Source: Utah S.B. 297 (2025) — Congregate Care Amendments

Summary

Enrolled S.B. 297, 2025 General Session — the second act of Utah's congregate care oversight reform, again sponsored by Sen. Michael K. McKell, with Rep. Casey Snider as House sponsor. It takes effect July 1, 2025.

Where S.B. 127 (2021) told programs what they may not do and told the regulator to show up more often, this bill builds machinery: a congregate care ombudsman with entry, interview, and records powers; levels of congregate care and minimum safety requirements to be defined by the Office of Licensing in consultation with a new Congregate Care Advisory Committee; state review of each program's admissions criteria at licensure; a list of authorized contacts a child in crisis must be connected to; whistleblower protection; and a penalty fund. Two details are worth reading closely, because they bound what the ombudsman can be: the position is created within the department it examines, and it must refer every report it receives back to that department.

Useful Claims

• A congregate care ombudsman is created within the Department of Health and Human Services (Section 26B-2-124.2), to serve as a resource and advocate for children admitted to congregate care programs and to receive and investigate reports about a program or its staff.
• The ombudsman's powers are investigative and physical: to interview any child, parent, staff member, sending or receiving agency, or anyone who entered a program within the last year; to enter or inspect any physical area of a program's facilities; to access, copy, or inspect a program's records including communications; and to observe operations.
• Its discretion is bounded in two directions. It may investigate a report "for which the department or other state agency lacks investigative authority", and it "shall refer all reports or information received by the ombudsman" to the department and to any other agency authorized to investigate.
• The office keeps business hours and takes messages otherwise, while programs must provide a dedicated telephone from which a child or staff may contact the ombudsman "at any time".
• Programs must post the ombudsman's contact information beneath a statement in bold font "not less than one inch in height" reading that any person with a complaint or concern about the program may contact the congregate care ombudsman.
• A child in crisis triggers a clock: the program must notify the child's parent or guardian as soon as reasonably possible and not later than five hours after the state of crisis begins, and must make every reasonable effort to connect the child by telephone to an authorized contact.
• A Congregate Care Advisory Committee is created, but the decisions belong to the Office of Licensing (Section 26B-2-124.1). The office "is authorized to and shall, in consultation with the committee" define the levels of congregate care, adopt minimum safety requirements by rule for each level, review and approve or deny each applicant's proposed admissions criteria at licensure or renewal, and designate each program as standard or intensive congregate care. The committee advises; it holds none of those four powers itself.
• The committee is appointed by the body it advises. Eight members, all appointed by the office: seven clinical seats (a physician, a pediatrician with behavioral-health experience, a psychologist, a marriage and family therapist, two licensed therapists with congregate care experience, and one with juvenile justice experience) plus a single "community representative" the office designates, who may be a former admitted child, a parent or guardian of one, or a current or former owner or staff member of a program. The division director appoints the chair from the membership and the division staffs the committee. Members serve unpaid, with per diem and travel only. It must meet at least monthly until levels and safety requirements are set, then at least quarterly.
• Admissions criteria may be denied where they are inconsistent with the defined levels of care or "would fail to preclude the admittance of a child for whom the program is not designed to address" — the bill's answer to a program taking a child it cannot treat.
• Whistleblower protection covers children and adults alike (Section 26B-2-124.3): no adverse action for communicating with, cooperating with, or facilitating the ombudsman, with termination, demotion, suspension, reduced hours, harassment, intimidation, a hostile work environment, and baseless threats to report someone to licensing or law enforcement all named as adverse actions.
• A Licensed Provider Civil Money Penalty Fund is created as an expendable special revenue fund (Section 26B-1-336), funded from federal civil money penalties, legislative appropriation, and interest, usable under a federally approved state plan to assist individuals affected by a shutdown of a facility or program, for administrative expenses, or for allowable activities.
• The same bill trades away old complaints for anonymous ones. Section 26B-2-709 is amended so that the bar on investigating a complaint no longer turns on the complainant being anonymous — instead the department may not investigate or substantiate a complaint about events more than 48 months old, or more than six months old at a child care program. The prior text barred investigation whenever the complainant elected anonymity and limited the staleness bar to six months.
• The bill appropriates no money ("Money Appropriated in this Bill: None") and takes effect July 1, 2025.

