The bill would amend Family Code to require juvenile court intake staff, instead of proceeding with a juvenile case, to refer a child residing in a General Residential Operation (GRO) to a community resource coordination group (CRCG), a local-level interagency staffing group, or other community juvenile service providers.
The bill would amend Human Resources Code to require residential child-care facilities to expand behavior intervention training for staff to include crisis response training. The bill would also require the juvenile board to establish policies to defer children from referral to a prosecuting attorney and limit detention of children in GROs as well as require certain data collection.
Based on analysis of the Department of Family and Protective Services, the Juvenile Justice Department (JJD), and the Office of Court Administration, it is assumed that the costs associated with implementing the provisions of the bill could be absorbed within existing resources. It is also assumed that there would be no significant impact on state correctional populations or on the demand for state correctional resources.
Based on information from JJD, there could be costs to juvenile probation departments for increases in the number of referrals for CRCG services but fiscal implications of the bill cannot be determined at this time.