AI-generated summary. We recommend consulting the bill text for important decisions.

Several procedural and definitional changes to Utah's child welfare system are packaged together in this bill. It expands the definition of "relative" — a legally significant category affecting placement priority — to include second and third cousins and removes some previously listed relations like brothers- and sisters-in-law and stepsiblings, while also allowing DCFS to establish additional qualifying relationships by rule. The bill permits DCFS to share abuse and neglect report information with the Division of Professional Licensing for licensing investigations, requires DCFS to actively notify all parties when it files a court report or family plan, sets specific deadlines for courts to resolve placement objections (15 days for parent placements, 30 days for relative or friend placements), lowers from two years to 12 months the threshold at which foster parents may request a juvenile court judge review before a child is removed from their home, clarifies when a court must make findings about emergency removals, and extends postadoption contact agreements to all adoptions — not just those involving children previously in DCFS custody.