BILL ANALYSIS
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
2322 (Feuer)
Hearing Date: 08/09/2010 Amended: 08/05/2010
Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-HernandezPolicy Vote: Human
Services 5-0
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BILL SUMMARY: AB 2322 would make various changes to statutes
governing discretionary multidisciplinary personnel teams
(MDTs). Specifically, this bill would:
1) Provide that the activities of MDTs engaged in the
prevention, identification, management, or treatment of
child abuse, elder or dependent person abuse, are
activities performed in the administration of public social
services;
2) Include in the definition of MDTs CalWORKs case
managers, and social workers with experience or training in
child abuse or neglect prevention, identification,
management, or treatment;
3) Include information relevant to the provision of child
welfare services, as defined, as information that may be
disclosed and exchanged by an MDT;
4) Require specified optional computer databases that are
authorized in statute, if they are developed by individual
counties at their discretion, to include information about
persons living in a child's home and a contact person
instead of the employee assigned to the case from a
provider agency, as specified;
5) Specifically authorize the County of Los Angeles, to
include information in its database about convictions of
family members or persons living in the child's home for
crimes that involved a child as a victim, as specified.
6) Permit the otherwise confidential information contained
in the databases to be used for the provision of child
welfare services, as specified;
7) Recast various related confidentiality provisions, to
provide that the above information, if relevant to the
provision of child welfare services, as defined, or the
investigation, prevention, identification, or treatment of
child abuse or neglect, may be disclosed to
multidisciplinary personnel teams; as specified.
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Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2010-11 2011-12
2012-13 Fund
Expands allowable MDT activities Likely minor,
non-reimbursable costs* Local
Requirements for optional Potentially significant,
non-reimbursable costs* Local
local databases
New authority for LA County Potentially significant, non
reimbursable costs Local
*To the extent that counties choose to participate/adopt.
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STAFF COMMENTS:
Local MDTs have been authorized in California to allow for a
coordinated interagency response to elder and child abuse cases
for more than 20 years. MDTs operate at the county level, and
are authorized to share confidential information among team
members
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AB 2322 (Feuer)
for the purposes of preventing, identifying, managing, or
treating child abuse. Currently, all 58 California counties
operate child abuse MDTs, and counties often operate multiple
MDTs which also facilitate coordination among the different
agencies and entities participating on the team to better serve
children. Because MDTs are created by local option, expanding
the scope of who is allowed to serve on an MDT and the authority
to share broader information do not constitute reimbursable
mandates.
At this time, Los Angeles County is the only county operating a
computerized database for its MDTs. This bill would allow Los
Angeles County to include in its database the convictions of
family members and persons living in the home of a child (with
whom the MDT has involvement) for crimes that involved a child
as a victim. This provision is optional, and does not constitute
a reimbursable mandate on Los Angeles County. This bill would
specify that if the county chooses to include criminal
information, that it be removed from the database 50 years after
the date of conviction.
This bill would continue to allow other counties to develop and
utilize MDT computerized databases for their MDTs, but would add
specified requirements for those databases if the counties
choose to develop them. Because there is no requirement to
develop a database, this provision does not appear to constitute
a reimbursable state mandate.