Emergency Temporary Care For Children

The act requires the general assembly to annually appropriate money to the state department of human services (state department) sufficient to fund 5 nights of care for each juvenile placed in a licensed temporary shelter. The state department allocates the money to judicial districts in accordance with a formula developed by the working group for criteria for placement of juvenile offenders (working group). In order to receive an allocation, a judicial district's juvenile services planning committee, or the judicial district if the judicial district has not established a juvenile services planning committee, must include a plan for providing temporary shelter in the judicial district in its local juvenile services plan.

Under existing law, the working group is required to make recommendations regarding the placement of juveniles. The act requires the house of representatives public and behavioral health and human services committee and the senate health and human services committee to annually hold a joint meeting to determine whether the working group's recommendations have been implemented in a manner that warrants discontinuing the annual appropriation for 5 nights of care in a licensed temporary shelter and the requirement that judicial districts develop a plan for providing temporary shelter.

The act defines temporary shelter as the temporary care of a child in a physically unrestricted setting pending a return to the child's home or placement in an appropriate alternate setting pursuant to applicable state law. Temporary care in a temporary shelter is voluntary and a child may not be placed in a licensed temporary shelter facility for more than 5 days. The act requires a person providing temporary shelter to allow professionals to assess children there, and a child in temporary shelter must have access to educational services.

The act appropriates $137,308 to the state department from the general fund for use by the division of youth services to implement the act.

(Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)