BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SB 12
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Date of Hearing: July 14, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON JUDICIARY
Mark Stone, Chair
SB
12 (Beall) - As Amended June 2, 2015
SENATE VOTE: 35-0
SUBJECT: NONMINOR DEPENDENTS: WARDS
KEY ISSUE: SHOULD FOSTER YOUTH WHO TRANSFER OVER TO THE
JUVENILE DELINQUENCY SYSTEM AND TURN 18 WHILE there, WHO LIKELY
HAVE NO SUPPORT SYSTEM TO HELP THEM TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD, BE
ELIGIBLE, with court approval, TO PARTICIPATE IN extended foster
care until they reach 21 years of age?
SYNOPSIS
This bill, jointly sponsored by the Alliance for Children's
Rights and the Youth Law Center, seeks to help ensure more
successful implementation of the California Fostering Connection
to Success Act (FCSA) of 2010 for more former foster youth
transitioning to adulthood. The FCSA provides transitional
foster care support to qualifying foster youths ages 18-21 by,
among other things, allowing former foster youth to voluntarily
remain in or re-enter the foster care system as nonminor
dependents. Last year in AB 2454 (Quirk-Silva), Chap. 769,
Stats. 2014, the Legislature expanded that group to allow former
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foster youth, who had been adopted or subject to a guardianship,
but whose guardians or adoptive parents had failed to support
them after they turned 18, to voluntarily re-enter extended
foster care upon the approval of the juvenile court.
This bill expands that by allowing youth between 18 and 21, who
were subject to a foster care placement, but who crossed over to
delinquency and who were adjudged to be a ward of the court
while in foster care and were then in secure confinement when
they turned 18, to seek extended foster care, subject to various
conditions and with court approval. This bill continues the
Legislature's efforts to ensure that more foster youth, ages
18-21, have the necessary support as they prepare and transition
into adulthood. This bill is supported by children's groups,
including Children Now and the National Center for Youth Law,
who argue that these youth, who often have no support and
nowhere to turn, are at greatest need for extended foster care
services and for whom these critical benefits truly may be what
prevents homelessness and hopelessness. It passed the Assembly
Human Services Committee unanimously. It is opposed by the
Chief Probation Officers of California who are concerned that
the program is not adequately funded today, so expansion is not
appropriate and, regardless, probation should not be providing
any of the extended foster care services.
SUMMARY: Expands eligibility for extended foster care to
nonminors who have crossed over from the dependency system to
the delinquency system. Specifically, this bill permits a youth
between the ages of 18 and 21 to petition the court to resume
dependency jurisdiction or assume transition jurisdiction over
him or her, provided the youth:
1)Had been adjudged a ward of the court;
2)Was subject to an order for foster care placement at the time
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the petition to adjudge him or her a ward of the court was
filed; and
3)Was held in secure confinement at 18 years of age.
EXISTING LAW:
1)Provides that a juvenile court has jurisdiction over a child
as a dependent when that child is subject to abuse or neglect.
(Welfare and Institutions Code Section 300. Unless stated
otherwise, all further statutory references are to that code.)
2)Provides that a juvenile court has jurisdiction over a child
when that child has committed acts that trigger delinquency
jurisdiction rendering the child a ward. (Sections 601 and
602.)
3)Establishes the California Fostering Connections to Success
Act of 2010 which, among other provisions:
a) Provides for the extension of transitional foster care
to eligible youth up to age 21 as a voluntary program for
youth who meet specified work and education participation
criteria; and
b) Requires changes to the Kinship Guardianship Assistance
Payment (Kin-GAP) program in order to allow for federal
financial participation in the program. (AB 12 (Beall),
Chap. 559, Stats. 2010.)
4)Defines a "nonminor dependent" as a current or former foster
child between the ages of 18 and 21 who is in foster care and
under the responsibility of the county welfare department,
county probation department, or Indian tribe and is
participating in a transitional independent living plan.
