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 programs that serve vulnerable children. Then we will talk about automation projects and finally end with a conversation around on the Department of Community Services and Development's budget proposal. We will start with the opening issue on racial disparities in child welfare and the role of CalWORKS in the community prevention pathway.

We are delighted to welcome leaders both in the child welfare and calwork spaces to speak at the same table to this interrelated topic that holds promise for breaking the cycle of poverty for more of California's children. Today we are having an in person hearing in the Capitol in room 444. All panelists today are all in the room and 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 1-877-692-8957 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 have completed all of the discussion issues on the agenda is when we will begin public comment after all of the Members have concluded their questions for the panels.

There will be no votes taken in today's hearing, and I want to note that we are accepting written feedback through the sub one email account, and that address is budget sub one at ASM.CA.Gov. Before we invite our first panel to begin, I will make some introductory comments and then we'll open it up to see if any colleagues would like to do the same. Part of our challenge in government is to see above the silos and to leverage the interrelationship between programs.

We've rebranded programs and refurbished them in an effort to reimagine and to improve outcomes. We've made big cultural changes and shifted paradigms in many areas, closing the developmental centers, expanding Cal Fresh to our SSI population, ending group homes, and building connections to the medical behavioral health for our foster youth, creating a health for all as well as CalAIM.

Just as a few examples building upon some of these past conversations, it is important for us to enact new changes in our antipoverty programs, with special attention to the welfare of our children. Seeing CalWORKS as a primary prevention strategy to improve outcomes and to reduce the stark disparities is of high interest, an interest that I hope the Administration and I can embrace and share. As we do more in the child welfare prevention. The disparities that we will hear under issue one are profound, historic, and disturbing.

It is widely recognized that poverty is a key driver of these disparities, and we have a core safety net program that is perfectly situated to aid families who are at risk of their children entering the child welfare system. Moving CalWORKS to be more central in the conversation about child welfare prevention is a strategy that we can marshall forward as a state. I am hopeful that we can take some key steps this year to activate this connection to the prevention conversation.

I want to read two quick quotes that I think are important to the conversation. The first is from David Swanson Hollinger, who is the co chair of the Prevention and Early intervention Committee of the California Child Welfare Council, and he says, I think it is about helping families before it gets to child welfare. We need leadership from our systems, our public partners, to private agencies and our community to support and to strengthen our families.

And second from Jessica Matu Newsom, program Director of family and children's services in San Francisco Human Services Agency. She says, when we discuss the data, people are shocked. Black and Native American children and families are touched by the child welfare system disproportionately and at significantly higher rates than other groups. Understanding this disproportionality helps us examine our own biases and starts to think about how we can be part of the change instead of part of the problem.

Today we will talk in depth about the large scale initiatives that the state is involved in in child welfare, including the continuum of care reform and the work to implement the Federal Family First Prevention Services act. We will hear from the many voices and will be asking for some important follow up work from the Administration. With that said, I am grateful to our panelists who are here in person. I'd like to now open it up and see if any other Members would like opening comments.

With that, we will begin with panel one regarding racial disparities in child welfare and the role of CalWORKS in the community prevention pathway. For those panelists who are presenters, I'd ask that we please present in the order that your name appears in the agenda. I'd like to remind all of the 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 the public comment before too late into the afternoon or early evening, some of the questions for the panelists for this issue are, what is the state's vision and tangible goals to reduce racial disparities in child welfare? What is the correlation between poverty and involvement in the child welfare system? And what is the relationship and role of the CalWORKS program in the state's goals related to prevention?

We will have six presenters on this panel for issue one, and we will begin with Ms. Short when you are ready.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman, Members Angela Short with the Legislative Analyst Office. I'll be presenting today from this handout, which provides an update to our office's ongoing research and analysis into this issue. I believe you have the handout. The sergeant also has copies. Also, it's available on the Subcommittee's webpage as well as Lao's page. So jumping right in as we know, foster youth in California are disproportionately Low income black and Native American.

This first figure serves to demonstrate the disproportionate representation of various racial and ethnic groups between their share of California's overall child population and their representation in the foster care system. So, for example, looking at black youth, we see they make up around 5 or 6% of California's overall child population, but account for more than 20% of youth in foster care. In addition, we have recent research from Dr. Emily Putnam Hornstein and others on the cumulative or lifetime child welfare system involvement.

Specifically, this research looked at California's 1999 birth cohort and found nearly one in two black and Native American youth, by the time they turn 18, become involved with the child welfare system at some level. Turning to page two, this same research also found that lower income families, specifically those with Medical, as their insurance, experience child welfare involvement at more than twice the rate of higher income families or those with private insurance.

And moreover, we know that the vast majority of our families in the child welfare system are experiencing poverty or otherwise facing some level of economic hardship. Turning to page three, this figure uses data from the California Child Welfare Indicators project to illustrate the disparate likelihoods of different racial and ethnic groups of becoming involved with the system at various levels.

So this is comparing various groups to white children, meaning that bars moving to the right of that center line are showing those groups are more likely to be involved. Bars to the left, conversely, mean that group is less likely to be involved. So again, looking at black children just as an example, we see they're nearly three times more likely compared to white children to be subject of a maltreatment allegation and more than five times more likely than white children to actually be in foster care.

Turning to page four, this figure is demonstrating a similar concept in terms of disparities between different groups. However, this is comparing just children in poverty. So when we look at families experiencing poverty, we see that disparities are diminished somewhat. However, notably, black and Native American children still are significantly more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to be in foster care.

Turning to page five, all the figures we've talked through to this point are just looking at the most recently available data at a point in time. However, if we look historically, we can see that the trends in terms of disproportionate representation really haven't changed very much over time. Turning to page six, I'll now touch just briefly on a few specific policy areas that our office is exploring through our continued research.

We're really focusing on the front end of the child welfare system at this point, meaning initial allegations, entries into care, because as we just saw in those figures, disproportionalities are present at that level and then really cascade throughout the rest of the system. So those three areas that I'll just touch on briefly here are mandated reporting, neglect, and prevention services. Beginning with mandated reporting, the vast majority of maltreatment allegations come from mandated reporters.

These are individuals actually defined by statute in certain professions who have regular contact with children and families, such as teachers, doctors, law enforcement, et cetera. So, turning to page seven, some key questions we are exploring around mandated reporting include, are current practices effective? Do mandated reporters receive sufficient training? In particular, implicit bias training? Should all mandated reports go directly to the child welfare agency, or is there some alternative pathway we could consider?

And finally, as we're considering any changes to mandated reporting, how can we continue to ensure child safety is prioritized? So I'll next touch briefly on neglect. As you can see from the figure on page eight, the vast majority of youth in California's foster care system have entered care due to a maltreatment allegation of neglect as opposed to physical abuse or any other reason in particular. Over time, as we can see, more than 80% of our foster youth have been placed due to neglect.

However, we don't have good aggregated data at the state level that really allows us to understand systematically what are the underlying harms or risks to the child when we're talking about neglect. We do have one recent study that examined social worker narrative reports. So really looking into the detail of what was the family experiencing? What were the particular conditions? And this study did identify that some common parental risk factors include substance use, domestic violence, mental health, and a few other areas. So turning to page nine.

Again, considering that we still don't have good aggregated data to be able to better really analyze what's happening when we talk about neglect, the areas we're exploring here are what data should the state collect to better understand the underlying risks or harm to a child of neglect? And are there any statutory changes or clarifications the Legislature could consider to better define what neglect truly means? And then lastly, turning to page 10, the final policy area we're really focused on in our ongoing research is prevention services.

Research has found that poverty and economic stressors create conditions in which child maltreatment is more likely to occur. Research also has found a clear relationship between increasing state public assistance programs such as cash assistance, nutrition assistance, housing supports, tax credits, and more, and decreasing child maltreatment. Finally, as noted, research also has identified substance use, mental health and mental health are some key underlying harms of neglect. So, with that in mind, what supports could the Legislature consider to target disproportionately impacted communities prior to their system involvement?

How can the Legislature ensure poverty alleviation programs, including cowworks and child welfare supports, are truly complementary? And similarly, how can the Legislature help ensure behavioral health and mental health budget augmentations, and programs are complementary to child welfare. So I'll stop there and happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Director Johnson.

Good afternoon. Thank you. Chair Committee Members Kim Johnson, California Department of Social Services and I just want to thank the Committee for the Intention of addressing and identifying these inequities. That's a big portion of our work, is having the data being clear about to track over time, our progress in the space, but really naming the inequities that we're seeing and the disparities in disproportionality.

To the Committees questions our ultimate vision is to achieve equity and eliminate those disparities and disproportionalities at all points in the child welfare Continuum and beyond in our other programs. And we absolutely want to just, again, other committees been speaking about the terms of equity and what we mean by that, but we're ultimately talking about 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.

Again, I've shared with the Committee prior that I did establish an office of equity in 2019 within the Department of Social Services, and that is to ensure we have focused leadership across the organization to embed equity principles in what we are doing having ambassadors across the organization, our ability and capacity to look at our policies, our program design through that lens was all the intent behind the establishment of this office.

In addition to that, we've established an Assistant Director of equity and inclusion, which advises and assists the executive leadership, including myself, in the formation, implementation, and evaluation of those policies and practices, and specifically focuses on child welfare and foster care programs. Within the office of Equity, including the Director of the office, the Assistant Director that I just referenced, we also have an office of tribal affairs.

So to the disproportionality and overrepresentation of Native American children, Indian children, in our child welfare system, this is key and paramount. And I'm grateful to my predecessor, Director Lightborne, for establishing this office prior to my time in this role. But really, the office is there to organize and facilitate our government to government consultation with tribal leaders and representatives. They help support and provide technical assistance and capacity building across the organization.

But a big portion of what they are focused on is the implementation of the indian Child Welfare act to fidelity. So we're working not only with tribal leaders, but also with our county partners in ensuring that's an effort that we are all moving towards. I will just note, noting the Supreme Court and Brackeen court that's currently in process, the Department and the Administration continue our commitment to California's ICWA.

Obviously, we've taken the federal law and have several components that we've embedded into the California law, and we are committed to continue this work. And so again, we have grown this office over time, including the expansion of actual field liaisons that are out into communities, again working on that connection between the counties and the tribes to support that implementation of ICWA. We also this past year created an icwa state plan in partnership with tribal leaders and counties and are in the process of implementing that.

Many tools have been developed out of this office and in partnership with the Children and Family Services Division as well. We have a compliance hotline where as we're seeing any challenges with implementing ICWA, again, goal being keeping Indian children with their family and tribes. We have an ability to look at what's coming in through that hotline, address immediate concerns, but look at trends over time on how that shapes the technical assistance that we provide going forward.

I'll also just note that while the office of Tribal affairs is primarily focused on the Indian Child Welfare act, it's also been really the catalyst that drives us to have new ways. We're creating set asides of supporting in our housing and homelessness programs, tribal communities. We have tribal TANIF conversations that we have in partnership with tribes in Cal Works as well and many other components.

So we're grateful to have the opportunity and in partnership with the Legislature Administration to launch many of the first of its kind funding for some of these efforts, including tribal dependency representation, which we've never had before. There's set asides within the family, finding engagement and support that the Committee will hear about in a bit as well. For tribal communities and much more, cultivating and maintaining the meaningful relationship is key here.

I just had the great privilege of spending the last week, a couple of days of last week in Humboldt County working directly with tribal leaders and the county to talk about what else the state can be doing to address disparities and work on fidelity. So really, again, a huge priority for us in addressing the disparities that we see also in terms of addressing systemic disparities for black families in child welfare programs.

