BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES
Senator McGuire, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular
Bill No: AB 1911
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|Author: |Eggman |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|----------+-----------------------+-----------+-----------------|
|Version: |March 31, 2016 |Hearing |June 14, 2016 |
| | |Date: | |
|----------+-----------------------+-----------+-----------------|
|Urgency: |No |Fiscal: |Yes |
----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|Consultant|Taryn Smith |
|: | |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Dual-status minors
SUMMARY
This bill requires the Judicial Council to convene a stakeholder
committee which, by January 1, 2018, must develop and report to
the Legislature recommendations to facilitate and enhance
comprehensive data and outcome tracking for youth involved in
both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. It also
requires the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) to
enable county child welfare agencies and county probation
departments to identify and track the involvement of these youth
in both systems, as specified.
ABSTRACT
Existing law:
1) Establishes a child welfare system for children who are
or are at risk of being physically, sexually or emotionally
abused, being neglected or being exploited to ensure their
safety, protection and physical and emotional well-being.
(WIC 300, et seq.)
2) Establishes a juvenile justice system for any child or
youth who violates any state, federal or local law, except
those crimes serious enough to warrant prosecution as an
adult if committed by a youth over age 14. (WIC 602)
AB 1911 (Eggman) PageB
of?
3) Requires that whenever a minor appears to come within
both the dependency and delinquency descriptions, the
county probation department and the child welfare services
department shall jointly determine which status will serve
the best interests of the minor and the protection of
society, and ultimately develop a joint written protocol to
ensure coordination. Both recommendations shall be
presented to the juvenile court with the petition that is
filed on behalf of the minor, and the court shall determine
which status is appropriate for the minor. (WIC 241.1)
4) Prohibits the filing of a petition or petitions, or the
entry of an order by the juvenile court, to make a minor
simultaneously both a dependent child and a ward of the
court, except under specific written protocol that allows
the county probation department and the child welfare
services department to jointly assess and produce a
recommendation that the child be designated as a dual
status child. (WIC 241.1 (d))
5) Requires that any dual status protocol include a plan to
collect data in order to evaluate the protocol, as
specified. (WIC 241.1. (d)(4))
6) Requires the Judicial Council to collect and compile all
of the data and to prepare an evaluation of the results of
the new protocol for a representative sample of the
counties that create a protocol for dual status minors.
Requires the Judicial Council to report its findings and
any resulting recommendations to the Legislature within two
years of the date those counties first deem a child to be a
dual status child. (WIC 241.2)
7) Requires the Judicial Council to review all proposed
protocols to ensure that they provide for the collection of
adequate, standardized data to perform these evaluations.
In order to assist counties with data collection and
evaluation, permits the Judicial Council to prepare model
data collection and evaluation provisions that a county
must include in their protocol. (WIC 241.2)
This bill:
AB 1911 (Eggman) PageC
of?
1)Deletes WIC Section 241.2, which mandates data collection and
analysis of the dual status protocols and requires a report to
the Legislature on its findings.
2)Creates a new section 241.2, which requires the Judicial
Council to convene a committee of stakeholders serving the
needs of dependents and wards of the juvenile court, including
judges, social workers, probation officers, education
officials, youth, attorneys and advocates involved with both
the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, and
representatives from CDSS, child welfare agencies and
probation agencies.
3)Requires the committee, by January 1, 2018, to develop and
report to the Legislature recommendations to facilitate and
enhance comprehensive data and outcome tracking for youth
involved in both the child welfare and juvenile justice
systems, as specified.
4)Requires DSS, by January 1, 2019, to implement a function
within the child welfare services automation system that will
allow county child welfare and juvenile justice departments to
identify youth involved in both systems, and to issue
instructions to all counties on how to completely and
consistently track the involvement of these youth in both
systems.
