AB 562, the Justice through Placing Foster Children with Families Act, amends Section 309 of the Welfare and Institutions Code to strengthen California’s emphasis on kinship placement in foster care. The bill builds on existing duties to identify and notify relatives after a child is removed from parental custody, and it adds a new statewide data-review requirement beginning January 1, 2027. Each county must compare its rate of placing children with relatives against the statewide average, and, for Indian children, against the statewide rate tied to federal Indian Child Welfare Act placement preferences.
If a county’s placement rate is below the statewide average, the county welfare director or designee must consult with the Center for Excellence in Family Finding, Engagement, and Support to identify best practices for improving kin placement. The bill also defines family finding more explicitly as an active search effort, including computer-based searches and, for Indian children, contact with the child’s tribe to identify relatives and kin. In addition, counties must maintain public procedures for relatives and parents to identify themselves to the county and receive required notices, and they must report whether they have adopted suggested family-finding practices.
The bill’s stated policy goal is to reduce racial disproportionality in foster care, especially for Black and Native American children, by increasing placements with family members rather than nonrelatives. Legislative findings cite research that kinship care is associated with greater placement stability, lower re-abuse, better behavioral health, and improved permanency outcomes. The bill also references practices in other states as models for prioritizing kinship placement and using data to improve performance.
AB 562 affects county welfare departments by imposing additional duties to review data, communicate with a state-designated center, and document family-finding practices. The bill is described as creating a state-mandated local program, but it also states that no reimbursement is required under a specified constitutional exception. In practical terms, it reinforces existing foster care and child welfare procedures while adding oversight, benchmarking, and technical-assistance requirements intended to increase relative and tribal placements.
The overall sentiment around the bill appears strongly supportive and noncontroversial. The recorded votes were unanimous at each stage shown, including committee votes, floor passage, and concurrence in Senate amendments, and the bill ultimately became chaptered law. The main policy emphasis in the text is on improving outcomes for children through kinship care and addressing racial disparities in the foster system, rather than on limiting county discretion or expanding benefits to new groups.
AB 562 amends Welfare and Institutions Code Section 309 to add new county-level obligations related to family finding, kinship placement benchmarking, and consultation with the Center for Excellence in Family Finding, Engagement, and Support. It also requires counties to publicly maintain procedures for relatives and parents to identify themselves and receive notices, and it clarifies that family-finding efforts include computer-based searches and tribal outreach for Indian children. The bill creates a state-mandated local program, but specifies no reimbursement is required under the stated constitutional framework.
The bill appears to have enjoyed broad bipartisan support and little visible opposition. All recorded votes were unanimous, including committee votes, floor passage, and concurrence in Senate amendments. The bill’s framing around child welfare improvement, kinship care, and reducing racial disparities suggests a generally favorable reception among lawmakers.
The bill’s main points of policy tension are implicit rather than reflected in recorded opposition. The added duties for county welfare departments—annual data review, required consultation with a state center, and expanded family-finding documentation—could raise administrative and fiscal concerns for counties, which is why the bill includes a state-mandated local program finding and a no-reimbursement clause. Substantively, the bill also places special emphasis on Indian children and tribal placement preferences, but the text presents this as an extension of existing federal and state child welfare policy rather than a contested change.