AI-generated summary, not yet reviewed by Better Utah staff. Please consult the bill text.

Utah's child welfare system would see several procedural and definitional changes under this bill. It expands the legal definition of "relative" for placement purposes to include parents, second and third cousins, and other relationships DCFS designates by rule, while removing brothers- and sisters-in-law and stepsiblings from that category; this matters because relatives receive preferential consideration when a child is removed from home. The bill also allows DCFS to share child abuse and neglect report information with the Division of Professional Licensing for licensing investigations, requires DCFS to notify all parties in a case whenever it files a court report or family plan, and sets deadlines for courts to resolve objections to a child's placement — 15 days for objections involving a parent and 30 days for objections involving a relative or friend. Additionally, it lowers from two years to 12 months the length of time a child must be in a foster home before foster parents can request review by a juvenile court judge (rather than a neutral fact-finder) before the child is removed, clarifies when courts must make findings about emergency removals, and expands postadoption contact agreements — which let birth relatives maintain contact with a child after adoption — to apply to all adoptions, not just those involving children who were previously in DCFS custody.