This bill amends RCW 43.330.705 to create a new Office of Homeless Youth Prevention and Protection Programs housed within "the department." The office is to be led by a director supervised by the department director or the director's designee and is charged with coordinating funding, policy, and practice related to homeless youth, improving their safety, health, and and welfare, and pursuing measurable goals to reduce youth homelessness and increase permanency. The office must gather data and outcome measures, initiate data‑sharing agreements, develop recommendations and timelines to address funding, policy, and practice gaps related to the five key components in RCW 43.330.700, report on progress, enhance system integration to avoid discharging youth into homelessness, and develop county and statewide measures and a comprehensive plan to identify youth experiencing homelessness and promote family stability. The bill also creates a regularly consulted advisory committee to provide guidance on funding, policy, and practice gaps; the department must staff the committee. Members are appointed by the governor except that legislators are appointed by the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate. A young adult serving on the advisory committee who turns 25 during their term may complete that term. The bill references but does not define the "publicly funded system of care" (RCW 43.330.720) or the five key components in RCW 43.330.700, and the specific department that will house the office is not named in the provided text. The bill was prefiled December 31, 2025, read first time January 12, 2026, passed the Senate February 4, 2026 (49-0), and passed the House March 4, 2026 (72-25).

If enacted, the bill creates a new office inside a state department to lead and coordinate efforts to prevent and reduce youth homelessness and increase permanency for young people separated from family or guardians. That office would be run by a director and would collect and share data, set measurable goals, make recommendations to fill funding and policy gaps across five key program components, build county and statewide measures (like counts of homeless youth and their dependency or housing status), and work to stop state systems from discharging young people into homelessness. The department that houses the office will need new staff and resources to run the office and to staff the advisory committee, and service providers, counties, law enforcement, and other agencies in the publicly funded system of care can expect more requests to share data and align practices, which may create administrative costs and new coordination duties. Advisory committee members (appointed by the governor or legislative leaders) including youth and people with lived experience gain formal roles in planning. Important details are missing from the extract—specifically which department will host the office, how the five key components and the “publicly funded system of care” are defined, and where funding for the new duties will come from—so the scale of cost and timing is unclear.