BILL ANALYSIS
SB 118
Page 1
SENATE THIRD READING
SB 118 (Liu)
As Amended September 3, 2009
Majority vote
SENATE VOTE : 38-0
HUMAN SERVICES 7-0 APPROPRIATIONS 17-0
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|Ayes:|Beall, Saldana, Tom |Ayes:|De Leon, Conway, Ammiano, |
| |Berryhill, Hall, Logue, | | |
| |Portantino, Swanson | |Charles Calderon, Coto, |
| | | |Davis, Fuentes, Hall, |
| | | |Harkey, Miller, Nielsen, |
| | | |John A. Perez, Skinner, |
| | | |Solorio, Audra |
| | | |Strickland, Torlakson, |
| | | |Hill |
|-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------|
| | | | |
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SUBJECT : Seeks to improve outcomes between foster care youth
and their incarcerated parents. Specifically, this bill :
1)Requires that the case plan include information about a
parent's incarceration.
2)Requires social workers to make reasonable efforts to collect
and update data regarding a child's incarcerated parents once
a data entry field has been designated in the statewide child
welfare database.
3)Encourages the Department of Social Services and counties to
consult on ways to incorporate this information as a required
field in the statewide database.
4)Encourages the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation,
county welfare departments, and county sheriffs to develop
protocols facilitating information exchange about incarcerated
parents.
5)Adds chaptering-out amendments to avoid code conflicts with SB
597 (Liu).
SB 118
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FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee analysis, there are one-time costs of approximately
$250,000 ($165,000 General Fund (GF)) for the workload
associated with updating child welfare case plans for children
currently in the foster care system to include the required
information about a parent's incarceration. On-going workload
costs for new entries into foster care database would be in
excess of $100,000 ($70,000 GF) per year.
COMMENTS : The author observes that expanded and lengthened
criminal sentences have resulted in a growing number of children
whose parents are in jail or prison. Research finds that at
least one-third of the children in the child welfare system have
experienced the arrest of a parent. To improve child welfare
services to these children, especially when there is a
possibility of parent and child being reunified, improvements
need to be made to the child welfare services case management
system. The author believes that information about a parent's
incarceration should be in a child's case plan.
Strengthening recent reunification efforts : AB 2070 (Bass),
Chapter 482, Statutes of 2008, increased the length of time that
reunification services are available to incarcerated parents of
children receiving child welfare services. The author of this
bill believes that for AB 2070 to achieve its goal of promoting
the reunification of parent and child, whenever possible,
children's case plans need to include information about whether
the parent is incarcerated.
In 2003, the California Research Bureau (CRB), at the California
State Library, released a report, entitled "California Law and
the Children of Prisoners." The CRB reported that in California
prisons, nearly 80% of women and 67% of men are parents. The
CRB also found that the connections between imprisoned parents
and child welfare services are limited and tenuous at best, even
when a child is in foster care and a reunification plan is in
place.
The state's child welfare services case management system does
not necessarily record that the child has a parent in jail or
prison. Since the release of the CRB's report, additional
organizations and individual academic researchers have added to
the information available to policy makers. The Urban
Institute's Justice Policy Center reported in 2008, in "Broken
Bonds: Understanding and Addressing the Needs of Children with
SB 118
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Incarcerated Parents, that "one of the greatest needs within the
policy community lies in obtaining better records of the number
of children with incarcerated parents." The Journal of Public
Child Welfare included a recent article by researchers at the
University of Illinois who confirmed that emotional and
behavioral problems are more prevalent in children whose parents
have been involved with the criminal justice system than those
who have not, and they argue that child welfare caseworkers can
have success with parents who are now out of jail or prison.
Analysis Prepared by : Frances Chacon / HUM. S. / (916)
319-2089
FN: 0002853