Legislative Deadline Passes; Which Child Welfare Bills Are Still in Play?
Last Friday was the last day for bills to pass out of their house of origin in order to continue to move through the State Legislature over the 2016-17 legislative session.
Over 22 child welfare-related proposals live on, including several bills related to foster care placements or California’s Continuum of Care Reform, including Assembly Bill (AB) 404 (Stone), AB 1446 (Cooley), AB 501 (Ridley-Thomas), AB 507 (Rubio), AB 1006 (Maienschein) and Senate Bill (SB) 213 (Mitchell).
Bills also continued on that would improve access to Extended Foster Care and placements for non-minor dependents, such as AB 604 (Gipson) and SB 612 (Mitchell), and that would improve educational outcomes of foster youth, including AB 766 (Friedman), SB 12 (Beall) and SB 233 (Beall).
Multiple bills proposing changes that would benefit youth supervised by juvenile probation moved onto the next house including AB 811 (Gipson), which would provide access to computers and internet in detention facilities; AB 1124 (Cervantes) and SB 304 (Portantino), focused on education; and AB 878 (Gipson), which would limit the use of physical restraints.
AB 1164 (Thurmond) also continued on, which would establish emergency child care for foster parents and parenting foster youth; along with AB 1371 (Stone), protecting the rights of parenting foster youth; and SB 245 (Leyva) which would reduce the rate of unintended pregnancy among foster youth.
Also still under consideration by the Legislature is AB 754 (Acosta), which would establish grants to enable foster youth to participate in extra-curricular activities; AB 1332 (Bloom) related to the removal of children from a parent with whom the child did not reside at the time the petition was initiated; and AB 1375 (Dababneh), which would establish a database of available foster care beds by county,
Finally, AB 1495 (Maienschein), which would impose additional penalties on perpetrators of child sex trafficking; and AB 1406 (Gloria), which would establish the Homeless Youth Housing Program, have both continued on as well. Bills that make it through the next house will ultimately be voted on by the full legislature and, if they pass, will make it to the Governor’s desk where they must be signed or vetoed by October 15th.