Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 1 on Health and Human Services

Good afternoon and welcome. This is the Assembly Budget Subcommitee Number One on Health and human services. Today we will be discussing core programs that make up the fabric of the social safety net. These essential programs, namely Cal Works and Cal Fresh, provide for basic human needs, food, housing, clothing, essentials for daily survival, and essentials for raising children. Today we are having an in person hearing here in the state capitol, room 444. All panelists today are in the room and will be presenting in person.

We are accepting public comment at the end of the hearing, both in the hearing room and on the phone. The phone number to connect is on the Committee website and should be on the screen. If you are watching over the Internet. The number is toll free 877-692-8957 and the public access code is 131-5444 if you encounter any problems, please contact the Assembly Budget Committee at 916-319-2099 and a staff Member will assist you. Those wishing to testify in person may do so when we start public comment.

Once we've completed all the discussion issues on the agenda, we will begin public comment after all the Members have concluded their questions for the panels.

There will be no vote taken in today's hearing, and I want to note that we are accepting written feedback through the sub one email account and the address is budget sub one at ASM.CA.Gov. Before we invite our first panel to begin, I'd like to provide a few introductory comments and open it up to see if anyone else would like to do the same. I am proud to chair this Subcommitee on these topics in human services.

At such a historic time, after the trauma of the great Recession and through the COVID-19 pandemic, we have worked hard in California to build up our safety net programs. In the best of times, these programs work to provide a basic level of support to those who are the most vulnerable in our society, the lowest income and the poor who may have no income. In the best of times, these programs. Can be life changing.

In the worst of times, these programs can be life saving and they can prevent the more awful of human suffering. People or families with children living on. The street without shelter or who are destitute. We are at a very unique moment in time. We have the ability to refocus and to strengthen our core programs. We can reimagine and redesign them to improve outcomes for our families facing multiple and difficult barriers of poverty. In the CalWORKS programs, this means shifting the culture to one of personal attention, warmth and empathy, connecting parents to supportive services, and keeping children in these households safe, healthy, housed, and fed in CalWork's sister programs, CalFresh and Cal food.

We must work to address food insecurity, as hunger is a daily trauma for so many families and children in our community. We're going to hear today about many subjects in this space on a range of issues, but I want us together to consider how California can be even more bold leader in the poverty space with no child in poverty as our North Star focus, and to commit ourselves to the small, medium and large steps to get there to ensure that California's dream of Independence, freedom and self fulfillment is afforded to every person in our state.

One major step is the decision around language and terms that we use, and changing the name of Cal Works to Cal Families will communicate a renewed focus on people and their inherent worth and value. Let us work towards a new version of this program that places human dignity and respect for families at the center of this mission and purpose. I look forward to working with all of the thought leaders who are here today to move us into this new direction of reimagining and refocusing.

We can do this in a strength-based, trauma informed, and client led way. With that said, I am grateful to all of our panelists who are here in person. I'd like to thank all of the Members as well who have shown up, and to the public who are here in the room and to those who are watching on the live stream. I'll open it up to any of my colleagues who would like to provide opening remarks.

Dr. Jackson, thank you very much. Mr. Chair. Obviously, today's hearing is critical to the future of California and its residents. I think it's going to be very important that we understand that the society in which CalWORKS was originally created no longer exists. And one thing we've learned during the pandemic, we always hoped that we would go back to, quote unquote, back to normal, that normal no longer exists and it will not exist anymore. And if our society changes, that means our systems must change with it.

And too often we create systems and we expect other people to conform to the system, but we must have a California in which the system conforms to the population, their needs, their culture, their daily habits. So looking forward to making sure that we strengthen these programs, because how we treat these programs defines what kind of state we are, right?

And if we're not treating the least of these with the dignity, humanity and respect that they deserve, and making sure that we welcome more into the system, to making sure that the least of these have the strong foundation of our safety net then we must reconsider whether we want to be called the Golden State or not, because right now I'm not sure we can call ourselves the Golden State. We might need to downgrade to silver or bronze to making sure that we do that.

So if we want to be the Golden State, that state that everyone in the nation should want to emulate, we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of changes to make, and everything is on the table at this point to make sure we get this right. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Let's begin with panel one regarding reimagining Cal Works to alleviate poverty for California families with children and to prevent child welfare involvement. For those panelists who are presenters, please present in the order that your name appears in the agenda. I'd like to remind all panelists to please limit your remarks to five minutes maximum.

Given the density of our agenda of speakers today and our desire to turn to public comment before too late this afternoon or early evening, we will have 10 presenters on this panel for issue one, including Kim Johnson, Director for the Department of Social Services. Linda Nguy, senior policy advocate for the Western center on Law and Poverty. Glenda Brownnell, current CalWORKS parent. Ted Lampard, President of Children Now, Sarah Kimberlyn, senior policy fellow for the California Budget and Policy Center. Devin Gray, President of end poverty in California Epic. Kathy Senderling Mcdonald, Executive Director for CWDA of California. Sanjay Bougay, Director for the Fresno County Department of Social Services. Janine Doctor with the Department of Finance. And Ryan Anderson with the LAO. Director Johnson, begin when you are ready.

Thank you so much, chair and Committee Members, good afternoon. Kim Johnson, Director of the California Department of Social Services and I want to first and foremost thank the robust and comprehensive agenda that has been developed here and look forward to engaging with you on this conversation as it relates to the questions that you've posed for this issue area. I will focus first on poverty, and as we know, deep child poverty can have serious and long lasting impacts on children's health, education, and future opportunities.

According to the Harvard University center on the Developing Child, learning how to cope with adversity is an important part of healthy development. While moderate, short lived stress responses in the body can promote growth, toxic stress is the strong, unreleased activation of the body's stress management system in the absence of protective adult support.

Without caring adults to buffer children, the unrelenting stress caused by extreme poverty, neglect, abuse, or severe maternal depression can weaken the architecture of the developing brain with long term consequences for learning behavior in both physical and mental health. So that toxic stress that's present in experience in our children in poverty is huge. The good news child poverty has been on a steady decline nationally since 2009.

In 2021, the California Public Policy Institute reports that child poverty plunged from 17.6% to 9% from the fall of 2019 to the fall of 2021. In California, 2021 marked the lowest ever child poverty rate, in large part due to the combined effect of existing safety net programs with pandemic related relief, especially the expanded child tax credit and Calfresh emergency allotments.

And again, just a tremendous investment that we made together with the Administration and the Legislature, but also at the federal level in terms of really supporting families in recovery. While we continue to see a decrease in poverty in 2022, when these supports are still available to families, it's likely that we will see changes in the coming year.

Another good news component, and a piece that we can all be very proud of, is that the share of California's children in poverty who receive TANF benefits historically has been much higher than the share in other states and in the nation in 2020, while the National Percent of Poor Children Receiving TANF was only 17.6%. California served 62.8% of children in poverty, more than three times the national share.

Cal Works policies that strengthen support for children, including providing aid to age 18 and continuing to provide aid when a parent's portion has ended. So when you pair our robust CalWORKS array with additional support services that we've built together, the impact of disrupting poverty is even greater. These include access to childcare subsidies, housing supports, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the child tax credit, calfresh and food supports, medical and health supports, universal school meals, and more.

In terms of the Calworks program specifically, and again, your agenda does a great job outlining the demographics and the profiles of our children and families. That is, who we serve. The average monthly CalWORKS caseload is estimated to be 347,900 families in fiscal year 22-23 and 360,330 families in 23-24. Though increasing the CalWORKS caseload is expected to be 6.1% lower than previously projected for 2223 and 2.7% lower for 2324 compared to the Budget Act of 2022.

As again, your agenda outlines, we are predominantly serving women. 90% of our CalWorks caseload are women 59.9 of cases identify as Hispanic or Latino, 15.2% of cases identified as Black, 69.4% speaking English as their primary language, 27.2 Spanish and again, many other demographic components are included in your agenda. We administer what's called the online CalWORKS appraisal tool for all of the families that participate in CalWORKS who are entering our welfare to work program.

And as we look at that appraisal and assessments, we also know that the top needs that come out of those appraisal appraisals are 76% are unemployed, 28% have additional mental health needs and supports, 18% are survivors of domestic violence and abuse, and 4% have a substance use issue that they've identified.

And so, again, while the OCAT only captures the welfare to work cases and the barriers experienced on the entry of that particular point in time, it provides some rich information and insight to the potential needs of our populations. Your agenda also asks for the historical underpinnings of the program.

The TANIF Cowworks program was created in 1996 as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation act, or PRWOP, designed to replace the previous welfare system, aid to families with dependent children, or AFDC, which was criticized at the time for creating a culture of dependency and encouraging single parenthood. The TANIF program in Cal Works was born of it was intended to promote work responsibility and self sufficiency among low income families with children.

It required recipients to engage in work or work related activities in exchange for financial assistance and impose time limits in terms of the receipt of benefits. As I go to answer then the question of how, from that time period we are here today, more than 20 years later, part of our activity and what we do as a Department is we publish the policy changes over time as a historical reference, and just that section alone is nearly 30 pages.

This body, this Legislature, and this Administration, as well as prior administrations have had significant policy changes, moving the culture change to a very much strength based support for our children and families experiencing poverty in this state. With that goal of the North Star that you identified, to really eliminate any families being in deep poverty, in particular in California. I will name a few of these changes to highlight them.

I imagine many of my fellow panelists might name more, but I want to highlight a few the establishment of family stabilization in 2013, which provided services in addition to those provided by the welfare to work program to families who are experiencing a crisis. Additional services included treatment for family Members, intensive day treatment, nonmedical outpatient drug treatment, residential treatment, emergency shelter, movement to transitional housing, rehabilitative services, and more. I also will point out in 2017 where we eliminated the maximum family grant and this again was cash.

Grants were increased to include children who were not receiving cash assistance because they were born to families who received aid for the 10 months prior to the child's birth. I also want to highlight the addition and really thank the chair for your leadership in the space of the CalWORKS Home visiting program. We've never forgotten that the K in CalWORKS stands for kids, a voluntary, strength based approach.

And I will tell you from personal experience as a WIC recipient over 20 years ago, the home visit made all the difference in the world to me as a first time mother. Really having that tool of coming with and alongside families and identifying the supports that help them along the way.

And so that was a huge addition that really looks again at not only the family's holistic needs, but the child's needs and how we can connect them to quality childcare and early learning opportunities and much, much more. I'll also point out that it was intentionally designed in recognition of who our families are in California. So we have immigrant integration opportunities embedded in the program.

So even where a family in the household may not be eligible for CalWORKS, we can connect them to the robust array of legal services supports and other supports that we have specifically designed to support immigrant integration opportunities in California. I'll also highlight the additions of both the county led CalWORKS 2.0 that's really about goal achievement of the family and really helping them achieve the goals that they've set out for themselves.

And it's really about listening and engaging directly with the families, which is a huge culture change and very much appreciate the partnership of the counties and the Association in that effort.

And also CalOR, our Cal Works outcomes and accountability review process, which has clearly identified that one singular metric of work participation rate, which is the only metric at the Federal Government that is used to demonstrate progress. Is not nearly enough to demonstrate the full array of success of our families participating in this program and of all of those county and stakeholder and community based organizations that support them.

So it really is identifying the full array of outcomes that we would expect to see for our families, and we are glad to have launched that. I'll note that again in our theory of change in that space.

And again, this was designed with current and former CalWORKS participants, that we're talking about those short term goals and outcomes of increased engagement and program satisfaction, that the basic needs of families are met, but also towards those long term outcomes of looking at persistent employment with increased wages, overcoming periods of adversity, and ultimately reducing intergenerational poverty, changes to the time limits which have recently come into effect to 60 months, really allowing for that time to gain stability, changes to our asset limits that the amount of resources that a family can earn prior to that impacting their ability to become stable.

But again, I also want to highlight, in the spirit of the work that we do in our child welfare space, the work that we're doing on family reunification to keep families together. So prior policy stripped families who are participating in Cal Works from the ability to continue receiving assistance and support while a family was removed. Now we have turned those and continue to keep those resources on, thereby increasing the likelihood of that family reunification to occur.

I also want to say it reflects all the way down to how we name to your point around language, even within the Department of Social Services, formerly the welfare to work division, has changed the family engagement and empowerment division. We have gone from a place where any job for families to career pathways and true opportunities for families. Again, just a tremendous amount of changes across the space in terms of accessing the supportive services in the program along the way.

As well, I want to name again that, as we often talk about in the Department. That we in government have incredible power. We are making the decisions every single day about who has access to critical safety needs and supports. Part of the first actions that I took in 2019 upon having the honor of being in this position was the establishment of an office of equity.

How we define equity in the Department is the belief that equity will be achieved when a person's race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability or disability, national origin, language, or any other aspect of their identity can no longer predict their life outcomes and outcomes for all groups are improved. And again, as you noted, chair, the pandemic certainly lifted up the inequities in our system and who was impacted more greatly than others.

So part of that is using that equity lens to all the work that we do in our policy changes, and we certainly have more work to do in this space. I want to lift up very briefly some of the improvements that we are working on together.

Everything from in the pandemic being quickly able to adapt and shift to offering cell ed, which was basically allowing families to engage in educational opportunities at whatever time was convenient to them on their cell phone, access to laptops in the remote environment. But we continue again, on many fronts, with education and training to improve access to those opportunities along the way. We are very much continuing to be engaged in how we are connecting families participating in CalWORKS with that array.

So, for example, in the tax year 2020, we're engaged in a tax outreach campaign, actually working directly with families, which yielded $13 million directly to participants in Cal Works. So again, making sure that all of these other supports around that we have built are being accessed and also, just a number of places that we are excited to launch in terms of our outreach to the program.

The first time ever this Legislature and Administration have committed to investing in outreach to ensure that all families who are eligible for the program get connected to them. So there's a number of areas that we look forward to do in that space. More work that we are doing on entering the program and staying on retaining access in terms of streamlining and simplifying the application.

Also ensuring pre populating redetermination notices so that that can be an easier process to facilitate continuing to implement our verification hub, which essentially means that families don't have to go to multiple eligibility workers to turn in information to keep them on the program as they're eligible. So I will stop there.

There's much more to continue to highlight, but I am just grateful for the opportunity and I think it really shows and demonstrates alignment with the Administration, stakeholders and the Legislature in terms of how much we've been able to do in such a short time period. Thank you.

Thank you Director Johnson. Linda Nguy, Western Center Law and Poverty thank you.

Good afternoon chair Members Linda Nguy with Western center on Law and Poverty and part of the Reimagining CalWORKS Coalition the CalWORKS program is a deeply flawed program, but can fulfill its potential if reoriented to center families and their needs. Premised on racist and sexist stereotypes of welfare recipients, CalWORKS reinforces the public perception that Low income people do not want dignified work, abuse the system, and are lazy, so must follow rigid rules that punish families for not meeting unrealistic expectations placed on them.

We appreciate the Administration and Legislature's recent investments, but the current punitive, compliance oriented system must be reimagined to a traumainformed program focused on family dignity, autonomy and well being. One way to do this is to eliminate all cowworks requirements that are not federally mandated and partner with families to develop a plan to meet their needs and goals. Other states, including Colorado, Illinois, and Vermont, have eliminated sanctions when parents fail to submit immunization records, report failing grades, or their kids are truant from school.

California should do the same and provide a broader set of participation requirements that support well being. Inflexible requirements with constant verification perpetuates narratives that people living in poverty are taking advantage of the system and fail to recognize the discrimination that Low income people, particularly women of color, face in the workforce.

Therefore, it is unsurprising that a quarter of CalWORKS participant in the welfare to work program are sanctioned at any one time due to failure to meet or verify meeting a rigid set of work activity requirements that range from 20 to 35 hours a week. Instead, the state can help families meet these requirements through supportive services like childcare and transportation. According to the department's own data, the majority of sanctioned families did not receive these supportive services that they are entitled to based on experience.

This is due to not knowing these services are available rather than not needing these services. The fear of cuts is destabilizing for families who rely on every penny to cover basic living needs like rent and food. For a single mother and her two kids, this means a grant cut of over $200 from 1130 a month to less than 900, pushing these families into deep poverty. Instead, we recommend the sanction be reduced to 1% and limit it to one month.

We also recommend participants be able to cure or resolve their sanction at any time. Research shows that sanctions have a proven Association with increasing child welfare injuries, while a more robust grant, even a 10% increase, reduces child welfare by 8%. We also recommend eliminating the county work penalty pass through, which requires counties to share in any future federal penalties associated with not meeting the 50% work participation rate.

California has a solid 59% work participation rate, which we expect will increase following our proposed reforms that center families having this penalty on the books means that the state is placing its minute financial exposure ahead of the needs of low income families. Finally, we appreciate that the Legislature has set a target to end deep poverty by increasing CalWORKS grants to 50% of the federal poverty level for a family that is one person larger than the assistance unit.

It is past time to realize this goal and grants should be increased so that even if a parent is ineligible, the grant would be above that 50%. Over 60% of CalWORKS family has an ineligible adult that is not counted in the assistance unit due to immigration status, time limits and sanctions for noncompliance. In addition to losing cash aid, these families are not eligible for many of the supportive services that are an entitlement while doing welfare to work.

The biggest victims of sanctions are the children who have to endure the long term effects of the toxic stress from experiencing deep poverty. Research shows that children in deep poverty are more than twice as likely to have Low incomes in the future compared to middle income children. Rather than being a social determinant, reimagining CalWORKS has the potential to transform families thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll hear from Glenda Brownell, current CalWORKS parent.

Dear Members of the Budget Committee, thank you for the opportunity to comment on ways to reimagine CalWORKS.

Including through AB 310. I am a current cowworks participant, a full time college student, a work study student, the mother of a 16 year old son who loves playing the piano, soccer, and baking, and I'm also a spark leader for the CalWORKS Association at American River College. Spark stands for student parents are reimagining CalWORKS. Spark is has been doing research on the barriers that exist for CalWORKS students, and we are doing our own research as CalWORKS parents.

I'm grateful for the CalWORKS program and the much needed support it has given not only my family, but other families that have been on assistance. However, this time has not come without a variety of difficult situations and circumstances. For quite a few of us, CalWORKS participants experience inconsistencies with the equitable implementation of rules, expectations are often not clear, and communication about resources and available benefits is lacking.

When I first applied for CalWORKS, I was never offered college or education as part of my required participation for receiving benefits. Instead, I was told I had to do job club. Almost all CalWORKS participants are only given the job search option. We often have to engage in burdensome self advocacy to ensure paperwork is submitted to maintain benefits, learn of existing resources, and navigate administrative processes. I first discovered that I could go to college from a community resource program Director of Urban League of Sacramento.

Participants often learn about county resources, not from the county itself, but from external community resource programs. Another issue is that annual renewal process, which is labor intensive and because of the punitive outlook, causes unnecessary mental stress about having benefits discontinued. The process often feels like more like an interrogation session instead of a professional routine process.

This causes a lot of mental stress and anxiety for many of us when our cases come up for renewal, we also experience delays and disruptions and benefits due to issues with paperwork, transfers to different case workers, and shifting eligibility status. Although we are given 10 days to submit the required paperwork, I was told two days later that my case would be discontinued, which felt very threatening and caused undue stress. This causes unnecessary mental stress and worry regarding maintaining eligibility.

We often experience disrespectful and microaggressive treatment that negatively impacts self esteem and sense of dignity. These required interactions to maintain eligibility often come at the expense of our dignity, the participant's dignity. For example, at my last renewal, I was my husband's translator because no interpreter was offered because the worker could not pronounce his name properly. In the middle of asking questions, she rudely and impatiently asked, do you understand what I'm saying?

Her tone caused him to shut down and he did not want to participate in the rest of the renewal process. I know of other participants who have been told that their cases fell through the cracks and that their case was erroneously discontinued. These are just a couple of the examples of the types of experiences that are preventable when dealing with a worker and often happen to way too many of us. The circumstances I've described are unacceptable.

Currently, the prevalent culture of the CalWORKS program has a condemning tone. The focus is on work participation rates and not the well being of families. In order to make the CalWORKS program family centered and to reduce barriers for parenting students, I recommend not only as a CalWORKS participant, but as a SPARK leader, the following changes in policy we support shifting the program focus from work participation rate to a family center approach.

We encourage the supportive services and ancillaries to include further support for participants regarding transportation and mental health, among others. In addition, we are advocating for ancillaries to be expanded to all transportation costs at the rate that aligns with the current federal standard mileage rate and enforcement of providing mileage requested for transportation to and from children's school and childcare as stated in the welfare to work plan.

