Foster care.

(1) Existing law, commonly known as Continuum of Care Reform (CCR) , states the intent of the Legislature to improve California's child welfare system and its outcomes by increasing the use of home-based family care and creating faster paths to permanency resulting in shorter durations of involvement in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, among other things. Existing law, as part of the CCR, requires the State Department of Social Services to implement a resource family approval process, and directs counties and foster family agencies, commencing January 1, 2017, to approve resource families in lieu of licensing and certifying foster homes. Existing law defines a resource family as an individual or family that has successfully met both home environment assessment standards and permanency assessment criteria. Existing law requires the department to review resource family approval standards, including case file documentation. Existing law requires foster family agencies to prepare a written report on an applicant's capacity to foster, adopt, and provide legal guardianship of a child based on information gathered through the resource family application and assessment processes, and requires counties and foster family agencies, when a resource family seeks approval by a subsequent foster family agency or transfer of their approval to a county, to request or provide the above-specified written report, including any updates to the report. This bill would require counties and foster family agencies, when a resource family seeks approval by a subsequent foster family agency or transfer of their approval to a county, to request or provide documents in the resource family file maintained by a county or the resource family case record maintained by a foster family agency, including any updates to the file or record. By imposing additional duties on counties, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. (2) Existing law requires the department to license and regulate various facilities, including community care facilities, residential care facilities for persons with chronic, life-threatening illness, child daycare centers, family childcare homes, and licensed foster family homes or certified family homes, and generally makes violations of these requirements a crime. Existing law requires the department to secure from an appropriate law enforcement agency a criminal record to determine whether an applicant or specified persons have been convicted of a crime, and prohibits the department from approving applicants who have committed specified crimes. Existing law authorizes the department to prohibit a person from being a member of the board of directors, an executive director, or an officer of one of the above-specified facilities if they, among other things, have engaged in conduct that is inimical to the health, morals, welfare, or safety of either the people of the state or an individual in or receiving services from the facility or have engaged in acts of financial malfeasance concerning the operation of the facility. Existing law generally prohibits an excluded person from working in a facility or being licensed to operate any facility licensed by the department or from being a certified foster parent or resource family for the remainder of the excluded person's life if the excluded person appealed the exclusion order and there is a decision and order of the department upholding the exclusion order. This bill would state that an excluded person is prohibited from being a resource family. The bill would impose specified criminal background check requirements on individuals who work in a community care facility that is eligible to accept placement of a dependent child. By expanding the requirements on those facilities, the violation of which is a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. (3) Existing law authorizes specified caregivers who are not licensed health care professionals to administer subcutaneous injections of medications to a foster child in placement, as prescribed by the child's physician. This bill would additionally authorize a staff member of a group home who provides direct care and supervision to children and youth residing in the group home to administer those injections to a foster child in placement. (4) Existing law requires the department to establish rates for short-term residential therapeutic programs and foster family agencies that include an interim rate that is effective January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2019, inclusive, and that becomes inoperative on January 1, 2020. This bill would instead make that interim rate effective January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2020, inclusive, and would make it inoperative on January 1, 2021. (5) Existing law authorizes the department to license, no later than January 1, 2019, and contingent upon an appropriation in the annual Budget Act for these purposes, a short-term residential therapeutic program operating as a children's crisis residential program, as defined, and requires the department to regulate those programs. This bill would specify distinct program approval requirements for short-term residential treatment programs that serve only children who are experiencing mental health crises and programs that also serve children who are not experiencing mental health crises. (6) Existing law establishes the Foster Family Home and Small Family Home Insurance Fund within the State Department of Social Services to pay, on behalf of foster family homes, small family homes, and resource families, claims of foster children, their parents, guardians, or guardians ad litem resulting from occurrences peculiar to the foster care relationship and the provision of foster care services. This bill would authorize the Foster Family Home and Small Family Home Insurance Fund to make, on or after January 1, 2020, payments on behalf of tribally approved homes. (7) Existing law authorizes a court to make any reasonable orders for the care, supervision, custody, conduct, maintenance, and support of a minor or nonminor, if they are adjudged a ward of the court. Existing law, in conformity with federal law, requires a probation agency to determine the appropriate placement for the ward once the court issues a placement order. This bill would authorize a probation agency to make an emergency placement of a minor with a relative or nonrelative extended family member if the probation agency takes specified action, including conducting an in-home inspection and requiring the relative or nonrelative extended family member to submit an application for approval as a resource family. (8) Existing law, as part of the CCR, updated