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(Section 11400(v).)
5)Defines "nonminor former dependent or ward" as either:
a) A nonminor who reached 18 years of age while subject to
an order for foster care placement, for whom dependency,
delinquency, or transition jurisdiction has been
terminated, and who is still under the general jurisdiction
of the court; or
b) A nonminor who is over 18 years of age and, while a
minor, was a dependent child or ward of the juvenile court
when the guardianship was established, as specified, and
the juvenile court dependency or wardship was dismissed
following the establishment of the guardianship. (Section
11400(aa).)
6)Allows a former nonminor dependent or ward who turned 18 years
of age while under the order of a foster care placement and
who is under the age of 21 to petition the court to resume
dependency jurisdiction. (Section 388.)
7)Provides for the voluntary continuation or reentry into foster
care for nonminor dependents who meet general Aid to Families
with Dependent Children-Foster Care requirements, as
specified. Permits re-entry into extended foster care for a
nonminor dependent whose guardian or adoptive parent died if
the nonminor dependent is between the age of 18 and 21.
(Section 11403.)
8)Allows a nonminor former dependent who previously received
extended Kin-GAP or adoption assistance benefits but whose
guardian or adoptive parent died or no longer provides ongoing
support, to petition the court to resume dependency under the
extended foster care program, as specified. (Section 388.1.)
FISCAL EFFECT: As currently in print this bill is keyed fiscal.
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COMMENTS: This bill seeks to improve the California Fostering
Connection to Success Act of 2010, which provides transitional
foster care support to qualifying foster youths ages 18-21 by,
among other things, allowing former foster youth who crossed
over to the delinquency side of the juvenile court to
voluntarily re-enter the foster care system as nonminor
dependents to receive supportive services to help them more
successfully transition to adulthood. In particular, this bill
allows vulnerable former foster youth who were made wards of the
court while in a foster care placement and who were held in a
secure confinement at 18 - when they would have emancipated from
foster care - to be eligible to voluntarily enter transitional
foster care and receive critical support services. In support,
the author writes:
Our obligation to these youth is the same as any parent, to
ensure that youth who have spent their formative years
parented by the child welfare system receive ongoing
support in navigating adult life. Research tells us that
this oversight has serious consequences as youth who cross
over into the delinquency system from child welfare are
twice as likely to experience unemployment, homelessness,
incarceration, mental health disorders and educational
challenges as those youth in the child welfare or probation
system. Failure to meet the formal requirements of
extended foster care, has left this small but highly
vulnerable population of former foster youth on their own
with nowhere to turn for help. No youth should have to face
these grave challenges alone, without the support we
intended they receive.
SB 12 actualizes the Legislature's original intent in
passing the Fostering Connections to Success Act, by
remedying the inadvertent exclusion from extended foster
care of a very small but most vulnerable population of
former foster youth. This bill will provide a safety net
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to this most vulnerable population of youth by allowing
youth previously in foster care who crossed over to the
delinquency system and then were temporarily in a secure
juvenile facility at 18 to re-enter the foster care system
and, with court approval, receive the critically needed
support to develop connections to a caring adult and to
become a healthy and productive member of our communities.
California Fostering Connections to Success Act of 2010. The
California Fostering Connections to Success Act of 2010 was
landmark child welfare legislation to opt the state into two
provisions of the federal Fostering Connections to Success and
Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (Fostering Connections Act).
Specifically, the FCSA:
Re-enacted California's existing state- and county- funded
Kin-GAP program to align it with new federal requirements and
allow the state to bring federal financial participation into
California's kinship guardianship assistance program for the
first time; and,
Provides transitional foster care support to qualifying foster
youth ages 18-21, phased-in over three years, beginning in
2012. It is now fully implemented.
The goal of the FCSA is to assist nonminor dependents in their
transition into adulthood, by providing them with the
opportunity to create a case plan alongside their caseworkers
tailored to their individual needs, which charts the course
towards independent living through incremental levels of
responsibility. It is a voluntary program grounded in evidence
of how the option of continued support to age 21 can counter the
dismal outcomes faced by youth who are forced to leave the
foster care system at age 18, including high rates of
homelessness, incarceration, reliance on public assistance, teen
pregnancy, and low rates of high school and postsecondary
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graduation.