And we also ask for partnerships with third party mental health referral agencies for CalWORKS participants, and no county referral needed or necessary to get CalWORKS funded mental health services. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and please support efforts to make CalWORKS a family centered program.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Ted Lempert, President of Children Now.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. Ted Lempert, Children Now, which is a whole child prenatal to age 26, antiracist connector organization and we've been sounding the alarm for a while now about needing to put kids at the top of the priority list. Why California is a national leader on so many areas, it's not when it comes to our kids. The Annie E. Casey foundation ranks us 33rd in child well being. Now we're making progress.

We were 43rd just eight years ago, but we have a long ways to go. I'm a lifelong, proud Californian and I want us to be number one for kids, not 33rd or truly get a gold mezz medal, something over Jackson. When we say whole child, this means not just connecting systems, but making sure we're investing and making improvements in each of the supports that kids need and making them more parent and family friendly. As Ms. Brownell eloquently discussed.

Today we're focusing on reimagining CalWORKS to alleviate poverty and prevent child welfare involvement. And I love this focus, Mr. Chair, and love the reframing CalWORKS. But as we dive into this, let's make sure we focus on all the supports, including health and education, that kids need at the national level. When it comes to seniors, we don't just say, let's focus on Social Security and forget Medicare. Kids rely most heavily on the state level for their basic living supports, housing, education, health care.

And we need to look to you as leaders to make sure all kids are getting the supports they need. But the focus of this hearing is spot on. If only we were 33rd in child poverty. Even with the improvements, we're still at the bottom of the country. The most recent data 2021 over 3 million California kids, over 35%, are living below 200% of the federal poverty line in families with young kids, where poverty is most concentrated in this state.

Among all groups, among zero to four year olds, over 63% are living in low income households. Although progress certainly has been made over the past few years and commend the Administration and the Legislature, it's likely that childhood poverty could increase due to stoppage of COVID era relief policies at the federal level.

And let's not forget that the pandemic exacerbated inequities, with as many as one in three families reporting difficulty in paying for basic needs like food, housing, utilities, and roughly half of Low income black and Latino parents reported these challenges. Families of color with children are more likely to report economic hardship.

Families of color have also been hardest hit economically during the pandemic due to historic and ongoing disparities in access to jobs that pay a living wage, inequitable opportunities for quality education, exclusionary immigration policies and others, and has been highlighted. Growing up in poverty can have a lifelong impact on children's health, learning and opportunities. But yet we know that these safety net programs work.

Cal Works EITC child tax credit it's a few years out of date, but a report in 2018 showed that the safety net lowered child poverty by 12.8%. Without safety net resources, California's economic divide would be 48% wider. Or, said another way, without California's safety net income assistance, over 1 million more kids would live in households with incomes below the federal poverty line. So now, just quickly, a few specific areas of focus.

We want to applaud how the Administration and Legislature, and thank you, Director Johnson, are working to make CalWORKS move in a direction of providing support for families and being viewed positively by communities and families. These efforts, including the state's historic investment in the creation of the CalWORKS home visiting program, are a demonstration of dual generational support for both the parent caregiver and the children. Core safety net programs should also work to prevent and mitigate adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress and promote resilience.

A 2020 evaluation by the California Surgeon General's office identified the health related cost of ACES and toxic stress to the state at $112,000,000,000 annually. We need to put a greater emphasis on trauma informed care and training for our service providers and practice models that are culturally attuned and effective in working with youth who are experiencing stigma and discrimination, especially LGBTQA and multiracial youth.

Next, we need to invest in and strengthen the supportive services and Cal Works to break the cycle, such as home visiting, childcare programs, CalFresh to expand their impact and reach in most of these categories, it is not that we're not doing good things. We are. We're simply not investing at a large enough scale to make a sufficient impact.

Now Children Now is an active Member of the End Child Poverty campaign, and I was honored to serve on the End Childhood Poverty Task Force a few years ago and wholeheartedly support all their comprehensive recommendations on reimagining CalWORKS, especially centering CalWORKS on the families the program serves and what they need to move forward.

Finally, as part of these efforts and to increase enrollment, we must ensure we are keenly aware of the barriers for the most marginalized families who need support, including improving outreach in multiple languages. The Migration Policy Institute notes that 44% of Californians speak a language other than English, and several communities need language assistance to ensure they can access programs. And we can't just rely on written materials for outreach.

In person outreach collaboration with trusted community partners are essential to making sure the most vulnerable among us are reached and supported. So I started with some rankings. I'll close with some grades. Children Now's most recent report card gave the state a D plus for childcare, a C minus in voluntary home visiting, a C in paid family leave, and C's and D's in most child welfare categories. We can and must do better. We can get all A's.

The report card gave an A to health insurance thanks to the sustained effort and even continued progress. Like last year to waive MediCal premiums, the report card gave an A for preschool and TK. Now we need to make similar large investments, larger investments in care. So let's truly prioritize our kids and be the national leader in what's most important for all of us. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Sarah Kimberlyn, senior policy fellow with the California Budget and Policy Center.

Thank you Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee, I'm glad to be here today. My name is Sara Kimberlin. I'm a senior policy fellow at the California Budget and Policy Center. Today I'm presenting information from our recent report on the CalWORKS work participation rate penalty, and I'll mention key figures that I will be mentioning are printed in the hearing agenda.

So I want to start by noting that CalWORKS is California's primary program to help families that are struggling to secure a basic income to meet their needs. That means it provides a unique opportunity to support many thousands of children and parents each year in addressing the challenges of poverty and the barriers put before them. The first key point I will highlight is that CalWORKS participants face multiple challenges to establishing economic security.

CalWORKS parents face a labor market in which gender and race based discrimination are ongoing, as well as workplaces that make it difficult for parents to balance work with caregiving. Cowworks parents are particularly exposed to these inequitable conditions because they are predominantly women, people of color, and parents of young children.

As shown in the first chart in the agenda on page 15, CalWORKS parents also face an economy where a college degree is increasingly required for even all but the lowest paying jobs, and yet nearly half of CalWORKS household heads do not have a high school degree or equivalent. As shown in the second chart in the agenda. This situation reflects structural barriers to education that many have encountered, again pointing to the effects of racism and sexism embodied by past and ongoing policies and practices.

A significant share of CalWORKS parents also experience health challenges, such as mental health and substance abuse challenges, and many are survivors of domestic abuse. And yet, despite these obstacles, each of these parents has demonstrated the determination and resilience to successfully navigate to and connect with the CalWORKS program in order to access support for their families. And that resilience points to how much California has to gain from taking seriously the opportunity to support and invest in these parents and their children and families.

The second point I will make is a positive one, that state policymakers have made changes to CalWORKS in recent years that recognize the challenges faced by CalWORKS families and the importance of respectfully addressing those challenges so that families can secure long term stability. These reforms include establishing state specific calwork participation standards, distinct from federal standards that include no rigid time limits on activities to address barriers or advance education.

Other recent reforms include CalWORKS 2.0 and the CalWORKS Outcome and Accountability Review, or CalOR as described by Director Johnson, as well as the home visiting program. However, these constructive reforms are hindered from full implementation because state policy continues to threaten counties with financial penalties linked to the work participation rate, or WPR, as defined by federal TANIF rules.

The Federal Government defines success for state programs only based on whether programs meet specific WPR targets, measured by the percentage of parents engaged in a very narrowly defined set of welfare to work activities. These federal activities focus on getting parents into paid employment as quickly as possible, despite the fact that such work requirements have racist and sexist roots, and research suggests they do not lead to long term improvements in employment, and they do lead to increases in deep poverty.

California has sometimes struggled to meet federal WPR targets like many states, but has never had to pay a WPR penalty. Current state policy would require counties that miss federal WPR targets to pay half of any financial penalty the state received for not meeting targets.

But this policy incentivizes counties and caseworkers to direct CalWORKS participants into activities that count towards meeting the federal WPR and away from state approved activities that don't fully count, like addressing barriers, even if removing barriers would be the best investments for participants long term stability and employment.

This is illustrated in the table shown in the agenda as well, page 19 so, for example, adult basic education or high school or GED preparation does not fully count for federal WPR, yet nearly one in two CalWORKS heads of household lack a high school degree. Mental health services do not fully count, yet. More than one in four CalWORKS participants were recommended for mental health services based on assessments at program entry to welfare to work.

Substance abuse services do not fully count, yet about one in 20 participants were recommended for these services, and domestic abuse services do not fully count, yet more than one in six participants were recommended for domestic abuse services. This financial penalty policy therefore works at cross purposes with extensive recent CalWORKS reform efforts, and repealing this policy could better align state policy with the CalWORKS program's current supportive focus.

I want to conclude by noting that policymakers have options to build on these recent reforms to further bolster supports for CalWORKS parents and families. Examples include continuing to increase the size of cash grants to help families meet basic needs expanding policies that help parents avoid and quickly resolve sanctions and reducing sanction penalties that reduce access to cash grants and recognizing county performance that demonstrates strong participant engagement and addresses participant barriers.

Continuing to align state policy and build on recent reforms can help CalWORKS reach its potential to help ensure every California child and family can thrive. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Devon Gray, President of End Poverty in California.

Thank you and good afternoon. Chairman Arambula and Members of this Subcommitee my name is Devon Gray. I'm the President of End Poverty in California, or Epic for short. We're an organization that was founded about a year ago by former Stockton mayor Michael Tubbs. And we're really excited to be joined by so many wonderful advocates and policymakers who I think all understand the urgency of this moment.

And as Assembly Member Jackson was sort of referring to this recognition that we are increasingly a State of contradictions and not one that has prioritized an ideal of shared prosperity. And we know some of the statistics. We know that California has the fourth largest economy in the world, and yet we have the highest poverty rate of any state when you take into account cost of living. We know that we have more billionaires than any country in the world, aside from the United States and China.

And yet four and a half million Californians live below the poverty line. And this is a consequence of policy choices that we've made in both our distant and recent past that have led to this concentration of wealth rather than again moving towards a state with shared prosperity. And these choices have certainly trickled down towards our safety net systems as well. We've created barriers to access for programs like CalWORKS, where we see an uptake rate that's around 60%.

And though it's sort of fluctuated over recent decades, we still know that regardless of that, what that means is that there are hundreds of thousands of families in the state that are not availing themselves of the resources that are vitally needed for them to get themselves out of poverty. So why is this? Why have we created so many barriers to access?

Well, EPIC's theory is that the reason behind this is that we have been internalizing as a society narratives and harmful stereotypes over the last decade, if not centuries, that further this notion that poverty is fundamentally an individual failing, that people live in poverty because they choose to be, because they're lazy, because they can't be trusted, or any number of other stereotypes that are very harmful and often quite racially coded. So what this leads to is benefits programs that internalize that belief and then structure themselves accordingly.

They operate from a presumption of fraud or unworthiness that applicants themselves are tasked with disproving. We see this through a number of examples. We see it through own risk or certification requirements. We see it through short durations of eligibility where applicants and beneficiaries constantly have to reprove their deservedness.

And we see it through rigid work requirements that prioritize notions that we think are a little bit outdated and exist more from the 90s era welfare reform era, instead of having one that's more flexible and actually prioritizes delivery of benefits. And the effect here is that it makes benefits harder to access, it ultimately discourages uptake, and fundamentally it breeds a distrust in government. So what types of reforms should we embrace?

Well, I think fundamentally we need to abandon again this presumption of fraud that shapes so many of our systems and instead prioritize the delivery of benefits over the gatekeeping of benefits. The status quo again places this burden on applicants to navigate an admittedly very complex system, and time and time again, prove their deservedness. We can also start by eliminating the onerous recertification and renewal rules and processes so that CalWORKS recipients don't have to meet these duplicative reporting requirements on varying timelines.

The current system certainly imposes what we call a time tax on applicants, where it takes hours, if not days, to retrieve all the necessary information just to prove again, that you are worthy of receiving help from the state. And that takes time away from your family, it takes time away from your job, it takes time away from advancing through higher education, and again ultimately discourages uptake and breeds that distrust with government that we don't want to see.

We can also lengthen the duration of eligibility for benefits and waive rules that enable what we call benefits cliffs. Now, under the current regime, sudden changes in income can abruptly kick someone off of their programs before they've had a chance to establish real financial security. So we want to make sure that we're providing a bit more flexibility there.

And we can also increase the amount of income support so that all recipients are actually able to receive enough cash assistance in the first place over time to meet again basic needs. And last, we can revise work requirements to allow for greater flexibility and access, as others have alluded to. I think we have to constantly remind ourselves that our goal for the safety net should be fundamentally ending poverty, and child poverty in particular.

And programs like CalWORKS, if done correctly, can't help provide a basic income floor for all Californians. I think as a state, we can't guarantee that everyone's going to be prosperous, but we can at least try to ensure that everyone has enough to meet basic needs to get by. I think ending poverty is possible, but I think we have to embrace a few ideals in order to get there.

I think first we have to abandon again these old narratives in favor of one that's more accurate and authentic, and understands that poverty is caused less by individual choices, but more by systemic and policy choices that set people up to fail. Second, we have to center lived experience and recognize those who have lived experience those living in poverty as subject matter experts on the policies that we're discussing today.

I think as advocates and legislators, we have no issue talking to farmers about agricultural policy or entrepreneurs about small business policy. But despite doing it today, and we deserve credit for that, we don't always consult people living in poverty on how benefits programs are going to affect their lives. So again, I'm glad we've done that today, but we need to continue doing so. And again, value lived experience as much of expertise as anyone from a think tank or academia.

And last, I think we need to fundamentally believe that ending poverty is possible. I think in California we have all the wealth, we have all the talent, we have the political capital, which again, is oftentimes the hardest thing to accrue. But we have to recognize that the choices that we make today have the impact to end poverty tomorrow, and that we can't be bound by the policy choices of yesterday that have led us into this predicament in the first place.

So with that, I want to appreciate you all for making this platform for all of us to share our priorities. So thank you all.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Kathy Senderling Mcdonald, Executive Director of the County Welfare Directors Association of California.

Thank you, Mr. Chair Members. Kathy Senderling CWDA. I was joking with Mr. Gray before we came up here that I was just going to say what he said, which I would like to say, but also just to thank the speakers ahead of us for the really excellent imperative that I think that they have shared an urgency around having this conversation.

And then thinking about what steps you can take as a legislative body, what we can do as advocates and practitioners on the ground, and how we can work with the Administration, both here in California and at the federal level to hopefully make these changes actually happen in California.

I think we have laid some really excellent groundwork for additional change to the program. Director Johnson and some of the other speakers have mentioned CalWORKS 2.0, and that was an effort that CWDA and the counties undertook in partnership with Mathematica several years ago because we realized that times had really moved on from that 1996 welfare reform law. The underpinnings that you're talking about, misogyny, classism, racism, that really were built on that original program, and that we wanted to move past that as well.

And so how could we do that and really think about different ways to engage the recipients of our program and help them both understand what was out there and what was available but also set goals that might not be go and work that required number of hours, but it might be help my child who's having some issues in school, bless you, get some additional services in order to address behavioral health issues and things like that, that it was okay to have somebody working towards that goal of work participation but not necessarily meeting that rate.

And from that, I think we got to a point where we realized that we had done about as much as we could within the existing construct of the program and we were able to partner with, again, legislative staff advocates, the prior Administration and now the current Administration to develop and now finally due the pandemic delay to implement the CalOR.

The measures are really critical to think about how do we measure these other opportunities that we have, how people experience the program, listen to people who actually are getting the services and supports and what do they want and how do we make changes to be able to work with them and help to change the situation that we see in California that we don't want to see. We want to see people in a better place. And so we are excited about getting going with those.

And yet, I'll say what you're hearing about the work participation rate still being the measure that carries a penalty, the one that we have to measure to in case we do fail to meet that federal rate and we do then end up getting that penalty, it does have this chilling effect and continues to do so, and we end up in a situation.

While most counties have embraced the 2.0 principles, it is difficult to put both feet across that line when you know that that penalty is out there. And so we appreciate the support from others, not just us saying it as the practitioners locally, that if we could really think about the structure of the program and really focus on the measures and the goals and the outcomes that we as a group want to see and move that forward, we think that will make the bigger change.

And so we certainly stand ready to support, if possible, eliminating that pass through and moving forward to really implement the CalOR structure, the 2.0 structure and other changes that others have put forward here. I think the Administration, Legislature and counties, we've made positive changes that align with the spirit of the program to uplift families, to move people out of poverty, to promote self sufficiency. But we do think that it's time to take that larger, holistic look at the program. 2.0 has been great.

You're going to hear from our Fresno County Director who's here with me today, who also was one of the early leaders and adopters of those strategies in Kings county or Prior county.

And I think it's really important to think about how we can make regulatory changes, how we can advocate at the federal level for this discussion to happen as well, because there are going to be factors that are just outside of the control of county human services agencies that affect families, that lead to greater wealth gaps than we want to see. And the state will need to really be innovative in thinking about how we provide for vulnerable families.

And again, harkening back to Director Johnson, the first speaker, not just CalWORKs families, but families who we're trying to help, who also may have involvement in the child welfare system, who may have housing needs and things like that. How do we really be as holistic as possible as we work with those families? And I think it's about coordination, collaboration, and really listening to our staff and listening to our families and recipients about what it is that they need and what will work.

So thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Sanjay Buguet, who is the Director for Fresno County's Department of Social Services.

Thank you, Chairman and Members. Sanja Bugay, Fresno County Department of Social Services and prior to my current role, I also have been in Kings County. So I want to share from a Central Valley perspective, kind of couple of points and really support everything that has been said so far.

So I want to give you a little bit about Fresno county, because while we're a part of California, there is poverty levels in Fresno county that are significantly different and in Central Valley that are significantly different than the rest of the state. So we're a county with just over a million residents and a county where 23% of our residents live at 100% poverty level or before or below. And our CalWORKS program has 17,500 families and nearly 50,000 individuals. 78% of those individuals are kids.

So really are serving kids. Majority of our families are kids. Our adults in our program, 77% are women. So when we're talking about people who are on this program, we're talking about women with kids. And poverty rate in our county is about 23%, but then 32% of our kids are actually living in poverty. And when you look at the kids that are five years and below, it's 36%. That's significantly higher than the rest of the state.

So from that vantage point, and when I look at how our CalWORKS program has developed, we have some significant successes. About 46% of our adults, including moms, are working, but their wage is at the level that they're still on CalWORKS program and really, when you look at how little it takes to actually be bumped off CalWORKS program, you're talking families who are working and still are earning little enough to actually be on this program.

So supports and how we approach this program, really, I really want to echo there's a lot of positive things have been done and yet there's still how we think of this program really could change. So I want to suggest few things and echo some of the things that have been already said. Both CalWORKS 2.0 and CalOR, really we need to give it some time to fulfill the promise of that. There's a lot of early efforts that have been done on both.

And then we took a pause. We really took a three year pause during the pandemic. And some of that wasn't really intentional. Right. There was just a lot of good reasons why things have been paused. And now what we're dealing within our counties is a vacancy rate and a turnover. That staff that we have hired over the past few years have never really heard of that. Some of the training, some of the early investments that have done, we really are starting over.

We're one of the early counties on CalOR and we've just in January submitted our county self assessment and working on our self improvement plan. And when I look at it, kind of. So this is an opportunity to step back and really assess our program and where we're at. And when I really look at the next steps, we need to do a lot of really what we need to do is align some of our Cal Works 2.0 philosophies and embed them in our program rules and regulations.

One of them kept being mentioned is work participation rate penalties. So as a county Director, I can say I really don't care about that, except our rules and regulations and program rules are still in there. So really aligning some of those operational level rules that eliminate, that pass through to the counties would be important. We need to invest in some of these programs that are already there, but really expand the investment. So family stabilization is a program that was mentioned. It's great.

In Fresno county, we really focus on families family stabilization. We focus on families that have domestic violence and really invest in services for both kids and adults that have been touched by domestic violence. But a lot more families actually need family stabilization services. And when I really look at about 40% of our caseload does not have an aided adult and are really kind of automatically excluded from supports that our welfare to work program and employment services program provides, including family stabilization.

So some of that changes in distinction that CalWORKS families, regardless whether the adult is aided or not, that some of these additional supports are available to them is, I think, one of the important policy considerations. A few other things that can really look at our front door engagement with families can really change. In Kings county, prior to the pandemic, we spent some effort that both our employment services workers and eligibility workers were meeting with CalWORKS applicants.

