BILL ANALYSIS
AB 2216
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ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB 2216 (Bass)
As Amended May 26, 2006
Majority vote
HUMAN SERVICES 5-2 APPROPRIATIONS
(vote not
available)
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|Ayes:|Evans, Berg, Bass, Coto, | | |
| |Nation, | | |
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|Nays:|Haynes, Nakanishi | | |
| | | | |
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SUMMARY : Creates the California Child Welfare Council (Council)
to improve outcomes for foster youth. Specifically, this bill :
1)Establishes the Council to 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.
2)Requires the Council to issue advisory reports to the
Governor, Legislature, Judicial Council (JC), and the public
at least annually.
3)Specifies that the report shall contain, at a minimum:
a) Recommendations for coordinating services, increasing
effectiveness of programs, increasing judicial excellence,
ensuring that all state Title IV-E plans, Program
Improvement Plans and Court improvement plans demonstrate
effective collaboration and increasing coordination between
courts and county, state and federal agencies;
b) Information on the development of systematic methods for
obtaining policy recommendations from foster youth about
the effectiveness and quality of program services;
c) Information regarding the timeliness and consistency of
legislative enactments in child welfare and foster care
programs;
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d) Progress on strengthening and increasing the
independence and authority of the foster care ombudsperson;
and,
e) Efforts to coordinate available services for former
foster youth and improving outreach to those youth and
their families.
4)Requires the Council to be comprised of the Secretary of the
California Health and Human Services Agency, 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.
5)Requires the Council to meet at least once every quarter, and
requires the meetings to be open to the public.
6)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.
7)Permits the Council to access aggregated data and information
concerning the child welfare and foster care systems.
8)Requires the Council to develop additional outcomes to measure
youth transition to self-sufficient adulthood, the rate of
out-of-county placements, and foster youth school attendance
among many other outcome measures for foster youth.
9)Requires the JC to adopt performance measures designed to
complement and promote the outcome measures and the
performance goals and federal outcome standards as required by
the federal Child and Family Services Review.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee analysis, General Fund costs in excess of $250,000 to
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provide analytical staff for the Council, and there are minimal
costs for the JC to develop and implement performance measures.
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. 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."
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, Steinberg, Chapter 678,
Statutes of 2001), 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 care 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, a 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
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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%."
Further, the report states that while a "?disturbingly small
number of counties are meeting the federal standard for repeat
abuse (of foster children)?not a single large county?met this
standard."
Analysis Prepared by : Caitlin O'Halloran / HUM. S. / (916)
319-2089
FN: 0014954