No. SB 2518
Filed under Healthcare.
Health; Requiring the Social Services Estimating Conference to develop certain official information relating to the pilot program for individuals with developmental disabilities; authorizing the Department of Children and Families, as authorized by and consistent with appropriated funding, to contract with a specified organization to provide grief support services to help certain children and youth; revising the monthly room and board rates the department is required to pay to certain foster parents and caregivers; renaming the Step into Success Workforce Education and Internship Pilot Program as the Step into Success Workforce Education and Internship Program, etc.
Plain English Summary
AI-GENERATEDFoster parents and relative or nonrelative caregivers get a room-and-board rate increase starting July 2026 -- about a 28 percent rise across all three age brackets used to calculate monthly payments.
A separate youth-workforce stipend rises from $1,517 to $1,717 a month, but the law no longer guarantees an extra payment to offset any SNAP, Medicaid, or housing-voucher benefits a participant loses because of that stipend.
The Step into Success internship program for foster youth becomes permanent instead of a 3-year pilot, with new regional recruiting duties, and mentors can now qualify with a year of experience in the field rather than at the specific host organization.
A new grant program funds faith-based nonprofits recruiting foster and adoptive families in underserved areas, and the department may separately pay Valerie's House to provide free grief counseling to bereaved children and teens.
AIMonthly room-and-board rates paid to licensed foster parents and to relative or nonrelative caregivers rise across all three age brackets: roughly $518 to $663 (ages 0-5), $531 to $680 (ages 6-12), and $622 to $796 (ages 13-21), effective July 2026.
AIThe law drops the guarantee that a former foster youth who loses SNAP, Medicaid, housing-voucher, or other benefits because of the Step into Success stipend gets an extra payment to make up the difference.
AIThe department must award grants only to not-for-profit, faith-based organizations to recruit foster and adoptive families and support foster, adoptive, and kinship families in underserved and rural communities; secular nonprofits doing the same work are not eligible.
AIThe internship program for foster youth drops its 3-year pilot status and becomes ongoing. The office must build regional cohorts and recruit mentors and organizations with emphasis on five named counties: Duval, Escambia, Hillsborough, Palm Beach, and Polk.
AIA former foster youth participating in the onsite workforce training internship gets a monthly stipend of $1,717, up from $1,517, subject to available funding.
AIA mentor previously had to have worked at the specific participating organization for at least a year. Now a year of experience anywhere in the relevant career field qualifies, widening the pool of eligible mentors.
AIThe Quality Incentive Program payment pool rises from 10 to 14.77 percent of 2016 baseline payments, and qualifying shifts from a percentile ranking to a flat 33-percent-of-points threshold. Any future methodology or scoring change from rebasing must wait a year, with scores posted publicly first.
AIThe department may pay Valerie's House, Inc. to provide free grief support, mentoring, counseling, financial crisis support, and in-school services to children and youth ages 4 to 19 who lost a parent or sibling, subject to appropriated funding.