We did not know if that applicant is actually going to be approved for CalWORKS or not, but that investment of time to really explain the benefits of employment services programs and how families, some early indicators of how families can be helped. So some of them didn't end up using it because they didn't end up coming on the program. But that staff time spending with the applicant, not going through rules and regulations and the whole bunch of paperwork that you get on roles and responsibilities.

But real engagement takes actual time from a county perspective. So investing in that and not separating our Cal Works eligibility and employment services just how we do in the county level. But that really is a staff time that I think that initial investment pays dividends from both a program outcome perspective, but also success rate and families understanding of what they can access. A few other I think key things are that a lot of our programs and supports are really about surviving poverty, and that's important.

I don't want to minimize that, but when you think about yourself and what your family really needs in order to be successful, we're talking about you need to have a vehicle, you need to have a stable housing, you need to have a job. But you also really need a job where you have some wage progression. We don't have in our programs sufficient supports that are adequately funded to talk about credit and financial counseling and some of these legal supports.

When we look at even wage progression and how we talk to families about education and where the wages are, when I look at 40 some percent of our families are employed. When they exit programs based on their income, the employment rates continue. Wage progression is significantly different between men and women. In Fresno county, our exit rates are about the same. Maintaining of employment is about the same, but women wage progression is 27% below those of men.

And when you look at what are the sectors that are growing in the jobs, so families are getting off Cal Works, they're just above those poverty lines, but they are not successful enough to really beat poverty. So some of those investments really would be key in making this program grow. There's a lot of good that's happening and I think we need some room to actually have it evolve and happen, given that we are just exiting the pandemic.

But we do need some continuing investment in these programs to be successful. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Janine Doctor with the Department of Finance.

Hi, Janeane Doctor, Department of Finance. Nothing further to add.

Next we will hear from Ryan Anderson with the LAO.

Good afternoon. Ryan Anderson, Legislative Analyst Office. This was a long panel, and listening to the previous comments, I know a lot of ideas have been thrown at you all. I think there's one perspective that our office can add. The last few years we've been engaged in an ongoing research project looking at the CalWORKS takeup rate. The methods are basically we've been using survey data from the US Census Bureau to estimate the eligible population.

That allows us to get at this crucial question, which otherwise has been very difficult to access, which is, what does the population that is eligible for CalWORKS but not enrolled look like? And to a large extent, it's a population that hasn't been talked about a lot here which are not necessarily the neediest families. There are a lot of families that have a connection to the labor market right now who are employed currently, who are regularly employed, or who have, by historic standards, relatively strong employment prospects.

Perhaps they have some college education. Those are the families that have the lowest takeup rates. And why does this matter? There are two reasons that occur. One is that these families, despite not being the neediest, not having zero outside income, as many CalWORKS enrolled families do, are still very needy. The income eligibility standards for CalWORKS are quite low. Federal poverty, to start out with, is very low. The CalWORKS eligibility standards are beneath federal poverty, somewhere around 80% of that level.

So just because you're working and eligible for CalWORKS doesn't mean you're well off. Second is there's been a lot of discussion about the work participation rate, and regardless of the state's decision about whether to share a potential penalty with counties, the state will have to pay attention to the WPR because the state will always be liable for potential federal penalties.

Meeting the WPR, well, it invites two obvious potential solutions for the state, is one, we can take current CalWORKS recipients and help get them into the labor market. But two, we could take these CalWORKS eligible families who are already in the labor market and find out what are the barriers to getting them enrolled in the program and get them the help that is offered by that program. That would also help us meet our WPR and relieve some of that pressure that is being felt for that. So that's just one perspective that I thought we could add. But that's all for now. Thank you.

Thank you. I will bring it up to the dais for members questions, if there are any. We'll begin with chair Ting and then Dr. Jackson.

I guess this is a question for, I guess, any of the panelists who wanted to talk about, I think one of the things that really appreciate Dr. Aambula's work and all our staff's work is we've seen how we make inroads in poverty. I mean, we saw it in the last couple of years in the Federal Government, as families got resources, they got access to money, whether it's a childcare tax credit, whether it's EITC, any number of programs, we saw poverty go down.

So it actually was a very simple formula. Right? You gave people money. They were able to afford food, afford housing, afford childcare. It wasn't, wasn't really complicated. Right. So in looking, and I know a lot of folks talked about this, and I apologize for coming in a little bit late, but what are some of the specific things, either legislatively or through our budget that we could do to really reduce these barriers?

It's a little bit frustrating to look at the chart that when we passed that budget in 2021 I think we anticipated more caseload, which we saw as a positive thing. More people getting on, more people getting access to resources. Even in the last budget year, you could see, we had hoped that we would see more. And obviously, not only has it not gone up, it's gone down.

So what do we need to do to really reduce these barriers, which are, I know some folks addressed some of the specifics around that, but I don't know if any of the panelists, many experts want to just give us advice on specifically what are some of the things we should be really focused on tackling this year.

I'll invite others to come up. We just stayed put because we weren't sure what to do. But. Cathy Senderling CWDA. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that's an excellent question. And one of the things, of course, that a Legislative Analyst Office has been looking at, one of the things that we've thought a lot about is exactly what you said. When you get more resources to someone, they're less poor. I mean, it is such a basic thing. We had a poverty summit about 10 years ago, and I remember the first speaker saying that, and we all went, hey, that's pretty amazing.

And so one of the things that has been done, and I think it was mentioned by another speaker, is setting a floor for CalWORKS grants to make sure that there's no children in the program who are living in deep poverty, which poverty in general is terrible for everyone and certainly for kids and as you know, there are these long term impacts of that, but deep poverty in particular is even more terrible.

So we, I think, were able to several years ago work together with Chair Mitchell at the time to put that minimum in place through some efforts that she did, and both houses got very involved. So that was amazing. And it does seem like now at a moment where we are seeing things being pulled away, such as I think the Director mentioned the CalFresh emergency allotments, which we'll talk about on the next panel, being discontinued at the federal level.

I mean, that's half $1.0 billion in California a month across all 58 counties, obviously would be very difficult for us as a state, given current economics to replace. But that is a huge hit for families bottom lines. And so thinking about where are we with that floor and how does that look now would be certainly one way to think about how do we help to address the effects of this, even if we can't know, replace it.

And then I think talking more about the project that you've been doing, Ryan, from the LAO, regarding this question of why do people choose to apply or not apply or know about or not know about the program, and how could we address some of those concerns? And I think the chair ultimately may have some thoughts about that as well. So I'll certainly step back and let others give.

I'm sorry, if I can jump in here, Ryan Anderson with LAO, follow up Senderling's remarks. Fundamentally, some of the questions that you asked, Chairman, we can't get at them directly with the data that we have, but we have some observations that I think are relevant. One is that the data indicate that the people who enroll in CalWORKS have limited to no alternatives to CalWORKS.

And we think part of what happened with caseload's surprising decline during the pandemic, whereas normally we would have expected it to increase alongside unemployment, was that there was a wider array of alternatives that were available to folks. In particular, we think that the bonus to Federal Unemployment Insurance had a big effect. In fact, we saw case load start to increase the same month that that bonus was rescinded. The second observation is that most folks who leave CalWORKS do so when their recertification paperwork is due.

Now, putting those two observations together suggests a possible framework, and we can't say definitively that this is the right way to approach it. But one possible framework is a simple cost benefit analysis. Right. From a CalWORKS recipient's viewpoint, there's a benefit to being on, which is largely the cash assistance and other services that are provided there's a cost to being on that cost can be more difficult to quantify.

Previous panelists have discussed the time tax, simply the cost of doing the paperwork, showing up for all the required meetings. There's also social taxes. Right. The stigma associated with being in the program. This is to say, if that cost benefit analysis is an appropriate way of looking at this, then that suggests two possible options. You could increase the benefits of the program, and that would attract more folks.

That'd be either increasing the cash assistance or the services offered, or the quality of the services offered, or allowing folks to continue receiving greater benefits even as they earn more money from outside sources. Or you could alleviate the costs of being on the program for recipients, either by alleviating that time tax, the paperwork burden, the various requirements that are placed upon them, or find ways to address that social stigma, which are more difficult, but might speak to some of the ideas, like the rebranding effort that have been referenced before.

Sorry, just a quick follow up to Mr. Johnson's point, but sort of what I'm hearing you take away is Dr. Johnson was just saying the same thing, where during the pandemic, we threw so much money statewide and federally at folks, and what you're stating is in some ways it was working.

So then instead of people who only had one tiny little doorway to go to, there were other doors that they could walk through and get the help that they needed, which in essence, is sort of what would be probably a better model versus having people fight into a program that's so hard to get into.

Yes, I think that's a fair characterization. I think the flip side of that is that that doesn't necessarily mean that everything was fine during the pandemic. Of course, a lot of these folks who have alternatives are still struggling, would still benefit from being enrolled in CalWORKS, but perhaps because they do not view the benefits that they would receive as worth the cost that it would take to be enrolled. They're not walking through that door.

But I think it's our job to figure out how do we make it easier for them to enroll?

Yes.

I may ask Linda, Director Johnson and Ted Lempert to weigh into your question, if I may.

Thank you, Linda Nguy with Western center on law and Poverty. Appreciate the question. And from a cowworks participant perspective, I think it's already been touched upon eliminating those barriers to actually being able to access the program. The state already right now goes well beyond what is federally mandated in terms of the requirements, having to report regularly, report cards, pregnant teens being sanctioned for failing classes, and actually having their CalWORKS cut.

And we know these sanctions actually don't help with compliance, but actually make it harder to comply. And as Ms. Brown now mentioned in her testimony, some of the rude treatment. And so, as noted, there are other options that resulted in, during the pandemic, an actual decline when we would have expected an increase, not because these individuals had much better options or even long term that would improve their future outlook, but because it was better than the alternative of having to go through all these hoops and hurdles.

Yes, sure. I'll just add a few things. And just building on a few of the remarks prior, just to give a sense on the CalWORKS grant levels, because cash does make a difference in disrupting poverty. Five years ago, an assistance unit of three in a high cost county in 2018 was receiving $714 a month in CalWORKS. As proposed in the Governor's Budget for January 10 and October. That would be one $163. That's a significant change over time.

And not to say that that's not more to come, more needed, but certainly it's a significant change from where we are. I'll also just say that I think that to the point around cash benefits and other child tax credit was what I mentioned in the opening remarks, of having a significant difference in disrupting poverty during the pandemic, is that we are right looking at the piloting of guaranteed income, and what does that mean to have an unconditional cash assistance?

And how does that, even in the long term, disrupt poverty? I think the thing that we would say again about Cal Works, and the beauty of that is that there is this menu, if you will, an array of services, depending on what you need as a family. Again, based on appraisals, based on the conversation and engagement with family, are there other connections we can give to those career pathways? Are there ways in which we can support barrier removal to employment?

How are we connecting again to the quality, early learning and childcare opportunities, those components of CalWORKS and that kind of embedded and integrated array to connection to housing, for example, are key to, we also believe will have longer lasting impacts. Also, to your question, we are, and that's part of the outcomes and accountability review system that we are now implementing, going to have a greater ability to answer these questions going forward.

How are people accessing different components of the program and then therefore, how are they doing six months later, a year later and so on? And I think we're very excited to have that kind of data, both at a local level but also at a statewide level to go forward.

And the other piece around culture that we've talked about is we also now have a training component that we're working on with counties around racial and implicit bias to the point of how are we kind of taking all of our tools and looking at the equity lens and engaging families in their ultimate goals of what they're meeting? How are we also looking at how we can be a better and stronger system throughout the experience to the points made going forward? So I think these are all part of how we want to move forward together.

I would wholeheartedly agree with the other panelists'comments about direct cash assistance. We've seen that works over the last few years. And this gets to my comment earlier about seniors. We wouldn't just do Social Security, we do MediCare. So let's talk about kids, because when we talk about poverty, I get it's all age groups, but the highest poverty is families with young kids. So in addition to cash assistance, childcare, three reasons. One, it allows too often mom to work, right. And so you need that childcare.

Second, we don't want to be here in 20 years. Right. And we shouldn't be either or really, the whole Legislature should be meeting, right. It's cash assistance and paid family leave, childcare, education. You can't just do one thing. You've got to do it all in childcare. And the third part, and this is really the worst, unfortunately, the other reason to invest in childcare, because the childcare workforce, primarily women, primarily women of color, average income under 25,000.

By investing in childcare, we prevent more people from going to poverty. So I would just totally agree with the cash assistance, but this great State of California can do that and be a leader in childcare.

Can I just also add that there are some differences in our rules for our program when it comes to applicants versus people who are already on aid. So there are some outdated rules that really, or there should be outdated rules when it comes to number of hours that you're working. So if you're working over 100 hours and there's no deprivation, you're not eligible for Cal Works.

So really looking at some of the differences between rules for applicants and recipients, there are some significant benefits, and I don't want to lose that for clients, for our families not to be discontinued from CalWORKS because they've now reached a certain level of income. And part of it is really looking at it at some of these post aid services. So childcare, like stage three childcare, is available for families who are off CalWORKS, but some of these other supports should be as well.

So really looking at eligibility rules for applicants that some of these rules that have existed for a long, long time that prevent families who are working poor from accessing the programs, that investment is necessary. So are the supports that once families are working, if we're truly going to talk about eliminating poverty, wage progression should be a goal, but that wage progression also gets you off program, and then all of these other supports are eliminated. So looking at both of those things would be part of the answer.

Well, I think as much as you can give us, that specificity would be extraordinarily helpful because you're the ones every day on the ground in the counties. Really seeing that, and going back to Director Johnson's point about UBI, I think part of the challenge, not the challenge with the UBI, but the reason we're looking at Ubi is in some ways, Cal Works, probably should be more like UBI, where we are not making it so difficult for everybody to enroll. And I think that's the challenge.

And it's nothing to do with the culture of your organization, but really, all the rules that have been put in place, it's sort of only really in this country, in this state, is somebody in poverty, guilty until proven innocent. They have to prove that they're not going to be fraudulent, which is you don't get that treatment anywhere else in any other, really, if you think about if you got treated that way, going into a restaurant or going to buy something, or if you went to some retail south, they treated you that way, you would never go again. Right.

And I know that the office really reflects a lot of the rules that got put in place in the culture that got put in place 30, 40, 50 years ago. And I think that's something that we have to take a really hard look at, at trying to reverse. So I think the frustrating part about the chart is that the money was budgeted, right. When we see the caseload, we actually budgeted that money. So that was money that didn't go to families who really needed it.

And so I think that's something that I feel very frustrated about and feel like, hey, what do we need to do? Because the money is not supposed to sit in the, it's supposed to be in somebody's pocket right now, so they can go buy food or pay for housing, then go in to Mr. Lempert. Or I'd like to think of Assembly Member Lampard's points.

We're absolutely focused on childcare I mean, we're trying to figure out with all the vouchers that didn't get used, what do we need to do to really get those in the right hands? Or is it the challenges of service provision? So we hear you loud and clear. We're going to keep fighting on childcare. And clearly what we're doing isn't quite working as well as we'd like. So I think we have to figure out where, and again, we've deployed resources and the resources aren't being used. So I think we have to figure out, okay, something's disconnected. And I think there's no question that those two things go hand in hand. So thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I think just a couple of questions here. And obviously, many of us came here to Sacramento with the goal to achieve universal childcare during our time here. And as chair of human services, the first thing I asked was, how do we expand eligibility in CalWORKS for childcare? And just like anything you have someone deliver you some bad news. And the bad news was, well, we're not even utilizing the ones that we currently have. So I had to take a step back and say, how in the world is that possible?

And everyone keeps bringing up this doggone penalty stuff from counties and the way that our system is incentivizing, basically making sure that people are working more than receiving these other programs, what do we need to do to finally fix this problem so that childcare is being utilized to its full extent, that all the other programs are being utilized so that we can make sure that we actually move the needle here? Any questions first, Ms. Johnson?

Sure. Thank you, Assembly Member, for that question. As it relates to families in CalWORKS, and I want to fully acknowledge Ms. Brownell's comments in terms of accessing services. I think having sat through, I think I got through more than half the State of the orientations in CalWORKS as one of my first experiences in joining the state eight years ago. The array is offered, but when you need it varies. Right?

So in other words, there is just a phenomenal array that's being offered and is included in the overall orientation. But I might not on that first day need a support that I might need on the 60th day. Right. And so making sure we're kind of continuing to provide an outreach related to what is available in the array and how that's known, not a best kept secret in any way. For care specifically and for the building of embedding into CalWORKS, childcare is essentially an entitlement.

So that anyone needing a childcare subsidy that is currently participating in CalWORKS should be receiving it. The funding and support is there. We're going forward. Families also have array larger than that subsidy to choose from. They might choose Head Start. They might choose a state preschool program in their community. They have a lot of options in terms of what that looks like.

And of course, the governor and the legislature have invested a lot in preschool and transitional kindergarten, for example, as another option for them as it relates to the alternative payment program, which is the program that families who might qualify for a subsidy but may not be receiving Cal Works.

We've had the greatest expansion of that program in its history in the last couple of years, and what we have done is we've also committed to and provided additional dollars to the Alternative Payment Programs to help them staff up and ramp up the ability to connect with those families and get them enrolled. We do have a proposal in the Governor's Budget here to delay. We have a goal to have 200,000 new childcare subsidies in that particular funding stream within five years.

The governor's gen 10 budget does propose to delay that by one year to allow for both that staffing to continue to ramp up and then get that outreach connected to families. But again, I will say, I know we'll have a whole nother conversation with you all around access to childcare and early learning, because certainly we did see a change in the overall supply of programs through the pandemic.

There's a lot of things that we've done together in partnership with childcare providers united to incentivize and encourage retention of the workforce. But there's more for us to continue to do in that space as well. But both just ensuring that such a large increase can be taken up, that staffing component is key to that, and that's resources we provided. So we'll continue to work to make sure that every subsidy space is utilized.

What is our options, though, to fixing this federal penalty? Meaning we bought to do a bill right now. What are my options?

Appreciate the question, Assembly Member. We have as a requirement to you, the Department will be issuing you a report of recommendations next month, as a matter of fact, and we've had the great privilege of working with stakeholders, many of whom are here today to consult with, to give us recommendations on what we should be doing universally.

I will tell you as not stealing the thunder of that report universally, as you've heard today, there is a recommendation to eliminate the penalty to counties, and so there was some conversation about what to do instead. How does our outcomes and accountability system feed into our new way of looking forward. But you will receive that recommendation from us in one month.

Thank you. So we can end this hearing right now? We'll pause for a month. Okay. Obviously, I've always made it clear to folks that just to survive is not okay. Right. Being in crisis is not okay. Every human being deserves to thrive. How do we continue to make sure, and this is a question for all of you, how do we make sure that we no longer call these survival programs, but we're calling these empowerment programs? Thoughts?

I do. So, like I said in the beginning, I'm part of a student parenting.

Led program, and we are a group of cowworks parents. We are called Spark, and we've been doing a lot of research regarding childcare, regarding the barriers where we are major stakeholders and our children are, too. And we are trying to change our children's future that they don't have to live in poverty. For many of us, it's been multigenerational. Right?

Like parents were on CalWORKS, and now I'm on CalWORKS, and I don't want my son to be on CalWORKS you know, because of the stigma know and because not only that, we want to change our generation. So there's, we've been doing our own research, and we would love to have a seat at the table. We are major stakeholders, and we want to give our research to you to help, maybe even so that this Bill can really be family focused. Right.

But I also just wanted to add, too, that my own experience, my lived experience with accessing childcare, it was very hard. I just decided to go elsewhere instead of accessing the services at the county. I went to first five. I had my son in early Head Start, and I had him in Head Start, and while I was driving him to Head Start, going to class, picking him up, and going home, and I had to only take a couple of units.

So it's taken me longer to get my degree because he was only allowed 3 hours at Head Start. I could only do 3 hours at college. So that's one of the things. Just accessing the programs and just eliminating those barriers, making it a more streamlined process not so difficult. And also another experience of mine is the transportation. When I asked to have the ancillary payment, right, to have my mileage covered, I was denied. I was denied. Why?

Because my house or where I live in my child's school, to the American river college where I attend was not in, there's like a limit. So having that barrier also removed, that doesn't mean I still don't have to pay for gas. I still have to pay for gas. And so how is it fair that I have to use what limited income I get from my CalWORKS grant on gas? Because I want to improve my life.