As you've heard, significant histories of systemic racism in society and government, not unlike the tribal experience. And so we have been looking at a number of efforts also focused on training and competencies.

We in child welfare have done things that we are now replicating in our calorics and Calfrosh programs, like providing implicit bias training to county staff and state staff, again to build our own competencies and recognizing the power that these Members of our government have in really ultimately determining the life course of children and families. And so I also just want to lift up we have something called the integrated core practice model that guides all of the work that we're doing.

It actually was built from a 2010 federal grant specifically looking at the disparities in the black and African American community and shaped by those communities and how we look at our supports and strategies of how we inform trauma informed approaches and supports. Moving forward, you'll hear a lot about how we are really changing how we're thinking about our systems, the inflow of child welfare.

So, to the comments that the LaO referenced related to mandated reporting, and you'll hear that again from our assistant secretary at California Health and Human Services Agency, mandated reporting to community supporting, not unlike the conversation, again, we just had in the Cal workspace of how we can re envision how we are supporting families. But how big of a difference would that make both in, of course, to the, again, the LAo's report, the training and supports that are needed for mandated reporters to understand their obligations.

But what if it was leading to the support on the other end that connects families to what they have? So that's a huge piece of the work. We're doing together also part of our family first prevention services plan as well. And I'll speak a little bit more to that in just a moment. Committee asked the correlation between poverty and involvement in the child welfare system.

I want to just first and foremost say that we are ensuring that we're not correlating being poor with being involved in child welfare. We do certainly to the points being made, see that the most common concern is related to the allegation of General neglect.

And I want to lift up and appreciate Assembly Member Holden that sponsored AB 2085, that we now have the opportunity in our implementing which really redefined General neglect and how we're looking at that over time from a place where we are revising it to describe substantial risk of suffering, serious physical harm or illness.

And so again, it states that it's not further that General neglect does not include a parent's economic disadvantage, that we are thinking very specifically intentional about how that's defined and how that then leads to connection. But again, I want to just highlight that we have to look at every part of our, the mandated reporting is one example, but we have to look at every part of our flow process through the child welfare system to identify what additional ways we can reform that space over time.

The Committee asked the relationship and role of the CalWORKS program in the state schools related to prevention.

Again, I want to just lift up kind of the theory of change in our prevention work, in our plan, and that is really about if California shapes policy and practice to promote the safety and wellbeing of its children, youth and families, then California's prevention partners and family strengthening agencies can promote child and family safety and well being by strengthening the capacity within communities to care for one another, work effectively together as a network of support and leverage resources to enhance impact so that we are integrated.

I really appreciate your opening comments, chair in that space of silos that we are integrated to support families to provide safe and stable and nurturing relationships and environments. So it's that no wrong door concept and part of our overall strategy. And so thinking of that and thinking about our CalWORKS program, which is providing that cash assistance and again, robust array of supports to help families meet their most basic needs to reach that economic stability. But ultimately, family stability is certainly a key to that work.

A few pieces I referenced in our prior conversation on Cal Works, but I just want to lift up. Again, it is the addition of components like family stabilization that we recognize that when a family in Cal Works is experiencing crisis, that we are wrapping around supports to stabilize them, to then think about additional opportunities to engage in work and education supports. We're looking at the needs of the child in terms of those supports.

I again want to thank the chair for their leadership on home visiting, a voluntary, strength based addition to our CalWORKS program that is all about connecting families to the supports that will provide that stability in the long term and having a trusted partner in relationship to walk alongside a family in that space, and that we are just grateful for the outcomes we are seeing to date with that addition to our program and look forward to continuing strengthening that effort.

We, of course, also have policy changes that I've referenced to the Committee before around family reunification. You'll hear again California Health and Human Services Agency and of course our secretary, who talks about how we're keeping families together. So we have together, between the Legislature and Administration, changed our policies to ensure that if a family is working to be reunified, they have the supports they need to do that and be more successful in that space.

And I'll also reference we have reinvigorated our linkages project, which is really about thinking through the families that are part of both Cal Works and our child welfare system. How are we working as a system together to integrate our resources and connections and not ask them to do duplicative or more than what's maybe even doable when they have their separate planning processes.

I also just want to share, again, as I did prior in the last Committee, that again, what we see and what we know in terms of impacting child poverty is that we actually saw child poverty drop in 2021 from 17.6% to 9%. That's from the fall of 2019 to the fall of 2021. And that really did mark the lowest ever child poverty rate. And that was again due to the safety net supports, child tax credit, Calfresh, emergency allotments, that again, stability.

And again, the supports that we've built that were much part of why that success was occurring. The Committee asked, how can the CalWORKS program be strengthened to improve outcomes? And again, want to note that we'll continue on our family reunification policy implementation and other components of this.

But it's also about our CalWORKS outcomes and accountability review that we've talked about with this Committee prior, looking holistically at the outcomes that we are aiming for, that we are focused on and intentional about on family and child well being, service delivery, engagement and barrier removal, with a much more robust array than in the past of just having a work participation rate. And so again, I think in terms of outcomes and how we're looking over this at time.

Again, you've heard me kind of start with internal to the Department, because it's critical again for us that we have that intention of how we're looking at data over time and addressing these disparities and having focused leadership whose essentially sole responsibility is to do that in partnership and again building the capacity of the organization. But certainly in terms of the data that we're looking at in disparities over time, that's a huge piece of what we're looking at.

We have data that we collect as part of our Child and Family Services review, or CFSR process that also looks at this and asks counties to look at disparities and disproportionality locally so they can address this over time and how they're specific in their community to identify plans to address those disparities. So again, more work to be done and just again appreciate the lifting up of how we're moving on this work together.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Andrew Shane, managing Director of Public Policy at Grace and End Child poverty in California.

Thank you, chair Members. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the reimagined Cal Works Coalition.

As you said, my name is Andrew Shane, managing Director of public policy for Grace and End Child Poverty California, and I am so glad to have the opportunity to be at this table with these leaders to discuss how reimagining Cal Works to be an anti racist, family centered program can also address racial disparities in the child welfare system as an intervention to help prevent removals in the first place, limit the duration of placements, and support family reunification.

Cal Works is a critical safety net program providing basic cash assistance and supportive services to approximately 360,000 families with 750 children in those families. The adult caseload is disproportionately single women of color, more than half of whom are not receiving the adult portion of the grant. The caseload is approximately 60% Latinx, 17% black, with approximately 90% women.

As the powerful testimony by CalWORKS advocate Glenda Burnell recently highlighted, the current program has significant flaws grounded in the 1996 personal responsibility welfare law from the Federal Government in 1996 and the 1997 CalWORKS implementation, that unfortunately was grounded in racist, sexist, and classist notions that parents with low incomes are lazy and must be coerced to work that we know is not true.

A body of research that the LAO has done well to overview has documented both the harmful Association between our currently rigid and punitive policies that contribute to child welfare placements and the protective potential of CalWORKS as a preventative intervention. As Dr. Johnson pointed out, the relationship between poverty and child welfare is not intrinsically correlated. However, the data are long term and show that in practice, unfortunately, those connections are quite strong.

And in fact, the 80% data shown by the LAO in terms of the initial reports being related to neglect is actually far higher. Nationally, it's only 60% of substantiated CPS responses involve neglect only, and overall, we know that children in economically insecure households are seven times more likely to experience neglect compared to other children. But the data allows to be even more specific, spotlighting the harm of withholding vital cachet in destabilizing families.

States that have implemented full family TANF sanctions, which we're not doing, we only have the adults. But for illustrative purposes, the full family TANF sanction for lack of compliance with work requirements were actually associated with a 12.7% increase in total foster care entries. So in fact, that connection has been documented and I'd be glad to share the data with everyone.

And every study comparing the race and ethnicity of sanctioned TANF or CalWORKS recipients finds that African Americans are significantly more likely to be sanctioned than their white counterparts. Fortunately, research also shows that improving access to and raising levels of CalWORKS and other public benefits as Director Johnson spoke to as we have the national data on it doesn't have to be just CalWORKS. Also the CTC and the Calfresh emergency allotments.

These mitigate against the potential risk factors for intervention due to negative earning shocks or other toxic stresses that families occur nationally. This protective effect is especially strong for families with young children ages zero to four, having shown to demonstrate a 12% decrease in the risk for child CPS involvement and a 50% decline in the risk for physical abuse investigation. Conversely, a 10% increase in the state public benefit levels, including TANF for a family of four, has been shown to reduce foster care placements by 8%.

Our coalition has proposed a set of interrelated reforms to reimagine CalWORKS away from its current flaws and fulfill the potential of the program. Here are just a few highlights and how they will help stabilize families to prevent child welfare referrals and support family reunification, including some of the wonderful efforts that Dr. Johnson outlined eliminating or reducing sanctions to federal minimums ensuring parents have the income to afford critical necessities like food, rent, utility and school supplies.

Shifting calworks'current rigid workforce focus to a family assistance model, enabling counties to quickly offer supports tailored to parents as well as children move from a penalty focus into one in which families create plans that meet their needs, including alignment with requirements for family maintenance or reunification.

Supporting the linkages work already ongoing, as was pointed out, expanding the activities related to work participation to include a wide variety of antipoverty related activities necessary for families in crisis improving access to supportive services to meet needs related to substance abuse, mental health, and other related risk factors, eliminate the work participation rate penalty pass through, to remove the potential penalty on counties and make clear that centering family wellbeing and long term success are the program's guiding goals. And finally, fulfill the commitment to achieve the grant levels at least at 50% of the federal poverty level and end deep child poverty for all assistance units, including au plus one.

These steps to reimagine CalWORKS and end deep child poverty for all children are powerful evidencebased interventions to stabilize families and prevent the traumatic long term consequences of removal critical to that child's well being and which will also save the significant social and financial costs associated with child welfare placement for a CalWORKS caseload that is disproportionately led by women of color. These long overdue reforms can also address racial disparities in the child welfare system.

I know it wasn't possible to have a CalWORKS participant here today, so I just want to very briefly channel Glenda from the Spark community advocate who just testified to this Committee two weeks ago. When parents are denied transportation support or don't receive the translation services needed to navigate the program, as she reported, her husband simply shut down.

It is the children in these families who are the ultimate victim of these policies bearing the toxic stress of deeper poverty when parents are sanctioned, or the trauma of watching that parent fight for them to come back onto the program. The good news is California does not need to have these policies on the books.

We can follow the example by Vermont and other other states to enact these family first policies, which are critical even to fulfill the wonderful work that's being done by CalWORKS 2.0 that were mentioned. Thank you chair, for your leadership on these issues and the opportunity to testify today.

Thank you.

Next, we will hear from Nick Picinich, Assistant Secretary for California Health and Human Services Agency.

Good afternoon. Chair Arambula and Member Jackson. My name is Nick Picinich, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. Want to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about the Child Welfare Council and our focus towards upending the disparities that exist in the child welfare system. So, to start, I'll give you some background. The council began it started in 2006. It serves as an advisory body.

It's comprised of co-chairs, which are currently Secretary Ghaly and Justice Earl. There are 45 members that represent state and county departments, as well as our tribal nations, nonprofit service providers, advocacy groups, parents, and former foster youth. Within the Child Welfare Council, there's also six committees and an action team, and their focus is really on building the recommendations put forward to members to take action or vote on. There's two main reasons this body exists.