5)Requires that the committee's recommendations to include, but
not be limited to, all of the following:
a) A common identifier for counties to use to reconcile
data across child welfare and juvenile justice systems
statewide.
b) Standardized definitions for terms related to the
populations of youth involved in both the child welfare
system and the juvenile justice system.
c) Identified and defined outcomes for counties to
track youth involved in both the child welfare system and
the juvenile justice system, including, but not limited
to, outcomes related to recidivism, health, pregnancy,
homelessness, employment, and education.
d) Established baselines and goals for the identified
and defined outcomes, as specified.
e) An assessment as to the costs and benefits
AB 1911 (Eggman) PageD
of?
associated with requiring all counties to implement the
committee's recommendations.
1)Requires CDSS to implement a function within the Child Welfare
Services/Case Management System (CWS/CMS) that will enable
county child welfare agencies and county probation departments
to identify youth involved in both the child welfare system
and the juvenile justice system who are within their counties.
Additionally requires CDSS to issue instructions to all
counties on how to completely and consistently track the
involvement of these youth in both the child welfare system
and the juvenile justice systems.
FISCAL IMPACT
According to an analysis by the Assembly Committee on
Appropriations, this bill will incur costs of approximately
$100,000 to the Judicial Council to convene a stakeholder group
and to develop and report recommendations to the Legislature.
The analysis noted that there may also be minor and absorbable
costs to CDSS, as CDSS indicates it is already working to
implement these requirements from a State Auditor's report.
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
Purpose of the bill:
This bill seeks to facilitate counties' ability to identify and
track youth who are involved in both the child welfare and the
juvenile justice systems. Currently, lack of common
identifiers, standardized definitions, and defined outcomes make
it difficult to track this population of youth.
Per the author, AB 1911 will provide guidance to the counties to
better track youth involved in both the child welfare system and
the juvenile justice system. This bill will require the
Judicial Council to convene a committee of stakeholders involved
in serving the needs of dependents and wards of the juvenile
court to report recommendations to the Legislature to facilitate
and enhance comprehensive data and outcome tracking of youth
involved in both systems. There are currently no standardized
definitions for terms relating to youth involved in both
AB 1911 (Eggman) PageE
of?
systems, per the author. The stakeholder committee will be
charged with creating standardized definitions for these terms
as well as common identifiers the counties can use to track
outcomes for this population. The committee will also provide
an assessment as to the cost and benefits associated with
requiring all counties to implement the committee's
recommendations. Lastly, this bill will require CDSS to
implement a function within the Child Welfare Services/Case
Management System that will enable county agencies to identify
and track youth in their counties involved in both the child
welfare and juvenile justice system.
Dual Status Youth
In 2004, California passed AB 129 (Cohn, Chapter 468, Statutes
of 2004), which made it possible for "dual status youth" who are
involved in both the child welfare services and the juvenile
justice systems to receive the oversight and benefits of both
systems. Prior to passage of AB 129, the law required that
cases involving foster youth who were also involved in the
juvenile justice system had to be placed into either the child
welfare or the justice system.
AB 129 allowed counties to voluntarily adopt formal dual status
protocols, through which youth can simultaneously be under the
formal jurisdiction of both the dependency and delinquency
courts. Per AB 129, those protocols must describe the process
for assessing the eligibility for and necessity of dual status
youth, the communication between judges in the dependency and
delinquency courts, the collection of data for the Judicial
Council evaluation, and the adoption of either a "lead
court/lead agency" or "on-hold" model.
AB 129 also required Judicial Council to collect and compile
data, to evaluate the results of implementing the dual status
protocols, and reports its finding to the Legislature. The
study, which was conducted in 2007, revealed that the counties'
implementation of protocols and experiences varied greatly.
According to the Judicial Council website, only 18 of
California's 58 counties have elected to develop dual status
protocols. Because of the local flexibility, the dual status
jurisdictions have different operating protocols and may or may
not be comparable. Additionally, some of the counties that have
AB 1911 (Eggman) PageF
of?
not opted to adopt dual status protocols are working on
independent projects to help dual status youth.
