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Over 90 Bills Focused on Child Welfare Proposed in State Legislature
Children Now has compiled a document listing over 90 child welfare-related legislative proposals currently making their way through the California State Legislature. With nearly 60 bills in the Assembly and more than 30 in the Senate, these bills focus on a range of issues related to foster care, education, mental health, youth homelessness, human trafficking, and juvenile justice.
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AB 885 Seeks to Remove Barriers to Re-entry into Extended Foster Care
Assembly Member Patty Lopez has introduced Assembly Bill 885, which would clarify the requirements for re-entry for a youth whose permanent plan fails after age 18. In 2014, Assembly Bill 2454 was signed into law, providing youth who exited foster care to adoption or guardianship the right to re-enter foster care if the adoption or guardianship disrupted after age 18. However, AB 2454 created an unintentional barrier to re-entry by requiring that the adoption assistance or guardianship assistance benefits be terminated as a condition of petitioning the court for re-entry.
According to the Alliance for Children’s Rights, most youth have no way of knowing whether the funding has terminated as the assistance is paid to the adoptive parent or former guardian. Further, a youth has no mechanism to get the assistance terminated. AB 885 removes this administrative barrier to re-entry, allowing a youth to petition for re-entry in a timely manner without having to first ensure that funding has terminated.
AB 855 will next be heard in the Senate Human Services Committee (submit a support letter) and the Senate Judiciary Committee (submit a support letter). To learn more about AB 855, read the fact sheet.
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Coalition Requests Congress Invest in Housing Vouchers for Homeless Families and Former Foster Youth
The Children’s Defense Fund is leading a coalition of organizations requesting that the United States Congress invest in New Housing Choice Vouchers (HCV) and Family Unification Program (FUP) Vouchers. The request includes an additional $88 million for 10,000 new HCVs for homeless families with children, and $20 million for the FUP vouchers to provide 2,500 new vouchers to serve families involved with child welfare and young adults who have left or are leaving foster care.
HCVs provide families a choice to live where they want to, and communities an opportunity to create and develop new long-term affordable housing. The FUP promotes partnerships between local child welfare agencies and public housing authorities to reduce child placement into foster care, promote family reunification, and reduce and prevent homelessness among former foster youth. Children’s Defense Fund submitted a letter to Congress on March 16th outlining this budget request.
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Call to Augment Budget for Foster Youth Dependency Counsel Needs Your Help
The Children's Law Center of California (CLC) is asking for letters of support to allocate an additional $33.1 million to help reduce the caseloads of dependency counsel attorneys and non-profit public interest law firms who advocate for children in the foster care system.
In 2015, $33.1 million was allocated to reduce the caseloads of court-appointed dependency counsel. However, this allocation was eventually reduced to $11 million, which was only 1/3 of the funds needed to bring caseloads statewide to 188 child clients per attorney – the maximum recommended by a 2008 California study. Several studies detail the impact that crushing caseloads can have on the quality of representation given to foster youth by dedicated, but overworked counsel. Although the reports above detail the need for additional funding, the reduced allocation of $11 million remains unchanged in the Governor’s January 2016 Budget Proposal.
To support CLC’s campaign, all letters of support to the Assembly Budget Subcommittee (support letter) can be sent to: marvin.deon@asm.ca.gov. All letters of support to the Senate Budget Subcommittee (support letter) can be sent to: julie.salley-gray@sen.ca.gov . A copy of any support letter should be sent to abramss@clcla.org.
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