One is to improve the collaboration and processes between the multiple agencies in the courts. The second is to ensure that these multiple agencies and the courts are responsive to the needs of the children in their joint care. At the beginning of 2022, Secretary Ghaly introduced his vision for the council, and it was well received. His vision is a focus toward keeping families together.

As Director Johnson has stated, a recent investment that aligns with this focus is the Center for Excellence in Family Finding, Engagement, and Support, which is really the perfect illustration for holding true to a kin-first and family-centered culture. Family Finding, Engagement, and Support is a practice that respects the expertise of the family, and it understands that our children cannot heal without being connected to those people that are most important in their lives.

The council continues to support the investment through a series of ongoing recommendations made by the Permanency Committee, and these recommendations are well aligned with the Department of Social Services through its own efforts, have seen dramatic improvements in establishing first placements with relatives. Since 2017, DSS notes a 20% increase in youth that have first placement with a relative or an extended family member. We know that this isn't perfect, but this is a strive in the right direction.

With a unified approach between our courts and the child welfare departments, we can create a network of support for our youth and ensure that those people that matter the most to them have a role in planning for their future. The Prevention and Early Intervention Committee has also been very vocal as of late and has provided recommendations for a statewide implementation of community pathways. And really, this is in support of that paradigm shift from mandated reporting to community supporting.

To avoid the possibility of this recommendation falling to the wayside, the PEI Committee did a good job in setting up a task force, and they're being charged with ensuring that the legal definition of neglect is redefined, that there is a redesigning of the mandated reporter training, and addressing policy and practice reforms to institute this shift in mindset for how and when we report. To be successful, we must center the voice of those with lived experiences, and by placing equity at the center of all recommendations made by the council, we are reinforcing that shift of power to the communities and those that feel marginalized. We are acutely aware that over the past decade, as the LAO has stated, that more than 80% of youth in foster care at any time were removed due to neglect.

More importantly, we are aware that the economic and concrete supports are associated with a decrease in neglect. Through programs like cultural brokers who break down barriers for successful engagement with family and kin, such as connecting them with public benefits, we are seeing results that are culturally appropriate and responsive to the needs of families.

There have been specific additions to the CalWORKS program that target families that may be more vulnerable to potential child welfare involvement, and the CalWORKS program has incorporated additional supports for these families experiencing crisis, like the Family Stabilization program, to ensure a basic level of stability. The Legislature and the Governor recently extended the availability of CalWORKS assistance for parents whose children were removed from them through the child welfare system in order to support the reunification process.

So overall, both the California Health and Human Services Agency as well as the Department of Social Services are continually striving to improve the effectiveness of the CalWORKS program by supporting families experiencing a need, including those families in crisis or whose children may be at risk of experiencing neglect or abuse. Thank you for your time.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair Members. Cathy Senderling-McDonald, CWDA. Counties, as you heard, are engaged in a lot of efforts right now in partnership with the state and with other organizations to try to help reduce disparities and disproportionality in the child welfare system. Obviously, though, given the data that you see, more can be done on all of our parts. Counties continue to engage in differential response work.

The idea there is to partner locally with organizations such as family resource centers to respond when there are reports of abuse and neglect and try to provide services to help prevent entries to foster care. What we're seeing now is nearly all counties working to develop their prevention plans.

We'll talk about this more when we get to the Family First Prevention Services panel, but as Director Johnson noted, we are looking to utilize funds that were provided by this committee and the legislature and administration two years ago to try to further build out and use the opportunities that that act provides. We also are continuing to implement and revitalize the linkages program, as noted by Director Johnson.

And we really appreciate the ICWA work and our partnership with the tribes, as well as we have a specialist in ICWA on our staff who can work individually with counties and tribes as well as with our state partners when issues may arise. What I think we continue to see, though, as you noted in the LAO presentation and report, is that we have disproportionality at every stage from that first phone call all the way through.

And depending on which group of children you're looking at, it may be that children who are black remain longer in care. Children who are Latino may come in more at a rapider pace, but go home quicker, so we can try to, I think, also learn from differences that we see. How do we get some children back with their families quickly, and how does that work? Why do some stay so long?

We want to try to, I think, arrest and change from the very start, like you've heard just from that first phone call, that we get backing it up even further now and thinking about how we work with communities and directly with mandated reporters to say: how do we strengthen families and how do we change the dynamic where the only place to call in some situations when you're worried about a child or a family is the child welfare system?

And so we think that there is great promise in a lot of the work that is being done. We also think that CalWORKS offers great promise, too, just as Mr. Cheyne said. And as Director Johnson noted, we're administering the home visiting program, which you've been a champion of, Mr. Chair, as well as the family stabilization program. Those have a great opportunity for us to provide services for our CalWORKS recipients and also try to arrest the effects of poverty.

In addition, the CalWORKS Family Reunification program, which Director Johnson also mentioned, allows us to directly work with families who are both in the child welfare system as well as in the CalWORKS program. CWDA was pleased, and it was one of the first bills I worked on when I came to CWDA in 2000 to sponsor the original legislation that allows us to continue providing supportive services in those situations. However, at the time, we were not able to continue the grant.

Now, a couple of years ago, as you've heard, we were able to again sponsor an effort and successfully to continue providing the grant to the families as well as the supportive services when children are removed and placed in foster care.

It just didn't make a lot of sense ever, and certainly not with the cost of living and the high cost of housing to impoverish families when their children are pulled out, put into foster care, and we're attempting to reunify them, especially when we know that there's so much disproportionality in who's in the system, who are receiving services from our programs, to begin with.

It just really exacerbates and kind of perpetuated all of the racism, the classism, the sexism that we know existed and that our services are built on and that we're trying to break free from. And so even with those additional economic supports, counties recognize we do need to continuously work to reduce racial, ethnic as well as economic bias in our system through continued training, workforce support, and empowering families and communities to identify and drive the services that they need locally.

Not us coming in and saying, "We know what you need," but us going to them and saying, "Let's talk, and you tell us what you need, and we will bring those services and resources to bear as your partner." I do want to share just a couple of additional things. First, you heard from the assistant secretary regarding the Child Welfare Council. I'm a proud member of that council representing CWDA and was pleased to vote for the community pathways effort.

The idea moving from simply having that mandated reporting to also having a way to support communities, it's not done yet. We obviously have work to do, but I think it holds significant promise for our continued ability to really meet families and communities where they are and learn from the work that they've done, the programs and services that they've built up. Often, those things don't have an evidentiary base.

We really like to see evidence-based programs, but things that are homegrown in smaller communities that may be very culturally relevant may not have that evidence base. So we may have to put in state funding, county funding to be able to support those for some time. Ideally, we could build that evidence base and ultimately be able to bring down federal dollars for that, but we certainly should support the proliferation and expansion of those services.

I want to just also say one last thing, which is one of the questions that the LAO asked was related to behavioral health augmentations and child welfare augmentations, and how can we ensure that those are really complementary to each other? It seems like there's a few needs here. We would say more coordination of care by making sure that we're jointly working together, more training, and workforce supports. We really appreciate the recent investments by the administration, the legislature in both child welfare and behavioral health.

I mean, a lot of this was led through the CalAIM initiative, and a huge example that's very important is automatic eligibility for specialty mental health services for children who are in foster care or at risk of being in foster care. There's a tremendous change, and being able to access those services is going to be extremely important. That was a joint recommendation by our partners at CBHDA as well as CWDA, and we were so pleased to see it happen.

DHCs and CDSs in this budget have proposed child and family teams for family maintenance cases. The idea is to bring the teaming effort that is successful when done robustly to cases that we're trying to keep together once we've reunified or if we think we're not quite at a place where we need to bring you into care, but we want to provide some services.

And really having the voice of the family and other people who are important to them is really critical in that. We're also having significant difficulty accessing behavioral health, including both mental health and substance use disorder services for the parents. That's an area where if the parent is using substances or has untreated mental health needs. I think, as you saw, that was something that was present in so many of those neglect cases that Ms. Short reported on from the LAO.

We know that there is huge demand for behavioral health practitioners right now. There were workforce investments made. Some of those are proposed to be delayed. We do just urge that we all take a really critical eye as we think about how we build that workforce. It is in significant demand, even over the weekend, and today we've heard from the Health and Human Services Agency these proposals, and they are very important. And also the workforce is very stretched at the moment through all of the demands on it.

And so working together to increase our social work and county staff on the child welfare side, as well as ensuring that those investments in the behavior feral health workforce are also being brought to bear, are extremely important. Just wanted to make a few notes on that. Thank you.

Thank you. Department of Finance.

Erin Carson, Department of Finance. Nothing to add on this issue?

Bring it up to the dais for any members'questions. We'll begin with Dr. Jackson.

Thank you all, certainly, for being here. Obviously, there's starting to be more reports on implementing a blind case review to help with the disproportionality that we are seeing. Certainly we know Los Angeles County right now is going through a pilot. When are we ready to pull the trigger?

Thank you, Committee Member. We are following this very closely. Just let me start there. We actually have been in touch with LA County's effort here and some early results that we have seen that have been promising. So, with the blind removal, we've seen a real change in the data and the outcomes that have been as a result. So we are just very closely in touch right now in following this to see what we can learn in terms of any other implementation or scale on this effort.

Any idea when we should start seeing the first round of data that comes from that?

We do have the first round of data, so I'm happy to follow up with the committee on what's been shared, and we can coordinate that with LA County.

Please. That would be very helpful. Secondly, obviously, we know that a significant part of those who are most vulnerable are single mothers. We've already indicated that in many cases, money runs out for the parent but continues for the child. Are we considering any way to fix that, or is that a federal issue? Who can fix this?

Again, Assembly Jackson and thank you for the question. Kim Johnson, Social Services. Yes, so currently, this is a state construction, so we can, we, the state, can make any adjustments to this piece. Certainly, part of all of our conversation around providing cash assistance and additional support. There are certainly federal rules that are related to that, and this is, again, going back to the work participation rate, right? What activities count, what rules do we have related to sanctioned policies, these kinds of things.

There are pieces of that that will impact work participation rate, but we have made adjustments over time as a state and can continue to look at that. I will say that we are one of very few states that continues the cash assistance to the child and, in fact, think that's a really key and critical component of our program that's supporting families for a longer duration.

But in terms of any other policy changes related to additional supports for the family, we could do that and then certainly think about what the consequences would be in terms of any implication work participation rate. I will again say you are all very close to receiving a report from the department related to the work group's consultation with us on recommendations related to work participation rate, and I will also say to you that policies around sanctioning was a big piece of feedback that we received from stakeholders in that conversation. So, more to come on that topic. But again, much of those provisions are in the state statutory construction.

Can we bring in Cathy Senderling-McDonald, please? And then followed by Andrew Cheyne.

Thank you. Thank you, Assemblymember. Jackson Cathy Senderling, CWDA: on that point, I would just note also to sort of how to think about CalWORKS, and the federal rules are we fully exhaust the federal block grant that we receive, we spend it and then a lot more.

And so really, any investment at this point in CalWORKS, think of it as a state general fund dollar because even though there's a block grant, it's not like it's matching funds like we see in things like Medi-Cal, where if we put up a dollar, we'll get a dollar that sort of know we've exhausted it. So it's always a state general fund.

So that does put a lot of the decisions then back squarely on the state to make the decision as far as do we have those funds? And also, is that a policy that we want to do?

I think one of the things, and I think Mr. Cheyne might speak to this, I think we spoke about last week, is thinking about for those child-only cases, I think we know that there is a good bit of economic participation in the economy, and so it's possible that it might help to some degree, or at least not hurt, if you think about that federal work participation rate, to think about how we might aid those. You know, it's math, right?

