Elect Sheila Leslie for State Senate

Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice

During the interim between regular Legislative sessions, there is still a lot of work to be done.  The Legislature usually assigns special committees to conduct interim studies and develop potential legislation for consideration in the next regular session.  Then there are statutory committees that always meet during the interim to hold more intensive hearings on topics of special interest and also develop future bills.

This Interim, I am chairing the Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Committee, a statutory committee approved in the 2009 session.  This Committee is an outgrowth of the work of previous interim committees tasked with studying different aspects of the juvenile justice and child welfare systems led by legislative leaders including the late Assemblywoman Jan Evans, Speaker Barbara Buckley, and Senator Ray Rawson.  I am very honored to follow in their footsteps.

The Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Committee consists of three members from the Senate and three members from the Assembly, appointed by the Legislative Commission.  I currently serve as the Chair, with Senator Valerie Wiener serving as Vice-Chair.  Other members include Senator Barbara Cegavske, Senator Allison Copening, Assemblyman John Hambrick, and Assemblywoman April Mastroluca.

The Committee has held four lengthy meetings this interim, in December, February, April, and June.  On July 19^th, we held our final meeting, a work session where we voted on the bills the Committee would like to introduce under its name in the 2011 session.  While the final report and bill drafts will not be available until early next year, some of the highlights include the following:

·      Authorizing legislation to create a kinship guardianship assistance program to assist families who provide a home for their relative children through formal guardianship agreements with a child welfare agency in Nevada.

·      Allowing courts in Nevada to finalize the adoption of a child in the custody of a Nevada child welfare agency without regard to the state of residence of the proposed adopting parents.

·      Strengthening planning in the area of disaster response relating to child welfare and juvenile justice agencies in Nevada and providers of foster care.

·      Allowing for the appropriate sharing of information between child welfare and delinquency court for child treatment, custodial and case planning purposes.

·      Increasing penalties for those who live from earnings of a prostitute, when the prostitute is a child.  Also, increase penalties for those who conspire to traffic in child prostitution.

·      Strengthen background checks for employees of all facilities that provide residential services to children.

As the Chair, I will be responsible for appearing at Committees during the 2011 session where these bills are heard to explain the background of the bill requests and encourage their adoption.  I will work closely with the Legislative Committees to develop the final legislation for consideration by the full Legislature and Nevada’s next Governor.

Please let me know if you have any comments on these concepts as well.