Legislation: batch A — AK AL AR AZ CO CT DE GA HI IA ID

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>

legislation/us/states/de/151/sb-255.md

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+---
+type: "Bill"
+title: "AN ACT TO AMEND TITLES 13 AND 16 OF THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO THE VOLUNTARY ADMISSION PROCEDURE."
+description: "When a youth who is experiencing foster care and living in an out-of-home placement has a need for inpatient psychiatric treatment, there can be a delay in gaining voluntary admission to a facility due to the Division of Family Services needing to obtain the youth’s parent or legal guardian’s consent for treatment. This can lead to a youth waiting in an emergency department bed or other inappropriate setting while waiting for the proper consent to be signed. In some cases, when a youth’s parent or legal guardian cannot be located, the youth must be involuntarily committed in order to obtain inpatient treatment, even when the youth is going willingly."
+jurisdiction: "us/states/de"
+legislature: "Delaware General Assembly"
+session: "151"
+identifier: "SB 255"
+citation: "Delaware SB 255 (151)"
+classification: ["bill"]
+subjects: []
+status: "enacted"
+primary_sponsors: ["Marie Pinkney", "Melissa Minor-Brown"]
+version_count: 1
+action_count: 7
+vote_count: 2
+first_action: "2022-03-31"
+last_action: "2022-09-21"
+source: "openstates"
+source_identifier: "ocd-bill/c3469f3c-ebf1-417a-b00d-333684cae8f5"
+source_url: "https://legis.delaware.gov/BillDetail?LegislationId=89288"
+source_hash: "2039ae7898892c41cc577e1900736a59cf4e0eeb779ab8b058be5224bc31555e"
+vintage: "2026-07-01"
+source_snapshot: "https://data.openstates.org/daily/2026-07-01/public.pgdump"
+retrieved_at: "2026-07-06"
+confidence: "reported"
+tags: ["legislation", "bill", "us-de"]
+---
+
+# Delaware SB 255 (151) — AN ACT TO AMEND TITLES 13 AND 16 OF THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO THE VOLUNTARY ADMISSION PROCEDURE.
+
+When a youth who is experiencing foster care and living in an out-of-home placement has a need for inpatient psychiatric treatment, there can be a delay in gaining voluntary admission to a facility due to the Division of Family Services needing to obtain the youth’s parent or legal guardian’s consent for treatment. This can lead to a youth waiting in an emergency department bed or other inappropriate setting while waiting for the proper consent to be signed. In some cases, when a youth’s parent or legal guardian cannot be located, the youth must be involuntarily committed in order to obtain inpatient treatment, even when the youth is going willingly.
+
+## Version chain
+
+The bill's text revisions, in order — the diff chain from filing to enrollment.
+
+1. **Bill Text** (committee substitute) — [source](https://legis.delaware.gov/json/BillDetail/GenerateHtmlDocument?legislationId=89288&legislationTypeId=1&docTypeId=2&legislationName=SB255)
+
+## Votes
+
+- 3/5 — **41–0** (pass) · lower
+- 2/3 — **21–0** (pass) · upper
+
+## Sponsors
+
+- Marie Pinkney — primary (person)
+- Melissa Minor-Brown — primary (person)
+- Bryan Townsend — cosponsor (person)
+- David P. Sokola — cosponsor (person)
+- Debra Heffernan — cosponsor (person)
+- Eric Morrison — cosponsor (person)
+- Krista Griffith — cosponsor (person)
+- Kyle Evans Gay — cosponsor (person)
+- Nicole Poore — cosponsor (person)
+- Paul S. Baumbach — cosponsor (person)
+- Ruth Briggs King — cosponsor (person)
+- Sarah McBride — cosponsor (person)
+- Stephanie L. Hansen — cosponsor (person)
+
+## Timeline
+
+The legislative action history — every referral, reading, and vote.
+
+- **2022-03-31** Introduced and Assigned to Health & Social Services Committee in Senate `introduction, referral-committee`
+- **2022-04-13** Reported Out of Committee (Health & Social Services) in Senate with 3 Favorable, 2 On Its Merits `committee-passage, committee-passage-favorable`
+- **2022-04-14** Passed By Senate. Votes: 21 YES `passage`
+- **2022-04-28** Assigned to Health & Human Development Committee in House `introduction, referral-committee`
+- **2022-05-11** Reported Out of Committee (Health & Human Development) in House with 2 Favorable, 6 On Its Merits `committee-passage, committee-passage-favorable`
+- **2022-06-28** Passed By House. Votes: 41 YES `passage`
+- **2022-09-21** Signed by Governor `executive-signature`
+
+## Source
+
+OpenStates / OpenCivicData bulk snapshot [2026-07-01](https://data.openstates.org/daily/2026-07-01/public.pgdump); origin `ocd-bill/c3469f3c-ebf1-417a-b00d-333684cae8f5`. Confidence: reported (aggregated from official Delaware legislature records).
+