In essence, FCSA seeks to mirror the type of continued guidance
and assistance most young adults receive from their parents and
families in their late teens and early twenties. It provides
nonminors with the option to petition to re-enter care if they
opt out of extended care and want to return before age 21,
provided they meet the eligibility criteria set forth in federal
and state law.
To be eligible to continue foster care benefits up to age 21, a
nonminor dependent must: continue under the jurisdiction of the
juvenile court; sign a mutual agreement which commits both the
nonminor and the placing agency to certain responsibilities;
reside in an approved, supervised placement; work alongside his
or her caseworker to prepare and participate in the transitional
independent living case plan; and have his or her status
reviewed every six months. In addition, pursuant to the federal
Fostering Connections Act, a youth must meet one of five work-
or education-related eligibility criteria.
Foster Youth Too Often End Up in the Delinquency System And May
Need Even Greater Support to Transition Effectively to
Adulthood. Foster youth are far more likely than the general
population to become involved with the juvenile justice system:
Youth put in care were three times more likely to be
arrested, convicted, and imprisoned as adults compared to
those who were allowed to remain at home. This indicates
that, after controlling for abuse severity, foster care
experience has some additional impact on future
criminality beyond the effects of abuse and neglect. . .
. For children and juveniles in out-of-home placements,
experiences of abuse and neglect are often compounded by
other negative experiences and factors. . . . The
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extensive needs of children who are placed in foster care
often go unmet, increasing the likelihood that youth will
engage in future delinquent behavior.
(Erin McLaughlin, Dual-System Youth: The Need for Systems
Integration to Improve Outcomes for Foster Youth who Commit
Delinquent Acts 16-17 (2009).) Foster youth are "not only more
likely to be arrested as juveniles than their peers not in care,
they are also more likely to be arrested at a younger age and
more likely to recidivate." (Id. at 11.)
If a foster child commits a crime and becomes a ward of the
court as a delinquent, the child's status as a dependent is
terminated since a child cannot, as a general rule and except as
discussed below, be both a dependent and a ward of the juvenile
court at the same time. If the child successfully completes a
detention by the juvenile court, the child will normally be
returned to his or her parents. However, if the child came to
delinquency out of the foster care system, it may not be safe
for that child to return home or there may be no support for the
child at that home. Thus the youth is either released into
homelessness or released to the home from which they were
initially removed to foster care, without any supports that the
child welfare system could have provided.
In an effort to address this issue and allow for better
oversight of youth who have been involved in both the foster
care and delinquency systems, in 2004 the Legislature passed
legislation to allow counties, should they so choose, to adopt
dual status protocols which permit children to be both
dependents and wards at the same time. (AB 129 (Cohn), Chap.
468, Stats. 2004.) Dual status for children who are both wards
and dependents allows for better oversight and coordination
between child welfare and probation and helps ensure that
children who have completed their detention are not held limbo
with no safe home to which to return.
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This voluntary program authorizes the probation department and
the child welfare services department in any county, in
consultation with the presiding juvenile court judge, to create
a dual status protocol to permit a youth who meets specified
criteria to be designated simultaneously as both a dependent
child and a ward of the juvenile court. According to the
Judicial Council website, 15 of California's 58 counties have
elected to develop these protocols: Butte, Colusa, Del Norte,
Los Angeles, Inyo, Modoc, Placer, Riverside, San Bernardino, San
Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Siskiyou, Sonoma and
Stanislaus. The remaining 43 counties have not elected to
establish dual jurisdiction protocols, thus have no way to
provide critical support services available from the dependency
system to these former foster youth exiting from the delinquency
system. Even in dual status counties, the child welfare agency
does not always stay involved with youth in delinquency, and
thus support services may not be readily available when a youth
completes his or her time in a juvenile facility.
