BOSTON — It wasn’t until the Senate passed a sweeping child welfare bill Friday that Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, realized a seven-and-a-half-year effort had finally reached the finish line.
The omnibus bill, titled “An Act Enhancing Child Welfare Protections” (S.148), includes a Foster Children Bill of Rights — the final piece of a trio of child welfare bills Comerford has sponsored since first taking office in 2019. The measure outlines in one place the rights, protections and resources guaranteed to every foster child in Massachusetts.
“We had to broker all of those rights, which in and of itself is a win for foster children,” Comerford said. “These are among the most vulnerable children in the commonwealth. What do we owe them? These are our children.”
The Foster Children Bill of Rights is bolstered by a series of broader child welfare reforms included in the legislation. Among the changes, the bill requires the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to exhaust available social service interventions before referring a child to the court system. It also empowers the agency greater authority to quickly transition children to new schools, reducing disruptions to their education.
The legislation would also strengthen the Office of the Child Advocate (OCA), currently under the umbrella of DCF, giving it the independence to more thoroughly examine cases involving child abuse, neglect and sexual assault.
All of these changes will ensure a brighter future for Massachusetts children, said Will Dávila, vice president of community-based services at Center for Human Development (CHD), a Springfield-based social service nonprofit that offers services throughout western Massachusetts.
“Any law, policy, or regulation that comes a step closer to eliminating child abuse of any kind is a win for all of us,” Dávila wrote in a statement to the Gazette. “Importantly, it empowers the OCA and professionals and organizations who advocate for children and adolescents — who don’t have the power, resources, or access to effect change and enforce accountability.”
A version of the bill passed in the House in October 2025 without the Foster Children Bill of Rights and a handful of other amendments. Before the new sweeping bill becomes law, legislators from both the House and Senate will iron out the differences before a final vote occurs.
The Foster Children Bill of Rights is the latest piece of a broader child welfare agenda Comerford has pursued throughout her time in the Senate.
The effort began with foster parent rights legislation she brought to the Senate floor in 2022. In 2025, she sponsored a bill directing federal benefits owed to foster children into Achieving a Better Life Experience, or ABLE, accounts rather than the state’s general fund.
“The bills represent the complexity and diversity of the constituents I represent,” Comerford said. “There is no easy, one-size-fits-all solution, which is why there are multiple bills.”
Sandi Walters, associate vice president of Community and Family Programs at Northampton-based social services agency Clinical & Support Options, views the legislation as a shift from punitive to proactive interventions for children and families.
She oversees The Bridge Family Resource Center in Amherst, a community hub that provides free family support and clinical services. Under this legislation, the state’s 33 Family Resources Centers (FRC) would become the first point of intervention for children facing behavioral challenges or truancy issues, shifting those cases away from the court system and toward community-based support.
“This is an important change in the system that takes steps to transition from expensive [and] ineffective solutions to important investments in helping children and adolescents overcome their challenges and have some hope of a brighter future, breaking a vicious multigenerational cycle that often follows the abuse,” Dávila wrote.
Rather than criminalizing this behavior, FRCs assemble a team to holistically address the problem. For instance, Walters said a family truancy issues may bring on a mental health clinician, a trusted friend with parenting experience, an educational liaison, school staff and a state caseworker.
“It can be really overwhelming and intimidating to access services,” Walters said. “And the family resource centers are comfortable family-friendly environments where the goal that we are really connecting with families, showing that there is some hope and we can support them in working towards having their child go back to school.”
Dávila said the Family Resource Centers will likely collaborate more with the Office of the Child Advocate on training and information access if the legislation becomes law. Created in 2008, the Office of the Child Advocate oversees the state’s child welfare system and advocates for children receiving state services. A separate bill filed by Comerford to make the office independent from DCF was ultimately absorbed into the omnibus legislation.
OCA’s role is greatly expanded under this legislation. The office would investigate all child fatalities and child abuse cases, develop training materials for mandatory reporters and work with other agencies to improve and expand family support programs.
The morals and ethics of child welfare are easy, but policy is far more complex, Comerford said. Every word in the Foster Children Bill of Rights was debated and negotiated between legislators, DCF agents, child welfare nonprofits and foster families. Simply gathering this many stakeholders in a room at once is radical, Comerford said.
“The issues are morally and ethnically clear and simple for me to embrace because I share these values,” she adds. “But the policy itself, there’s nothing simple about that.”
