HB 165 North Carolina House · 2025-2026 Session

Child and Family Welfare Ombudsman Office.

HB 165 establishes the Child and Family Welfare Ombudsman Office within North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services, directly serving foster parents, birth families, and resource parents navigating the state's child welfare system. The office will investigate complaints about foster care licensing, placement, and adoption processes; provide educational resources; mediate conflicts; and protect whistleblowers reporting violations. It requires confidentiality for all communications and mandates annual public reports on trends and complaints handled. Funded with $137,000 for 2025-2026 and $145,000 for 2026-2027, the office must begin operations by January 1, 2026.

Bill status died 1 of 4 stages cleared

Introduction

Feb 2025

Committee Review

Floor Vote

Governor

Introduced Feb 21, 2025 Last action May 28, 2026

Maddy AI version diff · 1 comparison

What changed between versions

Filed → Edition 1 · 2 edits

MINOR

The bill was reformatted from a filed draft to an official first edition, adding co-sponsor information and updating internal document identifiers. The substantive policy content, including the office's duties, funding amounts, and effective dates, remains unchanged.

TECHNICAL

Added Representative Loftis as a co-sponsor and updated the document version number from 'DRH30076-NBa-40' to 'H165-v-1'.

Reordered the list of office duties from (6) through (9) to (5) through (9) to correct the numbering sequence.

Floor votes

How they voted

No floor votes recorded yet.

Full legislative history

Actions timeline

Total actions

Key actions

Committee

May 28, 2026

Committee

Re-ref to the Com on Health, if favorable, Appropriations, if favorable, Rules, Calendar, and Operations of the House

lower

May 28, 2026

Committee

Serial Referral To Rules, Calendar, and Operations of the House Stricken

lower

Feb 24, 2025

Committee

Ref to the Com on Appropriations, if favorable, Rules, Calendar, and Operations of the House

lower

Feb 21, 2025

Introduced

Filed

lower

1 primary · 10 co-sponsors