An Act amending the act of June 13, 1967 (P.L.31, No.21), known as the Human Services Code, in children and youth, providing for ensuring safe and humane institutional practices.

PRIOR PRINTER'S NO. 1864 PRINTER'S NO. 2098
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF PENNSYLVANIA
HOUSE BILL
No. 1577
Session of
2025
INTRODUCED BY SHUSTERMAN, HOHENSTEIN, HANBIDGE, DOUGHERTY, HILL-
EVANS, KHAN, D. WILLIAMS, SANCHEZ, WARREN, CEPEDA-FREYTIZ,
MAYES, McNEILL, RIVERA AND BOYD, JUNE 6, 2025
AS AMENDED ON SECOND CONSIDERATION, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
JULY 8, 2025
AN ACT
Amending the act of June 13, 1967 (P.L.31, No.21), entitled "An
act to consolidate, editorially revise, and codify the public
welfare laws of the Commonwealth," in children and youth,
providing for ensuring safe and humane institutional
practices.
The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
hereby enacts as follows:
Section 1. The act of June 13, 1967 (P.L.31, No.21), known
as the Human Services Code, is amended by adding a section to
read:
Section 724.1. Ensuring Safe and Humane Institutional
Practices.--(a) The safe and humane care of children in
facilities demands that restrictive procedures, including
chemical restraints, manual restraints, mechanical restraints,
seclusion, exclusion, strip searches and body cavity searches,
only be used as measures of last resort to protect a child from
behavior that poses a serious and immediate risk of physical
harm to self or others.
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(b) To ensure safe and humane institutional practices:
(1) Restrictive procedures, including restrictions on a
child's rights, including the right to a quality education, may
not be used for punishment, retaliation, administrative
convenience, staffing shortages or for any reason other than
securing the immediate physical safety of a child.
(2) Inappropriate use of restrictive procedures shall be
grounds for full investigation, including a criminal
investigation, and license revocation.
(c) The department shall:
(1) Establish standards consistent with the law and
regulations of various departments of the Commonwealth for all
facilities within this Commonwealth that include a prohibition
on:
(i) The use of restrictive procedures unless used as
measures of last resort to protect a child from behavior that
poses a serious and immediate risk of physical harm to the child
or others.
(ii) The restriction of a child's rights, including the
right to privacy, receive mail, make phone calls, have in-person
visitation with family members and receive a quality education.
(iii) Any and all instances of abuse.
(2) Be responsible for the maintenance of safe and humane
care at a facility. The department or its representative shall
have free and full access to the premises and records of a
facility and full opportunity to interrogate or interview any
officer, employe or resident of the facility. The department
shall make routine announced and unannounced daytime and
nighttime inspections of all facilities.
(3) Expeditiously review all allegations of unsafe or
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inhumane care and maintain a public record of confirmed
instances that have occurred in a facility.
(4) Whenever the department, upon inspection, investigation
or complaint, finds a facility in violation of law, or that a
facility has failed to establish, provide or maintain standards
of care required by this section, give immediate written notice
of the violation or failure to the officers charged with
managing the facility. The following procedure shall apply:
(i) The notice shall include a description of the violation
or failure, the corrective action needed and a specified time
frame for making any necessary corrections.
(ii) Upon receipt of the notice, an officer charged with
managing the facility shall comply with the direction of the
department. If the officer charged with managing the facility
fails to comply with the department's direction within the
specified time frame, the department may:
(A) Revoke the facility's license.
(B) Request the Attorney General to institute appropriate
legal proceedings to enforce compliance with the direction.
(C) Withhold any State money available for the facility
until the officer charged with managing the facility complies
with the direction.
(D) Refer the matter for criminal investigation.
(d) The following exceptions apply to this section:
(1) A limited period of cool down or time out for a child is
not considered solitary confinement if the period conforms to
the following:
(i) The child's behavior is creating an imminent risk of
physical harm to self or others and is for a maximum of three
hours, with release of the child as soon as the child has
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regained self-control.
(ii) Support staff, including a social worker, is notified
and made available to the child to assist the child in calming
down.
(iii) Staff closely monitors the child during the period and
maintains physical proximity.
(iv) Restriction beyond three hours is documented and
reported to both the department and the Office of Child
Advocate.
(2) Strip searches and body cavity searches may be conducted
only as a last resort and where there is probable cause that the
child being searched possesses drugs or a weapon that could not
be discovered through less intrusive means and authorization
from an individual in the agency overseeing the facility. The
following shall apply to searches under this clause:
(i) When authorized, strip searches shall be performed by
two staff or medical personnel of the same gender as the child
in an area that ensures the privacy and dignity of the child.
(ii) Body cavity searches may only be performed by outside
medical providers.
(iii) To the degree possible, and only when searches are
necessary, a facility shall rely on alternatives such as wands
or metal detectors.
(iv) The use of a strip search or body cavity search shall
be documented and reported to the department. Documentation
shall include:
(A) The probable cause that the child being searched
possesses drugs or a weapon that could not be discovered through
less intrusive means.
(B) The authorization for the search.
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(C) The names and positions of the individuals conducting
the search.
