HOUSE BILL 1300

48th legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - first session, 2007

INTRODUCED BY

Teresa A. Zanetti

AN ACT

RELATING TO CHILDREN; PERMITTING A CHILD WHO HAS BEEN IN FOSTER CARE TO DELAY LEAVING THE CUSTODY OF THE STATE UNTIL THE CHILD'S TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO:

     Section 1. OPTION TO REMAIN IN STATE CUSTODY.--The children, youth and families department shall notify a person who is in foster care at the age of seventeen of the option to receive transitional services until age twenty-one. When a person in transitional services elects to remain after attaining the age of eighteen, the department shall provide services, housing, education and medical care to the same degree it did prior to the person's eighteenth birthday and for as long as the person remains in transitional care until the person's twenty-first birthday.

     Section 2. APPROPRIATION.--Five million dollars ($5,000,000) is appropriated from the general fund to the children, youth and families department for expenditure in fiscal year 2008 to support children between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one in transitional care with services, education, housing and medical care. Any unexpended or unencumbered balance remaining at the end of 2008 shall revert to the general fund.

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