Verbatim

"1475 (2) There is created within the department the title and position of congregate care 1476 ombudsman." — Section 26B-2-124.2(2)

"1494 (b) to investigate, at the ombudsman's discretion, a report for which the department or 1495 other state agency lacks investigative authority;" — Section 26B-2-124.2(4)(b)

"1502 (d) to enter or inspect any physical area of a program's facilities; 1503 (e) to access, copy, or inspect a program's records, including communications; and" — Section 26B-2-124.2(4)(d)–(e)

"1505 (5) The ombudsman shall refer all reports or information received by the ombudsman to the: 1506 (a) department; and 1507 (b) any other state or local agency authorized to investigate the report or information." — Section 26B-2-124.2(5)

"1508 (6) The ombudsman shall: 1509 (a) keep generally accepted business hours; and 1510 (b) maintain a messaging system to receive calls and collect messages during 1511 non-operating hours." — Section 26B-2-124.2(6)

"28 ● provide a dedicated telephone from which a child or staff may contact the ombudsman 29 at any time; and" — Highlighted Provisions

"1286 (a) notify the child's parent or guardian as soon as reasonably possible but not later than 1287 five hours after the time at which the child's state of crisis first begins; and" — Section 26B-2-124(6)(a)

"1425 (3) The office is authorized to and shall, in consultation with the committee: 1426 (a) define the levels of congregate care;" — Section 26B-2-124.1(3), where the four powers sit

"1427 (b) in accordance with Subsection (4), for each defined level of congregate care, adopt 1428 by rule a set of applicable minimum safety requirements; and" — Section 26B-2-124.1(3)(b)

"1400 (2) The committee shall be composed of eight members, who the office appoints, as follows:" — Section 26B-2-124.1(2)

"1434 (B) would fail to preclude the admittance of a child for whom the program is not 1435 designed to address;" — Grounds for denying proposed admissions criteria

"1516 (1) A congregate care program may not take any adverse action against a child or any other 1517 individual for: 1518 (a) communicating with the ombudsman;" — Section 26B-2-124.3(1)

"131 (1) There is created an expendable special revenue fund known as the 'Licensed Provider 132 Civil Money Penalty Fund' consisting of:" — Section 26B-1-336(1)

"1580 (b) [If the complainant elects to be an anonymous complainant] If the complaint concerns 1581 events that occurred more than 48 months before the day on which the complainant 1582 contacted the department, or if the complaint concerns events that occurred more than 1583 six months before the complainant contacted the department and involves a child care 1584 program, the department:" — Section 26B-2-709(3)(b) as amended; bracketed text is what the bill strikes

"1636 Section 13. Effective Date. 1637 This bill takes effect on July 1, 2025." — Effective date

Reliability Notes

Primary tier: enrolled Utah legislation at the Legislature's own address, so no archive snapshot is owed. The capture is of the enrolled PDF; text extraction preserved the printed line numbers and the page furniture ("Enrolled Copy S.B. 297", "- 44 -"), which is why no quote above crosses a page break.

The enrolled text contains a typographical error at the point where it states the ombudsman's qualifications — "(b) The ombudsmann shall meet the following minimum qualifications" — reproduced here only to record that the doubled letter is the statute's, not the capture's.

"Created within the department" is the load-bearing phrase for anyone assessing independence. The ombudsman is a position inside the Department of Health and Human Services, whose Office of Licensing regulates these programs, and it must refer everything it receives to that department. Reporting in 2025 framed the bill as establishing an independent ombudsman; that word is not what the enacted text does, and the distinction should not be smoothed over in either direction — the powers of entry, interview, and records access are real, and the office is not external to the agency.

The confidentiality of complaint records is older than this bill, and an earlier draft of this page got that wrong. Subsection 26B-2-709(6) — any department record related to a complaint is protected and may not be disclosed in a way that identifies a program — is reprinted unchanged in the enrolled copy. It was already law: the version renumbered by Laws of Utah 2024, Chapter 267 carries the identical sentence. S.B. 297 did not narrow disclosure, and the tempting "transparency loss buried inside a transparency reform" reading is not available from this document.

What S.B. 297 actually changes in Section 26B-2-709 cuts both ways. Anonymity stops being a disqualifier — the prior text barred investigation whenever the complainant elected to be anonymous — while a new 48-month staleness bar applies to complaints against every provider, and the six-month bar for child care programs survives. For an industry whose worst allegations often surface years later, from former residents who are by then adults, the 48-month cutoff is the provision to watch. The enrolled copy marks struck text in brackets and inserted text by underline; the underlining is lost in text extraction, so the direction of every change here was confirmed against the pre-2025 section text at le.utah.gov/xcode/Title26B/Chapter2/C26B-2-S709_2024050120240501.html.

What the document does not establish. No appropriation, no vote counts or enactment date (see the status record), no evidence that the ombudsman was hired, that the advisory committee met, that the levels of care were defined, or that any minimum safety requirement now exists in rule. Every one of those is a rulemaking or staffing question this statute only authorizes.

Related Pages

• Utah Congregate Care Oversight Reform
• Source: Utah S.B. 297 (2025) Legislative Status Record
• Source: Utah S.B. 127 (2021) — Human Services Program Amendments