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Children’s advocates press committee to keep siblings together in foster care and expand parenting time authority
Summary
Advocates, children with lived foster-care experience and the Committee for Public Counsel Services urged the committee to support House Bill 268 and related measures to prioritize sibling placement, expand judges’ authority to order parenting time, and require facilitated sibling visitation when placements are separate.
Children, attorneys and child welfare advocates urged the Joint Committee on Children, Families, and Persons with Disabilities to advance House Bill 268 and companion measures that would prioritize placing siblings together in foster care and, when joint placement is not possible, require regular sibling visitation. “For many of us, including children experiencing foster care, our relationship with a sibling will be the longest relationship of our lives,” said a speaker representing HopeWell, describing research that links joint placement to better mental health, educational outcomes and higher rates of reunification.
Young people with lived experience described the emotional cost of separation. “In October 2022, my 2 siblings…
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