All Roll Calls
Yes: 139 • No: 0
IowaSF 64191st General Assembly (2025–2026)SenateWALLET
A bill for an act relating to matters under the purview of the department of health and human services, including administrative services organizations, child foster care, child and dependent adult abuse, internal audit and examination information, and the region incentive fund in the mental health and disability services regional service fund, health maintenance organization’s premium tax, and making appropriations and including effective date and retroactive applicability provisions. (Formerly SF 620, SF 582, SSB 1171.) Effective date: 06/06/2025, 07/01/2025. Applicability date: 01/01/2024, 07/01/2024.
Sponsored By: COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Signed by Governor
Personalized for You
How does this bill affect your finances?
Personalize government policy and PRIA will tell you what this bill means for your household, plus every other piece of legislation we track. PRIA reads each provision against your financial profile to show you exactly what matters to your wallet.
Bill Overview
Analyzed Economic Effects
22 provisions identified: 11 benefits, 2 costs, 9 mixed.
More kinship options after age 18
Eligible young adults can continue foster care with an approved kinship caregiver in Iowa. This adds to placements with individually licensed caregivers or in supervised apartments. It covers people who voluntarily remain in care after reaching 18. It also covers people who aged out after 18 and later voluntarily applied for placement.
Kinship foster care gains recognition and rules
Placement efforts must consider relatives and close non-relatives, called fictive kin, without guaranteeing placement with a particular person. Their care counts as foster care when they are licensed or approved and the child is under department placement, care, or supervision. Kinship caregivers must apply on the department’s form and get approval before providing foster care. The department can deny or end approval for legal or rule violations, but must offer notice and an evidence hearing.
Stronger screening for foster and residential caregivers
Foster applicants, including kinship applicants, must complete criminal, child-abuse, and fingerprint checks, as must covered agency workers and facility residents. Specified felonies bar applicants; drug-related felonies are disqualifying when committed within five years before applying. Provisional licensing or approval requires completed state checks and a favorable review while fingerprint results are pending. Certified children’s residential facilities must use substantially equivalent checks for people providing care.
Faster kinship approval changes support rules
Relatives and fictive kin can seek faster Iowa HHS approval for a child placed with them by court order. Relatives include people related within the fourth degree by blood, marriage, or adoption. Approved caregivers may receive maximum available financial support, information, and resources; no dollar amount is stated. The law also exempts relative and fictive-kin placements from assignment of child support. That exception does not apply when the caregiver is individually licensed or an approved kinship caregiver.
Fewer licensing barriers for foster families
Department rules must encourage foster family homes and exempt them from requirements that do not fit those homes. The department cannot regulate individual licensees or approved kinship caregivers through listed food, social, activity, behavior-management, and education-program rules. Department employees cannot be barred from individual foster licenses solely because of their job unless they directly administer foster care. Babysitters need no foster license when asked by a parent, guardian, relative, or fictive kin with lawful custody.
Foster caregivers gain information and planning rights
Placement agreements must explain caregiver rights and duties, provide known risks before placement, and allow reports unless law bars access. Caregivers get regular case-manager meetings, timely planning and review notices, and consideration of their medical and education input. Approved kinship caregivers also get assistance contacts, notices of known education-plan meetings, and medical appointments required or arranged with the department. Department rules must require visits within two weeks of placement and at least once each calendar month afterward. Visit scheduling must consider family and caregiver needs; licensed and approved kinship caregivers cannot be required to conduct or attend supervised visits.
Stronger protections against dependent adult exploitation
Exploitation includes fraudulent, illegal, unauthorized, or improper attempts or acts by caretakers or fiduciaries involving a dependent adult’s resources without informed consent. It covers using physical or financial resources for personal gain or depriving the adult of their use. With probable cause of exploitation, a court may authorize a department-approved person to evaluate the matter and access financial records. The department must reasonably believe those records relate to the adult’s resources.
Hospitalized patients get stronger advocate independence
Court-appointed advocates represent involuntarily hospitalized patients on hospitalization and treatment matters. Officers and employees of administrative services organizations or disability access points cannot serve in this role. Advocates must have prior experience advocating for people with mental illness or promoting their welfare and rehabilitation.
School and health safeguards for foster children
Department rules must ensure licensed and approved kinship caregivers receive health records and known health information at or before placement. The rules must provide ways to obtain missing records or specific health information requested by the caregiver. Children with approved kinship caregivers must remain enrolled in and attend an accredited school in their original district. A court or responsible agency can allow a change when staying is not in the child’s best interests.
Retirement rules change for health-system workers
The law adds administrative services organization employees to a category under Iowa public retirement law. The supplied text does not explain the exact resulting retirement eligibility or benefit amount.
More community groups can seek prevention grants
Community-based entities can apply for and receive funds for eligible child and dependent adult abuse prevention projects. Eligibility extends beyond the volunteer coalitions and councils named in the prior law. The provision does not set a grant amount.
Funding supports behavioral health care transitions
Effective June 6, 2025, the law provides transition funding for July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025. It appropriates the amount needed from the region incentive fund to maintain care and fund administrative services organizations. These organizations must use distributions for duties in the behavioral health system; this money does not count toward administrative-cost limits. Regional mental health and disability services money still uncommitted on June 30, 2025, transfers to the behavioral health fund. No dollar amount is specified.
Specialized foster services gain flexible funding contracts
Iowa Health and Human Services can fund enhanced foster services through extra per-day or performance-based contracts. Qualifying facilities must serve children who otherwise face placement in a state juvenile institution or an out-of-state program. These facilities need not hold a foster-care license for these contracts. The provision sets no contract amount or specific appropriation.
