Working policy framework

Support does not end when childhood does.

Daveigh's Law is a proposed legislative framework for lifelong support of California's child performers, designed to strengthen existing protections and connect fragmented resources into one continuous pathway.

Every child deserves a future beyond childhood success.

The objective

Connect every qualifying child performer to independent, age-appropriate support when professional work begins—and preserve a trusted doorway back to help through adolescence, career transition, and adulthood.

The gap

California has built important protections around the employment of minors in entertainment. But protections tied to childhood employment can become fragmented when the work ends, the performer reaches adulthood, family or professional relationships change, records become difficult to locate, or a former performer needs help years later.

Daveigh’s Law addresses that continuity gap. The objective is not to replace existing protections or institutions. It is to ensure that a child who enters professional entertainment does not lose the pathway to trusted support simply because childhood or the career ended.

Childhood protections should create adult continuity.

The four-part system

1. Daveigh's Law

The legislative framework establishing continuity, accountability, independent access, education, and long-term support.

2. The Daveigh Safety Network

A proposed 24/7 phone, text, and app pathway for confidential guidance, independent advocacy, emergency safety coordination, crisis response, referrals, and long-term follow-through.

3. The Daveigh Transition Program

Case management supporting the transition from child performer to independent adult, including education, career planning, identity documents, housing, health, benefits, and financial literacy.

4. The Daveigh Resource Center

A confidential legal, medical, financial, and social-service hub that helps performers and former performers discover, understand, and navigate available resources.

Four rights. One continuous pathway.

The proposed protections are organized around four durable rights: Voice. Stability. Independence. Return.

I. The right to an independent voice

1. Automatic connection: a clear, age-appropriate introduction to support when a minor begins qualifying professional work or union membership.
2. Independent advocate access: access to a trusted advocate whose defined duty centers on the performer’s safety, voice, rights, and wellbeing.
3. Private check-ins: periodic opportunities for the young performer to speak outside the presence of employers, representatives, or family members, consistent with applicable law and safeguarding requirements.
4. Safe reporting: confidential and, where appropriate, anonymous pathways for on-set, family, coercion, harassment, financial, or welfare concerns, while preserving mandatory-reporting and other legal obligations.

II. The right to stability

5. Trauma-informed mental health navigation: referrals and continuity through childhood, career transitions, and adulthood.
6. Emergency stability: coordinated safety planning, crisis response, temporary housing navigation, and practical assistance.
7. Housing and support navigation: connection to appropriate public, nonprofit, clinical, and community resources when stability is at risk.

III. The right to independence

8. Financial navigation: education and practical help concerning wages, residuals, trust accounts, taxes, records, benefits, and financial literacy.
9. Education and transition planning: support for school, higher education, career development, identity beyond performance, and independent living.
10. Records and identity support: help obtaining IDs, vital records, union records, account information, and other documents necessary for adulthood.
11. Adult autonomy navigation: voluntary, privacy-protective access to plain-language information and independent qualified referrals concerning healthcare directives, estate planning, powers of attorney where appropriate, beneficiary designations, emergency contacts, digital records, and other decisions through which an adult can document and exercise personal agency.
12. Rights & Records Passport: a secure, portable way to understand and locate protected earnings, employment and union records where applicable, residual information, key professional records, available resources, and the pathway back to independent support.

IV. The right to return

13. Lifelong re-entry: former child performers retain a known, low-friction doorway back to support at any age without needing to rediscover the system or reconstruct their history from the beginning.

Lifelong re-entry is the continuity promise: the pathway remains known and reachable after the production ends, after the career changes, and after childhood is over.

Operating principles

• Independent: the advocate’s duty centers on the performer, and access is structurally insulated from employers, productions, representatives, parents, guardians, unions, funders, and other financially or relationally interested parties, subject to applicable laws governing minors and mandatory reporting.
• Confidential: privacy is designed into access, communication, recordkeeping, and referrals.
• Trauma-informed: systems respond with safety, choice, transparency, collaboration, and empowerment.
• Survivor-centered: lived experience shapes policy, program design, evaluation, and accountability.
• Available for life: a former child performer remains eligible to reconnect with guidance and navigation.

Implementation direction

The framework is intended to strengthen—not replace—existing union, nonprofit, government, clinical, legal, and community services. Initial policy development should include child performers and former child performers, labor representatives, studio and production stakeholders, child welfare experts, trauma clinicians, attorneys, financial specialists, nonprofit service providers, and legislators.

Five implementation questions to resolve

1. Eligibility: define which current and former young performers qualify, when eligibility begins, and whether access continues regardless of later union status or career participation.
2. Continuity: create a privacy-preserving, voluntary mechanism that allows a former child performer to reconnect 5, 15, or 40 years later without having to rediscover the system or reconstruct their history from scratch.
3. Duty: identify which entity is legally responsible for making the pathway available, communicating its existence, and maintaining reliable access over time.
4. Independence: insulate advocacy and support from financial or relational conflicts involving studios, productions, representatives, parents, guardians, or other interested parties.
5. Funding: evaluate durable options—including public appropriation, entertainment-industry assessment, philanthropic participation, and integration with existing programs—while preventing funders from controlling individual advocacy, confidential decisions, or access to private participant information.

Phase I: California pilot

Early implementation can begin with a legislatively authorized resource-navigation pilot: one trusted portal connecting eligible participants to independent navigation, transition support, and qualified existing services.

The pilot can establish an independent advisory council, conduct a statewide needs assessment, build referral agreements, adopt privacy and safeguarding standards, and measure demand, utilization, cost, referral completion, participant trust, and long-term re-engagement before permanent statewide infrastructure is finalized.

Accountability

Program evaluation should measure awareness, accessibility, response time, referral completion, housing stability, document recovery, financial access, mental health connection, participant trust, transition outcomes, and long-term re-engagement. The central accountability question is simple: does the person actually reach help? Public reporting should protect individual privacy while showing whether the system is working.