICWA placement preference requirements and children experience additional trauma and disruption. Resource Families: Current state law establishes new standards for foster homes, called "resource families" to be tested in five counties before authorizing the program statewide. In order to meet federal requirements that foster care standards apply across all foster homes statewide, additional counties need to implement the new standards during the piloting phase in order to achieve implementation statewide within the required timeframes. Without statutory authority for additional counties to participate, these counties would not be able to receive federal financial participation in foster care payments to resource families. Analysis Prepared by : Chris Reefe / HUM. S. / (916) 319-2089 FN: 0004488 SB 1460 Page 6