This Bill Extends Transitional Foster Care Support to Those
Youth Who May Most Need Extra Assistance to Survive and Thrive.
Current law provides opportunities for the court to resume
jurisdiction of a former nonminor dependent or ward of the court
for specified reasons. In these cases, a youth who was
receiving foster care services when they turned 18 may opt to
re-enter foster care so that he or she may remain in a healthy
and safe environment and draw down services to help him or her
transition into adulthood. In addition, the law specifically
allows a former foster youth, whose adoptive parent or guardian
dies before the youth turns 21, to re-enter as a nonminor
dependent if he or she meets the specified criteria. Last year,
this same opportunity was added for nonminor dependents who have
reached permanency through permanent guardianship or adoption,
but whose adoptive parent or guardian then fail to provide
ongoing support while the youth is between the age of 18 and 21.
(AB 2454 (Quirk-Silva), Chap. 769, Stats. 2014.)
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This bill expands access to extended foster care services to
those youth who were in a foster care placement, were made a
ward of the court while in the foster care placement, and were
in a locked placement when they turned 18 years of age. While
this is likely a small number of youth each year, these youth
are exactly the youth who have the fewest resources available to
them to help them succeed. They likely have no home, no family
support and no job lined up. As California Against Slavery
writes, these "same factors that make them vulnerable to
unemployment and homelessness also make them vulnerable to
traffickers. An extension of foster care benefits would allow
more time for youth to adjust to independent life."
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT: The Youth Law Center, one of the bill's
co-sponsors, writes:
Youth who cross over from dependency to delinquency are
precisely the at-risk population of youth that the federal
Fostering Connections to Success Act intended states to
serve. A study of child welfare and probation supervised
youth that exited Los Angeles County's juvenile court
system found youth that crossed over from dependency to
delinquency experienced negative outcomes at twice the rate
of youth coming into contact with only child welfare or
probation. This study reveals that crossover youth are
twice as likely to be heavy users of public systems, three
times as likely to experience a jail stay, one-and-a-half
times more likely to receive General Relief, and 50 percent
less likely to be consistently employed than other groups
of former foster youth. These youth desperately need the
safety net provided by AB 12, and the supports to help them
to become productive community members. (Footnote
omitted.)
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The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce very succinctly sums up
the importance of the bill: "By extending eligibility for
foster care up to age 21 for this small, but particularly
at-risk population, California can reduce recidivism and prevent
a lifetime of public dependence in favor of targeted housing,
education, and health interventions."
ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION: The Chief Probation Officers of
California opposes the bill, arguing that the current extended
foster care program is "underfunded and under-resourced. We
should focus our attention on ensuring the program is working
for the existing eligible population - and adequately funded."
The organization adds that it does not believe that it is
appropriate for these youth to be supervised by probation after
the youth has completed the terms of probation: "In our view,
if a youth on probation has successfully completed his or her
term of supervision and for whatever reason his or her housing
situation has become unstable, that is an issue specific to the
welfare of the child and not a probation offense." The author
notes that the decision about who supervises the youth in
extended foster care - whether child welfare or probation - is
made by individual counties and not the state.
Related Current Legislation. AB 885 (Lopez), 2015, would have
facilitated former foster youth re-entering extended foster care
upon disruption of their permanent relationships. It was held
on the Assembly Appropriations Suspense File.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
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Alliance for Children's Rights (co-sponsor)
Youth Law Center (co-sponsor)
Anti-Recidivism Coalition
California Against Slavery
California Youth Empowerment Network
Children Now
Junior League of San Diego
Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce
National Association of Social Workers, California Chapter
National Center for Youth Law
Opposition
Chief Probation Officers of California
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Analysis Prepared by:Leora Gershenzon / JUD. / (916)
319-2334