So, yeah, if we could have a seat at the table and as major stakeholders and really give our research what we found, we would love that.

Well, let me just say this, how thankful I am for you being here and how much your voice means to me and the majority of my childhood, my mom was receiving food stamps. That was before them, EBT cards, the big old things. And I used to hate standing in the grocery line and my mom peeling out them food stamps. And I'm like, mom, why couldn't you get this organized before?

But she had to stop working for three years in order to go back to school to finish her nursing program. And after that we got out of poverty.

And you're here today.

Right. She couldn't work for three years, but she was still working to get us out of poverty. So how do we make sure that we allow for those stories to continue to happen here in California, right. So that we can make sure that we can move everyone forward. Right. Your thoughts?

I grabbed the mic as you saw, Kathy Senderling CWDA, regarding the transportation, for example, and not the work group that Director Johnson referred to that just concluded, but the work group that was just before that one that we were in. I don't mean that to sound like it does, but I knew how it would sound.

There was a discussion and I think a recommendation from the group that we supported and had talked with our counties about regarding transportation and making it more of an automatic provision of a transportation amount similar to how we changed and how childcare should work more now. And so I think there are similar to, like I will tell you, there was this table for care, right?

And it's, is it a one parent or two parent and how many kids and how many hours and how many can the one person be there when the other person isn't? I mean, it's a hassle. And it's the hassle factor like Ryan was talking about. And I think with transportation, well, how far away are you from this and that and the other, and how many kids do you have to drive? Is there a way that we could just say, here is your transportation?

So many of these things are in regs or statute and looking at those things to just make that a lot easier as we're talking about the renewals, the reporting, those are things we've improved over time. When I started 20 plus years ago, it was a monthly report that people had to give.

You may remember these things and others here will, but now we're at a semiannual report, but you still got to do it and you got to report if your income goes over a certain amount, how can we make changes to streamline those things or eliminate them altogether? Most of those things are not required at the federal level.

They are things that California has made choices back dating to 1997-98 when the program was originally created, and that have gotten mostly better over time, but they're still there. So that's a conversation that I know.

We'd love to have anyone else before.

I'll just add that, and I have shared this in my earlier comments in the testimony about some of the changes that we have made together over time. And I say this often in our work in addressing inequities. It's not just about creating new. It is about changing what already is. There are many, many policies and some of which I lifted up that shouldn't exist.

And so I absolutely commit to you that we have some additional policies to talk to you about today, but we will be back in the future really lifting up those policy changes that you're hearing about to make going forward. There are many, many policy, and it's very prescriptive. In many cases, it's statutorily prescribed.

So we will be back to request as we continue to work through these issues going forward, getting the priorities from those who are experiencing the program on what we must eliminate in terms of the policies and rules in the program to make it more accessible.

Certainly appreciate that. Obviously, I guess you can tell that there's many people eager, ready and able to making sure that we fix this and we reform our programs that meets the 21st century way we are doing and the realities. And so looking forward to some of those prescriptions. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to invite Ms. Brownell back up to the mic if I can. I believe it's important for our Committee to center ourselves on the lived experience of those who are going through the programs. Earlier, I thought you spoke well to the need for us to eliminate barriers and to streamline, but would like you, if you can, help us to summarize how we make CalWORKS more parent centered and focused on child well being.

Well, I think eliminating some of the burdensome paperwork would be one of those. Right, because like was mentioned earlier, some people would just decide not to recertify it just because of all the paperwork. Or if they just miss one paper, then their case is discontinued. And then because they have to start the whole process over again. It's not that they don't need the assistance. It's just burdensome sometimes.

And for people that are working and that are just under that federal poverty line, they still don't have time to take to go and do these paperworks and these recertification processes and stuff like that, if they're just making whatever it is they're making, they'll just live off of that. And that's what CalWorks. Families look like they're very creative in making sure that they can meet their family's needs, but it's not an easy road.

And for me personally, I would always go to the community and different resources in the community to make sure that my family's needs were met. But it's just the tone, too. It's just like a penalty. There's like that condemning undertone, that tone of making you feel, like, undignified, making you feel like you're less than. And it's discouraging sometimes for us to put ourselves in those situations where you feel powerless, because that's what it feels like.

There's this power struggle and you know that you're asking for help and you think you can easily be turned down and you just feel like you're less than because you need the help, but yet you don't want to be treated differently, right? Yeah, basically, just maybe we think making the program a little more family friendly and just really not punitive, not the microaggressiveness that we experience a lot of times, too.

I was never offered an interpreter when we did our telephone renewal back in December, and I had to be my husband's interpreter. So because we're a multiracional family, I'm his interpreter most of the time. Immigration status and a lot of that stuff. We are a three parent family with a two parent income. So there's a lot of things that isn't at the forefront, right. That a lot of those in charge don't see. So that's why, as a SPARK leader, we want a seat at the table.

We are major stakeholders, and there are 116 community colleges in California right now. We have 51 SPARK leaders, one representative from each community college. And we would love to have a seat at the table to share our research and the barriers that we've encountered and how we can reimagine CalWORKS. And this will be for families, right. For California families.

I think that's beautiful and perfect and a great way for us to ask the next question for Mr. Lambert. Earlier, we heard how sanctions can cause toxic stress and you mentioned that there are currently 3 million children who are living in poverty. And yet, if it weren't for some of the investments we made, we would have 1 million more children who would be living in poverty now.

So can you tell us what's at stake if we are not advancing the priorities that we're speaking about today beyond just the simple number of children? What's going to be at stake for us as a state?

Yeah. Well, you could probably answer that question more eloquently than I, Mr. Chair. And you teed it up. I would just say that what we're talking about here is our collective future. I know you're bombarded with a lot of issues, but this is the society that we want to live in, and this is all connected.

That kid today, that poverty and the stigma we've talked about, and not providing them with that support and the income for their family that has health impacts and then that's going to impact their education. And so that's the society 25-35 years from now when that all impacts. And we did so many bad things in our history, but we did make some really great investments, including way back in the stuff, our state benefited from that.

And we really could say we were number one, even though obviously there was a lot of stuff we did wrong back then that we're starting to fix. The point being, though, was what's our stake is literally our collective future. And this panel, we're getting into the weeds of which we need to, of fixing these penalties and fixing this stigma and very specific things. But we also need to step back and say, if we don't do this, what's our state going to look like in 20-30 years?

My next question is for Ms. Bugay, if I can. You spoke well about the specifics for Fresno County, about our poverty rates. And I'm hoping you can share a vision of what you would like CalWORKS to look like in the future and what would we need to do to take us there?

In so many ways, some of these things are, there's some specific fixes or adding a specific array of our services. So, for example. Well, let me back up, being poor is expensive. There is a person in poverty to buy a car. It is more expensive for them to buy a car than it would be for me or for you. And part of that is the cost of credit. They're either priced out of being able to get credit and therefore we're relying on transportation and public transportation.

So specifically in Fresno county, if you live in the City of Fresno, you may be okay with public transportation. But if you live in Coalinga, if you live in Huron, if you live in some of these communities in between, you're stuck. You really are stuck and you're relying on a bus service that's once a month. So then our reimbursement of that transportation, it's reimbursement of rides. But really what you need is a vehicle. You really just need a car.

In most places in the state, you need a car, certainly if you live in Fresno county. So from that end, if you want to buy a car, your credit is expensive. So in Kings county, we started a debt counseling and debt repair program, and it was really incredibly expensive. And some of it, when you start observing it, you realize how little we understand about families in poverty. What the credit agency wanted to do is to ask families not to use credit cards.

Well, if you're living paycheck, that's how you're surviving. But some of these investments were really, we were able to say 30,40,50% point increase in your credit score that that allowed you to actually have a loan for a card. That's better. Some of these programs, if really we're not about surviving poverty, if we're saying these supports that employment services programs offer, we can say 40% of our caseload, 40% of our families are excluded because they're zero parent families or they're no longer aided.

If their kids are still on CalWORKS, they still need supports. So why are we doing that? Why are we saying that for some of these supports, even if I add that program in my employment services right now, I'd have 40% of our families be completely excluded from it.

My family stabilization program, we have families who are in domestic violence situations, they're going to have, for parents that are on CalWORKS right now, but then they have families who are absolutely excluded from even the referral to that. So some of these rules that these supports that exist that are available to some of our families, but then others are excluded simply based on the rules of eligibility.

Can you be more specific? Is that 40% you're speaking about? How much of that is being excluded due to immigration status or what are the other factors that are.

So these are adults who have exceeded their five years aid. So these are some of our families that children are aided, but for one reason or another, the adult is no longer on the case. So our employment services programs and supports are designed for family, for adults. And we're doing more to say children on some of these programs are adding, but if you step back of how CalWORKS and welfare to work started, it really was about what does that adult need to be self sufficient?

And we saw self sufficiency about employment. So most of our supports are really about employment. Over time, they have expanded, so home visiting, family stabilization, even expansion now to say employment service is no longer for 24 months and is for 60 months. That started just last year in June. Right?

So it's going to take some time to do that, but it is really about, as adults are exiting the program, the kids are remaining on, but that tells you they're still in poverty, but then they no longer have access to some of this. So part of it is, I get it, there's only so many resources in a program that we can access, but we are excluding significant portion of our, and they're still mom and dad or mom and dad family.

They're just no longer considered aided adult CalWORKS and therefore excluded from some of these supports.

I will elevate the exclusion based on immigration status as well. Not agendized for today, but important for us to address as we're making this a California for all. Dr. Jackson.

Obviously, it's interesting how we separate the parent from the child.

Yeah.

Right. So obviously, if the child is still in need, the parent is in need. And so I think as we begin to transform and start thinking about Cal families, that we understand that as long as the child is in the program, the parent still needs support. Right. Because as a unit. Right. And we're talking from an ecological perspective here, they're all connected. And if one is weak, that means everybody's weak and everyone needs support.

So I know we all understand that, but we need to continue to say this publicly so the public understands, right, that at the end of the day, these are some major changes we need to do. And the worst thing I hate to hear is, well, we've never done it that way before or things like that. Right. I start getting seizures when I hear something like that.

And so I think at the end of the day, we just need to be ready to say we got to radically transform some of these things to get this right.

Director Johnson, earlier you mentioned the connection between CalWORKS and the child welfare system, and I'm hoping you can comment on how we can improve the collaboration between those two systems.

Sure. Thank you, chair, for that question. I'll say a little bit about a few ways we are doing that now. One, as I referenced some of the policy changes that we've made in the program that are focused on keeping families together and reunifying families. We also, many years ago, created an initiative called linkages. This was in recognition that there were families involved in the child welfare system that were also participating in cowworks.

And potentially over here we were asking the family to engage in certain activities, and over here we were doing the same, and these things weren't aligned. So you could see plans of hours and hours of requirements that were very, very challenging to meet.

And so the idea was to bring the systems together again from a perspective of bringing these programs together, that we are serving whole families and to identify how these things can essentially count, if you will, or meet the requirements of specific, maybe court ordered requirements, even in some cases. So we have refreshed and reinvigorated that linkages group that's now back active again to identify what else we can be doing on the policy fronts in this space.

Also on the child welfare side, of course, with the Family First Prevention Services act at the federal level, it is another lever, another tool in our toolbox, if you will, related to how we are investing in prevention into families. And so that's inclusive of the Block grant of state General Fund that we have contributed to counties to create prevention plans holistically on how they are creating community pathways, engaging with the full array of supports and services, including community based organizations and other partners in their communities.

So that's a big piece of work that's actively happening right now. We at the state level have also been negotiating approval of our own statewide prevention plan and are very close to receiving approval from the Federal Government on that piece as well. But I think as it relates specifically to concrete supports, ultimately we are working to ensure that absence of resource does not equate to child maltreatment. That by, by getting a home visitor in to connect to say, why is there no food in the house?

Because I don't have access to it. Maybe my refrigerator is broken. And we put in incentive dollars that the home visitor can use to create and immediately address needs in the home. These are the ways in which we're coming with a strength based approach to really prevent absence of resource as a pathway to the child welfare system. So a lot happening in that space at a high level. Those are some of the things that.

We're working on seeing. No further questions. I'm going to thank very much this panel. I will make a request from the chair. While the CalWORKS budget issues will remain open until the May revision, there are a few follow up requests I'd like to ask to further our progress in reimagining and improving Cal Works for family stabilization, parental support and child well being. First, I'd like to request that the estimate regarding the name change to Cal families be shared.

Please work with my staff to specify by what date the Subcommitee can expect to receive this information. Second, I look forward to welcoming the Department of Social Services and the CalWORKS team back on the March 22 hearing to discuss the role of CalWORKS and the community prevention pathway, as well as at our April 26 hearing to discuss the recommendations of the CalOR WPR report.

Third, I'd like to ask staff to share draft amendments to the guaranteed income pilot project statute on a direct connection between lessons learned from that pilot and ways to improve the CalWORKS program. We will hold these issues open for now and again, we'll thank very much this panel. We will move on to issue two. Issue two is regarding Calfresh, the emergency food provided through food banks and pantries, and the California Food Assistance program against the realities of hunger and food needs in our community today.

We will have seven presenters on this panel for issue two, beginning with Director Kim Johnson with CDSS, followed by Becky Silva, government relations Director for the California Association of Food Banks Keva Dean, community advocate with the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano counties. Jared Call, senior advocate with nourish California, followed by Kathy Senderling Mcdonald, Executive Director, CWDA. Janine Doctor, Department of Finance and Ryan Anderson with Lao. Let's begin with Director Johnson when you're ready.

Thank you, chair and Committee Members Kim Johnson, Department of Social Services I'll start with just indicating kind of the reach of our CalFresh program. As you've already heard, a huge component of our safety net at disrupting poverty. Over 4.8 million people in California, or 2.8 million households, are currently receiving Calfresh and food supports. We are projecting in the governor's January budget that this will increase in caseload, and of course, those updated caseload estimates will be provided in the May revision.

We can continue to improve on our outreach efforts, increasing language access, and the capacity of our various outreach partners to connect those most in need with these critical food supports. As you've also already heard, the federal investment in the pandemic was significant. And so you've heard a little bit more about Calfresh emergency allotments. But I want to really state this in specificity here.

So, in total, and based on the rules of the Calfresh emergency allotments, Calfresh households with the ending of this particular relief will see a minimum of a $95 per month reduction in their monthly benefits. Based on our latest complete issuance data from the statewide automated welfare system, in the month of November of 2022, the monthly emergency allotment average was $262 per household. As you've heard Director Senderling also mention, on average, in a month, it is $524,000,000 per month in California.

In total, a total of $11.4 billion in emergency allotments has been issued between 2020 and 2022 supporting all of those Calfresh recipients that I referenced earlier. So this has been a very significant component of our relief and a huge investment that we are very grateful for with the Federal Government. But of course then this particular support is expiring has expired in February. The last issuance of that February payment is this month in March.

We have, in consultation with counties and stakeholders, developed a number of tools to make sure we are clearly communicating about this change to those currently participating on the CalFresh program. We've also wanting to make sure that they also update any case information that could yield a difference in the maximum amount of income based on income and household size that they're receiving. And so I will just say that part of yes, we knew the public health emergency would come to end.

Yes, we knew these were temporary benefits, but the impact is significant as we go forward. In addition, we have a program referenced as pandemic electronic benefits transfer or pandemic EBT. That program will end with the 22-23 school year and removes summer eligibility for young children ages zero to six who are also able to get served and supported through this resource. And all of the PEBT benefits must be issued by September of this year.

Part of the change at the federal level and through the consolidated appropriations action that took place at the end of last year was that there will be a permanent summer EBT program. So we are grateful that we'll have the opportunity, as guidance is released, to implement and launch that program. Also want to I can't understate and underscore enough the tremendous response of our food bank and network during the last few years prior, but certainly through this experience in the pandemic has been tremendous.

The investments that the Administration and Legislature have made together included a historic increase to the existing Cal food program, bumping the amount available to food banks to purchase locally sourced foods from 8 million per year previously to $120,000,000 in the fiscal year and 60 million going forward. Additionally, nine food banks were awarded more than $30 million to enhance their facilities, improving their ability to serve communities, and having infrastructure that will long last that time period.

As it relates to emergency food boxes, the Department ensured that additional food resources were available to California communities impacted by drought, as we are grateful for the rain that's falling upon us. Currently, the Department is using 23 million to build drought specific emergency food boxes that we've been distributing to food banks in 17 counties, as identified as the most impacted, and so on.

So for the 23-24 the Governor's Budget proposal, we are including $86.7 million in current year and 34.7 million in budget year for Federal Food Bank programs, 148.9 million in current year and 65.8 million in budget year for state food bank programs. This is a decrease reflecting the changes to the federal changes in relief and support, including the emergency Food assistance program and a number of other federal programs, as well as the change in our own state funded drought food assistance program.

We are of course thrilled that we were able to invest together in having free and reduced meals in schools. So that's a huge change and a tremendous support to families that does provide some mitigation and relief in terms of supports moving forward, we also will be grateful for the opportunity to consult with tribes in a government to government relationship on the nutrition assistance $5 million that was appropriated in the last budget. Those funds will be scheduled for the summer of this year.

We are also glad, just last year, last week, excuse me, to have launched the California Fruit and Vegetable EBT pilot, which will be available in several communities across the state, allowing for the Calfresh food assistance to be matched and therefore leveraged with additional dollars that will be loaded onto the EBT card for expenditure and also supporting California grown fruits and vegetables, as well as our market match program which is with farmers markets, and allowing the benefits to further as well, we have continued outreach efforts to do in Calfresh to ensure we're reaching additional eligible populations.

And of course, we are also very glad and continue to be committed to implementing the California Food Assistance program, known as CFAP. The Governor's Budget does reflect an updated timeline for expansion to all non citizens 55 years of age or older. Automation is estimated to begin in July of 2024 instead of late 2022-23 and benefits are proposed to start in January 1 of 2027 as opposed to January 1 of 2025.

The automation components, the guidance, all of those documents have additional complexities, which is the cause of having to adjust some of those timelines. But I will tell you that we are committed to work with stakeholders and partners, including our partners with the statewide and California statewide automated welfare system. I'm trying on the acronyms this afternoon to spell those out to really ensure that we have everything in place to launch.

And again, I want to say that this was a proposal, not a delay of that system, but a proposal based on all complexities that we saw as the Administration going forward is the reason for those changes. But should there be a sooner implementation timeline, we would like to share that information as soon as we have it and we'll report back to the Committee on that Front. Thank you.

Next we will hear from Becky Silva, government.

Relations Director for the California Association of Food Banks.

Thank you again. My name is Becky Silva. I'm the Director of Government Relations at the California Association of Food Banks. Our organization represents 41 member food banks with a shared mission to end hunger in California. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members, for the opportunity to speak with you today about the state of hunger in California, the challenges that we face this year, and opportunities for mitigating harm through critically needed budget investments. Simply put, California is facing a catastrophic hunger crisis this year.

With the signing of the Consolidated Appropriations act of 2023 and ending of the federal public health emergency status on May 11, 2 critical programs that have helped to mitigate hunger over the last three years come to an end CalFresh emergency allotments and pandemic EBT we are very grateful that the Administration has fully maximized CalFresh emergency allotments and pandemic EBT as long as they were federally available.

And we're also equally grateful for the robust Farm Bill recommendations published just last week, including improving SNAP benefit adequacy and permanently ending harmful and racist rules like the ABOD time limit rule and College Student Rules. And while we will continue to advocate for these federal policy fixes, California must continue to lead with budget investments and policy solutions to address record levels of hunger here in California.

CalFresh emergency allotments, which have been boosting CalFresh benefits up to the maximum level for each household size since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic end after the last benefit goes out on March 26. Come April, just next month, 5 million CalFresh recipients who currently rely on CalFresh will see a dramatic drop in benefits of an average of $82 per person per month. That represents a loss of about $500 million per month.

Statewide, many households will see their benefits drop down to just $23, barely enough to cover a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and a gallon of milk. And pandemic EBT, which is a hugely successful program supporting low income children with food benefits on an EBT card, ends after the summer of the current school year. At its height, it provided $6 billion in benefits in 2021 to over 4 million children.

So to put these programs into perspective, in 2021, CalFresh emergency allotments and pandemic EBT accounted for one third of the food safety net in California, or about 3 billion meals. That is the scale of the gap we're facing this year. We know that SNAP recipients in states that have already ended emergency allotments have reported visiting food banks more, eating less food at meals and even skipping more meals.

