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Committee advances bill to narrow abuse exception and require notice in child-abuse investigations involving parents
Summary
The Senate Human Services Committee adopted amendments to Senate Bill 736 on March 27 and sent the measure to the Senate floor with a due-pass recommendation; the bill creates a narrow exception when a suspected abuser is a child's parent and requires written notice to parents or guardians before face-to-face investigative meetings.
The Senate Human Services Committee on March 27 adopted amendments to Senate Bill 736 and forwarded the measure to the Senate floor with a due-pass recommendation. The bill creates an exception for allegations of abuse of a child in care when the suspected abuser is a parent, and it also requires the Oregon Department of Human Services to provide parents or guardians with advance written notice before a face-to-face meeting that occurs as part of a child-abuse investigation.
Committee staff summarized the bill and its posted amendments. In committee, staff said the dash-1 amendment replaced a reference to "a child's parent or guardian" with "an individual who is the child's parent or guardian" and removed a reference to the Oregon Rules of Civil Procedure. The dash-2 amendment, the staff summary said, specified that a parent or guardian's right to be notified of the outcome of an investigation and to request an administrative review applies only to investigations in which the outcome is founded. Staff also summarized related fiscal impact statements: the dash-1 had no revenue impact and the dash-2 a minimal fiscal impact.
Senator Lenthcomb moved to adopt the dash-1 amendments; the committee recorded "Aye" votes from Senator Nash, Senator Kozansky, Senator Reynolds, Vice Chair Lincecum and Chair Lincecum, after which the chair declared the dash-1 amendments adopted. Senator Lenthicam then moved to adopt the dash-2 amendments; the committee again recorded affirmative votes and the dash-2 amendments were adopted. The committee then voted to move Senate Bill 736, as amended, to the floor with a due-pass recommendation. Committee staff recorded the required votes and announced the bill will be carried by the chair on the floor.
Committee discussion acknowledged prior deliberations: members said they had earlier postponed a vote on the bill because a supplemental fiscal analysis altered assumed impacts. One staff speaker noted an error in the earlier fiscal assumptions tied to the cost of printed pamphlets that led to inflated estimates of required positions. The speaker also observed that ODHS currently provides written notice of investigation outcomes only when an individual is "founded" for abuse, and that extending written outcome notice to unsubstantiated cases had driven higher fiscal estimates in prior drafts.
The adopted amendments narrow the scope of notification and clarify procedural references; the committee characterized the changes as technical and fiscally modest. No public testimony on SB 736 was recorded in this transcript segment.
The bill now goes to the Senate floor for further consideration.
