BOSTON — Massachusetts would create a so-called Foster Child Bill of Rights under a new child welfare compromise House and Senate negotiators agreed to on Friday.
The provision lays out rights for every child in Department of Children and Families custody or care, including to safety and security; placements that prioritize relationships with relatives and frequent contact with siblings; maintaining cultural, linguistic, religious and gender identity; regular school attendance and educational stability; timely medical care, including behavioral health care and reasonable access to a social worker.
The Bill of Rights has been a priority for Sen. Jo Comerford, who herself is a parent to two children adopted through foster care.
The compromise (H 5629) was filed just before 11:30 p.m. Thursday by a conference committee made up of Comerford, Sens. Robyn Kennedy and Patrick O’Connor, and Reps. Reps. Jay Livingstone, Judith Garcia and Alyson Sullivan-Almeida. The House passed its child welfare bill (H 4646) on a 159-1 vote in October; the Senate passed its version (S 3121) unanimously in June.
The bill would generally build a more comprehensive, standing, bureaucratic layer between DCF and the school system, so a social worker isn’t the only person tracking a student’s education.
It creates a dedicated education infrastructure inside DCF, subject to appropriation. The education unit would oversee education work across the department’s regional and area offices, to monitor academic progress of kids in DCF custody and support social workers on educational issues such as helping to develop Individualized Education Plans and 504 plans.
The office would also help education records move accurately when a child transfers between school districts. However, the Senate’s “electronic backpack” program — a system designed to help with the transmission of documents when students transfer — wasn’t included in the compromise and will be sent to a study commission that has a year to report back.
An education director would be appointed by the DCF commissioner to oversee the department’s overall education policy. And the director would also appoint education specialists, who are full-time DCF employees dedicated to educational stability for kids in custody. They could accompany social workers to meet with school staff, including IEP and 504 plan meetings.
The bill also creates a new set of legal counsel notification requirements, setting hard deadlines for DCF to tell a child’s attorney about major events in their case.
The state child fatality review team would be transferred from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to the Office of the Child Advocate. In rebuilding the state’s child-death review apparatus, the language also requires the team to outline new model investigation protocols and training for the local teams below it, and publish an annual public report of its findings.
The old law described the Office of the Child Advocate as “independent of any supervision or control by any executive agency.”
A new section of this bill would replace that with much stronger language to maintain the office’s independence: OCA would be “an independent state agency that shall not be subject to the supervision or control of any other executive office, executive agency, commission, board, bureau or political subdivision of the commonwealth.”
One of the largest changes comes in building out the state’s network of Family Resource Centers. The bill requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to set standards for these community-based service programs, connect the network to existing behavioral-health infrastructure, local schools and state agencies, and require standardized intake screenings to determine a families’ needs.
A facility deemed a Family Resource Center could then assign a case manager to high-needs families.
The bill then puts up a new enforceable preference for community services: a case manager can’t refer a family to juvenile court for a Child Requiring Assistance process — where parents, guardians, or school officials ask a judge for help supervising a youth aged 6 to 18 exhibiting stubborn, runaway, or truant behaviors — unless the family has exhausted all reasonably available community-based service options first.
The branches were likely to pass the bill Friday, the last day of scheduled formal sessions for the year, and send it to Gov. Maura Healey’s desk for her review.
Sam Drysdale is a reporter for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach her at [email protected].
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