Senator Kahn’s statement is as follows:
Senate Bill No. 260 would specify that the Department of Human Services allow a court with jurisdiction of a child who has died access to all information pertaining to that child. I spoke about this yesterday. The notion here is that we as a people, as a government, need to understand why children in foster care or involved with Child Protective Services die or are dying and what we can do about this, of course. It is important for state local agencies to work together and identify patterns or trends that can be used to avoid these tragedies.
This bill would permit the court to have this information even after a child has died. It is currently in law that upon the death of a child, the court’s jurisdiction expires. So by allowing courts to access information related to this child’s fate, it is our hope that we will construct rules or perhaps new laws to avoid these tragedies in the future.