BILL ANALYSIS
AB 2216
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 25, 2006
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES
Noreen Evans, Chair
AB 2216 (Bass) - As Amended: April 19, 2006
SUBJECT : Child Welfare Leadership and Performance
Accountability Act of 2006.
SUMMARY : Creates a Child Welfare and Foster Care Undersecretary
and the Child Welfare Council to improve outcomes for foster
youth. Specifically, this bill :
1)Makes findings and declarations regarding foster youth.
2)Establishes the Office of the State Foster Care Ombudsperson
as an autonomous entity within the department of California
Health and Human Services Agency.
3)Declares the intent of the Legislature to strengthen the
independence of the ombudsperson to making it more responsive
to youth by:
a) Expanding the budget to include staff salaries and
investigation and travel expenses;
b) Increasing the hours of availability of ombudsperson
services to include evenings, weekends to make services
more accessible to youth;
c) Revising civil service hiring procedures to encourage
and retain former foster youth as ombudsperson staff
members;
d) Authorizing the ombudsperson to identify areas of agency
partial or non-compliance with state and federal laws; and
e) Authorizing the ombudsperson to create written reports
and recommend corrective actions directly to the public,
Governor, Legislature and Judicial Council.
4)Specifies that priority shall be given to former foster youth
in hiring decisions within the Ombudsperson's office.
5)Creates the California Child Welfare Council (Council) to
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serve as an advisory body responsible for improving the
collaboration and processes of the multiple agencies and the
courts which serve foster youth and children in the child
welfare system.
6)Creates a Child Welfare and Foster Care Undersecretary
(Undersecretary) within the California Health and Human
Services Agency to serve as the state leader for child welfare
and foster care programs.
7)Requires the Council to issue advisory reports to the
Governor, Legislature, Judicial Council and the public at
least annually.
8)Specifies that the report shall contain, at a minimum,
recommendations for coordination of services, increasing
effectiveness of programs, increasing judicial excellence,
ensuring that all state IV-E plans, Program Improvement Plans
and Court improvement plans demonstrate effective
collaboration and increasing coordination between courts and
county, state and federal agencies.
9)Requires the council to be comprised of the Child Welfare and
Foster Care Undersecretary, the Chief Justice of the
California Supreme Court, the Superintendent of Public
Instruction, the Executive Director of the State Board of
Education, Directors of the Departments of Social Services,
Mental Health, Health Services, Alcohol and Drug Programs,
Developmental Services, Youth authority, the foster care
Ombudsperson, the administrative director of the Judicial
Council, three youth members of the California Youth
Connection and the chairperson of the Assembly Committee on
Human Services among other stakeholders.
10)Requires the Council to meet at least once every quarter, and
requires the meetings to be open to the public.
11)Prohibits Council members from obtaining compensation for
their services, except for foster youth who shall be entitled
to reimbursement for all actual and necessary expenses
incurred in the performance of their duties.
12)Permits the Council to access aggregated data and information
concerning the child welfare and foster care systems.
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13)Permits the Undersecretary to coordinate the work of the
state department and state agency and to facilitate
collaborations between those entities and the courts and
constitutional officers.
14)Specifies that the Undersecretary shall be responsible for
the direct oversight and coordination of child welfare and
foster care efforts across state agencies including:
administering all federal and state laws and regulations
pertaining to the administration of child welfare and foster
care programs, ensuring that legislative enactments in these
programs are implemented in a consistent and timely manner,
performing periodic system-wide needs assessment, examining
current child welfare and foster care laws to assess their
continued utility and ensuring that statewide performance on
federal and state outcome measures meet established
thresholds.
15)Requires the Undersecretary to be responsible for overseeing
the California Child and Family Service Review.
16) Requires the Undersecretary to convene the workgroup
outlined in current law comprised of representatives of
Judicial Council, state departments, the County Welfare
Director's Association, the California Association of
Counties, the California Youth Connection and other
stakeholders tasked with establishing a work plan for the
child and family service reviews and developing additional
outcomes to measure youth transition, out of county
placements, and foster youth school attendance among many
other outcome measures for foster youth.
17)Requires the Judicial Council to adopt performance measures
designed to compliment and promote the outcome measures and
the performance goals and federal outcome standards as
required by the federal Child and family Services Review.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Provides for a system of child welfare services administered
by each county with oversight by DSS for juvenile wards of the
court, foster youth, or other children under the supervision
of a county welfare department.
2)Enacted the Child Welfare System Improvement and
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Accountability Act to measure and improve outcomes for
children in California's child welfare system.
