BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 260
Page 1
ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB
260 (Lopez)
As Amended April 7, 2015
Majority vote
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|Committee |Votes |Ayes |Noes |
| | | | |
| | | | |
|----------------+------+---------------------+---------------------|
|Human Services |5-0 |Chu, Calderon, | |
| | |Lopez, Mark Stone, | |
| | |Thurmond | |
| | | | |
|----------------+------+---------------------+---------------------|
|Judiciary |10-0 |Mark Stone, Wagner, | |
| | |Alejo, Chau, Chiu, | |
| | |Gallagher, Cristina | |
| | |Garcia, Holden, | |
| | |Maienschein, | |
| | |O'Donnell | |
| | | | |
|----------------+------+---------------------+---------------------|
|Appropriations |17-0 |Gomez, Bigelow, | |
| | |Bonta, Calderon, | |
| | |Chang, Daly, Eggman, | |
| | |Gallagher, | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | |Eduardo Garcia, | |
| | |Gordon, Holden, | |
AB 260
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| | |Jones, Quirk, | |
| | |Rendon, Wagner, | |
| | |Weber, Wood | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
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SUMMARY: Provides support and protections for parenting foster
youth. Specifically, this bill:
1)Provides the legislative declaration that a child who has one or
both parents adjudged a dependent of the court, as specified,
shall not be considered at risk of abuse or neglect solely based
on the parent's or parents' age, dependent status, or foster
care status, or solely based on information regarding the
parent's or parents' placement history, past behaviors, or
health or mental health diagnoses prior to the pregnancy.
Allows such information to be taken into account when
considering whether other factors exist that place the child at
risk of abuse or neglect.
2)Requires all of the following to apply for a child with one or
more minor dependent parents, as specified:
a) Nullifies the stipulation that reunification services need
not be provided in instances where there has been a
termination of reunification services for, or permanent
severance of, parental rights over any siblings or half
siblings, as specified, unless other specified circumstances
removing the necessity for reunification services also exist;
and
b) Requires a party seeking foster care placement of, or
termination of parental rights over, a child with one or both
parents who were minors when the child was born to
demonstrate that reasonable efforts using available
resources, as specified, were made to provide services aimed
at preventing the removal of the child and that these efforts
were unsuccessful.
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3)Requires the clerk of the superior court to maintain court files
and records regarding a dependent parent of a child who is the
subject of a dependency petition separately from the files and
records regarding that child.
4)Allows a dependent parent's dependency court records to be
disclosed to the county in the child's dependency proceedings,
but disallows these records from being admitted as evidence
unless required by a court order stating that these files and
records contain information materially relevant to the case, as
specified.
5)Requires foster care placements for minor parents and nonminor
dependent parents and their children to support the preservation
of the family unit and provide services, as specified, to
prevent, whenever possible, the filing of a petition to declare
the child a dependent of the juvenile court.
FISCAL EFFECT: According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee, this bill will result in unknown, but potentially
significant costs in excess of $150,000 to the courts for
increased administrative workload and additional hearings. For
example, if 10% of female foster youth likely to have children are
impacted by this bill, the estimated cost to conduct court
hearings would be $210,000 (350 cases multiplied by approximately
$600/hour (estimated court hearing cost) multiplied by one hour).
Attorney fees and administrative costs for records management
would be additional.
COMMENTS:
Reunification services: The court may order reunification
services for parents who have had a child removed when it is
determined that reunification with the family would ultimately
benefit the child. These services can encompass a range of
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supports, including parenting classes, substance abuse treatment,
family therapy, home visiting, among others, aimed at responding
to the needs of the child and the parents. Depending on the
child's age, reunification services can be offered for between six
months (for children under the age of three) and 12 months (for
children ages three and older). Extensions for certain
circumstances may be granted if there is a substantial probability
that the child will be returned to the physical custody of his or
her parents. If the court finds that any one of a number of
situations exists - such as evidence of a parent's history of
abuse or neglect resulting in having a child removed from his or
her custody - reunification services need not be provided. A
parent's past history of terminated reunification services, or
permanent severance of parental rights, for a sibling or
half-sibling of a child currently removed from his or her physical
custody could also constitute a reason for not providing
reunification services.
Pregnant and parenting foster youth: As of January 1, 2015, there
were 62,898 children and youth in foster care in California.
Little information exists on the number of pregnant and parenting
youth in the foster system (although this will change as of
Federal Fiscal Year 2016, when the federal Preventing Sex
Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act (H.R. 4980) will
require states to track data on pregnant and parenting foster
youth).
While comprehensive data on the size of the state's population of
pregnant and parenting foster youth is currently lacking, evidence
of higher pregnancy and parenting rates for foster youth exists.
For example, recent research connecting Child Protective Services
(CPS) data with birth records in California was able to link
approximately 1.5 million California birth records (from 2000 to
2010) to 1 million CPS records. Using this linked data,
researchers found that, of girls in foster care at the age of 17,
more than one-quarter of them had given birth at least once during
their teens. Of girls in foster care who had given birth at least
AB 260
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once before the age of 18, over one-third had more than one birth
in their teens. These findings were corroborated by a much
smaller, more in-depth study that interviewed over 700 17-year-old
foster youth and former foster youth in California. This study
found that just over one-fourth of respondents had ever been
pregnant; 30% of those who had been pregnant had been pregnant
more than one time.
Need for this bill: Parenting can present any young person with a
number of significant challenges. Those challenges are often
greater for pregnant and parenting foster youth. According to the
author, "It is vital that we initiate a culture shift around the
way we think about parenting foster youth. Instead of making it
more difficult for these youth or overlooking their unique needs
as parents living within the dependency system, we should be
supporting them in their goals to create a healthy family in the
same way we support their goals for higher education,
career/professional, or any other permanency outcomes our system
seeks to achieve for them. By working to break the cycle of
foster care, we can ensure our foster youth can succeed while also
preserving the lives of children in their family unit rather than
settling for additional, unnecessary entrances into the system for
those children."
This bill will help support pregnant and parenting foster youth to
preserve their families by discouraging the inappropriate use of
outdated and/or irrelevant information as a means for removing a
child from the care of a parenting foster youth. Moreover, this
bill recognizes the fact that a parenting foster youth may have
more than one child and removes barriers to reunification services
for these youth that can exist for parents who have histories of
interaction with the child welfare system related to siblings or
half siblings of their child. Instead of preventing a parenting
foster youth from accessing services to help them maintain their
family, the goal of this bill is to ensure that these youth have
exactly those services and supports that will help them, and their
child(ren), remain an intact family unit. Additionally, this bill
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requires foster placements for parenting youth to be supportive of
family maintenance for those youth and their child(ren).
Analysis Prepared by:
Daphne Hunt / HUM. S. / (916) 319-2089 FN:
0000591