(3) Staff may use manual restraints on a child when the
child's behavior creates an imminent risk of serious physical
harm to self or others and shall be conducted in accordance with
the following:
(i) A facility shall ensure that manual restraints adhere to
a model approved in advance by the department.
(ii) Staff shall terminate manual restraints immediately
when the child's behavior no longer poses a risk of serious
physical harm to self or others.
(iii) Staff shall observe and document the child's physical
and emotional condition every ten minutes while manual
restraints are being applied to the child.
(iv) In accordance with 55 Pa. Code § 3800.211(c) (relating
to manual restraints), prone position manual restraints are not
used.
(e) A facility shall have the following duties:
(1) Use a program model that incorporates evidence-based and
evidence-informed practices. Staff shall deliver the practices
with the training and education required to maintain fidelity to
the program model or practices.
(2) Ensure that staff receive regular training on cultural
competence, evidence-based models for recidivism reduction and
the provisions of 55 Pa. Code Ch. 3800 (relating to child
residential and day treatment facilities).
(3) Maintain a discipline plan approved by the department as
part of the program model used under clause (1). Facilities
shall ensure that the discipline plan focuses on the use of
incentives rather than punishment or sanctions.
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(4) Ensure and facilitate access to a quality education.
(f) The department shall ensure that children and their
families and guardians understand how to report a grievance or
any instances of unsafe or inhumane care, in written or oral
form, formally or informally, or anonymously, without fear of
retaliation. The following shall apply:
(1) Assistance to file a grievance shall be available upon
request by a child.
(2) An adult with whom a child seeks assistance shall be
permitted to provide assistance and, notwithstanding mandated
reporting, shall keep confidential any information shared by the
child for purposes of filing the grievance.
(3) A facility shall accept any grievance, whether formal or
informal, as notice of the child's concerns and may not require
specific forms or processes.
(g) Beginning not later than ninety days after the effective
date of this subsection, the department shall prepare and
publish a monthly QUARTERLY public report detailing enrollment
in educational programming, use of seclusion, use of restraints
and invasive searches involving children committed by order of
court to a facility operated under the direction or supervision
of the court or other public authority. The following shall
apply:
(1) Each quarterly report shall include, at minimum, the
following disaggregated data:
(i) Number of children subjected to seclusion.
(ii) Number of children subjected to seclusion more than
once.
(iii) Number of children secluded for more than three hours
(iv) Number of children secluded for more than three hours
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on more than one occasion.
(v) Number of children restrained physically or
mechanically.
(vi) Number of children subjected to strip searches.
(vii) Number of children subjected to cavity searches.
(viii) Number of children educated in public school, on-
grounds school or cyber program.
(2) All data under paragraph (1) shall be disaggregated by
the following:
(i) Race.
(ii) Gender.
(iii) Ethnicity.
(iv) Sending jurisdiction.
(v) Disability status, including a diagnoses under an
Individualized Education Program , 29 U.S.C. § 794 (relating
nondiscrimination under Federal grants and programs) or the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th
Edition: DSM-5, 2013, published by the American Psychiatric
Association.
(3) Each quarterly report shall be published on the
department's publicly accessible dashboard by the twentieth day
of the month following the reporting quarter and shall be
available in machine-readable and open data formats.
(h) As used in this section, the following words and phrases
shall have the meanings given to them in this subsection unless
the context clearly indicates otherwise:
"Chemical restraint" means a drug used to control acute,
episodic behavior that restricts the movement or function of a
child. The term does not include a drug ordered by a licensed
physician as part of ongoing medical treatment or as
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pretreatment prior to a medical or dental examination or
treatment.
"Exclusion" means the removal of a child from the child's
immediate environment and restricting the child alone to a room
or area, even if the door is unlocked. The term does not include
a situation in which a staff person remains in the exclusion
area with the child.
"Facility" means a setting, including a children's
institution, youth development center, camp or other facility at
which a child is held as a result of the child's alleged or
actual dependency or delinquency under 42 Pa.C.S. Ch. 63
(relating to juvenile matters).
"Manual restraint" means a physical hands-on technique that
lasts more than one minute and that restricts the movement or
function of a child or portion of a child's body. The term does
not include a manual assist of any duration for a child during
which the child does not physically resist or a therapeutic hold
for a child who is eight years of age or younger for less than
ten minutes during which the child does not physically resist.
"Mechanical restraint" as follows:
(1) A device that restricts the movement or function of a
child or portion of a child's body.
(2) The term includes handcuffs, anklets, wristlets,
camisoles, helmets with fasteners, muffs and mitts with
fasteners, restraints to prevent exiting a hospital bed
unassisted, waist straps, head straps, papoose boards,
restraining sheets and similar devices.
(3) The term does not include a device used:
(i) To provide support for functional body position or
proper balance.
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(ii) For safe transportation to and from a facility or
medical treatment such as sandbags to limit movement after
medical treatment, a wheelchair belt used for body positioning
and support or a helmet used for prevention of injury during
seizure activity.
"Solitary confinement" means isolating a child in a cell or
room, locked or unlocked, for punitive or disciplinary purposes.
The term does not include a cool-down or time-out period as
described under subsection (d)(1).
Section 2. This act shall take effect in 60 days.
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