Improving California's Foster Care System: Why the Governor Should Sign AB 3051

By Dave Jones
Chair
Judiciary Committee
California State Assembly

AB 3051, a bill I have authored to improve California’s foster care system, is on the Governor’s desk, having passed the Assembly 76-0 and the Senate 35-0. It will ensure that foster youth can participate in their dependency court hearings. The bill is supported by children's organizations, the Judicial Council, the County Welfare Directors Association, and the Family Law Section of the State Bar, and had no opposition. We are hopeful Governor Schwarzenegger will sign it into law.

When children are removed from their parents due to abuse or neglect, they are placed under the jurisdiction of the dependency court. The dependency court gets to decide where they live, who they live with, and whether they can see their families again. The court even decides whether to terminate parental rights and begin adoption proceedings. However, even though these hearings affect just about every aspect of a child's life, many children who want to participate in their dependency court hearings are shut out of the proceedings.

Current law does not ensure that children 10 and over can testify at their dependency court hearings. If the child is not present at a hearing -- even the hearing to terminate parental rights -- all the court has to do is see if the child received proper notice of the hearing. The court is not required to postpone the hearing and make sure the child can attend, even if the child was not properly notified. This can effectively shut children out of what may well be the most important decisions of their lives.

AB 3051 ensures that children who want to participate in their foster care hearings can do so by (1) providing that children in attendance at their dependency hearings can address the court and fully participate in the hearing, and (2) if a child 10 or older is not present, and has not been properly notified or given an opportunity to attend, requiring the court to continue the hearing and make any orders reasonably necessary to allow the child to be present, unless the court finds that it is in the best interest of the child not to do so. This bill strictly limits continuances to ensure hearings are timely held.

AB 3051 stems from a multi-part in-depth investigatory series that ran in the San Jose Mercury News this past February. That year-long investigation discovered, among other things, that children are often regularly excluded from the dependency court process and that, as a result, judges issue life-altering decisions without ever seeing the children whose futures they are deciding. In particular, the series profiled Zairon Frazier, who lived in eight shelters and groups homes while in foster care. Despite being advised not to bother attending his dependency hearings, he traveled by bus and BART to be there. Unfortunately, there was no consideration of his schedule when his emancipation hearing was set on the same day as his high school final exams. He was forced to choose between taking his finals and attending a hearing involving his future as a foster child.

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