The first bill, Proposed S.B. No.453<\/a> AN ACT ESTABLISHING THE OFFICE OF THE CHILDREN AND FAMILIES OMBUDSMAN, was introduced by SEN. FASANO, 34th District and SEN. WITKOS, 8th District.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n They convened that the general statutes be amended to designate an independent ombudsman to receive and review complaints and grievances from children in the care and custody of the Department of Children and Families and maintain a record of all complaints and grievances, including descriptions of investigations, findings, recommendations and agency responses, which record shall be made available to the Child Advocate and, when appropriate, the Connecticut Juvenile Training School advisory group.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The purpose is to establish independent children and families ombudsman to provide children in the care and custody of the Department of Children and Families an opportunity to have complaints and grievances heard, reviewed and addressed.<\/p>\n Rep. Linehan asked a question, \u201cHow many clients satisfied?\u201d Sen. Witkos replied, \u201cWe didn’t collect these statistics.\u201d Later he mentioned, \u201cWe picked up 1271 phone calls in 2018, and 470 requires were from 130 families.\u201d It shows plenty of complaints exist, and a large number of children need the Department of Children and Families and ombudsman to pay more attention and take care. \u201cPick up the phone, and let people tell their stories.\u201d Sen. Witkos said.\u00a0 <\/span>The last simple question from Rep. Linehan was, \u201cWho is your aiming for your department?\u201d The answer was, \u201cKids\u201d said by Sen. Fasano. In the end, Rep. Linehan said to Sen. Fasano and Sen.Witkos, \u201cWe will make an appointment later for further discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n The second bill was introduced by Rep. Lanoue, 45th District, Proposed Bill No.5165<\/a> AN ACT REQUIRING BACKGROUND CHECKS ON OVERNIGHT CAMP COUNSELORS.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That the general statutes be amended to require camps to conduct background checks on overnight camp counselors, like fingerprints and criminal records. Rep. Lanoue expected to have a check on every counselor. But, it takes two to three months to collect fingerprints, which is too long. To shrink the time expending, the organization will spend a huge amount of money. Rep. Lanoue said she has two folds for this. The first one totally supports to collect fingerprints. The second one is it costs too much.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A question asked by Rep. Kokoruda, \u201cWho is required to do that, school, parents?\u201d \u201cThat\u201d here means collecting fingerprints and checking backgrounds. Rep. Lanoue answered that everyone wants children to have a safe environment and summer camp. She also mentioned, \u201cSome nonprofit organizations raised money to do it (collect fingerprints).\u201d In this bill, collecting fingerprints is the keystone instead of discussing check on criminal records because collecting fingerprints is the most money-consuming part. A male representative agreed with Rep. Lanoue and said, \u201cWe all want our children to have a safe environment and qualified adults.\u201d At the end of the discussion, Rep. Lanoue pointed out that \u201cOther states do it real quick, we are late\u201d which is a really strong argument that Connecticut should start working on it now!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Committee on Children Public Hearing On February 14th, a public hearing about children was held at Connecticut state capitol. The meeting started at 13:10. While I was hearing in ninety minutes, committee members discussed two bills.\u00a0 The first bill, Proposed S.B. No.453 AN ACT ESTABLISHING THE OFFICE OF THE CHILDREN AND FAMILIES OMBUDSMAN, was introduced … Continue reading Educational policy journalism<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2371,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[121],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8004"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2371"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8006,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8004\/revisions\/8006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/files\/2019\/02\/IMG_4912-225x300.jpeg\")
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