The House Committee on Early Childhood and Human Services held an informational hearing March 11 on House Bill 3835, the SOCAC (System of Care Advisory Council) Omnibus Bill, which sponsors said would realign Oregon statutes and rules to improve access to residential and hospital‑level care and clarify when restraint or seclusion should trigger a child abuse investigation.

The bill’s backers told the committee the changes are designed to reduce unnecessary investigations that chill staff, expand allowable crisis‑response models, and create narrow, heavily supervised exceptions to existing placement limits so children can access medically necessary treatment both inside and outside Oregon when appropriate.

Why it matters: Committee members and agency presenters said Oregon is facing rising behavioral‑health acuity among children in foster care while capacity — beds that are staffed and usable — and the workforce to operate them are limited. Witnesses linked long emergency‑room stays and denied referrals to gaps in placements and to uncertainty among frontline staff about when use of force will prompt child‑abuse investigations.

Chelsea Holcomb, director of child and family behavioral health at the Oregon Health Authority, said the state has been tracking real‑time capacity and referrals and has built a referral capacity management system. "When children are identified needing out of home treatment, it's serious and the treatment being available at the time it's needed is crucial," Holcomb said. She told the committee that, in recent data pulls, dozens of children with approved referrals were still waiting to enter psychiatric residential treatment and some were in emergency departments when the referral was made.

April Flint Gerner, child welfare director at the Oregon Department of Human Services, told the committee contracted behavioral rehabilitative services (BRS) capacity and utilization have declined over the past five years. "This is a drastic utilization decrease from around 210 to only 30 children served in these settings, a nearly 80% decrease," she said, and added that provider denials for children with aggressive behaviors are a major driver of the decline.

Child psychiatrist Ajit Chitmalani of OHSU described emergency‑room trends and capacity shortfalls, saying Oregon has among the fewest inpatient psychiatric beds per 100,000 children in the nation. "We have 44 beds in Oregon for inpatient acute psychiatric care," Chitmalani said, and added that longer hospital and ER lengths of stay often reflect gaps elsewhere in the system.

Key policy changes discussed

- Unified definition of wrongful restraint and wrongful seclusion: The bill would replace multiple statutory decision points with a single, uniform definition across child‑serving settings. Under the draft description presented, an action would be considered abuse if a restraint was used as discipline, punishment, retaliation or for staff convenience; if a chemical restraint was used; or if excessive or reckless force resulted in or was likely to result in serious physical harm. Presenters said the change is intended to remove technical paperwork or training lapses from automatically triggering child‑abuse investigations and to allow such matters to be handled through licensing or human resources when appropriate. Committee staff later said an amendment would re‑insert the word "reasonable" in some places to preserve an element of judgment.

- Investigations and school complaints: The bill would keep child abuse investigations with ODHS/OtIS when the statutory threshold is met, but it would route non‑abuse violations of restraint/seclusion in schools to the Oregon Department of Education for external investigation rather than relying solely on school districts to investigate themselves.

- Crisis models and training: The proposal would allow more than the three currently authorized crisis intervention models, with a required advisory panel of youth and families with lived experience to advise on approval of new models.

- Secure transport and mechanical restraints: The bill would remove medical transport providers from child‑caring‑agency regulation (clarifying oversight between OHA and ODHS) and would amend an outdated statute that currently permits mechanical restraints in certain transport settings. Presenters said the change aims to reduce regulatory confusion and encourage medically regulated transport providers to serve children in need.

- Placement exceptions and oversight: HB 3835 would create narrow exceptions to current placement limits for medically necessary in‑state adult settings for older youth, for extending short limits on certain non‑QRTP placements on a case‑by‑case basis, and for out‑of‑state placements when medically necessary and approved by the director of child welfare and, where applicable, the director of Medicaid. Each exception would carry additional oversight requirements: an in‑person licensor site visit, notifications to the governor’s office, the System of Care Advisory Council, the foster‑care ombuds, and (under proposed amendments) expedited court review on the juvenile docket and reporting to the legislature.

- Program supports and quality improvement: The bill includes a proposal to create a consultation/quality‑improvement program (described as an OHSU‑based institute for youth) to provide clinical consultation, workforce support, and continuous quality improvement that would be separate from licensing enforcement.

Numbers and capacity issues mentioned at the hearing

- Chelsea Holcomb: cited referral and waiting data from a recent pull; she reported that, in a recent snapshot, 68 referrals to psychiatric residential treatment were approved, 36 of those were still waiting to enter treatment, and 101 referrals were active but awaiting determination; of those 101, 41 had waited eight days or less, 21 had waited two to three weeks, and 16 nearly a month; 14 were waiting in an emergency department when the referral was made. (transcript excerpt; presenters used slightly different time windows and totals in places.)

- April Flint Gerner: reported that contracted BRS capacity and utilization declined from roughly 210 children served to about 30 over five years, and that provider denials for aggressive behaviors are the primary reason for the decline.

- Ajit Chitmalani: said Oregon has 44 inpatient acute psychiatric beds and that OHSU compared length of stay at Oregon academic centers with 20 others, finding Oregon had among the longest stays.

Discussion, concerns and next steps

Committee members asked for clarification on terminology, the timing and frequency of training for school staff, how investigations would be assigned between ODE and ODHS, and what oversight would look like for out‑of‑state placements. Lacey Andresen, deputy director for child welfare at ODHS, framed the bill as one piece of a broader system change and said child welfare had been subject to multiple settlements and audits that focus attention on placement and service quality. "There is no person involved anywhere in the child serving system who could successfully argue that children and young adults in Oregon have the placement and service capacity that they need and deserve," Andresen said.

Testimony from a named commenter urged the change to the wrongful‑restraint definition on the grounds it "would help protect educators, allowing them to act in the best interest of student safety without fearing unjust child abuse allegations that could jeopardize their current or future employment," (Anne Williams, commenter).

No formal committee votes were taken at the informational hearing. Sponsors and agency staff said they will return with rule language or technical amendments and that the bill includes a required report back to the legislature on implementation before the 2027 session. Several presenters and lawmakers repeatedly emphasized that statutory changes must be paired with investment in the behavioral‑health workforce, training, and prevention to avoid expanding out‑of‑state placements over the long term.

Ending note: Agency witnesses and members of the System of Care Advisory Council described HB 3835 as an attempt to square Oregon’s system‑of‑care values with on‑the‑ground realities: reduce administrative barriers that prevent timely treatment, clarify legal thresholds for abuse investigations, and add narrowly confined pathways for care when in‑state capacity is not clinically appropriate or available. The bill remains under consideration and was presented as informational at this hearing.