Resource families: supportive services pilot program.

Existing law provides for the implementation, by counties and foster family agencies, of the resource family approval process, which is a unified, family-friendly, and child-centered approval process that replaces the multiple processes for licensing foster family homes, approving relatives and nonrelative extended family members as foster care providers, and approving adoptive families. This bill would require the State Department of Social Services to establish and facilitate a pilot program in up to 5 counties that voluntarily apply and are selected by the department, to increase placement stability for foster youth and facilitate greater resource family retention through the provision of strengths-based, skills-based, trauma-informed coaching. The bill would specify that the pilot program is not intended to supplant any existing obligation on counties to provide core services, or to duplicate services already available to foster children in the community. The bill would set forth the pilot program responsibilities of the department and the participating counties, and would require the department, by June 30, 2020, to consult with relevant stakeholders and to consider the stakeholders' recommendations to the department regarding certain parameters of the pilot program, as specified. The bill would require a county that elects to participate in the pilot program to conduct at least one evaluation of the program's impact and effectiveness on increasing placement stability for foster youth and retaining resource families in accordance with, and upon issuance of guidance from, the department, and to submit the evaluation to the department no later than December 31, 2022. The bill would require the department to report the information provided by the counties to the Legislature, as prescribed. The bill would require the pilot program to be implemented only if the Legislature appropriates sufficient funding. The provisions of the bill would be repealed on January 1, 2023.