We also know that California can't fill the entirety of this gap that the end of emergency allotments and P-EBT will create. But there are several concrete solutions that can help to mitigate harm and that should be part of the long term solution to end hunger in California. First and foremost, we have to increase the CalFresh minimum benefit from the current federally set $23 per month to a minimum of $50 per month.

California's cost of living is one of the highest in the country, yet benefit levels are woefully inadequate. We have to achieve better benefit adequacy, ensure that it is worthwhile for people to apply for the program and continue to leverage federal funding for our most effective anti-hunger program. In addition, we ask you to protect and bolster funding for food banks as they will not be able to mitigate the hunger crisis alone.

CalFood is a highly effective program that provides state funding to food banks to purchase California grown and produced foods to distribute in their communities. We are extremely grateful for the $112,000,000.01 time provided in the 22-23 budget and we must ensure that 60 million is allocated in the 23-24 budget as planned and is set as the new annual baseline. Moving forward, we estimate that $1 towards this program enables food banks to provide five meals. CalFood is efficient.

It supports food banks in distributing culturally appropriate foods depending on the communities that they serve and supports California's food economy as well. In addition, we ask you to invest $180,000,000, 1 time in food bank's climate and capacity resiliency, enabling them to undertake well overdue and necessary food bank infrastructure and capacity improvements such as expanded warehouse space, bigger refrigeration units, vehicles and trucks, backup generators, solar power and other equipment that will enable them to keep sustaining their current operations.

Lastly, in partnership with the California Association of Diaper Banks, we ask for an investment of $60,000,000. 1 time towards diapers, wipes and menstrual products to sustain and expand the current state diaper bank program and period products pilot to reach more communities throughout California. Again, thank you for the opportunity to share these priorities to address hunger and we're looking forward to working with stakeholders in this room.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Kiva Dean, community advocate with the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano counties.

Hello Committee Members and fellow advocates. My name is Kiva Dean. I am a hunger fighter. I'm here today as the community advocacy partner with the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano. You might ask why I've chosen to use my voice to fight hunger well. When I was growing up in Washington, D. C. As one of nine siblings, in order to feed my family, my mother received food stamps.

I remember the books right, because she had so many mouths to feed, we often ate shelf stable foods like rice, flour, sugar, corn, beans, potatoes, and cooking oil. She was a prolific baker. I remember when we had something called pulley taffy for dinner. Us kids thought it was great to have candy for dinner, not knowing that all my mom had in the house was sugar, butter, and syrup. Food is a human right, and healthy food is a human right as well.

As you already know, studies show that some chronic diseases are more prevalent in poorer communities and communities of color, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity. And these conditions can be directly linked to hunger and poverty. And further, we know that nutrition can be directly linked to a student's ability to learn. When I and my children were victims of domestic violence, I had no choice but to apply for public assistance myself.

Between receiving food stamps and using the food bank, I was able to feed my own children in a healthier way than when I grew up. In other words, no pulley taffy for dinner. If it weren't for the food bank, I couldn't have fed my children fresh fruits and veggies because they were more expensive than unhealthy options. In the past year, I've had to utilize a food bank again myself.

I've not worked for more than a year now due to injuries and with the rising cost of food recently, especially eggs, I found myself not able to afford healthier grocery options as much. Again, the food bank has been an amazing resource as I've been able to get those fruits and vegetables and even dairy products from the distribution sites. In 2021, I participated in the food banks in the Contra Costa Solano food Banks speaker series.

Since then, I've had many opportunities to fight hunger, including being asked to serve on the food bank's board of directors. In the past year of me serving on the board, I've seen the numbers of people we serve in our community grow exponentially. Since the pandemic and the effects that it's had on the economy. We have seen elevated levels of hunger and need in our communities, and that has had a direct impact on the communities we serve and the levels to which we can serve them.

I understand that food banks across the nation are feeling the effects of lower levels of individual donations and rising costs of produce and needed food.

I'm here today to ask you to consider two things one, as a person sitting on both, having sat on both sides of the table, having received benefits and have given them out, I need you to consider the importance of investing in our children and families and communities by raising the minimum CalFresh benefit amount as the additional CalFresh benefits due to COVID end this funding can continue to address the rising food costs our families are subject to so that they don't have to choose between paying a bill and feeding their family or even themselves.

And two, the critical need for funding for CalFood ood that helps food banks like ours keep nourishing communities. So I respectfully ask that you consider additional funding in both of these areas. And thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ms. Kiva Dean.

You're welcome.

Next, we will hear from Jared call.

Thank you, chair and Members. Excuse me. Jared Call with Nourished California. I want to thank Becky and especially Kiva for really describing not just the scope but the face of the hunger crisis that's looming. We need to explore every option. So I'm going to highlight two additional options in addition to the proposal to raise the minimum benefit, which we strongly support, as well as well as the food bank asks.

So these are two proposals that build on existing pilot programs, one of which we already heard about from Director Johnson. So I do also want to thank you, Chair Arambula and the Subcommitee, for having the foresight years ago to fund these pilots. So we're in a position now to leverage existing programs and scale them up when the need is so great. So I'm going to start by highlighting the CalFresh safe drinking water pilot, which launched in March 2022.

That pilot is providing an additional $50 in CalFresh benefits per month to households that don't have access to safe drinking water. They're having to pay out of pocket, using usually their CalFresh benefits to buy bottled water, to drink, to cook, to mix with infant formula. And so that's obviously an additional burden and a very stark inequity that they're facing. It's operating right now in Kern, county, serving about 4,000 households.

Without further action, it will sunset in October of this year, and those households will face a double cut. Right. They're going to see this devastating cut right now, and then further down the road, they're going to get a surprise cut in their benefits again. So we are requesting a one time investment to extend and ideally expand that pilot. It is ready to go. There are very low administrative costs. The money goes straight to people. They don't have to sign up for anything.

They get a very clear notice from the county that they're authorized to participate, and then they start receiving the benefits. We really hope we can find the resources to extend and expand that pilot. So the second I want to highlight is again what Director Johnson highlighted, and that's the California fruit and vegetable EBT pilot, which was a long time coming. But we're very excited that it launched today. Not today, but actually very recently. It's in a number of farmers markets now.

It just started in one of the first brick and mortar stores in Northern California. It will expand to seven or eight Bay Area retail locations within a month and then 70 or 80 additional mother's nutrition centers in Southern California. And so we're very excited to see that we'll get another $60 per month, up to $60 per month in supplemental benefits into people's pockets when they purchase, again, fresh fruits and vegetables. So these are, again, pilots that are ready to go.

They are delivering benefits now with little to no administrative costs. There's no need for county workers to get involved. There's no forms to fill out. There's no applications. It's just getting money to people and meeting CalFresh customers and shoppers where they are at, at the stores that they already shop at. So we really hope again we can find the resources to expand those successful pilots.

So now I'll turn to the food for all proposal and the CFAP expansion we've been spending today talking about the benefits cliff and those coppers, 5 million people are going to see a major cut. There's a group of 700 to 800,000 low income Californians who are not going to see a cut because they get nothing. And they've always gotten nothing. And those are our friends and neighbors who are denied CalFresh solely due to their immigration status. So we were extremely pleased.

The Food For All Coalition, Nourished California, our co-sponsors of the California Immigrant Policy Center, to see the action over the past two years, but particularly last year, to expand CFAP to ages to those aged 55 and over. It's a tremendous first in the nation action and hopefully a model for other states. Other states are following suit already.

So we were deeply disappointed and frankly surprised when we saw the governor's proposal to delay that another two years and ask undocumented immigrants who've been waiting literally forever, and particularly older adults to wait an additional two to three years to receive vital food assistance and make our safety net, our nutrition safety net, truly equitable. So we hope we can work with the Legislature, with the Department. The Department has shared the concerns. We're aware of them.

But we really hope we can get together and shorten that timeline as much as possible to get those benefits out the door. So hope we can do. Also, you know, Dr. Jackson spoke earlier, families and households work as a unit, right? Everybody eats at a household. So recent research has shown that not just older adults, but all undocumented immigrants are facing food insecurity at a rate of 45%.

So nearly half of our undocumented population is food insecure, and that goes up to about two thirds for children. So we need food for all. We're very, again, grateful for the expansion to older adults, but we need a permanent and equitable solution like food for all. So that's what we're asking for as well, is to continue to invest in equity and continue to invest in food for all and fund CFAP expansion for all immigrants, with no exceptions, no exclusions, and no delays. So thanks again.

Look forward to working with the Legislature and happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Cathy Senderling-Mcdonald, Executive Director of CWDA.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Jackson, pleased to be here on the panel as well, and want to talk a little bit more about that CalFresh demand and some of the challenges that counties are facing and helping to meet that demand. As you've heard, the loss of the emergency allotments is enormous. It's going to really put a lot of our clients in a very dire situation. We're continuing throughout the pandemic to see extremely high takeup rates, application rates for CalFresh.

Of all of our programs, it is the one that we continue to receive the highest number of applications each week, around 60,000. This past week, it was 57,000 new applications for the CalFresh program. So it's continued at about that range for just months and months and months. What we're seeing, unfortunately, is that the impacts of ending the emergency allotments and of the inflationary adjustments that we're seeing that's making the eggs be, I mean, how much, right. Amazing.

We are going to continue, I think, to see that demand and what we're experiencing in the counties is a significant lack of staff to be able to actually process the applications to manage our existing clients'cases, help process the reports that are, in this case, federally required, not something that California has chosen and all of the other requirements that go along with the program.

The CalFresh budget methodology for county Human Services agencies hasn't been updated since the year 2021, and so we are finally in the process of doing that. It had taken a few years we understood the delay due to the pandemic and appreciate the support of the Administration to get it underway. And we do want to report that it's going on. It's on track. And our understanding and hope is that we will, in the may revision, see a proposal to begin to really right size the formula.

We are being funded as if our workers still cost the same salary wise benefits wise desks, computers as 20 years ago. And so it is beyond time to be able to update that.

Our concern if we don't see a change, and of course, we'll be back in May to let you know what we think about what's in the mayor vision, which is about two months away, is that we're going to see increased error rates, concern about people not being able to get someone on the phone, not be able to see somebody in the office when they come in, delays in processing, and especially delays in processing what are called immediate need benefits applications where someone has very little to no money in the bank and an urgent need for food.

We do not want to see that get worse than it already is. And so it's really dire that we get some relief, I think, from this. And we'll keep you posted. So this is sort of a marker to say we're hopeful that the work is being done and will be done well. Sorry, I have a little tickle. I do just want to also comment, if I may, on the CFAP expansion that the other speakers noted.

We supported that expansion and also were surprised and when we saw it was no longer sort of that 2025 timeline and proposed for 2027. I do just want to clarify that our information technology system, CALSAs, stands ready to make the needed changes when we receive the required instructions. So basically, in order for CALSAs to be able to program, they need the guidance from the state so they know what they're programming.

In this case, we are going to be changing to a person based process because we have to be able to track the eligibility. So Director Johnson's correct that it is a bit more complex than some of the other changes that we might put into play. But if we were able to receive the directions from the state by July of this year, we can make the January 12, 25 deadline.

And so I just wanted to sort of give you a sense of the timeline that we're operating on. And so as that were to push back, so then would be the IT system's ability to get that done. But as of right now, sitting here today, the January 12, 25 timeline is something that our CALSA system reports that it is able to accomplish. So we're not the delay.

So let's hope, we're very hopeful that we can work with the Administration as well as the Legislature to keep moving forward with this and hopefully continue to expand, as Mr. Call noted. So thank you and happy to answer any questions.

Next we will hear from Ms. Docter with Department of Finance.

Nothing more to add.

Next, we will hear from Ryan Anderson with the Legislative Analyst Office.

Good afternoon. Bryan Anderson with the Legislative Analyst Office one piece to connect this conversation with the one we had on the last panel. There was discussion on the last panel about the surprising caseload dynamics in CalWORKS after the pandemic. Our historic experience. Also the econometric modeling that our office uses to project caseload. Both said that caseload should be increasing along with the increase in unemployment we saw at the time. Instead, we saw a decrease.

And as we said in the last panel, some speculation was that was related to the availability of other supports outside of the program. Curiously, we've seen the opposite dynamic in Calfresh. Calfresh entered the pandemic at an all time high, largely due to the, at that time, relatively recent end of the SSI cash out option, and has increased consistently since then. Now for quite some time, actually, our econometric modeling of Calfresh caseload has suggested that caseload should actually be declining.

But month over month we continue to see it increase. In searching about for an explanation as to why, one possibility is that there is additional support being offered within the program, specifically the emergency allotments that we've heard about, which increase the benefit to those who might be on a marginal case when deciding whether or not to fill in the recertification paperwork. If that's the case, then we might anticipate with the expiration of those benefits next month that we'd actually see Calfresh caseload begin to decline.

That's just possibility to put on your table right now.

Bring it up to the dais for any questions, beginning with Dr. Jackson.

Obviously, there's enormous current and future red flags when it comes to Calfresh in various capacities, many of it not being because of federal assistance ending and things like that. Just a general statement, and no one needs to respond to this. But obviously, when we talk about the enormous needs we have to be able to provide for all the people in California who are facing food scarcity. We have got to be honest. We know that may revise is not going to look better than what we're currently seeing already. Obviously, it's time for us to start getting into priority mode when we start looking at our state budget and as we enter into may revise and after. And so we need to start preparing the public to start understanding what are our priorities as a state.

We know through research that the best investments any government can make when you have to decide or make tough decisions is investing in children, families with children. Best return on investment over time. Right. And so obviously we're going to need to start looking at there's a lot of good things in the budget, but I'm not sure if it would be a priority over food scarcity, making sure people get out of survival mode and those things.

So we just need to be prepared for those discussions in the future. Now for something that is safe for you all to respond to. I was very concerned when I read about the number of seniors who are eligible for Calfresh but are not receiving Calfresh. What can we do? My first thought is, is there a way to just automatically enroll them? Right? I mean, we have a number of ways to see people.

I think sometimes we even have contracts with companies through the various credit bureaus and things like that that we can actually get real good, timely information of who qualifies. We already have all their information. Why can't we automatically enroll them or do something as close to it to making sure that our seniors are taken care of. Any thoughts on how can we make this happen? Because obviously the percentage of seniors who are eligible are not getting it. It's not much to be proud about.

Thank you, Dr. Jackson, for the question. I want to go back to the examples that you've heard from this panel related to the extraordinary successful outreach that was done as it relates to what's referenced as the SSI cash out, basically getting people who were otherwise ineligible connected to the Calfresh benefits.

And that again with our partners, many of whom again, are here really doing different modalities of outreach in many different channels, having ensuring again, language access was a key component to make sure we're reaching all eligible populations. The benefit amount to. I think even the LAO's comment is smaller, but also would note that we are and have implemented things like simplified application processes. We were able to submit a waiver to the Federal Government that essentially allows us to simplify the application process for older adults.

And we'll continue to look at those kinds of modifications we can make, including, again, as I mentioned, increasing the capacity of our outreach partners to make sure we're reaching all those eligible families to the data matching point. We appreciate that point and have been continuing to explore those options as well. Where can we look at even MediCal and who's not receiving Calfresh? Where are the opportunities where we do, to your point, have the information?

The California Health and Human Services Agency has developed a global data sharing agreement amongst the departments within the agency that allows us essentially to just create a business use case to allow these data sharing mechanisms to happen in a more streamlined process and way. So those are exactly the kinds of solutions that we are looking to increase the outreach for this population. It's part of the master plan on aging. It's certainly a priority of ours.

So I appreciate you lifting it up and will be something that we look forward to continuing to update you on our progress going forward.

Will we get that in a month, too?

We do have a dashboard, have a dashboard for calfresh. That way you can actually look at some of this information in real time.

But obviously, there's a sense of urgency here. Absolutely right, and the more that we can help with that, the more we understand the gravity of what it takes to invest in the necessary things to be able to make that happen more frequently. Right. I think. Please, please, please utilize us as much as necessary.

If I could, something to reject two additional opportunities related to older adults. If I could just share quickly. If you look at the statistics of which states do better and worse at reaching older adults, we're dead last. California, 32% was the most recent data is our participation rate among those aged 60 and over. And if you look at the states that are doing the best, they took advantage of an opportunity.

It's a federal demonstration project called a combined application project, which, if we'd had that back when we did the SSI expansion, that's exactly what it is. It's a combined application between SSI and Snap or calfresh. So someone goes in to apply for SSI, they get both. So New York, for instance, has been doing this, and I think their participation rate among older adults, I'll follow up to make sure I have this right, is like 70%. So what? Our overall participation rate is among the General population.

So there was a moratorium put on those projects in 2016, but it's our understanding that USDA is potentially open to requests to renew those types of projects. So we'd encourage the Department to look into that. The second one, that's very timely, that I know the Department is working on, and we hope they can expedite, which could also help with the benefits cliff.

Is there is an allowable deduction for households that have an elderly or disabled Member for out of pocket medical expenses, and that can boost benefits by $20 to $30 per month for those households. But it's a very low takeup rate because the verification is very difficult. You have to provide physical receipts to show that you've got these out of pocket expenses.

But Massachusetts recently amended their waiver for their medical deduction waiver to allow people to self attest to say, hey, no, I've got $35 or over $35 in medical expenses. I have to drive, there's mileage, there's this and that. I have whatever expenses there are, and that is dramatically increasing their uptake rate. And so that would be really impactful right now if we could get that finalized.

And I know the Calfresh branch is working on that, but anything that can be done to expedite that would be really crucial.

If I might. One gradation on the SSI combined application is I think one of the things that held us back in that was that there was a requirement to customize in some way the benefit amount. If we were able to complicate more of a flat benefit that was just more kind of across the board, it might be something that we could more quickly get into place to be able to do it. Yes. Automatically, not quite as customized, but getting something to people.

So that might be, that's the trade. Off to explore there.

Right, right.

But at the end of the day, I think that as we continue to discuss this and find ways and look at best practices throughout the nation. Right. We need to be able to move on this no later than next year. Right. We need legislation, we need budget proposals. We need the whole deal, meaning this has to be a priority to making that happen. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My next question is going to be for Ms. Silva, followed by Director Johnson. I'm hoping you can comment on how quickly we will learn about food banks being oversubscribed after the emergency allotments end, as well as how we, as the Legislature will be notified about that.

Yeah. Thank you so much for the question. I really appreciate it. So, like I said earlier, and as Director Johnson mentioned as well, the last emergency allotment that people will receive is this month on the 26th. So that means that April will be the first month that people are not receiving an extra benefit on top of their sort of regular calfresh benefit amount.

So we would expect to start seeing an uptick in people visiting food banks in April at around the same time that they would have received the emergency allotment in the prior month. And we will be tracking that really closely. We've already been in really robust communication with all of our food banks to try to assess what are food banks doing to prepare, how are they going to be tracking the increase in need. And so it's definitely something that we're paying really close attention to.

And I'd be happy to provide an update in whatever format is most useful once we start to get a sense of what that looks like.

Director Johnson, same question. I'm just trying to make sure we're kept up to speed on what the current climate is at the local levels and hoping we can share information, hoping we can comment on that.

Absolutely.

Glad to work with the Association and the food banks to get that information. I think one of the beauties of accessing food bank services is we don't have a lot of paperwork. And again, I think that's, again, why even in the pandemic, we were also trying to assess need month over month, again seeing the significant increases. We saw lines in many places, those kinds of things. So we will absolutely continue to work in partnership with the Association to get information back.

Next question is for Ms. Senderling Mcdonald, if I can. We heard about some of the inappropriate discontinuances or churn that occurs, and I'm hoping you can talk about additional ways that the state can promote retention so we don't have those discontinuances or churn.

Sure. Absolutely. That's a great question. First, if I might take a privilege to clarify, the January date was being thrown around so much, October 2025 is what CalSA's could do, not January 2027. So I just want to clarify, October so there's not an expectation or confusion on that point. So thank you for letting me clarify that.

So you may recall that a couple of years ago, as part of the budget, the Subcommitee put forward and supported some simplification efforts that we were putting into place, initially thinking to increase uptake. But then we realized we also really needed to increase retention. And so I think that it's really timely to say we are in the process of continuing to work through the enacted legislation to be able to implement.

And those include things like looking at what we might be able to do to simplify reporting requirements, to pre populate forms, to connect Calfresh and Medi Cal more cleanly as we do our Administration, so that we have cross training going on. And so those are some things that we are either just getting put into place or there's still an ongoing conversation related to that. So I think it would be things like that.