So you sort of think through that. But just wanted to throw a couple of thoughts out there.

Yeah, thank you. Andrew Cheyne with the reimagined CalWORKS coalition. Yeah. Just briefly, to your point, Dr. Jackson, that the federal rules are quite strict on what the WPR requirements are, but that's on the state to meet those. And there's actually a lot of latitude for how states interpret that for families.

And so when we talk about expanding the types of activities, the hours requirements, the ways in which we can utilize these policies within CalWORKS to help families, even without changing the sanctioned policy, which is, of course, very important to us, there are ways to help promote compliance in the program that will help families stay on and prevent some of the kinds of issues with trying to maintain access to the program that then are some of the same risk factors we're talking about.

Well, certainly, it's a priority of not only this subcommittee but also Human Services to ensure that we're going to fix that. Okay. But the idea is that that's just the beginning of what we need to fix once that block is gone; it allows us to get into some of the other things that we're starting to see, understanding that it is also a math issue. I'm a political science major in my bachelor's, so I don't know what math is, but at the end of the day -

They make you take that one stats course.

I don't even remember. I barely made it. I barely made it.

But obviously, when we think of these more of empowerment and prevention programs, certainly, and whether we need to do a study on this or something about how much can we be saving by being able to making sure that we truly do all we can to stabilize these families, making sure that we're not just giving them enough to survive, but giving them enough to be able to get to a path of upward mobility, then this is one of those long term things.

I know California doesn't do this well, long-term to make sure that we understand how to help people thrive. Lastly, I agree with the mandated reporter reporting issue and that it needs to be fixed. As someone who was a mandated reporter myself and supervised many employees who were mandated reporters, there's a lot of things that certainly do need to be fixed to make sure that we get it right.

But also in case, though, when we have substantiated cases, once a family have been found that a report or an inquiry is substantiated, does that then unlock other access to some of our other safety net programs to be able to put our arms around them? And if not, is that something that might be helpful?

So certainly, families that are coming into the child welfare system, in that case, potentially could have some safety net services but certainly might have others that are needed. So I think it's part of the opportunity with both county, with the judicial system, to identify kind of what supports are needed to both, again, ideally reunify. So, yes, in that case, again, there would be a connection and way in which we would be looking to support the family with those options and opportunities.

And if that's not the case, then obviously there's a whole nother set of resources that we've been talking through, again, that you'll hear on additional panels around family finding engagement and support. How are we if that child can't stay connected to that family? How are we connecting them to Ken? The outcomes that we see when we do that are so much greater in terms of success for youth. So again, we have investments and supports there.

It's kind of the path and the kind of individual needs then of the child will dictate additional supports that would go along with that. But I'll also just say these are places where we've together established programs like Bringing Families Home. Right. In recognition that families that might be involved in the child welfare system, who might be unsheltered or unsupported, need additional support with their housing to gain that stability.

So we have been looking at, again, what is the support that's needed to wrap around the family with the goal to keep families together when we can.

Right now, this is just me thinking out loud, pretty dangerous. But obviously, say a child, maybe for safety reasons, is not appropriate to keep the child at home. But they go to another, we find another family member, but we're not sure whether they have the financial means to really do what they need to do. Is it possible for us to say that because that child is now placed with this family, now they have access to CalFRESH, now they have access to, you see what I'm saying?

But they may not be there, have been enrolled in the first.

Right, right. No, I think that's a key part. I defer to Ms. Senderling if she wants to say it's absolutely a key part of our work together. I'll give you another example of that is the emergency -

But this is done? Are you saying that -

Yes, I'm saying it is done.

That's what I'm trying to figure out.

Emergency childcare bridge program for foster families. This was the idea that me, as auntie, to be able to support my niece coming to me, needs childcare and that the cost of childcare could be a hindrance for me being able to say yes to supporting my niece in that example. Right. So we created together legislature administration childcare dollars to support that recruitment and that stability for families who are willing and able to make that connection. So, yes, these are the kinds of connections we're making.

Appreciate it.

And over time, we've been able as a state to increase the support that we provide to relative caregivers. In fact, you're going to hear from Ms. Schwartz on the next panel, who, in her prior role with the Alliance for Children's Rights, was a big advocate, and we were able to work together and successfully get parity in near. I think we're pretty much there. I mean, I can't think of anything where we're not, but I'm sure Angie would know, so you'll hear from her.

But anyway, we increased the rates paid. We made access to other supports that a nonrelated foster parent and a relative can also receive. When I started again so many years ago, it was a very lopsided system where the relative was essentially expected to, mostly out of the goodness of their heart, just take in that child. But the studies show that most relative caregivers themselves are single women, often women of color.

They are often in poverty or pushed into poverty by taking in one or more of their relative children. And so they would do that. They would do it out of the goodness of their heart. But we weren't helping them and they were struggling, and nobody needs that. So we've been able to make improvements in that over time.

Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll bring it up to the Chair, and I wish to share and follow up on the home visiting program as I had the privilege of meeting with almost a dozen mothers women of color, who spoke about the benefits to the program, the safety to the children, the family well being, the stability through getting upstream and really want to uplift that as work that we're doing collaboratively that helps to prevent and avoid the child welfare system. But we still have these stubborn disparities that are before us.

And what I'd like to try and figure out is if there's an opportunity, with the FFPSA funding, the federal Families First Prevention Services Act, if we can target subpopulations to get upstream on those specific disparities, can we use those dollars and target specific subpopulations?

Thank you, chair. Kim Johnson, Social Services. Overall, the answer is yes. I want to maybe say a couple of things that I didn't share. Not only this work around addressing disparities, disproportionality is a priority and focus of the department. It's the secretary, it's also the governor. So I just want to also identify that last year, the governor issued an executive order mandating departments across the California government to have plans to address inequities in the work that they do.

Also has a Racial Equity Commission that's being established. That's true also at the federal level. So I would say the Administration for Children and Families has, Children's Bureau specifically who focuses on the child welfare space, has a number of equity priorities that they have outlined, specifically asking states these questions around how they're addressing disparities. Part of our work, they have a clearinghouse, essentially, of evidence based approaches that they have deemed to be fundable, if you will.

They continue to add on to what's being approved to be added to that clearinghouse. But I think one of the things that they've outlined that's certainly a priority of ours is ensuring that all of that we're building the evidence-based approaches that are culturally appropriate to be able to access and include and then, of course, draw down the federal resources to serve and support. So, I would say that it's consistent with what we're being asked at the federal level as well.

I think our concern was really related to Prop 209 and our ability to drive toward specific subpopulations. I understand we as a state have done this within education, looking to lowest performing subgroup, and so how do we identify within our Child Welfare Services and get upstream on those very same populations so we can disrupt these disparities where they start? I'd like to follow up: I heard earlier that the sanctions have a very significant effect on the ability for families to get that stability.

And yet what I didn't hear is whether or not there are disparities that we're seeing within our African American, our Native American populations regarding sanctions. Are they being sanctioned the same equally, or is there some bias that we should be addressing there upstream?

I know you had some data.

Yes. Hi. Thank you, Chair, for the question. The data are quite strong on that. I don't have the California-specific information with me, but I'd be glad to follow up on that. But unfortunately, a body of research has found that in every state where it's been studied, this is, in fact, true.

And we can certainly take a look as well, Chair.

I would appreciate that since it was mentioned two weeks ago, I will just elevate again how we should be recognizing all that are in the households. I understand it's a zero-sum game, and yet we must make sure that we are not doing the workarounds like Au plus one currently, but making sure we're recognizing all of the families as it may allow us to again address some of those very same disparities.

Mr. Cheyne, if I can, I want to follow up on how the government can help ensure that our poverty alleviation programs and child welfare supports are complementary and helping each other.

Yeah. So, just to give one example of that, in the proposals that we're envisioning, that would allow a lot more latitude of activities that are available to families, as well as building some of the processes that Director Johnson and Ms. Senderling discussed around the plan development.

But to really advance that into a co-created plan where the family is working hand in hand with the county to develop what their plan is, with more options, with more accessibility to family stabilization, to the offering of supports that we talked about in a way that's not going to be linked to the types of compliance and punishment related to the sanctioned policy. That allows us, I believe, to maximize the potential for alignment between the types of plans that would be required on the shell welfare side related to family maintenance or family unification.

So it's not a one-size-fits-all, but it's trying to develop the process that allows for that type of alignment and simplification for the family.

Seeing no further questions, I will thank very much this panel. I will make a request from the Chair. The subcommittee will return to the issues in CalWORKS at the April 26 hearing this year and will consider program improvements with the prevention goals in child welfare that were discussed today in mind.

I would like to ask for the staff to continue to work with the Child Welfare Council and CDSs to develop priority goals for CalWORKS through this prevention lens with reporting back to the Legislature in future years. I anticipate that we will be taking budget actions on subject in May and June as we head towards a new fiscal year. Outside of that, all issues will be held open.

We will now move on to panel two, and I will hand the gavel over as I can't replicate myself.

As we bring up panel number two, our goal is to ask some very important questions as it relates to our panelists. How is the state faring in CCR implementation, and what are the current challenges? What are the Department's efforts to create a new rate system for the child welfare system? Is the Department on track to have a new rate structure in place by January 1, 2025? And when will a rate proposal be public?

We have here five presenters for this panel. Angie Schwartz, Children and Family Services Division Deputy Director with the California Department of Social Services. Cathy continues to stay here running the marathon with us. Ms. Cathy Senderling-McDonald, Executive Director, County Welfare Directors Association of California, Tyler Rinde...

Rinde. Rinde.

Rinde. Deputy Director of Child Welfare Policy for the California Alliance for Child and Family Services, Angela Short with Principal Fiscal and Policy Analyst with the Legislative Analyst Office, and Erin Carson, Finance Budget Analyst for the Department of Finance. We will begin with Deputy Director Schwartz. You may begin when you're ready.

Good afternoon, Members of the Committee. Angie Schwartz, Deputy Director of the Children and Family Services Division with the Department. I want to appreciate the detailed overview of child welfare funding and the history of the continuum of care reform efforts that was provided in the agenda. And as you just stated, Assembly Member, I'll be answering the questions that you just posed, starting with how the state is faring in implementation of CCR and what are the current challenges.

CCR began to be implemented in 2017, bringing together a series of existing and new reforms with the intent of limiting the use of congregate care to instances when they were providing a short term therapeutic intervention for a young person, with the overall goal centered around making sure all children are raised in families and preferably their own family settings. We've had a lot of success with CCR to date. An increased number of youth are being raised in family settings, as you heard from the previous panel.

Today, nearly 50% of children in foster care have predominant placements, not just with a family, but with their own family, their own relatives or extended family members. And as the previous panel spoke to, those are extremely stable placements. We know that 71% of children who have first placements with a relative are still with that relative if they're still in care at 12 months, which is exactly what we would want.

We've also seen a dramatic decrease in the use of congregate care placements, with more over 60% fewer youth residing in congregate care settings as compared to 2017. We've seen an increase in youth receiving the specialty mental health services that they need, increasing from 36.1% in quarter one of 2017% to 40% in quarter one of 2022. We've also fully implemented the Level of Care rates across the state.

Again, the previous panel was speaking about, and I think, Ms. Senderling specifically, about the goals to sort of equalize funding and make sure all children are supported in family settings. The Level of Care system also attunes that to the actual level of need of the young person. So we've implemented that system, and since full implementation happened, we've seen an increase in the number of youth receiving levels 2, 3, or 4, and a 20% increase...

