Welf. & Inst. Code, § 16500 · Chapter 5. State Child Welfare Services
Welf. & Inst. Code, § 16500
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
The state, through the department and county welfare departments, shall establish and support a public system of statewide child welfare services to be developed as rapidly as possible and to be available in each county of the state. All counties shall establish and maintain specialized organizational entities within the county welfare department which shall have sole responsibility for the operation of the child welfare services program.
The Legislature hereby declares its intent, in providing for this statewide system of child welfare services, that all children are entitled to be safe and free from abuse and neglect.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended by Stats. 1996, Ch. 1084, Sec. 10. Effective January 1, 1997.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=WIC§ionNum=16500.
- Text hash
- sha256 f4f35a97fd638a96f1772e9ff204d6e5e43709972e6be9a1f8fe936a8c3b54d1
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
Cited by 1 provision
Provisions in this library whose text cites Welf. & Inst. Code, § 16500. Each shows the citation as that text prints it.
Welfare and Institutions Code
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