Part of that is we can only go so far with some of those simplifications on the Calfresh side because there are federal snap rules that require certain levels of reporting. Certain things must be reported and tracked. And so we would need to either figure out ways to get waivers or offer demonstration projects. A difficulty with those is typically you have to show that they're in some way cost neutral.

And if the point is to have more people either get or keep their coverage, that might be a difficult argument but there is, I think, a lot of interest in continuing to just shake every cushion we can to think about what is it that we can make simpler for someone to either not have to send it at all, or as simple as possible, utilizing text messaging and ongoing communications and things like that to try to remind people that things are due to be able to keep their coverage.

We've seen some good results with programs like that as well, and so those would be the kinds of things that we'd suggest make it as simple as possible. But barring going further because of federal rules, try to put the pieces in place to enable the system to be as easily navigable as possible as well.

I'll elevate if I can. Jared Mr. Calls comments on the two pilots that we have and the ability to leverage and scale them. The safe drinking water pilot as well as the fruit and vegetable EBT pilot that are currently going on, allow us to take dollars and stretch them further for so many families who are feeling those inflationary pressures and are extremely supportive of them, and look forward to continued conversations with the Administration as we go forward.

Seeing no further comments from the dais, I will thank this panel, but we will make a request from the chair. Knowing that there's a stakeholder meeting pending next week, I'd like to request that the Administration provide an update after the meeting describing the concerns being shared by community leaders and the public on this issue and how the timeline may be shortened from what is currently being proposed.

If possible, coming out of that meeting, this issue will be held open, and we will now move on to issue three. Issue three will be on the Department of Child Support Services. For this item, we will be focusing on oversight regarding the pass through policies for former and current CalWORKS families. We will have three presenters on this panel for issue three, David Kilgore, who's the Director of the Department of Child Services, Omar Sanchez with the Department of Finance, and Angela Short with the LAO.

We are ready to begin when you are, Director Kilgore.

Good afternoon. David Kilgore, Director for the Department of Child Support Services. The agenda outlined very well where the Department is at right now and all of its performance and measurements like that.

So focusing in on the topic of the day, former and current pass through, it's a topic that I enjoy talking about because I think the advances and the opportunities for California are great. Particularly in alignment with some of the conversations with Cal Works earlier. Pass through of child support arrears or to formally assisted families is authorized under the Family Code, Section 1754.2 which became effective or will become effective July 1 of 2023 or on the date when DCSS notifies the Legislature of our ability to upgrade our systems to manage that system, manage that implementation with the approval of this in September, apt analysis of the pending work and the complexities and time necessary to make changes to the foundational system code involving most aspects of the financial functionality in CSE.

DCSS is targeting implementation date of April of 2024. The identified financial functionality impacted by the statute is substantially more than the Department had originally projected. Areas impacted, but not limited to include collections, processing, distribution, adjustments, disbursements, welfare, recruitment, fund management, and data for mandated federal reporting. This whole system was implemented in 2008. This aspect of our program hasn't been touched since then. So our involvement and need to kind of crack that open and work through all the issues are substantial and larger than we originally thought.

We've taken since September to now to really get a full understanding of that, and I think we can get it done by April 24. Family Code section 17504.6 requires CDSs, in collaboration with DCSS to submit a report to the Legislature on or before May 1, 2023 in just a couple of months, providing an evaluation of the impact of this decision to pass through family formally assisted monies to the families for their eligibility and determination of other needs based assistance programs.

While the Department expects to submit to the Legislature a report discussing these issues, we don't have all of the data pulled together to substantiate some of our General understandings. So we expect to create an addendum and bring that forward to you to kind of substantiate where we think we're at with that.

O the current assistance pass through, the 2022 budget prioritized the authorization of full pass through of the eligible child support payments to families currently receiving Cal Works or full pass through subject to the statewide General Fund availability evaluation in the spring of 2024. So that's really our key benchmark that we're aiming for. We're not in a position to really do a lot of analysis and a lot of technical changes or evaluation until we have that kind of clear go ahead to make the implementations.

However, with implementation of our formally system pass through, we are kind of earmarking identifying all the additional areas we might need to adjust or tweak or change for the current systems pass through down the road, so both of those are in line. The 23-24 Governor's Budget does not include a proposal for enacting the full pass through, as the journal Fund evaluation has not yet been completed.

Including such a proposal would be premature as the adjustment would result in a significant reduction in General Fund revenues as well as obligate the Department to build system changes that may be unnecessary to the extent the General Fund evaluation determines pass through cannot be done at this time. The Administration is committed to guidance laid out in the 22 budget and eagerly awaits the spring 24 evaluation to take necessary steps towards including the budget and the implementation.

And with the focus on the children today and the conversations there, I'm excited to see that that potential money could be enhanced in conjunction with the Cal Works money that they're receiving.

Welfare code also requires CDSS in conjunction with DCSS to convene a work group that consists of representatives from the Legislature, DCSS county welfare directors, Association of, California, advocates for low income families with children and noncustodial parents to discuss unintended consequences of enacting full pass through, and we'll submit that report to the Legislature by April 1, 2024.

That's the more impactful report because these children are still minors on the caseload and we want to make sure that receiving child support doesn't bump them off of other resources that they need and the government provides that concludes my comments and happy to receive questions.

Thank you. Omar Sanchez, Department of Finance.

Hello, Omar Sanchez with the Department of Finance. Nothing further to add.

Angela Short, LAO.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Members. Angela short with the Legislative Analyst Office. Just a few comments to build on the overview that you just heard from Director Kilgore. First, regarding the implementation of the full pass through of arrears collections to former CalWORKS families, we note that at the time of the Governor's Budget, the estimated implementation date for this new policy was July 1, 2023. Therefore, within the Governor's Budget proposal, the revenues reflect a full year impact.

Specifically, the Governor's Budget estimated that the General Fund revenues would decrease in 23-24 by around $104,000,000. However, since the release of the Governor's Budget, and as you just heard from Director Kilgore, the Department has determined additional time will be needed in order to prepare the automation to implement this new policy. Therefore, the target implementation date is now April of 2024, meaning only a few months of the 23-24 budget year will be impacted rather than the full budget year.

Accordingly, we will expect to see updated revenue estimates at the time of the May revision. And then secondly, regarding the report that was referenced, which will be due to the Legislature in May 1, as well as the addendum that Director Kilgore mentioned, we note that this report is expected to identify unintended consequences of the pass through policy, including, for example, whether a family's eligibility for other needs based assistance programs will be impacted by the policy.

Therefore, we view this report as something very important for the Legislature to have, and we will certainly work with the departments as well as the Legislature to ensure we fully understand what any of these unintended consequences may be. I'll stop there. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

I'll bring it up to the dais to see if any Members have questions. I will keep it here at the chair. My first question is for Director Kilgore, if I can. I want to get a sense about how stable this new operative date that we're looking at for April of 2024 will be for the pass through for formally assisted families.

We're pretty confident about that. It's the primary project or effort undergone at DCSS right now, so all of our resources, excess and otherwise, are going towards this specific move since it's so large and impactful for the constituents of California. So come hell or high water, we're working towards April 24.

I like that answer. Can you speak to what you're hearing from stakeholders about the pass through for currently assisted families? Are they giving you feedback?

Our General feedback on the currently assisted pass through is that it's positive. Cash in hand is what everyone wants to see. The concern on the currently assisted side is a little bit more on the impacts. Things like Snap and calfresh eligibility, which is kind of federal eligibility, is tougher for us to manipulate and handle here. But even in those instances, our stakeholders, again, cash in hand is better than the Snap benefit.

So we're kind of trying to measure all those and see if there are any others out there that we're not sure of, housing or childcare or those types of things where all those impacts are going to be.

With that, we all are looking forward to the May 1 report and would ask if the Department can please convene a briefing for legislative staff when you release this report. Is this agreeable to the Administration?

It is, except that the primary deliverer of that is Department of Social Services. I don't really want to speak on their behalf entirely.

But I'm seeing a thumbs up from their Director. And so with that, all other issues will be held open. We will thank very much the panelists for this panel, and we will move on to issue four. Thank you. Issue four is regarding the BCP for the Cal Works homeless assistance program and homelessness in the Cal Works population.

We will have three presenters on this panel. For issue four, we will begin with Hannah Asmati, Housing and homelessness division Deputy Director for CDSS. Followed by Janine Doctor with Department of Finance and Ryan Anderson with LAO. Deputy Director Azmati, when you are ready.

Thank you. Hi, thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. My name is Hanna Azemati. I'm the Deputy Director for the housing and homelessness division at CDSS. I'd like to start with a high level overview of the housing and homelessness division schools and then provide background on the experience of homelessness amongst families in the cowworks program, as well as describe how our programs help families avoid and overcome homelessness.

Finally, I'll explain how the budget change proposal for the homeless assistance program can help support these goals. The California Department of Social Services Housing and Homelessness Division schools are to design, support, and oversee the delivery of programs that are tailored to the unique needs of children, families, older adults, and people with disabilities who are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness and are served through the local social service agencies.

HHD oversees seven housing and homelessness programs that are embedded in the social services delivery system and operated by local social service agencies as well as tribal governments throughout the state. These programs have received significant onetime expansion funds with multiyear spending authority totaling more than $2 billion over the last two years. Families with children represent 35% of California's homeless population, and research shows that families with children often fall into homelessness because of the lack of affordable housing and compounding economic challenges.

As CalWorks serves families in deep poverty, families seeking and receiving Cal Works are likely to be amongst the most vulnerable when it comes to housing instability and homelessness, and therefore most in need of housing and homelessness services. Based on available data and research, we estimate that between 10 to 20% of the CalWORKS population is at risk of experiencing homelessness or experiencing homelessness. The impact on children and families who are experiencing homelessness is particularly severe and potentially long lasting.

Research shows that housing instability and homelessness contribute to children experiencing higher rates of chronic diseases as well as mental, emotional, and behavioral impairments. It also disrupts their education and social relationships due to frequent moves and changes in schools and children experiencing homelessness are at high risk, at greater risk of drug abuse, sexual abuse, and domestic violence.

Supporting families in obtaining and retaining stable housing thus is a keystone to not only addressing our homelessness crisis but more broadly in breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty, which disproportionately impacts people of color. Housing stability is the foundation for achieving better outcomes across other systems for parents and children as well, from education to workforce to child welfare and health.

HHD our division, oversees two programs that were created in response to the critical need for housing and homelessness services amongst families in the Cal Works program, the Cal Works Homeless Assistance Program, as well as the Cal Works Housing Support program. The Homeless Assistance Program is an entitlement program available to eligible families across all 58 counties applying for or receiving Cal Works benefits who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

The program is a crisis intervention that helps families receiving Cal Works pay to secure or maintain permanent housing or obtain up to 16 nights of emergency shelter when experiencing homelessness. The housing support program is intended to foster housing stability for families experiencing or at risk of homelessness. In the Cal Works program, HSP is state funded, locally administered, with 55 participating counties.

HSP assists families in securing and maintaining permanent housing as quickly as possible using evidence based, rapid rehousing, and or prevention models and a housing first approach. It is designed to be flexible and client centered. It can provide financial assistance and wrap around supportive services, including everything from rental assistance to housing navigation, case management, security deposits, utility payments, and so on. HSP also provides connections to local social service providers, including the homeless continuum of care.

CalWORKS offers an array of services and supports that can equip families to avoid homelessness and maintain stable housing that includes everything from financial and childcare supports, education and training programs, mental health, substance use, domestic violence services, financial counseling, supportive services such as transportation, and individualized family stabilization services.

While prior and subsequent panels can share more specifically about the range of supports within Cal Works broadly, I will speak to SB 1083, our staff resources request, and the opportunities that we see to stem the inflow into homelessness through the Homeless Assistance program and the Housing Support program.

The ability of counties to support families in avoiding a homelessness crisis was strengthened in 2021 through AB 135 when HSP program eligibility was expanded to include families at risk of homelessness, including those that have not yet received an eviction. The tremendous expansion of HSP starting that year from 95 million to 285,000,000 in each fiscal year 2021 to 2022 and fiscal year 2022 to 2023 further bolstered county's abilities to reach many families further upstream.

And finally, legislation relevant to the homeless Assistance program, including SB 1065 and SB 1083, enacted several different policy changes that improve low barrier access to the program and thus also make it more accessible upstream. Our BCP request for one manager and two analysts will enable our division to implement the changes enacted by SB 1083, provide statewide guidance on legislative updates, and deliver ongoing technical assistance as well as oversight to counties as they adopt these changes.

While these resources are specifically focused on implementing SB 1083, we believe that the streamlined and expanded access through this legislation, in turn will create more opportunities to prevent homelessness amongst families in the CalWORKS program and create broader connections to the local homelessness response system. Thank you. Happy to take any questions.

Janeane Doctor with the Department of Finance.

Yeah, Janeane Doctor, Department of Finance. Nothing further to add. Thanks.

Ryan Anderson Legislative Analyst Office we've reviewed the budget change proposal from the Department and have no concerns to share at this time.

Ryan Anderson LAO

Thank you. I'll bring it up to the dais for questions. I'll stick with it for a while if I can. Deputy Director Azemati are there ways we can improve access to the CalWORKS HAP services? As we heard, such a large percentage of families with children, 35% of all homelessness, are families and children. How can we improve access to these services?

Thank you for that question. Access to all of our programs is top of mind and critical in order to make sure that the most vulnerable and most in need families receive the services at the right time when they most needed. And so our approach to making sure that there is improved access to our services has been through making sure that our programs are deeply integrated within other systems that families might touch.

So, for example, making sure that families are informed, in this case, Cal Works families that are already receiving or applying for CalWORKS are informed of their options and assessed for their needs as early as possible. And so we do have processes in place for HAPP, in particular to make sure that during the intake process as well as during the redetermination process, and then again during the OCAT assessment, that they are asked about housing instability and housing supports.

And then these programs are flagged for them as opportunities and connected to them.

We had added some oversight features into the most recent round of HAPP funding, but would like to be able to work on a housing report card if we could, and so I'd like to speak about the need for a reporting requirement to be added, either in statute or in budget Bill Language, regarding the trends that we find for housing and homelessness within our CalWORKS population overall.

I'm hoping to ask for regular meetings with legislative staff at set intervals to brief on what the data is telling us about those housing needs for this vulnerable population and how policy changes can help us in implementing and aligning housing best practices and the strategies that we are doing to reduce the incidences of homelessness within our families and children.

That I'd like us to consider by the May revision whether or not we can create a CalWORKS housing stability report card that would assist us on tracking both statewide information as well as per county information on this critical subject. Can I ask the Administration to work with the Subcommitee staff on technical assistant basis towards this?

Thank you, Chair Kim Johnson, Social Services we are glad to have this conversation with you. I want to just point out that part of the CalWORKS outcomes and ability review system, or CalOR, does have a component related to connection to our housing programs that are embedded within. So there might be ways we could augment that dashboard as a way to fulfill this kind of data request. So just glad to continue to have a conversation related to it.

Appreciate it. We're just making sure that we have accountability in our housing programs and we have an ability to track and trend something that's public facing. With that, we will hold this issue open, and thank very much the panelists. We'll move on to issue five. Issue five is on reviewing the CalWORKS grant increase and the status of grants against the federal poverty level and deep poverty. We will have three presenters on issue five, beginning with Director Johnson, DSS, Ms. Doctor, and Mr. Anderson.

When you are ready, Director Johnson.

Thank you, chair and Committee, Kim Johnson, Department of Social Services. To the questions that are outlined in the agenda in this space. And this is one of those spaces that, as I referenced in earlier panels, that we have made significant progress over time. But put simply, our goals here in what we're trying to achieve is to disrupt poverty using a whole child, whole family and equity centered lens as outlined in the earlier responses.

As I mentioned, the state's current poverty rate under the official poverty measure is 12% and the state supplemental poverty measure is 11%. And again, as you've heard already today, without the social safety net programs, more Californians would live in poverty. I referenced the Public Policy Institute data components earlier, so I won't repeat those, but again, want to note that the other components that we have been working on together, such as the racial equity and implicit bias statewide training is consistent with the governor's vision of a California for all.

As you know, the governor's created an Executive order in this space, actually directing departments across the government to really work on disparities in addressing inequities across the board. So that's very consistent with that space.

The Legislature passed Assembly Bill 135, which requires the Department, as the administrator of the CalWorks and Calfresh programs, to develop and implement resources and training to further embed anti racist, anti stigma, and trauma informed practices into programs and services. And we will be kicking off the training in this space in March of this year. So we're very excited for that work and how we'll work directly with our county staff.

As was also referenced earlier on the panels, the guaranteed income pilot program is something that we're very interested in learning more about through our evaluation. It will be providing stipends ranging from 600 to one $1200 per month depending on the community that's implementing, and will test the efficacy of an influx of cash lasting 12 to 18 months in duration on a range of outcomes, including, but not limited to the economic stability and well being as it relates to the CalWORKS grant levels.

Cash assistance, as we have heard today in the form of grants, is a central component of the CalWORKS program. Grant levels are established in state statute and vary based on family size, income level and region. The maximum grant is referred to as the maximum aid payment, or map level. Under state law, local revenue growth in the child poverty and family supplemental support realignment subaccount automatically triggers those increases.

As I've previously mentioned, as is proposed in the governor's budget in 22-23 the budget included approximately $300 million for an ongoing map increase of 11% effective October of last year associated with local revenue growth. 22-23 also included $816,000,000 of General Fund for an additional temporary 10% map increase effective of October last year through September of 2024.

An additional map increase of 2.9% is projected for October of this year, and that increase, as I referenced, will bring the nonexempt map level from one $1130 today to one $163 per month for an assistance unit of three residing in a high cost county. Again, that equates to 61% of the 2022 federal poverty level in terms of our goal of really continuing to reach and again keep all families out of deep poverty. The Committee also asked some questions related to client perspective.

I know we had a client here on earlier panels, so I really appreciate that voice being lifted up. We certainly will continue to engage in conversations with direct participants on ways in which they feel like their needs are being met through the entirety of the program, including the cash grant size. I'll also note that we have enlisted some additional partners to do research to gain insight on client perspectives.

And we have heard from specifically the rescue agency, which is called out in your agenda, that clients aren't necessarily always fully aware of all of the service array. Again, as I referenced earlier, kind of when they need it, right? It might be introduced, but when they need it, not necessarily knowing exactly how to access those resources. So that's an area that we'll continue to work on. I'll stop there if there are any questions. Happy to answer them.

Department of Finance.

Janeane Doctor, Department of Finance no additional comments on top of what was provided by the Department, but happy to answer any questions as well.

LAO.

Ryan Anderson, Legislative Analyst Office. We would just like to highlight 1 point that was made actually in the portion of the agenda that covers the first panel for this. You don't have to search for it, I'll just state it. This has to do with the distinction between family size and assistance unit size.

Now, as has been pointed out, the Legislature set a goal for CalWORKS grants to be equivalent to 50% of the federal poverty level for a family which is one person larger than the assistance unit size, which is a mouthful. But the purpose of that target is acknowledging that historically a lot of CalWORKS families have included one or more ineligible adults, and they're ineligible for many reasons.

But among the primary are immigration status, lifetime limits on aid for adults, and sanctions, mostly due to welfare to work requirements. Now, acknowledging that reality, if you want to achieve a world in which we are providing grants where by the family size, we're at least at that level of deep poverty that 50% of FBL there are two options.

One is setting the legislative target, as we have, equal to au plus one, but the other is to reduce the number of families for which there are ineligible adults. And the Legislature has actually been exercising a lot of policies that move us in that direction.

Lately, we've expanded lifetime limits from 48 months to 60 months, which means likely if we had data from this year, we'd see a substantial shift from, as the agenda points out, 60% in the latest data, which is a few years old, of the caseload included an ineligible adult. Somewhere around 20% to 25% of those are the safety net cases, which included timed out adults. A lot of those folks got 12 additional months.

We probably saw a much larger proportion of families where the family size met the assistance unit size, especially in this year, and also both as part of pandemic temporary relief measures and as part of ongoing policy changes which have been made lately. The sanction rate has been declining. This is not to say, of course, that hooray if that level shifted from, say 60,40 of families, including an ineligible adult, to 40,60 or 30,70.

We're still talking about a very Low level of 50% of federal poverty level. But it's an important piece of context. I think there's several moving pieces here, and among those are those changes to eligibility. That's all.