Sorry, an increase in receipt of ISFC services from 7.5% of our youth to 20%. So, again, we're able to meet sort of the higher needs of youth through these reform efforts. The challenges that we continue to face are addressing the trauma and stabilizing youth with our highest acuity of needs. We estimate that there are about 4% of youth in California that have complex care needs, meaning they have a high level of needs needing to be met by not just the child welfare system, but multiple systems.

Our mental health, our behavioral health, our developmental service systems, our educational systems. Most of those youth are stably placed in STRTPs or relative homes or community homes. We estimate that a subset of that population, probably 200 to 300 youth, have what we would define as unmet complex care needs, meaning they're experiencing stays in unlicensed settings, multiple 14 day notices, multiple placement changes, long lengths of stay in STRTPs, which, again, those are intended to be short term therapeutic settings.

So again, while the percentage of youth in congregate care placements overall has decreased by more than 60%, those that are in our STRTP settings, the average length of stay and the placement stability indicators have remained largely the same. So that's continuing to be a challenge that we're trying to work on to better address the needs of those youth so that they don't have those long lengths of stay. Supporting youth with the most complex needs is not a new challenge.

But perhaps because of the success of CCR, we are seeing the need to sort of really look at the gaps within our continuum and address those gaps and find new ways to address the trauma that those youth have experienced. And we're working on that in a number of forums.

We've got the Complex Care Steering Committee that is meeting, and I think everyone sitting here is part of those discussions in order to bring together all of those system of care partners and really innovate around how to meet and address the trauma of the young person so that they can be stabilized in family settings. We've got the implementation and recommendations of the AB 2083 report and the gaps analysis. We've got the Crisis Continuum Pilot, which we'll be discussing further later on in today's conversation.

We've also got the work to implement the child-specific funding, which provides additional supports for counties and probation in addressing the heightened need of some youth. And we'll be talking about that further in the agenda. And then we're also working on capacity building with our counties, leveraging the 43 million in capacity building funds. And again, there are additional questions on that. So sort of recognizing that we'll get to those things, I won't belabor those things right this minute.

The second question was to provide an update on the allocation of the 50 million augmentation for the Resource Family Approval. So Resource Family Approval was part of the Continuum of Care Reform efforts, and we had seen sort of significant delays in RFA timelines. It was taking a long time to approve families. It was going down before COVID. It came back up during COVID, It's going back down again now.

There was 50 million included in current year budget ongoing to support counties in having the resources and staffing necessary to bring those timelines down and to do the Resource Family Approval process. That allocation and the claiming instructions were just released on March 3 of 2023, and counties are going to be able to access those dollars based on a negotiation that we did with the County Welfare Directors.

50% of the funds are distributed based on the county's percentage of total statewide number of RFA pending and probationary families between October 1, 2021 and September 30, 2022, and the remaining 50% of funds are distributed based on the county's percentage of total statewide RFA expenditures from fiscal year 2019-20 as provided to us through the reconciliation reports, but all counties will receive a minimum of $10,000.

We have seen the RFA timeline stabilize since July of last year, with averaging around 110 days for placement prior to approval and about 125 days for those that don't have placements prior to approval. With regard to the questions about the rate system and the work to reform our current rate system, we convened a series of subgroups between August and November of last year.

There was a resource home subgroup, STRTP intensive services, foster care, foster family agencies, and then a couple of special sessions focused on our youth and supervised independent living placements. The intent was really to get as much feedback as possible in terms of what was working and not working about our current rate system. The leading findings from those four subgroups was that the current rates only support care and supervision and do not address the service and support needs that our youth also have.

That rates should follow the child and not the placement type. The assessment should be based on the child's level of need, not where the child is placed, and that the current rates are inadequate across all placement settings. After holding these work group meetings, we're now working to develop a proposal for an ongoing rate structure that we'll implement in January 2025. We do believe we're on track to have the policy developed and approved by that date.

However, depending on the extent of the changes that we land on, there may need to be additional time for implementation in order to accommodate the automation needs that may be necessary. And in terms of whether or not we're contemplating increased rates on a short term basis, we do not have any current proposal to increase rates on a short term basis.

But we are continuing to provide technical assistance to counties to identify areas where it may be useful to take advantage of existing flexibilities that exist in the law to support individual children and families above the sort of existing rate structure. So they do have some of those flexibilities that are usually done on a program basis or a child-specific basis. And with that, I'm happy to answer questions or...

We'll move on to our next panel after everyone's done, then we'll have questions.

Sure.

Ok, great. Thank you, Mr. Chair Members. Cathy Senderling with the County Welfare Directors Association. So overall, as we are now several years into the CCR implementation, we have had many successes and there is still unfinished work to be done. Counties are continuing to work toward the vision of reducing lengthy residential treatment stays, strengthening families, and increasing placements with families, as you heard from Ms. Schwartz. We've also worked really hard to reduce those timelines through the RFA process.

That's the Resource Family Approval process that was made a statewide process of licensing and approving our caregivers when the CCR was implemented. While we aren't yet meeting that 90 day target, we do hope that the investment of $50 million, you heard about the allocation methodology, and I could not repeat that if I tried, how we ended up working it out. But we do hope it'll help stabilize funding in the program for counties and enable our counties to just continue bringing those timelines down.

We were also a co-sponsor in 2021 of SB 354, a bill by Senator Skinner, which was intended to reduce some known barriers in the criminal background check process for relative caregivers, especially those that already have an existing relationship. And that is often the reason that we see delays in approvals. And so we're hopeful that that will help with that. And we also are co-sponsoring a follow up bill this year, SB 824, by Senator Ashby, that will expand those changes to non-related extended family members, Another really critical group that we look to to provide more family-like setting of care.

We've also greatly reduced the number of youth placed into group homes, as you heard. And while these are extremely positive outcomes, we agree that the main group that we've really looked at right now is what is a relatively small group, but a very needy group of youth with the most complex needs.

This was a group that we struggled with before the CCR was put into place, with meeting their needs on a regular basis and ensuring that they receiving the services that they need in appropriate placement settings, ideally a family based setting. Those foster youth with complex needs were the primary drivers of a bill that we sponsored back in 2018, AB 2083, that required the state to identify gaps in placement resources and develop recommendations to address those gaps.

There's been delays, but we are pleased to tell you the report came out in January of this year, and we are working through the recommendations with the Administration. Unfortunately, and since, again, since CCR began, the need for both intensive residential and family based treatment services has simply grown, as not only the behavioral health needs of our youth have increased, but also increasing needs around needs across over multiple systems. Many of our youth, for example, have developmental delays or other intellectual issues.

They have educational needs that are unmet. And so we know that, and I'll defer to our next panelist, Mr. Rinde, regarding some of the issues and struggles that STRTPs, those treatment programs are facing. But what we're seeing is that more of our foster youth with these highest needs are bouncing from one STRTP to another, which really greatly exacerbates their existing trauma. Just from October 2022, we have some point in time data from the UC Berkeley, which is our data system that was referenced earlier.

We know that the shelter care populations in those counties that operate shelters have grown over time. Nearly 700 foster youth are in what's considered a runaway status at that point in time, mostly from residential care settings. And about another 400 foster youth were in non-foster care settings, which could be juvenile halls, hospitals, or unlicensed care, like a hotel, an Airbnb, or, unfortunately, an office.

And this is a conversation that we started having a few years ago when we had a number of children and youth, both in our child welfare system as well as the probation system, return from placements that were out of state when those were decertified by the state at the end of 2020. And really, we're just seeing such a crisis at this moment. It's really critical to understand. We agree strongly that the rates need to be revisited.

We're part of that group, and we think that that's something that absolutely needs to happen. We're also worried about waiting for another couple of years for that to get done, given that we're currently surveying our counties, and based on 33 counties so far, more than 500 foster youth at some point in 2022 were in an unlicensed setting. That is not safe for them and it is not a place for them to get services.

And so we are partnering with the Probation Chiefs Association to put forward the concept of a relatively limited number of enhanced STRTPs. We're calling them Short Term Assessment, Treatment, and Transition Facilities. The idea is that they would work very closely with the youth, with their families, and provide aftercare to figure out how do we get them into that next setting where it is a licensed setting where they can receive the services that they need. This is not a perfect solution.

Nothing is a perfect solution, but it's better than a hotel room where social workers are being asked to sit and basically just watch a kid who's not receiving services. It's way better than an office where they're showering in the bathroom. I mean, these are the choices. And so that's what we're putting forward. It's also, in addition to a budget request, we also have a bill, again, working with Senator Ashby. The bill and proposal for the budget also includes, and we'll follow up with additional information, regionalized health homes to try to ensure that youth in care with those high, complex needs as well as those who are at risk.

Because we know that we do have this behavioral health crisis out in our community that we can try to help provide a more coordinated set of services, not just health, but also behavioral health and other types of services, and really coordinate their care and get them linkages to appropriate services. And then also, which I'll talk about more under issue number four, thinking through how to continue expanding the complex care capacity using the grant funding that was provided.

And so there's a lot going on, obviously, but we're really trying to think about how to ensure that youth are in safe, licensed, service-rich environments on a short term basis while we are working to get them into a longer term placement. Could be in an STRTP, could be, if they're in real crisis, a hospital or other type of facility. Ideally, it's with a family with the supports that they need, and so we're hoping we can get them stabilized and move forward. So happy, after the rest of the panel is done, to answer questions and looking forward to the discussion.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Tyler Rinde, Deputy Director of Child Welfare Policy at the California Alliance of Child and Family Services.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Tyler Rinde on behalf of the California Alliance of Child and Family Services. The Alliance represents over 160 nonprofit community-based organizations. Just brief overview, our members are foster family agencies that recruit and train resource parents into the system and provide social work services to family-based placements.

We also represent adoption agencies that help adopt youth out of foster care, short term residential therapeutic programs, which you've heard mentioned a few times, that provide 24/7 care and supervision to youth that require onsite mental health services, intensive services to try to transition them back into a home-based setting. And then we also do represent transitional housing providers and mental health and wraparound service providers.

The Alliance was very supportive of the vision of Continuum of Care Reform of more foster youth with families and less congregate care placements. However, in our experience, as Ms. Senderling had mentioned, the implementation and our vision of it has not materialized in all of the ways that we had hoped it would.

Many of the changes proposed through CCR were accomplished regulatorily, and we view that there was not enough training and technical assistance for the field to really effectuate a lot of the practice changes that also needed to end up occurring. We are encouraged however, there have been some successes or a lot of successes, and we have been encouraged through the more widespread usage of child and family teams and working to incorporate youth and family voice into the system.

Acknowledgment that all youth coming into the system experience trauma and require a trauma informed approach, a reduction of children and youth that are in congregate care by over 60%, and the movement towards a leveled rate system for family-based placements to acknowledge different levels of need, although acknowledged that the additional work on the tool, the Level of Care protocol is needed, which is mentioned in the agenda.

While we have seen a reduction in congregate care placements overall, we've not seen that there's a commiserate increase in intensive family-based placements such as intensive services foster care, or ISFC that is utilized as an alternative to congregate care or the wraparound services needed to step youth down successfully from congregate care. Our members provide 99% of ISFC across the state.

Speaking specifically on the rate work groups, we were eagerly participated and were encouraged by a lot of the conversation in the convened work groups in the fall and the acknowledgment of the acuity of the need of the youth services for youth, the lack of funding and the funding disparities that exist, and the shifting landscape as less youth are coming into the system and the acuity that they have that the rate trackers need to be reevaluated.