3)Provides for the California Child and Family Service Review
System created to review all county child welfare systems
including child protective services, foster are, adoption,
family preservation and support and independent living.
4)Requires the state Department of Social Services to convene a
workgroup to consider any existing program improvement plans
entered into by the state pursuant to federal regulations.
5)Created the Foster Care Ombudsperson program to provide an
outlet for foster youth and advocates to report and resolve
problems and concerns.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown; likely significant costs.
COMMENTS : According to the author, "a recurrent criticism of
California's child welfare system is the failure to
effectively coordinate services administered by a vast array
of state and county agencies thereby leaving children subject
to injuries and without essential health, dental, mental
health, housing and educational services. Currently,
collaboration among the many governmental and judicial bodies
that impact the life of children is missing and California's
foster children continue to pay the price, developmentally,
emotionally, and economically. There is no single point of
leadership that the state, counties and the courts can look to
for desperately needed statewide vision, direction, oversight
and accountability of a badly fractured state system."
On January 1, 2004, the Child Welfare System Improvement and
Accountability Act went into effect. Created by the Child
Welfare System Improvement and Accountability Act of 2001 (AB
636, Steinberg, Chapter 678, Statutes of 2001) it requires
counties to address all of the federal review indicators and
measurements. In addition, it charges counties with developing
best practices and consensus-based planning for child welfare
services. This includes provision of better supports for
struggling families, changing the system to be more responsive
and less adversarial and ensuring that youth who turn age 18 in
foster care are better equipped for adulthood.
Counties began to receive data from AB 636 in 2005, allowing
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them to identify weaknesses in their performance and focus on
specific improvements. Every county has submitted their SIP to
the Department of Social Services (DSS). In the coming months,
DSS is expected to send letters to each county indicating their
approval of each SIP. Despite the progress counties have made
on the plans, many are not yet meeting the federal performance
goals. This may be due to lack of necessary funds to implement
needed improvements.
But, the author maintains that "(a)lthough progress has been made
with the passage of the Child Welfare System Improvement and
Accountability Act of 2001 (AB 636), statewide performance on the
established performance measures varies greatly, leaving children
at risk and the state subject to federal penalties for not meeting
national performance measures."
According to the outcome data gathered by the UC Berkeley Child
Welfare Performance Indicators Project and presented in a joint
hearing of the Assembly Committee on Human Services and the
Assembly Select Committee on Foster Care, "every one of the
(outcome) measures is changing in the right direction. Given the
short time frame, this kind of ?improvement is extremely
impressive?"
Specifically, the data supports substantial increases in
adoptions (29.4%) within 24 months of entry into foster care and
in the decrease (19.4%) in the number of children entering
foster car who are initially placed in congregate care; and more
modest increases in reunification within 12 months (1.4%),
decreases in the rate of children entering care (3.4%) and a
decrease in foster are reentry (6.7%).
However, according to a new report by the National Center for
Youth Law entitled Broken Promises: California's Inadequate and
Unequal Treatment of its Abused and Neglected Children, cites
concerns about both state and federal performance indicator
improvements. "State measures do not have standards by which to
gauge performance. Although this Report shows the state average
in the charts for each measure, the current average is not an
acceptable level of performance. For example, the four quarter
state average of children abused again within one year of a prior
incident is almost 13 percent."
Further, the Report states that while a "?disturbingly small
number of counties are meeting the federal standard for repeat
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abuse (of foster children)?not a single large county?met this
standard."
While reforms in foster care are undeniably needed,
questions remain about whether an overhaul of the foster
care system is prudent before establishing a clear picture
of state and county performance, and before allowing local
practice and policy changes to take effect.
Further, on May 21, 2003, a myriad of state departments and
agencies met and created the State Interagency Team which
includes high-level representatives from the State
Departments of Education, Health Services, Social Services,
Mental Health and Alcohol and Drug Programs to name a few.
This Team is tasked with streamlining State programs
relating to foster care and child welfare services. The
Committee may wish to suggest that rather than create a new
Council, members could be added to this Team if needed and
the Team could be tasked with the new and specific duties
currently assigned to the Council.
The author, bill supporters and other stakeholders agree that
this bill is still a work in progress. The author anticipates
feedback from several stakeholder groups and plans to integrate
their suggestions into the bill as it moves though the
Legislative process.
Some of the specific concerns that need to be addressed in
coming months include additional specific direction for both the
Ombudsperson and Undersecretary.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Association of Nonprofits (CAN)
California Coalition for Youth (CCY)
Children's Advocacy Institute (CAI)
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Caitlin O'Halloran / HUM. S. / (916)
319-2089
AB 2216
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