State Auditor Findings
In June 2015, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee directed the
Bureau of State Audits, at the request of the author of this
bill, to conduct an audit to determine whether counties are
addressing the needs of dual status youth. The resulting report
was issued in February 2016.<1> However, because the state has
not issued guidelines to the counties on how to track or
identify dual status youth, the State Auditor was unable to
determine how county programs were performing.
Per the auditor, "the State has not defined key terms or
established outcomes to track related to dually involved youth,
thus it cannot monitor the outcomes for this population
statewide. Furthermore, the State cannot perform a robust
comparison between the populations of youth involved in dual
status and nondual status counties." Without consistent
definitions, and tracking of attributes and outcomes, it is
impossible to reach conclusions about best models and practices,
determined the Auditor. For example, the counties all defined
recidivism differently, so it was not possible to say which
protocols, programs or services might be working to reduce
recidivism in these youth.
The Auditor recommends that the Legislature require Judicial
Council to work with a variety specified of stakeholders to
develop common definitions and outcome measures. The Auditor
also recommends that CDSS, which operates the state case
management automation system for tracking youth in the child
welfare system (CWS/CMS), develop a function in that system to
allow staff in both the child welfare and juvenile justice
systems to identify youth involved with both systems and issue
guidance on how to use that function and fully track those
youth. This bill would generally implement the Auditor's
recommendations.
Technology
CDSS is in the process of replacing its automated CWS/CMS with a
new system, which it calls Child Welfare Services-New System
---------------------------
<1> https://www.bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2015-115.pdf
AB 1911 (Eggman) PageG
of?
(CWS-NS). The case management module, which would contain
functionality for tracking dual status youth, is projected to
begin development work in FY 2017/18 and to be completed by end
of 2020. This bill requires the committee of stakeholders to
issue its recommendations for how to facilitate and enhance
comprehensive data and outcome tracking for youth involved in
both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems by January
1, 2018. Those recommendations could potentially feed into the
project development of the case management module.
The bill also requires CDSS to implement a function within the
statewide case management automation system that will allow
child welfare departments and juvenile justice departments to
identify youth involved in both systems. It also requires CDSS
to issue instructions to all counties on how to completely and
consistently track the involvement of these youth in both
systems, by January 1, 2019. Given that the case management
module for CWS-NS is projected to be completed by the end of
2020, CDSS may not be able to meet the January 1, 2019 deadline
within the CMS-NS project. However, there may be some interim
programming options for the legacy CWS/CMS that could facilitate
implementation of the new dual youth identifiers, definitions
and outcomes that would allow for data collection before the
case management module for CMS-NS is launched.
As noted by the Auditor, there is no statewide automated system
for the probation departments. In fact, the Judicial Council
noted in their response to the audit that, "while there is a
case management system that collects data on a statewide basis
for the child welfare system, there is no comparable system for
juvenile justice data. The Legislature recently directed the
Board of State and Community Corrections to assemble a Juvenile
Justice Data Working Group, which submitted its final report and
recommendations to the Legislature earlier this year.<2> That
report documents the lack of a statewide system and the
resultant problems in measuring recidivism or evaluating
different programs and processes in the juvenile justice system.
Given these shortcomings we would simply note that it may be
difficult for recommendations on dual status data collection to
---------------------------
<2>
http://www.bscc.ca.gov/downloads/JJDWG%20Report%20FINAL%201-11-16
.pdf
AB 1911 (Eggman) PageH
of?
be implemented by a council committee on a timely basis without
an effective statewide data system for collecting juvenile
justice-related data and outcomes."
Related legislation:
AB 2813 (Bloom 2016) prohibits a probation officer from
considering a minor's status as a foster youth or current
availability of a placement when making the decision whether or
not to detain, and requires a probation officer to immediately
release a minor to the custody of the child welfare services
department, a caregiver, or a foster parent, unless it can be
demonstrated that the minor's detention is necessary. This bill
is pending in Senate Public Safety Committee.