The state established rate for ISFC and FFA placements does not receive an annual cost of living adjustment based on the CNI, even though the cost for providing the robust services necessary goes up every single year. We did not receive a cost of living adjustment in 2022, and that has resulted in a reduction of services and capacity of resource families across the state or resource families within FFAs.

Additionally, the state just lost between December 2022 and January 2023 over 750 licensed STRTP beds based on after the state, the Department of Healthcare Services completed assessments of if STRTPs were designated as institutions of mental disease. That capacity loss is huge across our system, and there has not been a commiserate adjustment within the rate structure to acknowledge that many of these programs were reduced from 32, 64, down to 16 and the loss of ability to do kind of an economy of scale type approach.

Additionally, STRTPs accept youth that are coming from emergency departments, hospitals, youth that have experienced complex trauma, and with the loss of in the system, we view that it's detrimental to the overall services of the youth. Since the implementation of the rate work group or the proposal currently in state law is January 1 of 2025, we're still about two years away from implementation of any rate structure changes.

So we do have two budget requests this year to try to shore up existing programs, working with two of the Members in this room, Assembly Member Blanca Rubio on the FFA request this year, and then we have one with Assembly Member Ramos on STRTPs. Just very briefly, the FFA one is to increase of what the cost of living adjustment is proposed to be this year, which is 8.3%, which is huge of how much inflation has actually gone up.

And then the other one is to increase the costs or the wages of our direct care staff that have to have bachelor's degrees and must be trauma informed in their approach. The average right now that they make is 19 dollars and fifty cents an hour, and these are the staff that are required to provide 24/7 care and supervision to our most vulnerable youth across the state. And the inability to hire right now directly impacts program capacity and program ability to meet the ratios that they need to have safe staffing.

The Alliance did conduct a survey this year of 43 of our foster family agencies that have over 3300 resource families, and 32% of FFA social workers turned over in 2022. 44% of those that were surveyed are going to have to downsize later this year if they don't receive some extra support or funding, and 27% of them are at risk of closing at least a sub-office or potentially their entire side of that part of their business.

Social worker turnover does directly impact the likelihood of achieving permanency for youth. After three social workers, you reduce down to 3% likelihood of the youth achieving permanency. We are supportive of the state's approach of moving towards a kin first culture. We do believe, however, there needs to be additional support for providers in providing the direct services to relatives and families.

One example is, since resource family approval takes several months for approval to take place, services that are offered through the FFA can only be turned on once the full approval is made. And even though the family will be receiving the emergency caregiver funding, the extra services cannot be done until the full approval does take place.

Additionally, we found that many of the new initiatives, while very exciting around family finding and engagement, RFA processing, and intensive home based support for counties, has not trickled down at the moment to in partnership with our CBOs. We're continuing conversations around that, but believe that there needs to be partnership between the counties and our members. Thank you for the opportunity, and happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Next, we will hear from Angela Short with the LAO.

Thank you. Angela Short with the Legislative Analyst Office. As you've heard both from the Department and other panelists, the state certainly has been making significant progress in terms of meeting various objectives of CCR, so I won't repeat all of those. At the same time, a few key areas of challenge do remain that I'll just emphasize here. For example, Resource Family Approval times remain above the target 90 days.

Additionally, as you've heard, securing the appropriate placements and services, particularly for our youth with the most complex and acute care needs, does continue to be a challenge and require case by case, extraordinary effort. In the case of these examples, as you've heard, the Administration and counties are well aware, the legislature has also provided budget augmentations specifically for these areas as well as others within CCR. So at this point, we're really just continuing to monitor how those funds roll out and how solutions will be implemented.

As you've heard, there are several other areas, including some more technical areas of CCR, that are described in your agenda. So I won't belabor those points. But finally, did just want to mention we do concur with the staff recommendation on page 22 of your agenda regarding requesting a specific date and agreeing to an overall timeline as to the final CCR rate structure, which will be required to be implemented by January 1 of 2025.

Just for a little more context, the rates that we currently use for CCR are interim rates, and the rate structure required to be in place as of January 1, 2025 will be the final rate structure. So this will be important to get right for the ongoing success of CCR. So we think it makes sense for the legislature to request a certain deadline and timeline to ensure there's sufficient time not only for the legislature to review, but also for key stakeholders to provide input to ensure that this rate structure really gets it right for the ongoing success of CCR. Thank you.

Thank you. Department of Finance.

Erin Carson, Department of Finance. Nothing to add this time.

Bring it up to the dais for Members' questions. Dr. Jackson.

Two questions, but very important questions, is we saw a lot of foster care providers and others close down because of the transition. Sometimes they just couldn't meet the standards, other various reasons. But am I correct in saying we still don't have enough placements for all the children that we need to place them with?

Within the STRTPs? Are you talking specifically or across all placements?

Just across all placements.

I don't know that I would characterize it as not having sufficient placements. It's true. We've seen two trends. The number of licensed bed capacity has gone down, but the number of youth in those settings has also gone down. So at this point, we do have a slightly higher percentage of youth utilizing our overall STRTP capacity as compared to before.

Sort of the IMD rule and other things sort of impacted that capacity, but we still have more than double the number of licensed beds as we do have young people in those STRTP beds. That said, I think as everyone has spoken to, we've got youth that have high levels of acuity of needs, and even though there may be a licensed bed, it may not be the appropriate setting for that individual child.

And so we are continuing to really look at how do you really not develop just any capacity but the right types of capacity? Right? So we're really seeing that youth do best in these more trauma informed, really smaller settings, which is what the IMD rule pushed us towards is sort of reducing the size of the settings. And we even have had counties innovating with things like STRTPs of one and STRTPs of two and see success in sort of that really individualized, intensive type treatment program.

And so we have flexibilities because of AB 2944 to also allow counties to innovate in that way, to sort of think about how can you take that kind of staffing that would be in an STRPT setting, but support a young person in a more individualized, home based environment, even though the staffing would be more like a congregate setting. So this is a long way of answering your question. Do we have the right setting for every single young person in our system right now? No.

As Cathy spoke to, and as I spoke know, we do have youth that are having stays in unlicensed settings that know cycling from STRTP to STRTP, but I don't know that it's that we don't have sort of the right number of licensed beds. It's that we continue to need to really look at the individualized needs of these young people.

How many young people do we have staying the night in offices and other unacceptable places?

Well, so we estimate that there's probably 200 to 300 young people that are sort of unmet complex care needs, which is inclusive of the young people that are in those unlicensed settings.

I'll just jump in. We think that's a little low. We're doing the survey, and we'll share the information when we get it. But based on 33 counties that have responded to this survey so far, we counted up 500 youth that at some point last year stayed in one of those types of unlicensed locations. And so maybe this is a point in time versus overtime kind of conversation. We tend to think at any given point in time, it's a little higher than that, but you don't really know for sure. But I had to jump in because of that.

Also to jump in and stuff, I think just add a clarification. While foster youth is one of the populations in STRTPs, it's not the entire population that is served through those programs. So we also have youth that were formally in the foster care system that are paid through what is called Adoption Assistance Programs or AAP. We also have special education youth and occasionally some private placement youth through commercial insurance.

So it's not the entire population, but I think what you had seen previous to the IMD exclusion, and that is that you would have populations, different populations in the same program or you could have programs that could specialize in different parts of their campus on different needs of the youth.

And that is not something that we can see anymore, when you've had to reduce down to the size of 16. And the ratios right now, you may need to have additional staff or additional staffing, and you cannot staff entirely to the full capacity of the program. And so that's something that exists in the rate structure right now, is that you're paid in an occupancy rate of 90%. Hospitals are considered full between 80 and 85%.

And so that's something with coming and going and meeting safe staffing ratios that you need to operate sometimes at a lower capacity. And that's something that is also just challenge in our rates, but want to add additional clarification.

In order to meet the needs to ensure that no matter at any given time, that a young person has the right bed, because I agree, the wrong bed is also a problem and can create all kinds of problems with other young people. Right? I used to work at a level 12 group home myself to get through college. I still have flashbacks. Does this budget that the Governor proposes fix the problem we need to fix?

So I'd say the rates work that we have underway is looking at those issues, but that's not in this Governor's Budget proposal. So we're on track to sort of have that proposal so that we can implement or start implementing in January of 2025, which is the deadline in the statute by which we need to have the new rate structure implemented. So that was the series of work groups that we've engaged in, is to look exactly at that set of issues.

And how can we make sure that the rates are really meeting the individualized needs of the child, regardless of the type of setting that they're in, that we're really tying the rates to the needs of the child, and that we're also making sure that we can meet not just their care and supervision needs, but their services and supports needs as well. So those are the themes that came out of the work groups that we held that we're trying to figure. We're grappling with those issues right now.

So we're looking at, this is my concern. That we know that we have young people at any given time, and they're not very few. It's not like it's just two or three here, but we have hundreds of young people who we know we need to find the right bed for them. But it's going to take us until 2025 to even start the process. So we're talking about another few hundred young people at some point sleeping in an office, at some point sleeping in a place that is just not acceptable. How do we bring a more sense of urgency to this in order to make sure that that doesn't happen again? Because even if we wait till next week, it is not acceptable.

So I would say in the interim, before we have the final rate structure, we do have a number of things. I mean, we have a sense of urgency around this issue. It's not a new issue, of course, you know, from your work. I mean, this is decades old problem, but we do have significant new investments that we're utilizing. So there's the 18.1 million in ongoing funding that counties have to meet the specific needs of youth with complex care needs.

And so we are working with counties to make sure they're taking full advantage of those dollars. We do technical assistance calls that involve our entire system of care team. So that's not just child welfare, it's child welfare and behavioral health and our education partners and developmental services partners partnering with counties around specific young people. So the counties will call and say, we've got a young person.

We're trying to bring, we've got consultants that are trauma consultants that can help do some of the brain mapping and other work for specific children to really understand what's happened here and how can we best intervene to meet the needs of this young person. So we have UC Davis Mind Institute as an example of one of those contracts that we utilize in these specific instances to try to understand how can we best intervene for this young person.

And then we have those dollars that I just referenced available to sort of make sure that we can make the appropriate investment to meet whatever need that young person has. We're developing the additional capacity with the 43 million of the capacity building funds. We're about to launch the Crisis Continuum Pilot. Those awardees have been selected.

So, I mean, there is a lot going on, plus the Complex Care Steering Committee, there's a lot going on to try to say how can we have a more trauma informed system, and at the same time, the rates work is happening to sort of make sure that we have a final rate structure that provides a more systemic way of addressing those individualized needs of kids. But in the meantime, we do have investments that we're taking advantage of.

So I would just say that. Thank you very much. I'm just working through this. So obviously you have a lot going on trying to get through it. I understand that. A lot of it going on. I just want to make sure that as we are able to, while we're talking about this budget, that we're doing absolutely all that we can to at least make a big dent in the issue that we have. Because I'm not sure how a child who's spending the night in an office would be able to accept that answer. That sounds like a systems issue, and systems need to hurry up and meet the actual needs. Right?

And so I would just continue, as we continue this item, as we continue through the budget process, Mr. Chair, would love to have further discussions as it relates to that. Lastly, we know that there is a deadline coming up in order for the county of origin to retain responsibility and the limitation on the presumptive transfer provisions. And I think you mentioned delaying that or needing to delay that. Or is that the wrong issue there? Or making a determination about the deadline for adopting regulations. You mentioned about delaying something. You would like to see something delayed. Did I hear that wrong? If I heard it wrong, it's fine.

I don't recall saying that.

