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Committee approves working group to study legal representation for youth in child welfare cases
Summary
HB 900 will create a stakeholder working group to explore models for legal representation for children in foster care; advocates asked the committee to require youth with lived experience be central to the group and suggested a 50% lived-expert membership target.
The committee voted to advance House Bill 900 to create a working group to study legal‑representation models for youth involved with the child welfare system.
Dana Matsunami of the National Center for Youth Law urged the committee to require youth members with lived foster‑care experience and recommended specifying a percentage of lived experts on the working group. "How can you make decisions that change our lives forever without even hearing from us?" she quoted a former foster youth as saying when summarizing testimony from listening sessions. Matsunami cited research showing legal representation improves outcomes: youth with lawyers are more likely to exit foster care earlier, more likely to reunify with parents, experience fewer placement moves and have fewer school disruptions.
Noreen Cole of Hawaii Children's Action Network also supported the bill and emphasized youth‑centered design. Angela Melody Young proposed amendments to ensure gender equity and broaden lived‑experience seats to include parents and students with lived experience and an outside legal organization member for neutrality.
Committee action: Chair Lisa Martin recommended passage with technical amendments that include at least one site visit to jurisdictions in other states and other clarifying edits. The committee adopted the recommendation.
What happens next: The working group will be formed under the bill language and is intended to include stakeholders across the state and youth members; specific membership and any additional statutory language will be finalized in subsequent drafts.
