§ 42-72.1-4. License required. (a) No person shall provide continuing full-time care for a child apart from the child's parents without a license issued pursuant to this chapter. This requirement does not apply to a person related by blood, marriage, guardianship, or adoption to the child. Licensing requirements for child day care services are governed by § 42-12.5-4 et seq.

(b) The licensing requirement does not apply to shelter operations for parents with children, boarding schools, recreation camps, nursing homes, hospitals, maternity residences, and centers for developmentally disabled children.

(c) No person, firm, corporation, association, or agency, other than a parent, shall place, offer to place, or assist in the placement of a child in Rhode Island, for the purpose of adoption, unless the person, firm, corporation, or agency shall have been licensed for those purposes by the department or is a governmental child-placing agency, and that license shall not have been rescinded at the time of placement of a child for the purpose of adoption. The above does not apply when a person, firm, corporation, association, or agency places, offers to place, or assists in the placement of a child in Rhode Island, for the purpose of adoption through a child-placement agency duly licensed for child-placement in the state or through the department of children, youth, and families, nor when the child is placed with a father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, grandparent, or stepparent of the child.

(d) No parent shall assign or otherwise transfer to another not related to him or her by blood or marriage, his or her rights or duties with respect to the permanent care and custody of his or her child under eighteen (18) years of age unless duly authorized so to do by an order or decree of court.

(e) No person shall bring or send into the state any child for the purpose of placing him or her out, or procuring his or her adoption, or placing him or her in a foster home without first obtaining the written consent of the director, and that person shall conform to the rules of the director and comply with the provisions of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children, chapter 15 of title 40.

(f) [Deleted by P.L. 2019, ch. 88, art. 4, § 21].

(g) No state, county, city, or political subdivision shall operate a child placing agency, child caring agency, foster and adoptive home, or children's behavioral health program or facility without a license issued pursuant to this chapter.

(h) No person shall be exempt from a required license by reason of public or private, sectarian, non-sectarian, court-operated child placement program, child caring agency, foster and adoptive home, or children's behavioral health program for profit or nonprofit status, or by any other reason of funding, sponsorship, or affiliation.

History of Section. (P.L. 1986, ch. 254, § 5; P.L. 1986, ch. 274, § 5; P.L. 2019, ch. 88, art. 4, § 21.)