Okay, no problem. Did you have something?

I can chime in a little bit. I think what you're referring to is there's AB 1051, which is making changes to presumptive transfer, which is for foster youth that are placed out of county in several different placements but in STRTP and changing who is responsible for their specialty mental health services, AB 1051 will make it that the County of origin, where they came from, would retain responsibility.

We're working with the County Behavioral Health Directors Association on delaying that because there's a lot of challenges associated with on the ground decisions around making sure that timely payment is made for the services so that services are delivered. I think this is up in your Committee next week. AB 551. But happy to answer any more questions on that.

Yeah, we probably just need to have a sidebar on that one.

Happy to. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Assembly Member Ramos.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for the questions, my colleague from Riverside. It does touch on a problem, and it has been years in the making.

It'll take years for us to get to where we need to be, but we also have to make sure that what we're doing as the state, that local jurisdictions are leveraging those dollars to make sure that programs are successful at the local level. Which I wanted to highlight that within a lot of the budget now requests coming from the state, there is accountability at the local level for them to be able to show one, that they're utilizing the dollars, and to prove that it's going towards programs that are making an impact.

So I wanted to make sure that's there. And I am honored to carry the budget request of the $47 million to move these programs forward. But I do want to really talk more on that leveraging of the dollars at the local level.

We need to make sure that stays in the sight of Members on this dais and the legislature, that we are approving dollars, right, amounts of money towards programs, but we need to make sure that the local level is also leveraging those dollars to make the program successful. So it's all working together to ensure that our youth and those in our communities that need those services are getting them in a timely manner. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. My first question is going to be for Mr. Rinde. I'm hoping you can help to contextualize the data point you provided. You had stated that 32% of social workers were turning over. Can you compare that to where you are historically regularly, and would you attribute this to the LOC?

I wouldn't directly attribute it to the LOC, but I would just say when I've talked to members about their turnover, they have shared that with the rate not being increased, that it's the worst that they have ever seen at the level and with their social workers. And it is taking them, one other data point that I didn't mention was it takes them four months right now to end up hiring a social worker and to be able to fulfill that position.

And fulfilling the position is one part. It's also, can you get them through our backlogged background check system, which is, while not the subject of this hearing, there's significant delays that impact our providers across the board related to Guardian.

I'm going to follow up with Ms. Schwartz, if I can. We heard the January 1, 2025 date as when it will be implemented, but when will you release what the LOC rates are, and when will we be able to start to deliberate that, as more than likely it will need to be budgeted within the next budget year? So I'm hoping to have you provide a date so we can also hold you accountable to delivering by that time. So we can have conversations about where the LOC raises.

We're working so that we can have those conversations in the coming budget cycle.

As the Governor releases his budget on January 10, I anticipate us having that information by then. Is there a date over the fall that we are able to see those LOC rates so we can also participate and be involved, or will we be receiving it after the new year?

I don't know that there's any date that we can commit to. We are having ongoing conversations with stakeholders and counties and probation as we're working through this process.

I hope we are able to have advanced conversations about those rather than simply hearing about it through the budget process. I think it would be important to have those with lived experience and stakeholders give feedback on what we ultimately decide. And so I'll leave it there for now. We'll follow up on one item on the top of page 21, if I can.

There was a mention that our systems are not compatible, specifically with the CANS Assessment. That if you were a behavioral health staff and you entered into the behavioral health reporting system, that you were not able to see that information within the child welfare system. And so I'm trying to figure out when the plan is for us to integrate those to have behavioral health and child welfare be integrated. Is it going to be under CalSAAS or will it be through CWS-CARES? Hoping you can provide some comments as the agency's overall goal aligns with integration of these systems.

Sure. The integration is scoped for CARES version one.

Do we have a time of implementation on that, just so we're able to coordinate?

I think we're still working on the final timeline for implementation of that.

We would anticipate having a more firm timeline by May revision and look forward to the administration being able to provide those timelines by that time.

Appreciate that.

Ms. Senderling Mcdonald.

Sir, if I might. Just wanted to follow up on the question related to the rates. Our understanding from my automation folks is that it does depend that your conversation around when can they be made public so we can have that conversation and then hopefully finalize them is really important because we do have to automate them. And so based on assuming that the rate structure changes in some way, it would take at least a year, we believe, to get that automated.

So you really do want to think about how to back that up and have that conversation if you want it to go into effect January 2025. I just want to point that out because I think it's an important component to think through, as you all think and the administration thinks about when those conversations might able to be had.

Even more of a rationale for us to get an update on that timeline by the May revision. We'll now have Assembly Member Rubio ask any questions.

Thank you. I apologize. We've been ping ponging all day long, and so if you've answered this question again, my apologies, but I was looking at the, on page 19, the resource family approval processing time. It says, to become eligible to provide care to foster youth and receive foster care maintenance payments, households must complete their RFA process. The target for completing RFA is 90 days, but the state has yet to reach that target as an average or median processing time.

As of November 2022, median approval time was 119 days, and then it says 107 days for families with placement prior to approval. This is a slight improvement from third quarter when the median approval was 120 days. But to that, we've been working on this for a while and I want to, I guess, reiterate, this was an issue that we've been working on again for four years or more.

When the pandemic hit, we all got used to blaming everything on the pandemic, which a lot of it was true, but we're on the third year now, three years since we were put on lockdown. But is there any effort to make sure that those processing times, I know it's being reduced, but it's still too long sometimes some of these kids need assistance right away. And listening to the conversations earlier, we hear a lot of words about wraparound services and proper placement, et cetera, et cetera.

But if there's no placement happening, then none of the amazing programs that you all have are being utilized because these processing times are taking so long, and some of our kids are, quite frankly, being left behind or fall through the cracks or whatever you may have. So what is the effort to make sure that we reduce that time?

So, to clarify, there is funding available to support children in placements prior to their approval, although it's limited to the basic rate. And I think Tyler spoke to some of the other issues that come up in terms of being able to support those children with the foster family agencies. And there's the $50 million investment that was, we just released the claiming and allocation instructions on March 3 for counties that's 50 million ongoing to support sort of the workforce needed to bring those timelines down even further.

And you're right that we are seeing the timelines start to decrease, and it's averaging around 107 days for the placements prior to approval.

Yes, thank you for that. But I guess the bigger issue has been, and maybe in this context or not, but I think one of the biggest issues that we were discussing is some of these family members are not getting the funding on a timely basis. So there is a group of families that are not getting some of this funding. It might not be specifically what I pointed out. However, one of the issues that we've been working on is trying to get the payments to those families.

Some of them are having to front whatever it is, expenses. And I only have two kids. And my God, that just right there in terms of food and clothing and all of the necessities for those children. For a family that receives a child and is having to put out of pocket to just the basic necessities.

Like I said, it may not be related to what I just asked or the section that I asked about, but the overall question is, are we making sure that those families that are taking our kids are receiving the financial support so that they can provide those services to the kids? Again, we have amazing programs, but if the families can't get them there, for example, if they don't have enough gas or whatever the issue may be, then we're losing out on. These families are willing to support these children just for the fact that they can't afford them.

Right. I would just also note that the 50 million in the flexible family supports, that was part of current year budget. So those dollars are also now available. Those claiming and allocation instructions have also been released.

And that's exactly for some of the things that you were just speaking to, some of the just upfront costs that it takes when you're accepting a child into your home and you may have to make modifications to the home or need some additional costs in order to stabilize or funding to stabilize the child in that setting. It also supports making sure that you can do reunification and respite and those sorts of things. But I would defer to Ms. Senderling.

So you just stated that the $50 million were just released. When was it supposed to be released? Was it done on time or was it supposed to be released in January?

Done on time.

It was done on time, yeah.

The March 3, no, the flexible family supports letter got you.

So there's two pots of 50 million. I think we just got confused on them. So, first to just thank this subcommitee, especially Dr. Arambula, for brokering a conversation last year between CWDA CDSs and the Department of Finance, along with his staff, to have a continued conversation around the resource family approval process.

You probably remember we've had these conversations in the past related to whether counties are fully funded for the RFA work, which in our belief was created on a statewide basis by CCR and therefore is subject to the requirements of Proposition 30, that we should be fully funded for that work. And we've not been fully funded for that work. And there's been an argument on that. So we still aren't quite through all of that.

But Dr. Arambula helped to create a conversation and a space for us to talk last year. The result of that being the $50 million augmentation in the current year that Ms. Schwartz mentioned, that was the allocation of which was just sent out a couple of weeks ago. So I think, I can't lie and say we wouldn't have rather had that earlier, but we have it now. And so we did work together on a methodology. It was rather complex, it sounds like.

So that took a bit of time. So here we are. We're ready to spend that funding. We have been reducing the numbers. The other thing, and we did talk a little bit about this, I think it was before you might have stepped out. The SB 354, which helped with the background check requirements for relatives, has, we hope, helped to reduce some of the timelines and some of the barriers, because we know that it's much quicker when there's not something in someone's record.

And if you are a person who's getting licensed as a foster parent to take in any kid, you think about that in advance. And if you have something that you need to kind of get right with or figure out in your history, you can go deal with that. And then when you come in and you go through the process. There's plenty of time to do that. But then if you have a relative and we say at midnight, can you take this kid? Boom.

And you're like, well, there was that conviction. And as you know, our requirements are very stringent, and we have to look into and get reports on pretty much anything other than a misdemeanor traffic violation. We may easily give somebody the benefit of an exemption to be able to still care for that child, but we still have to go through quite a lengthy process. And so we are making some improvements to that through SB 354.

And then we have a cleanup bill, I guess I wouldn't say cleanup SB 824 this year, which will expand to non related extended family Members. So both for family members and for those non related, but very family like auntie by name but not necessarily by blood, we will be hopefully able to apply those as well and then get those individuals also more quickly approved to be able to be formalized as that caregiver.

So we are, I think, making those strides and we are bringing those numbers down. And it is an important focus. We're a co sponsor of that legislation with a number of other organizations and caregiver groups, and so we're really happy to be able to do that. I think we're moving in the right direction.

Thank you. And then another comment. You mentioned earlier that the average salary is $19 whatever .50 cents. $19 is not enough. Obviously, it's difficult, and I know in a budget deficit year, but we had this conversation in a budget healthy year and nothing really changed.

And so I just wanted to make a comment that the workforce is depleted in all kinds of areas, not just here, but when I can go to target, for example, and make $22 an hour, why would I have a bachelor's degree go through some processing and some imagine live scan and all of those things to go make $19 an hour at that point, obviously, they do it like teachers. I'm a teacher.

We do it not necessarily for the money, but you do it because of the children. But at some point, your own family and your own livelihood comes into play and you have to make choices. And if the choice is, I don't know, do I feed my family or do I take care of other people's kids, the choices are clear. And so not a question, just a general comment in support of, hopefully we can get that support and get some of that funding.

If we don't give livable wages to some of these folks that we're depending on to help us with our foster kids, then we're losing out on talent just for the fact that they can't live. I teach or I taught, but some of the work that these foster care, the counselors, FFA, they do is incredible. I don't have that kind of patience as a teacher. I don't have that kind of patience.

So when we find people that are willing to go and do this kind of work to help those kids, we need to figure out how to compensate them so that at least they can live. I'm not even asking for these amazing wages, just livable wages. We struggle with that throughout every sector. But we are here right now, and so I want to just advocate and hope that somebody hears us.

We keep pushing again, this is a deficit year, but we were pushing on a healthy year, and we still didn't really get much out of it. So I just want to kind of offer that and thank you for the work that you do. It's really critical that all these kids get the support that they need. And I'm also wondering if our numbers are going down because they're in hiding right now, not necessarily because it's going down because we're helping more kids.

