Senate Bill S9424

                                 
BILL NUMBER: S9424

SPONSOR: BRISPORT
 
TITLE OF BILL:

An act to amend the social services law, in relation to removing
research restrictions from certain unfounded reports of alleged abuse or
maltreatment

 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section 1 of the bill amends subparagraphs (iv) and (v) of paragraph (a)
of subdivision 5 of section 422 of the social services law, subparagraph
(iv) as amended by chapter 555 of the laws of 2000, and subparagraph (v)
as amended by chapter 256 of the laws of 2014 and adds a new subpara-
graph (vi). This amendment allows individuals conducting research to
access CPS case data on unsubstantiated cases.

Section 2 of the bill amends subparagraph (vii) of paragraph (d) of
Subdivision 5 of section 427-a of the social services law, as amended by
chapter 377 of the laws of 2011 and adds a new subparagraph (vii).  This
amendment allows individuals conducting research to access CPS case data
on Family Assessment Response (FAR) cases.
              

Section 3 of the bill establishes the effective date.

 
JUSTIFICATION:

Under current statute, New York draws a distinction between founded and
unfounded cases in allowing individuals to request case information for
bona fide research purposes. Based on a review of other state statutes
limiting the release of child welfare records for research purposes, New
York is unique in distinguishing between founded and unfounded cases.
See, e.g., MCLA Sec. 711.627 (Michigan), CA Self & Inst. Code Sec. 10850
(California), OAC Sec. 5180:2-3321 (Ohio), NJSA Sec. 9:6-8.10a (New
Jersey), YAMS Sec. 210.150 (Misiouri). Therefore, this bill seeks to put
us into line with more common practice, allowing researchers to analyze
departmental case data more comprehensively, while maintaining the
privacy of subjects in unfounded or unsubstantiated cases and FAR cases.

Current law lists five scenarios under which unfounded or unsubstanti-
ated case data may be accessed, but research is not one of them. The
bill establishes "bona fide research purposes" as the sixth scenario.
For privacy reasons, the bill guarantees that personal identifying
information will be redacted unless it is absolutely essential to the
research purpose and the department gives prior approval.

Current law lists seven scenarios under which FAR case data may be
accessed, but research is not one of them. The bill, as with unsubstan-
tiated or unfounded cases, establishes "bona fide research purposes" as
an additional qualifying scenario and creates privacy restrictions.

Within just the last two years, governmental and non-governmental organ-
izations have repeatedly encountered issues when requesting this data,
significantly impacting their ability to generate research which accu-
rately reflected the original goals of the projects. For example, (i)
the NYC Center for Innovation Through Design sought this information to
model potential policy shifts that could protect against ACS contact,
but were unable to access information which may have contained negative,
needless ACS interactions; (ii) The NYC Family Policy Project's partici-
patory action research study with CUNY (approved by both the city and
state) needed to use a workaround which changed the study design because
they could not access relevant case data; and (iii) The YouthNPower
guaranteed income research team had wanted to be able to report on all
ACS contact that study participants and the control group had during the
study year, but were not able to get a count that included all unfounded
cases and CARES cases.

This bill will remove a restriction, protect the privacy of case
subjects, and better allow governmental and non-governmental organiza-
tions to conduct research and develop policy proposals which will keep
children and families safe.

 
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

New Bill

 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS:

None.

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall take effect on the thirtieth day after it shall have
become a law.