South Carolina Code of Regulations › Chapter 114 - DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SERVICES › Article 5 - LICENSING › Subarticle 9 - RESIDENTIAL GROUP CARE FACILITIES FOR CHILDREN › Section 114-590 - Licensing of Residential Group Care Organizations for Children

Current through Register Vol. 48, No. 6, June 28, 2024
A. General Purpose
				and Compliance with Other Laws.
The South Carolina Department of Social Services is
				  authorized to license residential group care organizations for children. In
				  carrying out this authority, the overall purpose of licensing by the agency is
				  to promote the provision of a temporary, safe, stable and humane environment
				  for children who are placed in residential group care settings, and that these
				  settings include adequate supervision, supports for mental and physical health,
				  safe physical facilities, and opportunities for appropriate learning
				  experiences to maximize the potential of each child to be well-adjusted,
				  responsible and independent. When interpreting and enforcing these regulations,
				  regulations that provide greater specificity supersede regulations that are
				  more general in nature and are therefore, the controlling authority. All
				  residential group care organizations shall comply with these regulations and
				  all other applicable requirements of State and Federal law.
B. Definitions.
(1) "Age- or developmentally-appropriate
				activities" means activities that are generally accepted as suitable for
				children of the same chronological age or level of maturity or that are
				determined to be developmentally-appropriate for a child, based on the
				development of cognitive, emotional, physical, and behavioral capacities that
				are typical for an age or age group; and in the case of a specific child,
				activities or items that are suitable for the child based on the developmental
				stages attained by the child with respect to the cognitive, emotional,
				physical, and behavioral capacities of the child.
(2) "Behavior intervention" means any
				containment, management or treatment technique or procedure used to intervene
				in a child's behavior when that behavior poses a clear and present danger of
				serious physical harm to the child or to others
(3) "Caregiver" means any of the following: A
				person who is, or is expected to be, an employee or contractor of a facility,
				who is or is expected to be under the control of the facility, as defined by
				the Agency by rule, and who has, or is expected to have, regular, direct
				unsupervised contact with children of the facility.
(4) "Care plan" means a written plan of
				services to meet the specific goals and care needs of a child.
(5) "Chemical restraints" mean drugs
				administered to temporarily restrain a child who poses a threat to harm
				themselves or others.
(6) "Child"
				means a person under the age of twenty-one.
(7) "Child Care Institution means a private
				residential group care facility, or public residential group care facility
				which accommodates no more than twenty-five children, and is licensed by the
				Agency. The setting does not include wilderness camps or training schools, nor
				does it include any facility that exists primarily for the detention or
				correction of children.
(8)
				"Commercial Sex Act" means any sex act for which anything of value is given,
				promised or received, directly or indirectly, by any person.
(9) "Corporal punishment" means physical
				punishment inflicted directly upon the body.
(10)  CSEC" means Commercial Sexual
				Exploitation of Children.
(11)
				"De-escalation" means behavior that is intended to escape escalation of
				conflicts. It also refers to approaches in conflict resolution. De-escalation
				techniques may use verbal and non-verbal cues.
(12) "Department" means the Department of
				Social Services.
(13) "Fictive kin"
				means an individual who is not related by birth, adoption, or marriage to a
				child, but who has an emotionally significant relationship with the
				child.
(14) "Gender identity" means
				a person's internal identification or self-image as male or female, which is
				usually established by age three.
(15) "Group care" means the care and services
				provided by group care facilities and child care institutions.
(16) "Group care facility" means a
				residential organization, including residential institutions, residential
				facilities, and child care institutions, licensed by the Department to provide
				temporary or long-term, full-time residential care for children on a year-round
				basis, emergency shelters, and group homes. State contracts may also further
				categorize group care facilities by population and services provided. Boarding
				schools that do not operate year-round or that do not offer services beyond
				those associated with school programming are not encompassed within these
				regulations. All group care facilities are considered "residential
				institutions" for purposes of S.C. Code Section
				63-7-1210,
				governing institutional abuse and neglect.
