Licensure by the Department of Children, Youth, and Families.
It is unlawful for any entity designated as an "agency" to receive children for supervision or care, or arrange for their placement in foster care or with adoptive families, unless licensed by the Department of Children, Youth, and Families. Agencies include child care businesses, placing agencies, foster homes, group care facilities, resource and assessment centers, and numerous other types of entities. Certain individuals and entities are exempt from licensure requirements, including physicians and lawyers.
Licensure rules designate requirements appropriate to the ages and other characteristics of persons served and services offered, as well as requirements for suitability of facilities and operations, background checks, staffing, safety and provision of necessary care, and record keeping, among other requirements.
A foster care license is valid for a three-year period, and may be renewed at the end of that period.
Child-Specific License.
A child-specific or kinship license is issued for placement of a specific child or children and is available to relatives and relatives defined by the tribe caring for children in out-of-home care.
Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children.
The Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC) is a uniform law enacted in all 50 states. It establishes procedures for the interstate placement of children and responsibilities for those involved in placing a child. The placements covered by the ICPC include placements with parents, relatives, foster care, group homes, and certain residential facilities.
Crisis Residential Centers.
Crisis Residential Centers (CRCs) are short-term, semi-secure facilities for runaway youth and adolescents in conflict with their families. Youth can remain in a CRC for up to 15 consecutive days. There must be four staff members, and in no event less than 3:8 staff-to-child ratio, in a CRC.
The Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) is authorized to issue a child-specific license to a relative or close family friend for placement of a specific child in the care and custody of another state who is to be placed in Washington through the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children.
Kinship care providers are exempted from completing blood-borne pathogen training.
The licensing exemption for physicians and lawyers receiving children for supervision or care is removed.
The DCYF is authorized to terminate a license to receive children for supervision or care when a license has been inactive. The DCYF is required to develop rules in collaboration with impacted groups to define inactivity, assess for inactivity, and provide exceptions to termination for inactivity.
The specificity of licenses to receive children for supervision or care are limited to remove a designation for the sex of persons to be served so that licenses only specify the category of care which an agency is authorized to render and the age and number of persons to be served.
The staffing requirements for regional crisis residential centers with semi-secure facilities are modified to require 1:4 staff-to-child ratio during working hours and 1:6 staff-to-child ratio during sleeping hours (instead of four staff members and in no event less than 3:8 staff-to-child ratio).
The substitute bill restores the requirement for state monitoring of the residential program at the Washington School for the Deaf and comprehensive child health and safety reviews every three years.
(In support) This is a technical corrections bill. The bill should clarify that no license be eliminated based on inactivity due to clerical errors.
This bill will make it easier for kinship caregivers to get licensed by exempting them from the blood-borne pathogen training and allow them to receive child-specific licenses for children who are out of state and placed in Washington.
This bill also makes it easier for Crisis Residential Centers (CRCs), which are semi-secure facilities for unaccompanied homeless youth and adolescents in conflict with their families, to operate. Right now, there are more staff than they probably need in order to be able to operate a safe, semi-secure facility.
Foster parents sometimes need to take a break. The bill allows the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) to work with foster parents to make rules to define what "inactive" means so that the DCYF can stop continuing to staff the maintenance of a license when a foster home is no longer planning to take foster children.
The DCYF will develop a rule-making process taking input and feedback to come up with some rules to really define what would constitute inactive status, so the DCYF does not have to continue to staff employees for the maintenance of the license and a situation where foster parents have decided that they are not going to take children for a extended period of time.
In regard to the CRC staffing ratio changes, for decades the programs have operated with a 1:4 staff-to-child ratio during daytime working hours and a 1:6 staff-to-child ratio during overnight hours.
The technical fix included in the bill will actually align state law with the long-term practice within these facilities. This is a budget neutral fix that has no cost, and without the fix there will be a need to unnecessarily ask for additional funding to increase the staffing for these programs above the current practice, and force CRC programs to reduce the number of participants they can serve in a program because they do not have the staff to meet those staffing ratios right now.
In the biennial budget, the DCYF took cuts to the licensing division that resulted in a loss of five staff employees. This bill takes steps to right-size the work of the licensing division to account for those cuts.
(Opposed) None.
Representative Adam Bernbaum, prime sponsor; Kim Justice, Partners for Our Children; Julie Watts, Department of Children, Youth, and Families; Derek Harris, Community Youth Services; and Mary Curry, Linked Arms and Pathways.