Laws & Policy

We implement policy advocacy at the federal, state, and local levels. Our work includes policy development, lobbying, coalition building, and community organizing.

Focus areas

Education

Foster Care

Health

Immigration

Commercial Sexual Exploitation

Youth Justice

Location

Initiatives

Oversight and Monitoring for Foster Children Prescribed Psychotropic Medications (2015)

SB 319 (Beall)

The legislation strengthens the role of public health nurses giving explicit responsibility for the oversight and monitoring of the administration of psychotropic drugs to foster children.

Implementation of the Federal Preventing Child Sex Trafficking Act (2015)

HR 4980/SB 794

In 2015, California passed Senate Bill (SB) 794 which enacted key provisions of the federal Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act of 2014 (HR 4980). Importantly, SB 794 requires counties develop two sets of protocols for CSEC and for youth who runaway or go missing from foster

Implementation of California’s CSEC Program (2014)

SB 855

Launched in 2015, the groundbreaking Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC) Program is administered by the California Department of Social Services (CDSS). Counties that elect to participate in the CSEC Program are required to develop an interagency protocol that utilizes a

Youth Offender Parole (2013)

SB 260 and SB 261 (Hancock)

Working to ban life without parole sentences for youth and create meaningful opportunities for release to those that have.

Local Control Funding Formula (2013)

AB 97

This groundbreaking law changed the way education is funded in the state and designation of foster youth as student sub-group for the first time anywhere in the United States.

California's Fair Sentencing Law (2012)

SB 9 (Yee)

Enacted in 2012, this law gives juvenile offenders sentenced to life without the possibility of parole the opportunity to seek a hearing to reduce their sentences