Bill > H608

This bill proposes several key provisions: 1. It mandates the transition of North Carolina's social services system from a county-administered to a regionally-administered system, with the Department of Health and Human Services developing a plan to create no more than 30 regional social services departments by January 1, 2022. A working group is established to provide recommendations on the regionalization plan. 2. It requires the state to contract with a third-party organization to evaluate and reform the state's child welfare system, including improving data collection, leadership, staffing, and evidence-based practices. The bill also creates a child welfare transparency dashboard to monitor the system's performance. 3. It revises the state's corrective action program for local social services departments that fail to meet performance standards, allowing the state to temporarily assume administration of the child welfare program if a department fails to successfully complete a corrective action plan. 4. It establishes the North Carolina Child Well-Being Transformation Council to promote coordination, collaboration, and communication among agencies and organizations involved in providing public services to children. 5. It creates a pilot program to reimburse costs for older youth in foster care to obtain driver's licenses, and a pilot program to waive employment requirements for foster parents providing intensive treatment services. 6. It reduces the time frame for appeals of termination of parental rights orders and requires the state to grant or deny foster care/therapeutic foster care licenses within three months of application.

Housing and Urban Affairs

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2017&BillID=H608&votesToView=all