I'll bring it up to the dais for any questions. I'll keep it here at the chair. My question is going to be for finance, if I can. Do you have any response to the AU plus one conversation that LAO was just bringing up? And how does this align with the governor's goals around no child in deep poverty?

Janeane Doctor, Department of Finance Finance supports the Governor's Budget at this point, but we are happy to take that comment back and continue conversations with your staff.

I would just follow up seeing that there are 60% of families who are not appropriately reflected in the AU. It's caused us to change to AU plus one. And yet there may be more effective ways for us to recognize the number of family Members who are being serviced by the program and so look forward to us addressing that.

As we go forward, I would like to ask the staff to work with the LAO and the Administration regarding a more straightforward public display regarding the no child in deep poverty and the statues, excuse me? And the status of CalWORKS grants against this goal. Incorporating that approach regarding AU plus one, amendments to statue adopted as part of the 22 budget may be necessary for us to achieve this display and still solidify this goal for the State of no child in deep poverty.

But with that, we will hold this issue open. Thank very much the panelists here. We will move on to issue six regarding the CalWORKS single allocation. We will have three presenters on this panel for issue six, beginning with Director Johnson from CDSS. Begin when you are ready.

Thank you, chair and Members Kim Johnson, Department of Social Services related to the single allocation as your agenda outlines beginning in 2018-19 a new methodology replaced the previous methodology, which has been used since 2001-02, the new methodology reflects a 22 county survey to update assumptions for annual eligibility worker costs, annual productive work hours, and the time required to complete mandated eligibility functions. These assumptions were then applied to an average CalWORKS caseload to derive base funding levels.

The base funding was separated to establish a level of fixed funding that is not adjusted when caseload changes and a level of variable base funding that allows for adjustments when designated. Caseload thresholds are reached, subject to certain rules to ensure funding stability each 5% change in caseload, which is around 20,300 cases, trigger a 5% change in the variable funding, or approximately $27.5 million. So, to ensure stable levels of funding over time, no more than one funding increment is adjusted and allowed in any given fiscal year.

That is the methodology we agreed upon when we revised this, so our proposal for the single allocation reflects funding to provide eligibility Administration, employment services and Cal learn intensive case management. Counties may use funds interchangeably within a single even though budgeted separately by component consistent with the agreed upon methodology, the Governor's Budget includes 1.9 billion total funds in current year for the calwork single allocation, reflecting a net increase of $124,000,000 from the Budget Act of 2022 for budget year.

The total single allocation is also proposed at 1.9 billion total funds, reflecting a net increase of 112.4 million total funds. Both fiscal years 22-23 and 23-24 include a onetime supplemental investment of $55 million in total funds for CalWORKS eligibility Administration. Per statute, the Department, in consultation with the County Welfare Directors Association and counties, will assess the funding methodology for the CalWORKS Eligibility Administration component of the single allocation during the 24-25 budget year and every three years thereafter.

So again, recognizing that as we've implemented and adopted a new methodology, we should periodically assess to see if again it's yielding what we anticipated, why is the eligibility portion of the single allocation decreasing as caseloads are projected to increase? That is, again due to the projected method, the methodology that we are working towards, based on projected CalWORKS caseload, the variable funding will decrease by one increment in fiscal years 23-24 due to that lower projected caseload.

A significant increase in caseload was forecast based on previous economic downturns. However, the actual caseload is not increasing as fast as initially projected, so I will pause there and happy to answer any questions.

Department of Finance.

Janeane Doctor Department of Finance no comments at this time.

Ryan Anderson Legislative Analyst Office. I'd just like to start by acknowledging this is a tricky and I'll try and bottom line it. The reason we're talking about this is that there's a misalignment, an apparent misalignment, in the governor's proposal between year over year growth or changes in funding and year over year changes in caseload with regard to one element of the single allocation, which is the eligibility Administration funding.

LAO.

What we're talking about is that there's a projected decrease in the funding, projected increase in the caseload. Naturally, that raises some questions. Right. The bottom line is that it's an appropriate application of the existing funding formula, what the Governor is proposing. Now, why did we end up with this misalignment? Again, it's tricky. It has to do with the funding formula being restricted to only changing in the single increments of 27.5 million at a time, which are triggered by caseload decreases of around 20,000 cases.

We had several increments of caseload decreases throughout the pandemic, and we held eligibility and Administration funding effectively harmless during that time. So we built up some decreases that on the books we should have been taking and we haven't yet. So that adjustment is appropriate given the existing formula. There's a separate question, which is whether it's appropriate given the expenditures we're seeing at the county level. And again, this is a tricky question. It's tricky because the construction of the single allocation makes it tricky.

We give counties, effectively a block grant that they can use interchangeably between several purposes, eligibility and Administration and employment services, principally. If you look narrowly at what are counties spending on eligibility and Administration versus what are they funded specifically for, that within the single allocation under the latest data suggests that they're oversubscribed. They're expending more in eligibility and Administration than the state is giving them, despite the fact that on paper they're overfunded.

If you look at the single allocation as a whole, however, they're undersubscribed for a variety of reasons. Demand for employment services is not in the latest data at the level that we would have anticipated, given the inputs we've had in the budget in the last few years. Now, you add all this together, what does it say? Well, in the picture of General budget problems for the state, maybe it suggests that this year this isn't a legislative priority, but it's a tricky issue of course.

There is obviously a difficulty with how do we properly align the funding that we give to counties for specific purposes to the expenditures for those purposes? Hopefully that helped clarify it a little bit, but I'm happy to answer questions.

Oh, sorry, I'll bring it up to the dais.

I shouldn't have turned on my mic while I was laughing. Is this a statutory formula or is this just an agreement between the Governor and the counties?

As with many elements at CalWorks, it's sort of both. The statute lays out some parameters for what the formula would be, but those parameters were followed up by negotiation between the counties and the Administration, the Department of Finance.

Is this something that the Governor is looking at in terms of rectifying this formula? Do you guys agree that this is an issue?

Finance would echo the comments made by the Department and that this methodology was agreed upon by the Legislature and the Administration. And the adjustment reflects caseload.

Same question, hopefully better answer.

Again, we have agreed to revisiting the methodology in 24-25 and every third year thereafter so that there's an ongoing cadence for us to reflect on the methodology always. That's right.

There's an agreed upon time at every so and so amount of years.

That's right.

Whatever. We come back, reevaluate, see if we can learn from past years.

Correct.

Thank you.

The county concerns with the proposed funding to CalWORKS seem pretty technical in nature, and so I want to make sure that I and other Subcommitee Members are aware of it. But I'd like to ask if Kathy Senderling Mcdonald with CWDA would be willing to come forward and briefly elaborate on the county's concerns.

And so that just is a mismatch. There's also a second component that is contributing a significant amount to the cut on the eligibility side this year. This may have been something going on for a while, but we just sort of picked up on it this year. When counties do our work on behalf of the state and Federal Governments, often we are doing work for multiple programs at the same time. So we're doing CalWORKS, Calfresh, and MediCal kind of all at the same time for somebody.

For example, if you get Cal1Works, you automatically get Medi Cal in the way that we've constructed our program. And so there needs to be a way to think about those common costs being moved from one to the other programs and sort of being shared across the programs.

What we've realized is that in funding the CalWORKS methodology based on a certain level of cost that is not based on an actual cost, which is what's happening in the CalWORKS piece.There is then a shift out of CalWORKS to Calfresh and MediCal that is actually based on actual costs. So it's sort of a double hit in the sense that what is going into the eligibility in the first place. Number one, the math is producing the cut.

And number two, it's not caught up for inflation every year, but then it's also being reduced further by a calculation that actually is adjusted for inflation. And so if we're a few years behind in one piece, we're actually getting cut at the current rate, and it's making it even worse.

And so the concern and the reason why it's worth having this discussion, not just because it's funky math, is because we also just had a huge conversation about services for people in our program, childcare, transportation, making sure that they're able to access education and get services associated with that.

And so as we think about coming out of the pandemic and reengaging with our families, there's been funding built into the single allocation in the services component that counties are going to have to take right out to do eligibility. And so we're not going to be able to make the kinds of investments in services that we just spent an hour and a half talking about because we're going to have to spend it on the operations.

So again, we understand that this is the agreement that everybody agreed to, but it does make sense. So we're here again, year two of that conversation, adding in this wrinkle of also realizing that we're getting kind of double hit with this shift of common costs. Yes, it is a lot of weeds to get into for right now in this discussion, but appreciate that we'll likely be continuing the discussion and happy to be engaged and a part of that.

But I think it's also very important to understand as we continue to try to find the right spot, right, that this is just a process we go through. Sometimes we try things and it isn't right. We course correct. Right. So we need to continue to try to innovate. This shouldn't stop us from thinking of new ways of doing things, but we're just going through the practice of getting it right. So hopefully we can continue to do that.

Taking into consideration the concerns being raised by the counties, I would like to request that a conversation be convened with the Administration legislative staff in both houses, the LAO, and the counties to discuss the issues, the impacts of the proposed reduction and approaches to resolve the shortfall.

In a report back to the Subcommitee on the April 26 hearing of this year that the Subcommitee will be returning to with issues in Cal Works at that time, is that agreeable to the Administration for us to convene those stakeholder meetings?

We are happy to have conversations.

Thank you. With that, this issue will be held open. Thank very much, these panelists. We will move on to issue seven regarding the trailer Bill proposal from the Administration on unrelated adult disclosure. We will have three presenters, beginning with Director Johnson.

Thank you, chair and Committee Members Kim Johnson, Department of Social Services. The Committee asked about the origin of this particular statute, and the statute was implemented in 1969 under the aid to families with dependent children, or AFDC, the predecessor of TANIF. The Department of Social Services didn't have specific insight into why at that time, but that is the time frame in which it was put together.

So if signed into law, this trailer Bill Language updates statute to apply gender neutrality to the household composition and family reporting requirements that currently only apply to unrelated adult males.

The Department does not anticipate adverse action by applying gender neutrality to the statute, as some county social service departments are already doing this current CalWORKS regulations require applicants and recipients to report all sources of income and resources at application at Sar seven and redetermination, including the contributions from any unrelated adults, whether they are living in the household or not.

Once county departments are informed of contributions from unrelated adults, they must determine whether that income will be reasonably anticipated to continue and if so, then the income and resources must be taken into consideration when determining program eligibility and grant calculation. The Committee also asked about the potential effect of striking the statute entirely. We do not believe that the striking of the statute entirely would significantly impact the program.

If such an action was taken, the Department would issue guidance instructing counties to not take into consideration income of unrelated adults who are not part of the family participating in Cal Works and not contributing financially. Happy to answer questions.

Department of Finance.

Janean Docter, Department of Finance no comment at this time, but also happy to answer any questions. Thanks.

LAO.

Ryan Anderson, Legislative Analyst Office. As the Department noted, this rule does appear to be a relative different era from this program, as a lot of the eligibility criteria for CalWorks have been grandfathered in over decades. Our best guess from looking at the deep history is that this might be related to a General policy goal for cash assistance programs over several decades has been to encourage parents to be married, or at least to not discourage marriage.

So that might be the thinking here is removing any potential financial disincentive to marrying as opposed to applying for Cal Works with the mother as a single mother.

Now, that being said, the Committee's question about the effects of eliminating this proposal, I think one thing that'd be important to note is for the last several years, as part of our takeup rate policy, we've been involved in a lot of really detailed discussions about CalWORKS eligibility procedures with experts at both the state and county levels, and this rule has never come up in those discussions as an important factor in determining eligibility.

This isn't to say that the rule serves no purpose, but does invite the question as to how relevant is this rule to how the program is currently operating.

That's the conclusion of the panel. I'll just ask, what are the trade offs for us in repealing this rule?

Again, I don't think we'd indicate any significant impact from repealing it.

With that, I would like to request a fiscal estimate on a technical assistance basis of repealing the statute entirely, instead of amending it as proposed by the Governor. Can the Administration please work with my staff to provide this by the end of March? Yes, this issue will be held open, and we will thank very much these panelists and move on to issue eight.

We will have three presenters on this panel for issue eight, beginning with Ryan Gillette, Chief Data Officer for the California Department of Social Services, Department of Finance and LAO. Let us begin with Ryan Gillette when you are ready.

Hello, thank you chair and Committee Members. My name is Ryan Gillette. I'm the chief data officer and the Deputy Director of the research, automation and data division at the Department of Social Services. I'm here to talk to you today about EBT card security. I'm going to start with a brief overview of the issue, and then we'll jump into the questions that you provided in the agenda. So over the past several months, the state has witnessed a rise in theft of EBT benefits.

In December of 2022, the most recent month for which we have full data available, the state replaced approximately $6 million in CalWORKS benefits and $2 million in Cal Fresh benefits due to theft. There are two types of theft in particular that we're working with to mitigate. One is related to skimming. Skimming is when a malicious actor installs a device on a point of sale terminal at an ATM machine or a place where you go to purchase groceries that reads the information off the magnetic card stripes.

The other type scamming occurs when someone uses social engineering or phishing with a ph to try to trick someone into disclosing their card information. In California, we face both of these challenges, but skimming represents the bulk of the theft. The best way to combat skimming is to increase card security by implementing chip and tap technology. Chip and tap technology encrypts card information by making it much more difficult for malicious actor to steal card information and make a cloned card.

Over the coming months, CDSs will be moving aggressively to deploy chip tap technology. This is a major overhaul of the EBT system, and California is on track to be the first state in the nation to be able to use chip and tap technology with its EBT cards. Jumping into the specific questions that you asked in the agenda, first of all, how will this affect existing cardholders, and will there be a grace period as cards are being replaced?

So yes, there will be a transition period as cards are migrated to chip tap technology. The rollout will proceed similar to how we deployed the card verification value earlier this year. So as a reminder, in July of or last year in July of 2022, CDSS deployed CVV. This is similar to that three numbers that you might see at the end of your own personal creditor or debit card.

CVV prevents a scammer from being able to clone a card because the information that they would need they could get by talking to someone on the phone is literally not printed on the card, so they don't have that information available and as a result they're unable to make a duplicate card. CVV has actually proven very effective at reducing scamming.

Prior to deploying CVV, scamming made up about 10% of our estimated theft, and in our most recent data it represented only 0.05% of reported theft, so a 95% decline. When we deployed CBV, we had a grace period, as you'd asked about. So cardholders were mailed a new card. Their old card would remain active until they activated their new card, either by using it or by calling a number on the back.

And after 30 days after the new cards were sent out, their old card would automatically turn off if they hadn't activated yet. Regardless, if a cardholder tried to use their old card, they would receive a message informing them to contact their county or FIS support, our vendor who operates the EBT system, and if they needed, they could then go into a county office or call and have a new card mailed to them. CDSS and FIS tracked activations and overall saw very high activations rates.

We did not witness any major spikes in call volume related to cardholders not receiving their cards. We would anticipate following a similar approach with the chip tap card, so ensuring that there's some amount of time of overlap, but after a certain period of time turning it off. The second question was related to the total cost of improvement, both to complete the transition and maintain improvements going forward.

So the total estimated cost of the chip tap effort is 76.5 million, of which 26.2 is estimated to be General Fund. This because chip tap represents a major overhaul of the EBT system and includes changes to federal regulations, updates to point of sale device software at all stores that accept EBT purchasing and deployment of new card printing devices.

At county welfare departments, a full replacement of approximately 5 million cards outreach to cardholders, county workers, vendors and other stakeholders to inform them and educated them of these changes. Once deployed, we would want to perform additional monitoring just to ensure that everything is transitioned effectively and patch any bugs that may arise, but we don't anticipate any significant new additions to maintenance costs. I would note, though that the chip cards do cost a little bit more.

They cost about a dollar 30 more than just the magstripe only cards, and so we would anticipate that that might result in about 1.1 million of ongoing additional annual costs, again about 500k of which should be General Fund just associated with the regular replacement and issuance of new cards. In addition to chip tap, we have been pursuing a number of other efforts to address the rise in theft that should have little to no ongoing budgetary costs.

These include things like blocking out of state transactions, utilizing data analytics to try to identify where some of these skimming devices are and remove them before they can be used to steal benefit or to steal card numbers. Limiting withdrawal windows during benefit load days, raising awareness through enhanced communication about everything that's going on so that cardholders can try to protect their cards better and then deploying a new app from FIS that will give cardholders additional self service functionality to change their Pin and freeze their cards.

Finally, I will just say know while we are confident that chip Tap will be an effective solution to the problem of skimming, we can't rule out the possibility that criminals will find other ways to seal benefits in the future. So if that happens, we may then have to come and explore additional mitigation strategies. The last question was how do these improvements affect the timeline for expanding the California Food Assistance program to some previously ineligible immigrants?

As discussed earlier, there's other conversations around that timeline going on, but from the perspective of chip tap, CFAP benefits are delivered through EBT cards. As a result, new recipients of CFAP will need to be provided with an EBT card if they do not already have one. That having been said, though, we do not think that the development of ChipTap will meaningfully affect the timeline for rolling out either of these initiatives.

The only possible consideration is if we ended up in a timeline where they were both happening around the same time. It might make sense to sequence them and do the chip rollout before rolling out CFAP just so that people don't receive one card and then two weeks later have to receive a new one. Happy to answer any questions.

Department of Finance

Janean Docter, Department of Finance. No additional comments, but also happy to answer any questions.

LAO.

Ryan Anderson Legislative Analyst Office appreciate the administration's response to the questions in the agenda. I have no further concerns or questions at this time.

I'll bring it up to the dais for the Administration. Can you explain why this proposal did not require a BCP?

So again, we are deploying this through our vendor FIS. So FIS is going to be implementing all of the changes associated with this. We already have a team on hand that has been working through a lot of these other improvements, so we're able to absorb that through existing operations, but the cost will primarily be to our vendor FIS, who will be delivering this.

Wasn't the total estimated cost, 76.5 million. Of that, 34.3 million was coming from General funds. So wouldn't that necessitate BCP?

We'll let Department of Finance answer that one.

Justin Freitas, this Department of Finance the reason why you're not seeing a BCP on that is because traditional BCPs are for state operations. And as Mr. Gillette expressed, we're not requesting additional state operations and resources. So this would fall into, normally what we refer to as a premise like, that's a technical talk or enrollment case on population. So it's like looking at the caseload for Cal Works. We don't submit a BCP telling you we're going to increase that. That's kind of why.

With that, we will hold this issue open and thank very much this entire panel. We will now move on to issue nine regarding the Calfresh for college students BCP. We will have three presenters on issue nine, beginning with Director Kim Johnson. When you are ready, Ms. Johnson.

Chair and Members Kim Johnson, Department of Social Services want to start off here with good news. We saw a 48% increase from pre pandemic levels, an average of 93,000 college students participating in Calfresh per month in fiscal years 1819, to an average of 138,000 college students participating in Calfresh in 2122. The Department is partnering with California Policy Lab to further identify potentially eligible students for Calfresh and program impact outcomes for participating students in Calfresh.

Thank you.

We anticipate having some additional information coming out of that study soon. It will include looking at measuring the takeup rate of Calfresh among college students using the FAFSA data to model eligibility measuring the impact of various policy changes and innovations on the take up rate of calfresh measuring the impacts of calfresh on educational outcomes such as test scores, attendance and graduation rates. Also want to note the question of the Committee was why are the resources requested ongoing when the report is due next month?

We want to clarify that this proposal that the Administration is putting forward is requesting resources for only two fiscal years limited term.

After the report is completed, the Department will continue to have workload related to maintain, update and post the list of state or locally funded programs established to provide a student with eligible exemptions from the Calfresh eligibility rule instructions for county human service agencies that maximize Calfresh eligibility providing additional technical assistance to counties engaging with higher ed stakeholders developing the data landscape of eligible students and facilitating more collaboration between the colleges and counties, including training components.

The Committee also asked about Low hanging fruit, would note that again, we did publish in January of this year. Earlier this year, the county fiscal letter that appropriated $6.8 million to county human service departments funding the higher education liaisons. We are collaborating with the statewide automated welfare system to create a student data dashboard to include available data regarding student participation. Some of those data elements will include monthly applications submitted that are approved, denied denial reasons, and demographic information such as language, race, ethnicity and gender identity.

We also want to highlight best practices and certainly share those widely throughout communities and also update the Calfresh Student handbook, which is being used locally around processes and policies. I also want to note, as was noted in earlier panels, this is another space where we want to make sure we are weighing in on the farm Bill at the federal level to make sure that if there's any ability to continue some of the flexibilities that we had in the pandemic, that's an option and opportunity for us.

