Foster Care: LGBTQ youth.

Existing law generally provides for the placement of foster youth in various placement settings and governs the provision of child welfare services, which is defined to mean public social services that are directed toward the accomplishment of specified purposes, including protecting and promoting the welfare of all children, preventing the unnecessary separation of children from their families, and restoring to their families children who have been removed. Existing law requires the State Department of Social Services, in consultation with county child welfare agencies and other specified entities, to implement a unified, family friendly, and child-centered resource family approval process to replace the existing multiple processes for licensing foster family homes, certifying foster homes by licensed foster family agencies, approving relatives and nonrelative extended family members as foster care providers, and approving guardians and adoptive families. This bill would require the department to convene a workgroup to create a report with recommendations to prevent housing instability among LGBTQ youth in foster care. The bill would require the workgroup to submit that report on or before January 1, 2025, as specified.