payment rate structures for foster care programs, and requires the home-based family care rate structure to be implemented as of January 1, 2017. Existing law requires that cases in which guardianship has been established in the probate court receive the basic foster care maintenance rate effective and available as of December 31, 2016, instead of the home-based family care rate. This bill would instead require cases in which guardianship has been established in the probate court to receive the basic level rate of the home-based family care rate structure. (9) Existing law requires the state, through the department and county welfare departments, to establish and support a public system of statewide child welfare services, and requires the department to implement a single statewide Child Welfare Services Case Management System (CWS/CMS) to administer and evaluate the state's child welfare services and foster care programs. Existing federal regulations require a child welfare contributing agency, as defined, to provide specified data from the Comprehensive Child Welfare Information Systems and support bidirectional data exchanges to exchange relevant data amongst various systems. This bill would require the department to determine which entities are a child welfare contributing agency for purposes of the federal regulations, and to develop and issue written directives for child welfare contributing agencies on specified matters, including how to submit data to applicable child welfare case management systems. The bill would require each child welfare contributing agency to provide child welfare services data to the statewide child welfare case management system. To the extent that the reporting requirements increase the workload of county agencies, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. (10) Existing law requires the department to develop an intensive services foster care program to serve children with specific needs, including intensive treatment and behavioral needs and specialized health care needs, whose needs for safety, permanency, and well-being require specially trained resource parents and intensive professional and paraprofessional services and supports in order to remain in a home-based setting or to avoid or exit congregate care in a short-term residential therapeutic program, group home, or out-of-state residential center. Existing law prohibits more than 2 foster children from being placed in an intensive services foster care resource family home if one or both of the children has intensive needs. Existing law, notwithstanding that provision, authorizes up to 5 foster children to be placed in an intensive services foster care resource family home in order to accommodate sibling group placement. Existing law requires, prior to the placement of a 2nd or subsequent child in an intensive services foster care resource family home, a foster family agency to provide the county placing agency with a written assessment of risks and compatibility. The bill would instead authorize a county placing agency to approve placements for no more than 3 foster children, 2 of whom may be eligible children, in an intensive services foster care resource family home, and would authorize the county to approve additional placements in compelling circumstances, such as to accommodate a preexisting relationship, if specified requirements are met, including that the needs and services plan of each child placed in the home would ensure timely support and services for that child. The bill would condition these additional placements on the approval of the director of the county child welfare department or the chief probation officer of the county probation department. The bill would require the department to adopt regulations to implement the intensive services foster care program, and would authorize the department, until regulations are adopted, to administer the program through the issuance of written directives. The bill would require a foster family agency that intends to operate an intensive services foster care program to provide to the department a description of the program model and how it intends to comply with specified statutory requirements. This bill would also require the department, in consultation with counties and other interested stakeholders, to consider options to expand the number of available resource families who are willing to provide intensive services foster care. (11) If a relative of a dependent child is appointed the legal guardian of the child and the child has been placed with the relative for at least 6 months, existing law requires the court to terminate its dependency jurisdiction and to retain jurisdiction over the child as a ward of the guardianship, unless the relative guardian objects or upon a finding of exceptional circumstances. This bill would also apply this provision to a nonrelative extended family member. The bill would instead condition the requirement for the court to terminate dependency jurisdiction on the guardian's home maintaining resource family approval for at least 6 months. (12) Existing law, the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act, requires a mandated reporter, as defined, to report whenever they, in their professional capacity or within the scope of their employment, have knowledge of or observed a child whom the mandated reporter knows or reasonably suspects has been the victim of child abuse or neglect. Existing law grants civil and criminal immunity to specified individuals, including a mandated reporter, for any report that is required or authorized by the act. This bill would extend civil and criminal immunity to any person who, in good faith, provides information or assistance, in connection with a report, investigation, or legal intervention pursuant to a good faith report of child abuse or neglect under the act. (13) Existing law continuously appropriates funds from the General Fund to defray a portion of the state's share of costs under the CalWORKs program, the AFDC-FC program, and for the placement of hard-to-place adoptive children. This bill would provide that the continuous appropriation would not be made for purposes of implementing the bill. (14) This bill would incorporate additional changes to Section 1517 of the Health and Safety Code proposed by AB 686 to be operative only if this bill and AB 686 are enacted and this bill is enacted last. This bill would incorporate additional changes to Section 16519.5 of the Welfare and Institutions Code proposed by AB 686 and AB 865 to be operative only if this bill and AB 686, this bill and AB 865, or all 3 bills are enacted and this bill is enacted last. (15) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.