(a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(1) It is the intent of the Legislature to ensure quality care for children and youth who are placed in the continuum of foster care settings.
(2) Attracting and retaining quality caregivers is critical to achieving positive outcomes for children, youth, and families, and to ensuring the success of child welfare improvement efforts.
(3) Quality caregivers strengthen foster care by ensuring that a foster or relative family caring for a child provides the loving, committed, and skilled care that the child needs, while working effectively with the child welfare system to reach the child’s goals.
(4) Caregivers who are informed of the child’s educational, medical, dental, and mental health history and current needs are better able to meet those needs and address the effects of trauma, increasing placement stability and improving permanency outcomes.
(5) Sharing necessary information with the caregiver is a critical component of effective service delivery for children and youth in foster care.
(b) Therefore, consistent with state and federal law, information shall be provided to a caregiver regarding the child’s or youth’s educational, medical, dental, and mental health history and current needs.
(c) This section is declaratory of existing law and is not intended to impose a new program or higher level of service upon any local agency. It is intended, however, that this restatement of existing law should engender a renewed sense of commitment to engaging foster parents in order to provide quality care to children and youth in foster care.
(d) No later than January 1, 2017, the department shall consult with representatives of the County Counsels’ Association of California, County Welfare Directors Association of California, and stakeholders to develop regulations or identify policy changes necessary to allow for the sharing of information as described in this section.
(Added by Stats. 2015, Ch. 773, Sec. 52. (AB 403) Effective January 1, 2016.)