“How many more kids have to die?” Rep. Travis Couture’s Hail Mary to fix WA’s child removal law
On the eve of House of Origin cutoff, Rep. Travis Couture, R-Allyn, made three last-ditch motions to pull child welfare bills out of committee and force a floor vote. This is the third straight session Couture has passionatley fought to change the 2021 Keeping Families Together Act, which created the current “imminent physical harm” standard for removing children from a home. Couture says the standard is too high, leaving courts no choice but to leave children in dangerous homes where parents activley use hard drugs, like fentanyl and meth with tragic consequences. Couture says it forces the system to wait until a child is nearly dead before removing them from a home, which has fueled the record number of child deaths and near deaths from exposure to fentanyl or other synthetic opioids. Despite his heartfel effort to fix the system and stop child deaths, and his months of working to build bipartisan support, majority Democrats have refused to hear his bill or similar bills from Republicans that don’t go quite as far as Couture’s fix. That’s why he made the procedural move to try to force a floor vote. But Democrats rejected all three motions. Couture warns that without reform, more vulnerable children will stay in dangerous situations — and more tragedies will follow.
