The Life of A DCPP Case 2021 Update

Important Changes in the Law for Parents!

In 2021, Governor Phil Murphy signed important new legislation with the intent to keep more families together and further protects the rights of parents with children in foster care.  The legislature passed that law because it determined that: 

a.  Foster care is intended by existing state and federal statute to be temporary.

b.  Kinship care is the preferred resource for children who must be removed from their birth parents because use of kinship care maintains children's connections with their families. There are many benefits to placing children with relatives or other kinship caregivers, such as increased stability and safety as well as the ability to maintain family connections and cultural traditions.

c.  Federal law permits kinship legal guardianship arrangements to be used when the child has been in the care of a relative for a period of six months.

d.  Parental rights must be protected and preserved whenever possible. 

e.  Children are capable of forming healthy attachments with multiple caring adults throughout the course of their childhood, including with birth parents, temporary resource parents, extended family members, and other caring adults.

f.  The existence of a healthy attachment between a child and the child's resource family parent does not in and of itself preclude the child from maintaining, forming or repairing relationships with the child's parent or caregiver of origin.

g. It is therefore necessary for the Legislature to amend current laws to strengthen support for kinship caregivers, and ensure focus on parents' fitness and the benefits of preserving the birth parent-child relationship, as opposed to considering the impact of severing the child's relationship with the resource family parents.

This new legislation allows for Kinship Legal Guardianship (KLG) to be finalizd after a child has been living with arelative or family freind for six months (previously the time was one year).  The new law eliminates the provision allowing DCPP to prove a case for Terminaton of Parental Rights (TPR) by proving that "separating a child from the child's resource family parents would cause serious and enduring emotional or psychological harm to the child to be used in initiating a petition to terminate parental rights.  Because this change in the law is so new, it is unclear if the change will lead to better results for parents in DCPP cases.  However this is an important and welcome change and hopefully will rebalance the parentalrights of birth parents with children's very important and legitimate need for permanency.