The Family Urgent Response System.

In a measure led by Assembly Member Bryan, the Family Urgent Response System is redirected so the statewide hotline becomes the primary entry point for urgent supports affecting caregivers and current or former foster youth, with 24/7 operation and trauma-informed responders available to de-escalate and coordinate next steps. The bill also requires deidentified, aggregated data on hotline and county mobile response activity to be published publicly, and directs counties to track and report on data through a biennial, single coordinated plan describing how their mobile response systems will operate and connect to ongoing services.

Key mechanisms center on a formalized, three-way connection between the hotline, families, and county-based mobile response teams. Hotline staff must provide a warm handoff to county teams through direct live connections when possible, or a direct referral followed by a required follow-up contact within 24 hours to offer additional support. The statewide hotline is tasked with maintaining contact information for all county mobile response systems to facilitate referrals, while the counties’ mobile response systems must operate 24/7 with rapid on-site response (ideally within one hour, not to exceed three hours in urgent cases) and same-day or expedited deployment for nonurgent situations. Teams are to include trauma-trained personnel and, whenever feasible, peers with lived experience, and they must deliver in-home deescalation and stabilization services, assess underlying causes, support family preservation, and connect families to continuing services within the county.

The legislation imposes structured planning and data requirements on counties. Each county or regional coalition must submit a single, coordinated plan describing how call tracking, data collection aligned with state guidance, transitions to ongoing services, care team coordination, response criteria, responder composition, and the use of existing or new services will be managed, along with protocols for family-based and congregate-care settings. Plans must be updated biennially and include a date of submission and a point of contact. The act also allows regional arrangements and requires provisions for temporary COVID-19 adaptations, while ensuring that funding under the measure supplements rather than supplants existing mobile response funding. An annual workload and utilization assessment is to be conducted, with updates provided to the Legislature during budget hearings.

Beyond operations, the measure clarifies fiscal and regulatory dynamics by establishing a state-mandated local program that may be reimbursed if the state mandates a cost, subject to the government-reimbursement framework. It contemplates data infrastructure and cross-agency data matching, with public reporting of data elements such as numbers of caregivers and youth served, call dispositions, and county outcomes, as well as the volume of calls received by county mobile response systems. The bill preserves federal entitlements and frames ongoing oversight through the Fiscal Committee, aligning the new requirements with existing public health and child welfare structures and directives to coordinate with health care services where appropriate. In sum, the proposal seeks a centralized, data-driven, trauma-informed, and collaboratively staffed approach to urgent family support, tied to explicit planning, reporting, and accountability mechanisms at both state and county levels.