This bill amends the court process in child protection cases by eliminating as an aggravating factor consideration of whether a parent's rights to another child were previously involuntarily terminated; requiring the court to consider the trauma to the child of removal from the child's home and whether the Department of Health and Human Services exhausted its options to mitigate that harm before removing the child; and at a contested termination of parental rights hearing, requiring the court to explicitly make findings that the department met its statutory obligations to provide reasonable efforts to reunify the child and parent before ordering a termination of the parent's rights.

Statutes affected:
Bill Text LD 1544, SP 628: 22.4002, 22.4034, 22.4055