The Committee also asked about collaboration with the Student Aid Commission and what we have as aligned priorities. Those include maintaining that permanent use of the $0 expected family contribution status as a metric that determines eligibility for cowfresh. Again, something we could weigh in on with the farm Bill, revisiting the county funding allocation methodology which we are doing, and providing clear communication to counties to ensure program compliance with the latest policies. And with that, I'm here to answer any questions.

Department of Finance

Janean Docter, Department of Finance. I do have one quick point of clarification. The questions in the agenda refer to the resources hired here as ongoing, but the position here is actually limited term as it is posted on the BCP that's on the website. It's just for 2023 to 24 in the year afterwards.

Got you, LAO.

Ryan Anderson, Legislative Analyst Office. We've reviewed this proposal and have no concerns to share at this time.

I'll bring it up to the dais for any questions. I'll keep it here at the chair if I can. This is an area of passion for me to address food insecurity in our higher education population.

We chaptered into law 1326 and 2810 during the last legislative cycle and have introduced 870 this year to work on sharing some of those best practices that I'd like to get a sense from you. It sounded like the scale went from 90,000 to 138,000 total, and while that 48% increase is significant, it represents 40,000 new students who are on Calfresh.

The estimate is anywhere from 400 to 750,000 students who may be able to be enrolled, and so I'm really wanting to lean into some of those best practices so that counties can learn from each other and would like to be able to work with the Administration going forward on how best to be able to do that.

I'd also like to pull in the LAO if I can, as we'd like to consider budget Bill Language to help us to formalize expectations on reporting and deliverables for this important conversation going forward.

And since we do recognize that it is a limited term position, we wanted to make sure that we were creating options to facilitate the increased access to Calfresh and wanted to make sure this new position was aligned and working with us on that goal that I'd like to ask for the Lao to please help with drafting of that BBL toward an action for us to take in May or June as we close out our budget,

if that BCP is ultimately approved. Can I ask the LAO and the Administration, if they are amenable to this project, to consider together? Happy to help with that. This issue will be held open and we will move on to issue 10 regarding housing and homelessness programs and related BCP for our HSP program, we will have three presenters, Hanna Azemati, who is the division Deputy Director with CDSS, Emily Marshall with Department of Finance and Ginni Bella Navari with the LAO. Deputy Director.

Thank you Hannah Azamati, Deputy Director for housing and homelessness at CDSS the significant and historic program expansions in fiscal year 21-22 build upon an ongoing workload associated with operating housing and homelessness programs that has regularly expanded in scope and size over the years. To meet this expanded and ongoing need, and in recognition that housing is foundational to child and family well being, the Housing and Homelessness branch has grown into the Housing and Homelessness division. Effective July 12022.

The 17 positions in this BCP are to address the ongoing workload associated with the operations and Administration of ongoing housing and homelessness programs, to fulfill the legislative mandates, as well as provide critical services to our grantees and in turn, individuals and families experiencing homelessness and prevent the worsening of the urgent statewide crisis. The Budget act of 2021 and Budget act of 2022 each appropriated $285,000,000 for HSP with multiyear spending authority.

These appropriations include 190,000,000 in onetime funds as well as the ongoing annual appropriation of $95 million. As a result of these tremendous investments, since inception in 2014, HSP has expanded from operating in 20 counties to nearly being statewide, now available in 55 counties.

Along with these significant expansions in 2021, eligibility for HSP was expanded to families at risk of homelessness, including those who have not yet received an eviction notice, enabling grantees to help stem the inflow into the homelessness system and provide services and supports further upstream. HHD engages in interdivisional work across the Department to serve this population holistically and to help ensure that we are identifying additional solutions to support families.

Furthermore, as our prevention work picks up steam, we will learn more about how to identify families at the highest risk of homelessness, what service components are most impactful, and identify any new interventions that may be needed to ensure that our programs are effectively preventing homelessness or assisting in rehousing.

Finally, through coordination and consultation with the Cal Works CalOR efforts, the Housing and Homelessness division has provided guidance and support on identifying key metrics on housing needs as well as measures of housing assistance delivery through the Cal Works program, specifically, the Cal Works Homeless Assistance and Housing Support program, which will be included in phase two of the calor metrics. Since HSB's launch in 2014 through October 2022, more than 31,900 families have been permanently housed.

Based on our internal analysis, the percentage of HSB enrolled families who are housed has also been increasing, indicating that counties are becoming more effective at using HSB either alone or in conjunction with other programs to help families access housing. Furthermore, counties report that 88% of participants that retained housing six months after exiting the HSP program, 70% of participants increased income throughout and after HSP participation, and 25% of participants improved employment or educational circumstances.

HSP has also supported systems change within communities through new or stronger partnerships between social service agencies and the local homelessness response systems, resulting in more coordinated, efficient, and effective service provision. Counties and HSP participants have both reported that the core components of HSP have supported families in addressing barriers to housing in a way that most families could not have done alone while experiencing homelessness.

Oversight and accountability are vital to every program, given the urgency to maximize the impact that local operating partners achieve with each dollar that the state invests in homelessness and housing, accountability structures also have to balance the need for sustained and collaborative partnerships across levels of governments and systems to overcome the systemic and entrenched barriers to rapid progress.

HHT has existing statutorily mandated requirements aimed at accountability and oversight across all of our programs, and the additional staffing resources proposed in the BCP are a key component of the capacity we are building to help ensure that the existing requirements can be met, but also that deeper analysis of program performance as well as engagement with grantees can be achieved and specifically, the resources provided by this BCP will increase oversight through the following strategies it will allow for us to collect, analyze, and report program data with a focus on who is receiving services, the impact of those services, as well as opportunities for improvement.

It will enable compliance with requirements and timelines of annual reporting across all of our programs. It will help us procure the delivery of targeted, hands on technical assistance provided to grantees to ensure that more effective program outcomes, as well as reporting on an analysis of the impact of such technical assistance. Development and updates of regulations for HA, HSP, HDAP and BFH to ensure statewide compliance of program requirements will also be supported.

And then finally, it will allow us to effectively participate in interagency workshops such as Cal IC to better integrate social services. Thank you. Happy to take questions.

Department of Finance.

Emily Marshall, Department of Finance. No additional comment at this time, but happy to answer any questions.

LAO.

Thank you Mr. Chair Ginni Bella with the Legislative Analyst Office. We have reviewed the proposal and given the significant expansion of the housing and homelessness programs and also the Legislature's interest in the continued effective implementation and oversight of these programs, we have no concerns to raise.

Thank you. I'll bring it up to the dais for any members'questions. I'll keep it here. I'd like to ask and follow up with the LAO, if I can, for assistance in helping to evaluate the degree to which the Department of Social Services, Housing and Homelessness one time investments that we made in the 21 budget have been implemented effectively, and if there are trends in all of our DSS programs that are telling us about the status of housing stability and homelessness for our DSS served families and individuals, that I'd like to ask the LAO to report back to us by early May if possible.

This effort may lead to either a trailer Bill or budget Bill language to sharpen the oversight and accountability for DSS housing and homelessness programs as we continue to implement them. But besides that, all issues will be held open.

Before we move to public comment, I would like to provide an additional comment, if I can, regarding one of the non discussion items that will non presentation items that was brought up regarding immigration services and specifically want to uplift the DSS. Your unaccompanied refugee minors program, that is, the opportunities for youth.

I'd like to make sure that we have an opportunity to talk about that program as I'm hoping you can reach out to my staff on an issue that is related to this as I'd like to discuss the status of this project to ensure its continuation. For those that don't know, this project offers culturally and linguistically responsive services that are trauma informed post relief supportive services to our unaccompanied undocumented minors and families throughout the five regions in California.

But I'd like to ask the Department to follow up on that one item so we can work on a resolution going forward.

Yang Lee, Department of Social Services. Yes, we're happy to follow up with Nicole about that.

Sounds great. This ends the discussion portion of our agenda for this afternoon, as I'd like to transition now to public comment. I will take a moment to thank very much all of our panelists. If there are no additional Members comments or questions, we will now begin public comment. We have a substantial number of people who would like to provide public comment, and therefore, I want to urge you to keep your comments as brief as possible so that we can hear from everyone.

We will start with any in person public comment in the hearing room. Please come forward to the microphone if you would like to make a comment.

Thank you, Mr. Chair Members Maika Yoshihara and I'm here on behalf of the Truth and Justice and Child Support Coalition. So first, I just want to thank the Administration and the work of this Committee and the Legislature for making some real progress in terms of reforming our broken child support system and making sure that more of that child support money is actually going to the children.

One of the coalition's top priorities is to ensure full pass through of child support payments to the custodial parent and ending the interception of those payments to repay the state for public benefits. So we would urge that you include funding and enact implementation language to give the go ahead for a full pass through for current CalWORKS assisted families.

And until we're able to get full pass through of those child support payments, there are a couple of things that we could do now to address the issue of how child support orders are set and the ballooning government owed debt that is trapping people in financial insecurity and just making it hard for them to work and support their children.

So in that regard, enacting language, which is currently in SB 343 and AB 1755 to update how child support orders are set in accordance with the federal final rule requirements is imperative. And we also need to eliminate the billions of dollars of government-owed child support debt that is currently on the books and increasing at a 10% interest rate and is virtually uncollectible. Eliminating this debt is also part of the recommendations of the State Reparations Task Force.

It is a racial justice issue because we know that these policies are disproportionately impacting families of color. Lastly, I just want to say for families that are struggling, this relief cannot come soon enough and there are some real things that we can do in this year's budget that really won't cost that much money. And so just looking forward to working with this Committee and the Administration on these important reform measures. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. Linda Way with Western Center on Law and Poverty. Regarding child support services. We would just like to align our comments with the Truth and Justice Coalition and noting, particularly related to full pass-through, that the current families tend to have higher needs and so great that we were able to do it for former but really see the need for current as well.

We oppose the CalWORKS trailer Bill Language that expands reporting requirements from unrelated adult melts to all unrelated adults as this is an additional administrative burden on families, so recommend that be eliminated completely. And note, the Department estimated no fiscal impact related to some nutrition proposals. We appreciate the governor's investment to prevent EBT theft and look forward to working with the Administration and Legislature on this.

We would like to uplift the request to expand CFAP from the Food4All Coalition and the California for SSI request to update the supplemental nutrition benefit and transitional nutrition benefit. And finally, we support the expansion of social services to immigrants seeking humanitarian relief that is supported by Assemblymember Reyes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. Cathy Senderling, the County Welfare Directors Association. On item five, I want to express support for the concept of a housing report card and suggest that we ensure any sort of report card is robust enough to measure the degree to which counties are hindered in finding temporary or permanent housing for people via HAPP and HSP due to a lack of affordable housing stock and the fact that our grants are likely significantly lower than average or median rents in many counties.

It also seems like an appropriate time to note that our Members have and would support additional increases in temporary housing assistance and expanding flexibilities for permanent housing assistance allowances in CalWORKS. On item six, I wanted to express our thanks for the requested ongoing discussion regarding the single allocation cut and our support for the requested meeting. Finally, on item eight, we strongly support the implementation of chip-and-tap technology. Our recipients are losing millions of dollars of benefits every month.

We were ecstatic to see this in the Governor's Budget and appreciate the Administration putting it forward. Thanks.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Benyamin Chao. I'm with the California Immigrant Policy Center. I'm also here on behalf of the Food4All Coalition, which represents over 110 different organizations across the state all the way from Humboldt to San Diego, antipoverty, anti hunger, and immigrant rights advocates. There's a lot of discussion today about the data. What we're seeing is the pandemic and the rising food cost of food has placed an extreme burden on immigrant families in our communities.

And I'm also coming here as someone who lived as an undocumented person for over 20 years. And I can just say from personal experience how much of a struggle it was to be excluded and see family members who were excluded and also denied when they wanted to access our safety net. And so we're really calling on you to really look at the priorities for the Assembly this year.

How can we make sure that families below the age of 55 can soon access these benefits that will lead to reduced rates of poverty, increased educational attainment, and improved health outcomes in the future? So yes, no exclusions, no exceptions, and no delays. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Member. Martha Guerrero, representing the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. We support the proposed CalWORKS grant increase, but oppose the reduction to the eligibility component of the CalWORKS single allocation. We also are very supportive of the $35.8 million and the third year phased-in approach related to the 2018 level of effort for the Child Support Program. We also support the investments that the Governor has proposed for the EBT chip card technology enhancements as well as the reimbursement for the stolen benefits.

As you might have heard, that EBT skimming has had a devastating effect to many families, thousands of families in Los Angeles County who received public assistance with over $19 million in cash aid stolen from them in 2022 alone. And there is every indication that this is a serious problem that will continue to proliferate during the year. We're already seeing a higher increase in the first month alone.

Locally, we've become a robust outreach and communications campaign, educating businesses and consumers to become aware and appreciate the partnership with the Department of Social Services to address this, working together to mitigate the impact this has had. And so we urge immediate implementation. There's just the impact it is having on families and also appreciate the guidance that they are to mitigate the barriers to being able to get their EBT benefits restored quickly that CDs recently distributed.

So we just ask for the ability to be able to get the technology for those individuals for the Cash Aid and the Calfresh Benefits. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Andrea Rivera on behalf of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network. CPEN is a statewide multicultural health advocacy organization that's dedicated to the elimination of racial disparities within our healthcare systems. CPEN was disappointed to see the governor's proposal to delay the expansion of the California Food Assistance Program for undocumented Californians ages 55 and above. As a health equity organization, we understand the importance of food security and making sure that all Californians, particularly communities of color, have access to food.

We urge the Legislature to reject this proposal so that we can ensure that all communities of color have access to food when they need it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman and Members. Michelle Rubalcava from Nielsen Merksamer on behalf of San Diego County on item eight, San Diego County supports the Governor's proposed funding of 76.5 million over three fiscal years to modernize EBT cards to include chip tap technologies to improve card security and reduce benefit theft. In addition, San Diego County supports the Governor's proposed funding of 198 million for the reimbursement of cash and food benefit theft to recipients.

San Diego County is dealing with an unprecedented levels of theft related to card skimming and scams. In San Diego, we have seen 2381 cases of experienced theft of food benefits, a total of 1.2 million in benefits that needed to be replaced. In addition, these events have placed additional strain on county staff as the workload on county departments to process the reports, claims, investigations, and restitution of these benefits is staggering.

We are grateful for the Governor having identified funds in his January proposed budget for the next fiscal year. But fiscal year 2025-26 is far too late. A process similar to the middle-class tax refund rolled out by the state over the last month would be an extremely helpful option to ensure necessary security is added to the Calfresh benefits.

Finally, we respectfully request that this body consider more immediate solutions that will assist our vulnerable residents who were, are being and will be impacted by fraudsters and scammers who have stolen from them. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. Anna Hasselblad with United Ways of California we're so appreciative of the content covered today and we are in support of an antiracist and family-centered CalWORKS program ending deep poverty for all children in CalWORKS, enacting food for all for all ages regardless of immigration status, a minimum CalFresh benefit of $50 per month and a cradle to career services supports. Our communities are struggling and we hear it all the time, especially through two-on-one information and referral call centers.

We encourage the Legislature to consider also pathways to resources and acknowledging 211 as a safety net front door, and it must be reinforced and considered a statewide resource. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, good evening. Maria Roma with the Child Care Resource Center. We are California's largest child and family services nonprofit that represents over 50,000 children and families in northern LA County and San Bernardino County. Thank you all for holding a Committee hearing on anti-poverty programs and specifically addressing childcare support services. At CCRC, we support reimagining CalWORKS to end deep poverty for all children. Our priority as an organization is to keep families whole while addressing child support disparities that disrupt families.

We strongly advocate for creating integrated support services for families at childcare sites because that is the first place most parents go to when they're asking for help. As a result of this effort, we are currently sponsoring a Bill with Senator Caroline Menjivar, SB 635, which will increase statewide access to early childhood development screenings for children zero to five and ensure that they are provided and referred to the additional services that they need for further assessment.

We are also sponsoring AB 596 with Assemblymember Reyes to increase reimbursement rates for childcare providers and eliminate family fees. I understand this is a budget hearing and we're not discussing legislative bills, but we do ask you to support these bills because, as we all heard during this meeting's first item discussion, childcare is essential to eliminating child poverty. And childcare allows parents and families to work and continue their professional development. It creates wage progression and means increased education for both children and parents.

And yet, while childcare is needed to move families out of poverty, we need to be aware that childcare workforce remains predominantly women of color who are often underpaid and overlooked. Childcare is a viable solution to ending child poverty, but we need to ensure that we support the workforce by increasing reimbursement rates.

We cannot expect providers to offer services while being paid less than they deserve, and we cannot expect families to pay more out of pocket for services that are essential to the parent and child's well being. We need the state to create more integrated services for families and make childcare sites the central hub for such services, increase reimbursement rates and eliminate family fees. Like Assemblymember Corey Jackson said earlier, if the child is in need, then the parent and the family is in need.

So let's support whole child and whole family needs. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, Chair and Members. Cynthia Gomez, State Policy Advocate with CHIRLA, here to speak on three items. First, we're in strong support of the expansion of CFAP to all Californians regardless of their immigration status or their age. And we want to see the implementation of CFAP for folks 55 and older, sooner rather than later.

Second, on the issue of homelessness, we see an urgent need for investment between investment for education outreach between immigrant rights, CBOs, and shelters to address the needs of new arrivals and mixed-status families experiencing homelessness. In particular, we hope to have resources that help with increased cultural competency for folks experiencing homelessness and have unique challenges because of their documentation status. Finally, when discussing poverty in families, it's imperative that we also discuss poverty in senior populations.

Many times, immigrant families are multigenerational households, which means that parents are providing both for their children and their senior parents. We see a need to provide cash assistance to aging immigrant and undocumented seniors and would like to see the CAPI Program expanded to include access for undocumented seniors facing poverty. Thank you.

Thank you.

Holly Fraumeni De Jesus with Lighthouse Public Affairs. Here today. On behalf of SPUR, we appreciate the staff and the Committee panelists earlier highlighting the hunger cliff that is in front of us. But identifying and raising awareness of the cliff is step one. Step two is coming up some critical solutions to address the immediate problem.

I'm speaking today on item number two and want to echo the comments of Jared Call from Nourished California's earlier remarks that one way to address this cliff is to support the expansion of the current pilot program of the California Fruit and Vegetables Supplemental Benefits Program that's providing $60 a month penny for penny match to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. This has now just got launched just this week.

The automation is finally set and we're now officially operating in farmers markets and grocers in the state and soon throughout the State of California. It's ready to scale, it's ready to go. And we encourage the Legislature as well as Administration to Fund the expansion of this program to support more households statewide. We're also in support of the increase of CalFresh's minimum allotments, as highlighted by the Association of Food Banks earlier, as well as the Food4All Program and the expansion of CFAP for undocumented Californians.

And we also support that expedited timeline that's reflective of last year's budget. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Christina McKibben Syas and I'm the Executive Director of Community Justice Alliance. We are a legal services nonprofit servicing California Central Valley and we also serve the unaccompanied minors that were at issue with opportunities for youth pilot. And so I wanted to share what we've learned with the first three years of that pilot, and that is after release from federal custody. These children have no safety net.

There is no safety net on the federal level, and this was the pilot for the safety net for the California level. So we have been able to provide concrete supports with mental health that were linguistically appropriate, culturally appropriate in the school settings. We've also supplied enrollment in schools where they were continuously told to apply for a continuation school. And we're supplying internship opportunities to build community.

And this is often the only time that they're able to meet each other outside of the immigration courtroom, where they're left to defend their own deportation proceedings. So they're not 2D images anymore from 2018 in the Ayes-Box with mylar blankets. They're our community Members, and they are deserving of an investment. And they're here to speak to you today.

Thank you. Thank.

Buenostardes, minambre S. Cruz belen

Good afternoon. My name is Cruz Belen.

Tango De Sino De anios bengal De Mexico. Ibivan Fresno.

I am 19 years old. I am from Mexico, and I live in Fresno, California.

Oyes toy paralevantar La Bos permutos Comoyo Kenopodiro beniroi.

I'm here to raise a voice for many unaccompanied minors like myself that couldn't make it here today.

Jolesquiro perino parama les voya contarunpoquito De mistoria.

I am here in support of the renewance of opportunities for youth, and I want to tell you guys a little bit of my story.

[Foreign Speaking]

I came to the United States as an unaccompanied minor.

[Foreign Speaking]

Community Justice alliance the Agency of Community Justice alliance supported me in my efforts of receiving mental health services.