Rep. Rosanna Gabaldon’s bill, HB2142, will require Arizona’s foster parents to attend a mandatory workshop on cultural hygiene. The bill will also increase the number of training hours required for foster care licensing.
The bill is co-sponsored by representatives Alston, Andrade, Espinoza, Fernandez, Friese, Gonzales, Martinez, Powers Hannley, Rios, Rubalcava, Saldate, and Salman.
The bill also increases the foster care licensing requirements, which had required 12 hours of training. The bill reads in part: “The department shall not renew a license without satisfactory proof that the foster parent or parents have completed 16 actual hours of approved ongoing foster parent training during the two-year period of licensure as set forth in section 8-503.”
The bill has been assigned for hearings by Speaker JD Mesnard in the Health and Rules committees.
According to the World Health Organization, “In the increasingly multicultural, globalized community that is health-care provision today, cultural awareness has never been more crucial for implementing good clinical practice in keeping with scientific developments. Immigration and travel are more common and extensive than ever before as a result of the geopolitically active forces of migration, asylum-seeking and, in Europe, the existence of a broad, borderless multi-state Union. With the increasingly diverse populations accompanying these changes, very diverse cultural beliefs are also more prevalent than ever. This evolving cultural topography demands new, rapidly acquired knowledge and highly sensitive, informed insights of these differences.”