With high-profile backing and little opposition, a bill to strengthen protections for youth in California’s residential treatment centers has passed the Legislature and now heads to the governor’s desk for final approval.
Senate Bill 1043 aims to increase oversight of staff at these facilities when they resort to physical restraints, isolation or medication to subdue youth in crisis. With strong bipartisan backing, the bill has sailed through the Legislature without a single no vote.
“For too long, these facilities have operated without adequate oversight, leaving vulnerable youth at risk,” celebrity mogul Paris Hilton stated in a joint press release with state Sen. Shannon Grove, who authored the bill.
“I urge Governor Newsom to sign SB 1043 into law, affirming California’s commitment to protecting our youth and setting a national standard for transparency and accountability in these institutions,” Hilton said. She called the legislation “a vital step towards ensuring that every child is treated with the care and respect they deserve.”
Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the legislation.
Following decades of reform, California already has some of the strictest laws governing residential care for youth, particularly those in foster care, and the pending legislation would further enhance that oversight.
Current law requires documentation of all unusual incidents in residential programs, and a thorough debriefing among staff and supervisors. Children’s “authorized representative” must be informed anytime a restraint or seclusion method is used and written reports drawn up.
The pending legislation enhances the transparency of such events, requiring that verbal and written explanations be provided to the child and their parent or guardian, specifying why they were restrained or secluded. It also requires facilities to provide youth the opportunity to contact the state foster care ombudsperson if they feel they’ve been mistreated.
Under its provisions, the state Department of Social Services would be required to maintain a public database showing how often restraint and seclusion techniques were deployed at each licensed residential facility, including redacted incident reports for each occurance. Those reports would be posted to the department’s publicly available database on group home incidents. While such data is currently collected by the state agency, it is not shared externally. But according to a legislative analysis, in 2023, there were roughly 3,000 instances of restraint or seclusion in the California residential facilities for youth.
“The use of restraints and seclusion can have serious, even deadly, consequences, and caregivers and guardians deserve to know exactly what’s happening in these facilities.”
— Meg Appelgate, Unsilenced
“The act will promote the highest level of transparency when it comes to using restraints or seclusion rooms on youth in short-term residential therapeutic programs,” Sen. Grove announced Wednesday.
Scott Murray, spokesperson for the California Department of Social Services, said he could not comment on pending legislation. But in May, he told The Imprint that his department’s licensing division collects reports from facilities whenever restraints are used on children, and investigates potential licensing violations. Murray emphasized that current law bars isolating children in locked rooms, using face-down restraints and giving medication solely to subdue crises.
California moved away from traditional group homes years ago, in an attempt to curb a longstanding practice of warehousing children simply because local agencies couldn’t find them more suitable homes. Group homes here are now known as short-term residential treatment programs. And under current law, foster youth can only be placed in these congregate care settings for limited periods of time approved by the court. They must receive treatment for behavioral or mental health challenges, provided by licensed clinicians.
There are currently 339 such programs licensed in California, serving 1,499 youth, according to an Aug. 21 bill analysis. That number includes 1,182 foster youth and 317 children sent to a facility by a probation department.
In a May interview, Sen. Grove said her current legislation was inspired in part by a 2020 investigation by The Imprint and The San Francisco Chronicle, Far From Home, Far From Safe. The exposé revealed rampant abuse in private, out-of-state residential facilities where California had long been sending its foster youth. The reporting resulted in a law banning child welfare departments from sending children across state lines, as well as a $100 million investment to create better treatment options in-state.
“We spent a lot of money bringing all these kids home and condemning those organizations outside of California,” Grove said in an interview. “We want to make sure that there’s transparency to make sure that these kids are getting the care they need.”
The Department of Social Services estimates the bill would cost $57.6 million over the first four years and $12.1 million annually after that. This would cover the costs to make the restraint and seclusion data publicly available, as well as increasing staffing and resources for the Office of the Foster Care Ombudsperson and the licensing division to account for increased investigations related to these incidents.
More than a dozen organizations have supported Grove’s legislation, including Disability Rights California, the Children’s Law Center of California and Unsilenced, an advocacy group for people who have lived in youth residential treatment centers.
“This bill is significant because it finally holds these facilities accountable by making critical data available to the public and brings much needed transparency to an industry that has long lacked it,” Unsilenced CEO Meg Appelgate stated in an email. “Passing SB 1043 is a key step toward ensuring these environments are safe for the children in their care and driving the essential changes these facilities desperately need. “
Appelgate said the stepped-up oversight could prevent future harm.
“The use of restraints and seclusion can have serious, even deadly, consequences, and caregivers and guardians deserve to know exactly what’s happening in these facilities,” she said.
While there has been no formal opposition to Grove’s legislation, the head of the trade group for residential care providers in the state said her members have been alarmed by the way it’s been framed.
Bill hearings and press conferences for the pending legislation included testimony from Hilton and others who described traumatic experiences during their time spent in residential treatment facilities in other states.
But Chris Stoner-Mertz and Adrienne Shilton, CEO and vice president of the California Alliance said California facilities do not deserve to be “lumped in” with the troubled teen industry and problematic out-of-state facilities.
“What happened to Paris Hilton sounds just awful,” Stoner-Mertz said of Hilton’s recounting of abuse at Utah’s Provo Canyon School and other facilities. In contrast, she added, her state’s programs provide home-like environments that “are highly regulated and have extensive licensing and oversight, which I am guessing is quite different from the facility that she likely was in.”