AB 388 (Chesbro, Chapter 760, Statutes of 2014) specified that a
dependent ward of the juvenile court is not necessarily subject
to other sanctions because of his or her status as a dependent
of the court.
AB 12 (Beall, Chapter 559, Statutes of 2010) authorized the
juvenile court to retain jurisdiction over a child who has been
adjudicated a dependent because of abuse or neglect until the
ward or dependent child attains the age of 21 years.
AB 129 (Cohn, Chapter 468, Statutes of 2004) authorized the
probation department and child welfare services department in
any county to create a protocol which would permit a minor who
meets specified criteria to be designated as both a dependent
child and ward of the juvenile court. This bill also required
the Judicial Council to collect and compile data, to evaluate
the results of implementing the protocol, and to report its
findings to the Legislature.
AB 1911 (Eggman) PageI
of?
COMMENTS
Developing and adopting common definitions for use by child
welfare department and juvenile justice departments is key to
ensuring the state and counties obtain meaningful and accurate
data on dual status youth. Having the technology to accept and
process that data is also significantly important. However, it
is not clear that a technology solution is available to both CWS
and juvenile justice systems.
While probation departments currently have access to the state's
CWS/CMS system, not all of them use the system. Due to lack of
direction from the state, those counties that use CWS/CMS are
not using it consistently. While this bill requires CDSS to
issue instructions to all counties on how to track dual status
youth in both the child welfare system and the juvenile justice
system, CDSS does not have the authority to require probation
departments to follow those instructions.
It is unclear if implementation of the new committee's
recommendations and CDSS's new CWS-NS will resolve that issue
and thus allow for consistent data collection and tracking of
dual status youth or if a new technology system will be created
for the juvenile justice system. Therefore, this committee
recommends the following amendment:
WIC 241.2.
(a) The Judicial Council shall convene a committee comprised of
stakeholders involved in serving the needs of dependents or
wards of the juvenile court, including, but not limited to,
judges, probation officers, social workers, youth involved in
both the child welfare system and the juvenile justice system,
child welfare and juvenile justice attorneys, child welfare and
juvenile justice advocates, education officials, and
representatives from the State Department of Social Services,
county child welfare agencies, and county probation departments.
By January 1, 2018, the committee shall develop and report to
the Legislature, pursuant to Section 9795 of the Government
AB 1911 (Eggman) PageJ
of?
Code, its recommendations to facilitate and enhance
comprehensive data and outcome tracking for the state's youth
involved in both the child welfare system and the juvenile
justice system. The committee's recommendations shall include,
but not be limited to, all of the following:
(1) A common identifier for counties to use to reconcile data
across child welfare and juvenile justice systems statewide.
(2) Standardized definitions for terms related to the
populations of youth involved in both the child welfare system
and the juvenile justice system.
(3) Identified and defined outcomes for counties to track youth
involved in both the child welfare system and the juvenile
justice system, including, but not limited to, outcomes related
to recidivism, health, pregnancy, homelessness, employment, and
education.
(4) Established baselines and goals for the identified and
defined outcomes specified in paragraph (3).
(5) An assessment as to the costs and benefits associated with
requiring all counties to implement the committee's
recommendations.
(6) An assessment of whether a single technology system,
including but not limited to the Department of Social Services'
statewide case management system for child welfare, is needed to
track youth in the child welfare system and the juvenile justice
system.
AB 1911 (Eggman) PageK
of?
PRIOR VOTES
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|Assembly Floor: |78 - |
| |0 |
|-----------------------------------------------------------+-----|
|Assembly Appropriations Committee: |20 - |
| |0 |
|-----------------------------------------------------------+-----|
|Assembly Judiciary Committee: |10 - |
| |0 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
POSITIONS
Support:
The Children's Advocacy Institute (Sponsor)
Children Now
Oppose:
None
-- END --