(17) "Group care staff" means an adult who
				works in a group care facility. "Group care staff" includes a person who has or
				is seeking a license to operate a group care facility and does not include an
				unpaid volunteer.
(18) "Infant"
				means a child under one year of age.
(19) "Licensing agency" or "agency" means the
				South Carolina Department of Social Services.
(20) "LGBTQ+" means lesbian, gay, bisexual,
				transgender, questioning or other sexual identities.
(21) "Sex Trafficking" means the recruitment,
				harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of
				a person for a commercial sex act. For minors, under the age of 18, there is no
				requirement of force, fraud, coercion or inclusion of a third party. No child
				or youth under the age of 18 can consent to commercial sex.
(22) "Victim of Child Trafficking" - a minor
				who is under 18 years old who is sex trafficked or labor trafficked as defined
				in S.C Code Section
				16-3-1210.
(23) "Normalcy" means a child's ability to
				easily engage in healthy and age or developmentally appropriate activities that
				promote his or her well-being, such as participation in social, scholastic, and
				enrichment activities.
(24)
				"Program director" means the person responsible for coordinating the general
				management, administration, and care of the children of a facility in
				accordance with licensing requirements and policies established by the advisory
				board.
(25) "Psychotropic
				medication" means any drug that affects the mind and is used to manage
				inappropriate behavior or psychiatric symptoms and may include an
				anti-psychotic, an antidepressant, lithium carbonate or a
				tranquilizer.
(26) "Qualified
				Residential Treatment Program (QRTP)" means a program that serves children with
				serious emotional or behavioral disorders or disturbances.
(27) "Residential Group Care Organization"
				means child care institutions, residential institutions, residential
				facilities, and group care facilities.
(28) "Reasonable and prudent parent standard"
				means the standard characterized by careful and sensible parental decisions
				that maintain the health, safety, and best interests of a child while at the
				same time encouraging the emotional and developmental growth of the child, that
				a caregiver shall use when determining whether to allow a child in foster care
				under the responsibility of the State to participate in extracurricular,
				enrichment, cultural, and social activities.
(29) "Relative" means an adult who is related
				to a child or youth by blood, marriage, or adoption, as well as an adult who is
				not related by blood, marriage, or adoption, but who has a relationship with
				the child, youth, or young adult, or their family (fictive kin). Under the
				Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a relative is defined as a family member who
				is related to the child by blood, marriage, or adoption only.
(30) "Restraint" means an emergency safety
				intervention defined as any manual method, physical or mechanical device,
				material, or equipment attached or adjacent to the child's body, that the
				individual cannot remove easily which restricts freedom of movement or normal
				access to one's body.
(31) "Staff'
				means an adult who is employed within the group care facility full-time or
				part-time, including, but not limited to, management, administrative,
				caregiving, program, maintenance, food service, and service personnel. This
				definition does not include adults whose presence in the group care facility or
				contact with children is incidental in nature. However, the group care facility
				must ensure that full-time or part-time staff provide line-of-sight supervision
				for any adult whose presence in the facility or contact with children is
				incidental in nature.
(32)
				"Standard license" means a license issued when a facility meets all regulatory
				requirements to obtain a license.
(33) "Supervision" means guidance of the
				behavior and activities of a child by a staff member who is within sight or
				sound of a child to ensure the safety and well-being of the child.
(34) "Time out" means a behavior intervention
				technique that is defined as the temporary restriction of an individual for a
				period of time to a designated area from which the person is not physically
				prevented from leaving, for the purpose of providing the individual an
				opportunity to regain self-control. Time-out will last only for the shortest
				amount of time needed.
(35)
				"Toddler" means a child at least one year of age but less than 2 years of
				age.
(36) "Transgender person"
				means a person whose gender identity (their understanding of themselves as male
				or female) does not correspond with their anatomical sex. A transgender woman
				is a woman whose birth sex was male but who understands herself to be female. A
				transgender man is a man whose birth sex was female but who understands himself
				to be male.
(37) "Volunteer" means
				a person, who of their own free will, provide goods or services to a facility
				with no monetary or material compensation and has no opportunity for
				unsupervised contact with children.