BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SB 1040
Page 1
Date of Hearing: June 29, 2016
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Lorena Gonzalez, Chair
SB 1040
(Hill) - As Amended June 21, 2016
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|Policy |Human Services |Vote:|7 - 0 |
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: YesReimbursable:
No
SUMMARY: This bill requires the Department of Social Services
(DSS) to establish a working group to examine the unique
challenges facing adoptive families, and makes it unlawful for
anyone to solicit custody of a child without pursuing a legal
adoption or guardianship, as specified. Specifically, this bill:
1)Requires (DSS) to create a working group, in consultation with
specified stakeholders, and to convene by April 1, 2017, to
review the unique challenges facing families with adopted
children and children with special needs to identify resources
within the community that will assist families with these
challenges, and to make recommendations to the Legislature by
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April 1, 2018, as specified, regarding services for these
families.
2)Makes unlawful the act of soliciting, by electronic or any
other means, to take custody of a minor child under the age of
14 and to subsequently take custody of the minor without
pursuing a legal adoption or guardianship within 90 days of
taking the child into physical custody.
FISCAL EFFECT:
1)One-time costs likely in the range of $125,000 to $145,000
(GF) to DSS to establish the working group, collaborate with
working group members to develop recommendations, and submit
the report to the Legislature.
2)Minor costs (GF) to the Judicial Council to participate in the
working group.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose. According to the author, the unlawful transfer of
custody of a minor "is an issue that has garnered public
attention as headlines have highlighted dramatic failures in
international adoptions. California laws already clearly
prohibit parents from abandoning their children, but there
also needs to be clarity in the penal code that soliciting and
taking children unlawfully is a crime. This bill allows
prosecutors to go after these unscrupulous criminals, many of
which are human traffickers. Additionally, this bill will
help frame the conversation and inform the Legislature on the
unique needs of internationally adopted children, many of
which are from war-torn countries with terrible emotional
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scarring. The working group led by Department of Social
Services will help provide feedback on how better to help
these children and families that adopt them."
2)Background. Existing law makes it a misdemeanor for a person
or organization to advertise adoption services in any
periodical or newspaper, by radio, or by other public medium,
if the person or organization does not hold a valid license to
place children for adoption.
Despite this prohibition under existing law, numerous articles
have highlighted the existence of the practice of adoptive
parents seeking permanent homes for their children without the
involvement of adoption agencies, child welfare officials,
attorneys, or the courts. As reported, in part, by Thomson
Reuters in its series of investigations entitled, "The Child
Exchange: Americans use the internet to abandon children
adopted from overseas (September 2013)."
"The teenager had been tossed into America's
underground market for adopted children, a loose
Internet network where desperate parents seek new
homes for kids they regret adopting. Like Quita, now
21, these children are often the casualties of
international adoptions gone sour.
Through Yahoo and Facebook groups, parents and
others advertise the unwanted children and then pass
them to strangers with little or no government
scrutiny, sometimes illegally, a Reuters
investigation has found. It is a largely lawless
marketplace. Often, the children are treated as
chattel, and the needs of parents are put ahead of
the welfare of the orphans they brought to America.
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Reuters analyzed 5,029 posts from a five-year period
on one Internet message board, a Yahoo group. On
average, a child was advertised for re-homing there
once a week. Most of the children ranged in age from
6 to 14 and had been adopted from abroad - from
countries such as Russia and China, Ethiopia and
Ukraine. The youngest was 10 months old.
After learning what Reuters found, Yahoo acted
swiftly. Within hours, it began shutting down
Adopting-from-Disruption, the six-year-old bulletin
board. A spokeswoman said the activity in the group
violated the company's terms-of-service agreement.
The company subsequently took down five other groups
that Reuters brought to its attention."
In September 2015, the United States Government Accountability
Office (GAO) published a report entitled "Child Welfare:
Steps Have Been Taken to Address Unregulated Custody Transfers
of Adopted Children," which examined recent media reports of
the unregulated custody transfer of adopted children by their
adoptive parents to new homes that are often found on the
internet or other unregulated networks. These unregulated
transfers are conducted without the safeguards and oversight
of the courts or the child welfare system, and prospective
homes are not subject to the same scrutiny that prospective
parents are subject to when going through legal adoption
processes, including home studies, criminal background checks,
and pre-adoption training. Unlike adoptions that result in
disruption or dissolution, unregulated transfers occur when
parents intend to permanently transfer custody of their child
to a new family without following the specific steps taken
during the disruption or dissolution process. Because
unregulated custody transfers are conducted outside the
purview of the law, it is unknown how many of these transfers
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occur.
Analysis Prepared by:Jennifer Swenson / APPR. / (916)
319-2081