Tax category expands for foster-care facilities
The law adds qualifying foster-care residential facilities to a residential-facility tax category. An Iowa HHS-licensed agency must provide the child foster care under the state's foster-care law. The supplied provision gives no tax rate or dollar amount, so any savings cannot be calculated.
Kinship caregivers need registration for child care
Approved kinship caregivers must register as child development home providers to provide child care. The provision does not state a registration fee.
Public access to health department audits narrows
Beginning June 6, 2025, Iowa Health and Human Services internal audit and examination information is confidential. This includes misconduct allegations, noncompliance information, and audit working papers. The state auditor may disclose shared information only with the director’s written permission or when it appears in the department’s final report.
Caregivers gain authority with cultural duties
Licensed and approved kinship caregivers receive authority to decide appropriate activities using the reasonable and prudent parent standard. Kinship caregivers have civil and criminal immunity when applying that standard reasonably and in good faith. Caregivers must make reasonable efforts to maintain the child’s culture and beliefs. They may follow their own beliefs only without discouraging respect for the child’s beliefs and without objection from a legal guardian or parent whose rights remain intact.
Foster placement changes require notice both ways
Approved kinship caregivers get written reasons at least 10 days before department removal of a child. Exceptions cover health or safety threats, court orders, unauthorized absence, moves to a biological parent or legal guardian, and caregiver abuse or neglect allegations. Licensed and approved kinship caregivers must give 10 days’ written notice before requesting removal, except for health or safety threats. Approved kinship caregivers also get timely notice of major duty changes and written findings from investigations affecting future caregiving. The department must maintain an online complaint process for licensed and approved kinship caregivers to report violations of their statutory protections.
Foster privacy rules allow targeted care sharing
Confidentiality rules cover department information about foster children, relatives, fictive kin, guardians, licensed caregivers, their employees, and approved kinship caregivers. Disclosure remains limited to uses allowed or required by law. The department or its agent may share relevant confidential child information with an approved kinship caregiver being considered for placement. It may also help share previous caregivers’ contacts with the next caregiver. Before releasing caregiver addresses or contact details, the department must assess safety risks to the caregiver, child, and others.
Abuse records stay private with targeted access
Child and dependent adult abuse information is confidential, not a public record, except for disclosures specifically allowed by law. Department contractors and registry or department staff can receive dependent adult abuse information when needed for official duties. Administrators of covered facilities can receive specified child-abuse data about current or prospective employees. That employment-screening access is no longer limited to administrators of licensed foster-care facilities.
Providers face broader abuse reporting duties
Child foster-care facility employees and operators must report child abuse, regardless of whether the facility is licensed or approved. Providers covered by the specified Medicaid requirements must share information with Iowa Health and Human Services when needed for abuse response. That duty covers identifying, preventing, or responding to child or dependent adult abuse.
Premium tax changes for Medicaid insurers
Health maintenance organizations contracting with Iowa HHS to administer Medicaid pay a revised tax on certain taxable premiums. The law replaces the fixed 2.5% rate with the applicable percentage set elsewhere in state tax law. The supplied provision does not state that percentage, so it does not establish whether insurers pay more or less.
Sponsors & Cosponsors
Sponsor
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Affiliation unavailable
Cosponsors
There are no cosponsors for this bill.
Roll Call Votes
House vote • 5/13/2025
Passed House
Yes: 91 • No: 0
Senate vote • 4/29/2025
Passed Senate
Yes: 48 • No: 0
Actions Timeline
Signed by Governor.
6/6/2025SenateReported correctly enrolled, signed by President and Speaker, and sent to Governor.
5/23/2025SenateExplanation of vote.
5/20/2025HouseNOBA: Final
5/14/2025legislatureMessage from House.
5/13/2025SenateImmediate message.
5/13/2025HousePassed House, yeas 91, nays 0.
5/13/2025HouseSubstituted for HF 1042.
5/13/2025HouseRead first time, passed on file.
5/12/2025HouseMessage from Senate.
4/30/2025HouseNOBA: Senate Floor
4/29/2025SenateImmediate message.
4/29/2025SenatePassed Senate, yeas 48, nays 0.
4/29/2025SenateAmendment S-3140 filed, adopted.
4/29/2025SenateNOBA: Senate Full Approps
4/28/2025SenateCommittee report, approving bill.
4/23/2025SenateIntroduced, placed on Appropriations calendar.
4/23/2025Senate
Bill Text
As Introduced
Enrolled
Related Bills
HF 2801, A bill for an act modifying the major economic growth attraction program, and including effective date provisions. (Formerly HSB 785.) Effective date: 10/02/2026.
SF 2472, A bill for an act relating to state and local government taxes, fees, financial authority, and budgets, by modifying property assessment provisions, divisions of revenue, and funding from the secure an advanced vision for education fund, establishing a program for first-time homebuyers, modifying and making appropriations, and including effective date, applicability, and retroactive applicability provisions. (Formerly SSB 3001.) Effective date: 05/18/2026, 07/01/2026, 01/01/2027. Applicability date: 01/01/2026, 07/01/2026, 01/01/2027, 07/01/2027, 07/01/2028.
HF 2601, A bill for an act relating to campaign finance, including participation in ballot issue campaigns by foreign nationals and investigations of election misconduct, and making penalties applicable. (Formerly HF 2044.) Effective date: 07/01/2026.
SF 2399, A bill for an act relating to bail and bond amounts and conditions. (Formerly SSB 3162.) Effective date: 07/01/2026.
SF 2471, A bill for an act relating to fees for lifetime fur harvester licenses. (Formerly SF 2317, SSB 3121.) Effective date: 07/01/2026.
SF 2299, A bill for an act relating to the district-to-community college sharing or concurrent enrollment program. (Formerly SF 2176.) Vetoed 6-2-26.