Florida Senate - 2016                        COMMITTEE AMENDMENT
       Bill No. SPB 7018
       
       
       
       
       
       
                                Ì792830#Î792830                         
       
                              LEGISLATIVE ACTION                        
                    Senate             .             House              
                  Comm: FAV            .                                
                  10/22/2015           .                                
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       The Committee on Children, Families, and Elder Affairs (Detert)
       recommended the following:
       
    1         Senate Amendment 
    2  
    3         Delete lines 1010 - 1043
    4  and insert:
    5         (e) “Residential group care” means a 24-hour, live-in
    6  environment that provides supervision, care, and services to
    7  meet the physical, emotional, social, and life skills needs of
    8  children served by the dependency system. Services may either be
    9  provided by residential group care staff who are qualified to
   10  perform the needed service, or a community-based service
   11  provider with clinical expertise, credentials, and training to
   12  provide services to the children being served.
   13         (3) DEVELOPMENT OF CONTINUUM.—The department, in
   14  collaboration with the Florida Institute for Child Welfare, the
   15  Quality Parenting Initiative and the Florida Coalition for
   16  Children, shall develop a continuum of care for the placement of
   17  children in care, including but not limited to, both family
   18  foster care and residential group care. To implement the
   19  continuum of care, the department must by December 31, 2017:
   20         1. Establish levels of care in the continuum that are
   21  clearly and concisely defined with the qualifying criteria for
   22  placement for each level identified.
   23         2. Revise licensure standards and rules to reflect both the
   24  supports and services provided by a placement at each level of
   25  care as well as the complexity of the needs of the children
   26  served. This must include attention to the need for a particular
   27  category of provider in a community before licensure can be
   28  considered; quality standards of operation that must be met by
   29  all licensed providers; numbers and qualifications of staff that
   30  are adequate to effectively serve children with the issues the
   31  facility seeks to serve; and a well-defined process tied to
   32  specific criteria that lead to licensure suspension or
   33  revocation.
   34         3. Develop policies and procedures necessary to ensure
   35  that placement in any level of care is appropriate for each
   36  specific child, is determined by the required assessments and
   37  staffings, and lasts only as long as necessary to resolve the
   38  issue that required the placement.
   39         4. Develop a plan to recruit, train and retain specialized
   40  family foster homes for pregnant and parenting children and
   41  young adults. These family foster homes must be designed to
   42  provide an out-of-home placement option for young parents and
   43  their children to enable them to live in the same family foster
   44  home while caring for the child and working towards independent
   45  care of the child.
   46         5. Develop, in collaboration with the Department of
   47  Juvenile Justice, a plan to develop specialized out-of home
   48  placements for children who are involved with both the
   49  dependency and the juvenile justice systems.
   50