Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, D-Corvallis, on the Senate floor on Jan. 13, 2025. (Photo by Laura Tesler/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
An Oregon state lawmaker is again trying to expand the list of rights given to the state’s foster youth and rework the child abuse investigation process, despite a previous veto from Gov. Tina Kotek which quashed the effort last year.
On Wednesday morning, Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, D-Corvallis, shared details of legislation incorporating two child welfare bills the governor vetoed last June. The veto prompted a rare rebuke from the Oregon Senate, which voted to override one of her vetoes. The Oregon House, however, later voted against doing the same, killing a push to expand Oregon’s Foster Children’s Bill of Rights, established more than a decade ago, in the 2025 legislative session.
The existing bill of rights entitles foster children to keep belongings such as gifts, have clean and appropriate clothes and participate in opportunities such as sports or art. Gelser Blouin sought to add multiple rights including access to personal belongings and for siblings in the foster care system to remain in contact barring a court order.
The other bill Kotek vetoed would have mandated that Oregon’s Department of Human Services tell a child’s parent or guardian during an abuse investigation that its representative is not an attorney and cannot offer legal advice.
In her veto message, the governor wrote that both bills make changes that “add greater complexity and confusion to Oregon’s already fragmented statutory framework for child abuse investigations.”
She instead offered praise for a failed bill she advocated for last year that sought to enact another bill lowering regulations around the transfer and seclusion of children in out-of-state facilities for needs such as residential care and treatment centers. The legislation sparked heated opposition from some child welfare advocates, given that Oregon by 2020 phased out the practice of sending youth out-of-state for foster care amid concerns of abuse.
Gelser Blouin told the Senate Human Services Committee on Wednesday that she believes the new legislation addresses issues raised in Kotek’s letter. If a child is on a trial home visit, she said, their parent will only be investigated under standard child abuse investigation practices, rather than the heightened inquiry that takes place when a licensed facility or foster residential home undergoes an abuse investigation.
The bill also incorporates a clarification for the responsibilities of Child Protective Services representatives, who do not provide formal legal advice to families undergoing abuse investigations.
“Apparently, you might be a CPS worker and also be an attorney, and then you would be not honest if you said ‘I’m not an attorney,’ when you really are,” Gelser-Blouin said. “So now ODHS would be able to hire as many attorneys as they wanted to work at CPS, and they still wouldn’t offer legal advice.”
The legislation also aims to ensure that the right to maintain and access to personal belongings does not go so far as to allow someone to “use your amplifier and your electric guitar at three in the morning,” Gelser-Blouin said. The Foster Children’s Bill of Rights must be posted in a prominent place accessible to a child, she said.
“What this attempts to do is pull the two elements of the two bills together in a way that addresses the concerns that were raised in the veto letter,” she said.
Out-of-state placements get another look
Kotek’s office on Wednesday did not immediately have any comment on whether she would support the new effort. The opposition and support for an out-of-state placement bill she backed last year, House Bill 3835, did not fall along party lines, splintering foster youth advocates, Democrats and Republicans. Oregon Department of Human Services spokesperson Jake Sunderland confirmed the agency has no bills it is putting forth for the upcoming February session.
Gelser Blouin on Wednesday acknowledged the debate surrounding that legislation, but signaled that she hoped to move forward by finding consensus, pointing to a 26-page omnibus legislative package for the human services department. She told the Capital Chronicle that out-of-state changes are “narrow.”
“There were places where I think there was some general agreement about the goal, and maybe some shifts in the process,” she said at the hearing, “and so what these pieces in the ODHS omnibus are are what appear to be the lowest hanging fruit.”
The package seeks to create certain conditions under which out-of-state placements are appropriate, such as for children experiencing eating disorders seeking specialized facilities unavailable in Oregon or Native youth going to homes or facilities in compliance with the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act. The eating disorder clinics would need to be prescribed by a child’s physician while being paid for and approved by Medicaid.
Under the bill, a housing placement would also meet state requirements for a Native American child through certification by that child’s tribe, for instance, rather than a formal license or contract with the state. Another section of the legislation removes such formal requirements when a placement involves an out-of-state foster home run by a child’s relative or a pre-adoptive family placement that the human services department has approved.
“I know there is a child waiting for this provision so they can get to their grandparents on the East Coast,” Gelser Blouin said.
Her legislation also would require that an employee with the human services department’s child welfare services must accompany a child when transported to an initial out-of-state placement, any time they are moved to a new placement or any time that child is “moved by secure transport.”
The new effort to spur reforms to Oregon’s child welfare system comes after Kotek appointed former deputy director Liesel Wendt last year to be the human services department’s top director, following the resignation of the long-serving Director Fariborz Pakseresht. Gelser Blouin told Wendt, who offered testimony on Wednesday, that she appreciates “some of the shifts and changes in the culture that I see moving forward.”
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