Senate Bill 5665 amends RCW 26.44.020, 26.44.030, 28A.310.280, and 28A.300.040 and creates a new section containing legislative findings. The findings call for improved training, reporting, background checks, psychological screening for volunteers and employees who interact with vulnerable populations, and better data collection about sexual abuse of children by public institutions that serve school-age children. The bill revises and adds many definitions in the child abuse chapter, including expanded definitions of abuse or neglect, child protective services language, “member of the clergy,” “child who is a candidate for foster care,” and others, and states that clergy are to be treated the same as other mandatory reporters while respecting certain religious practices. The bill makes procedural changes to how the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (the department) and law enforcement respond to reports. It requires the department to use one discrete response for screened-in reports—either investigation or family assessment—sets factors for case assignment and allows reassignment when new information arises, and requires investigations in specified circumstances. Time limits are imposed: investigations generally must be completed within 90 days unless extended by written protocol, and family assessment responses generally must be completed within 45 days with limited extensions. Family assessment responses are voluntary and do not result in a perpetrator being named or an investigative finding entered. The department may conduct background checks as authorized by law, must maintain investigation records and logs of screened-out cases, must present risk factors (including substance abuse) at placement hearings, and has limited civil liability protections for providing prevention and family services. Persons or agencies who receive information under the information-exchange subsection may not further disseminate it except as authorized by statute; an unauthorized further release is a misdemeanor. The department must notify the family and children's ombuds after a third founded report involving the same child or family within 12 months and must follow rules about child interviews, third-party presence, and access to mandated reporter records. The bill imposes education-sector requirements and reporting duties. The department must provide a downloadable, printable poster in English and Spanish describing reporting requirements (minimum size 8.5 by 11 inches) that organizations with covered employees or volunteers must post. Educational service district superintendents must keep and transfer records of official acts, preserve and transfer reports and records to successors, and annually report to the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) a record of sexual abuse accusations, investigations, disciplinary or corrective actions, and preventative measures, identifying individual employees or volunteers. OSPI is given authority to collect and compile sexual abuse data from educational service districts, make information about investigated school employees or volunteers available to districts on request, report annually to the governor and legislature on investigations and corrective actions, develop systems for psychological screening, training, and background checks for volunteers and school employees, promote safe environment programs, and establish an annual independent audit of screening and training with results made public. The extracted text is incomplete in places: the full text of the new section is not provided, several amended RCW texts (including the full amendments to RCW 26.44.030, 28A.310.280, and 28A.300.040) are not included here, a definition (psychologist) is cut off, and several sentences are truncated, so some specific procedural details and the complete scope of the amendments cannot be confirmed from these extracts.

If enacted, the bill will broaden and clarify what counts as child abuse or neglect, formalize how the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) and law enforcement respond (either an investigation or a family assessment with specific time limits), require DCYF to keep logs and risk assessments, and allow background checks during responses. Schools and other organizations must post bilingual reporting posters, and educational service districts must keep detailed records and annually report identified sexual abuse accusations, investigations, discipline, and prevention steps to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). OSPI gains new duties to collect and publish school sexual abuse data, create screening, training, and background check systems for volunteers and employees, and run annual independent audits of those systems. The groups most affected are public schools and educational service districts, OSPI, DCYF, clergy (who are treated like other mandatory reporters), and organizations with staff or volunteers around children. Expect increased administrative work and likely costs for recordkeeping, reporting, training, screening programs, audits, and compliance; DCYF and OSPI will need staffing and systems to track cases and reports, and districts will face privacy and record management burdens. Some important details about how certain sections are changed, exact deadlines, and the new section’s full requirements are missing from the extracted text, so the scope and timing of some duties and any budget implications are not fully clear.