The pandemic did a number on all of us, and some of these folks are not ready to come back again. The lowering of kids that we serve, I don't know if it's necessarily a good thing. I'm wondering if it's just that they're not coming out anymore or they're still waiting for this pandemic to be over, even though it is over. But anyway, that's, again, just more commentary rather than a question. So thank you.

Thank you. I'll bring it up to the chair and just make a request from the chair as we transition to the next item. I would like to request that details regarding the LOC rate package are shared with us, as well as the timeline about the stakeholder process to be shared by the May revision, as we asked.

I'd also like to ask the LAO that if we were to implement by January 1 of 2025, how long would it take to change the system, and what would a timeline be that you felt was appropriate so we could be involved? With that, all other issues will be held open, and we will move on to issue three. On issue three is regarding compliance with the federal Families first and Prevention Services Act, to be referred as FFPSA from here on out, we will have four presenters on issue three, beginning with Deputy Director Schwartz. When you are ready.

Sure. Thank you. Chair and members of the committee, Angie Schwartz, Deputy Director of Children and Family Services. In terms of the first question in the agenda, our main goals for the five year prevention plan and how they relate to the issues discussed in the first panel today, our overarching vision with our five year prevention plan, as well as the comprehensive prevention planning that all of our counties are doing, is an integrated statewide system of primary, secondary and tertiary prevention strategies grounded in principles of fairness and equity that supports families in providing safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments for their children and youth.

We're applying a no wrong door policy so that our families that are coming in through community organizations can also receive those comprehensive prevention services, the primary, secondary or tertiary prevention services that they need. We're promoting and supporting strategies that involve local prevention planning, including strengthening and building relationships around primary prevention and early interventions, and making those connections to our other safety net programs, assessing and identifying community driven needs and practices utilizing service delivery models rooted in equity and fairness, increasing capacity within our local level, and that goes to some of the investments that have been made and providing holistic models of care, integrating whole child, whole family approaches. As we developed our five year prevention plan that we will be submitting for the third time to ACF at the end of this month, we were grounded in family voice centeredness, principles of racial equity, and again, going back to the first panel, really looking at how do we address disparity and disproportionality through these investments and in connections to our other safety net programs.

Tribal consultation and collaboration so we engaged in multiple tribal consultations and continuing to do those tribal consultations as we're developing those comprehensive prevention plans, strength focused and trauma informed, making sure that there's a community pathway, so that we're also empowering the local service providers to assist our families.

And they don't have to necessarily be interfacing directly with our child welfare system, workforce excellence, integration and collaboration, and then also making sure we're developing continuous quality improvement strategies so that we can assess how we're doing and make sure that we can make adjustments as we continue down in implementation. In terms of the role of anti poverty safety net programs, including CalWorks, and how that can be strengthened, we are trying to integrate through the five year prevention plan and through that comprehensive prevention planning.

Like I said, with those safety net programs, the all county letter that was released that requires the comprehensive prevention plans also requires counties to sort of think through where are those intersections and what is that relationship to your other safety net programs and your other service providers and your other funding streams. Right? So not just title four B but also your TANF and SSBG and all the other sources of assistance that counties receive that can support primary, secondary and tertiary prevention strategies.

The last question on the agenda relates to when we're submitting the plan, so I'll just jump to that, as long as we're talking about part one here for a minute. So we are on track to submit, I think I said for the third time to ACF. We submitted the first draft of the prevention plan in August of 2021, and then they had additional questions and revisions. We submitted our second draft in November of 2022.

They had additional questions and revisions, and so we are on track to submit what I am hoping is going to be our approved plan at the end of this month. Once the plan is approved, we'll be able to start claiming those admin dollars for the prevention services back to October of 2021.

But we're not going to be able to do the title four e per child claiming until we have a system, an automated system to do the per child claiming and tracking that is required under the federal law. But in the meantime, we do have the block grant dollars, the 222,000,000 in block grant funding that's available to counties right now to support the development of their primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention strategies.

So I think that that covers the items in the agenda related to part one transitioning over to part four, how implementation has gone so far. All of the requirements related to part four and part four was the part of the Family First Prevention Services Act that had us have additional requirements for our congregate care providers. We call them STRTPs. The feds call them QRTPs.

It required us to implement qualified individuals so that we have qualified individuals making determinations based on an assessment of the youth's individual needs, on whether or not they can be served in a family placement, and also how the STRTP would meet that young person's therapeutic needs if it is actually necessary. That's been implemented in all of our counties, and we're also working on a continuous quality improvement system for that.

So some data collection and how we can also make sure that we're providing continuous quality improvement within our qualified individual framework. The federal law required implementation of 24/7 nursing services, which we did through a statewide contract for 24/7 nurse hotline, which has been fully implemented between December 1, 2021 and December 31, 2022. We received 98 calls through that hotline.

It also required us to implement six months of aftercare services so the youth that are exiting the STRTPs continued to get at least six months of aftercare services. We're implementing that in two phases. Phase one is complete and included initial implementation of the aftercare services, leveraging our existing wraparound programs. Phase two is implementation of our high fidelity wraparound requirements, and we're in the process of developing a California wraparound toolkit to support counties in implementation of phase two.

There were also court review and case plan requirements that have also been implemented, and that's been in partnership with the Judicial Council of California, who had to issue the court rules to accompany those new court review requirements that were in the law. As with any major reform effort, there have been identified challenges specific to the qualified individual.

Counties face challenges regarding information sharing and understanding what can be shared between a HIPAA covered entity like the mental health plan and a non HIPAA covered entity such as our Child Welfare Services, probation, and courts. There are situations where the parents don't sign the release of information for the QI to receive information they need and talk to the people that they need to talk to to do their assessment.

We are collaborating with DHCs and also the Judicial Council of California in order to develop language and guidance around the sharing of information and those confidentiality challenges. So that's in process right now. There were some initial issues with the nursing services. When first implemented, some of the STRTP staff callers did not have their facility administrator's contact information to address that. The contractor created a process to report to CDSS when this occurs. We haven't heard of that problem since that solution was put in place.

In terms of the aftercare services, we know that counties and providers have reported concerns around the high fidelity wraparound services. And again, we're working in conjunction with DHCS and UC Davis to provide a toolkit and technical assistance to counties to support the implementation of the high fidelity wraparound standards.

With regard to the court hearings, courts have reported the need to be able to vacate a hearing for a child that is no longer in the STRTP at the point that the hearing is actually scheduled, or to waive the need for hearings if the youth is in the same facility but they've just moved cottages because the sort of strict reading of the law would have them have to have a new court hearing for every move, even if it's sort of within the same facility.

So we've heard those challenges as well. I think we talked a little bit in the prior panel about the capacity questions that you have. As I said in that panel, we are seeing the two trends with regard to the capacity within our STRTP settings, the less fewer number of youth overall that are in STRTPs, but also fewer number of licensed beds as a result of some of the changes that I was just discussing, as well as the impacts of the IMD rule.

Like I said before, there's still more than double the number of licensed beds as there are young people that are in those beds currently. And as I said before, that doesn't mean that we have necessarily the right capacity to serve that individual youth. So we're continuing to look at how to have a more trauma informed framework and utilize our child specific dollars and our capacity building dollars in order to make sure that we have the right supports for that youth, not just any bed, in order to serve that young person. And I think that's all your questions.

Not all, but it's a good start. Next we will hear from Cathy Senderling Mcdonald.

There's a lot in this one for sure. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. Cathy Senderling Mcdonald, CWDA Executive Director. I'll start and also talk a bit about part one first, the prevention piece. We really see the ability to not just put into place what is in the letter of the federal law, but also using it as an opportunity to really springboard to additional investments.

And we appreciate the legislature supporting the additional increase of $100 million about two years ago in order to provide additional funding for services. Those are funds that can be used for federally eligible to match to title four E, as Ms. Schwartz talked about, or they could be provided to counties or to community organizations to be able to utilize and expand some of those more culturally relevant, specific, but not necessarily evidence based as of yet, but things that are promising or things that we're seeing those good effects of. And they just haven't really been evaluated. And so the funding is out there.

We're really pleased to partner with Children Now and about 80 other supportive organizations on that request two years ago that was ultimately adopted. The funding so far we've been using for planning efforts because, as you heard, the plan has not yet been approved and everything is really tied to the federal approval of the plan. And so the timeline is pretty frustrating to have started that work back in the mid 2021 time frame and to still be talking about resubmitting another version now.

Of course, we really want to do this because we think it will help with those issues that we talked about on the first panel related to disparities and helping support our communities and strengthening families. But we have received funding to engage with our community stakeholders in that prevention planning work, and that has been going on in 50 counties. The eight counties that haven't opted into that are mostly small counties.

They don't have as many local resources nor as many children in foster care or families in general. But we are continuing to work with the state and those counties to see if we could make it work for them to be able to opt in as well, since it is an optional program. We do want to note, and I think there's a question about this in the budget, the funding is one time funds. We had asked us at Children Now for it to be ongoing.

You're better able to build capacity and then maintain that capacity if those are ongoing funds. And so the question was, do we think we're going to spend it? I mean, the funds are available through June 30, 2025 which, as we're talking about with the rates, sure sounds like a long time. But we do think that we might want to start thinking about whether we want to extend that, just because if we're having this conversation, we know things are delayed quite substantially, not through really anyone's fault.

Maybe we kick it out a little bit. So we'd be happy to engage in a conversation around that. We do think that figuring out how we think about as part of our planning and then implementation once our plan is approved by the Federal Government, how do we meet a requirement that's in the federal law, which is about title four e being the payer of last resort? It's really important that we get some guidance on that.

I don't think we're there yet on that with the state and other stakeholders, but I want to kind of flag that because I think that's one challenge that we have to think about. I mean, all of our children and many of their parents are on MediCal. And so if Medi Cal can be utilized, how do we do that? How do we consider title for you to be the payer of last resort?

We would hate to start billing to the Federal Government finally, after we get that all put into place and then have it be disallowed if we should have used another funding source. And so especially as we think about some of those local programs that maybe over time we might be able to grow into a title 4E program, how do we think about those as well? I think is a critical piece regarding title. Sorry, part four.

I know Mr. Rindy covered this, too on the last panel, but that IMD ruling was significant. We have lost a significant number of our provider capacity. Some of the providers decided to turn from an STRTP license to just a more standard group home license and care for youth from those other types of placements, such as education or health care or private pay. Typically, my understanding is that those pay higher rates also.

And so some of the capacity issue and the analysis of that, I think, has to take that into consideration as we think about what beds are left. We may have licensed capacity, that is two times what we have, but we also know that a lot of that is being used by others. And so how many beds really, or how many placements and the associated services with those really are available at any given moment?

And is that one of the reasons why we have, unfortunately, so many of our young people in an unlicensed facility or overstaying in a 14 day shelter? So those are some of the things that we'll be working with all of you in the state, of course, as well. One last thing to mention is just Ms. Schwartz mentioned the qualified individual, which is a new requirement.

It was not something that was part of our CCR, though many of the aspects of families first drew from the work that we had done in California as a leader in doing our CCR. The qualified individual in our construct, in our state law implementing family first required that it be a mental health professional. Primarily, we've been working with the county mental health plans for that.

However, also the state was directed to seek a waiver that it could be potentially someone working for county child welfare in order to be able to make that certification. We did receive an approval for that waiver. However, we are still waiting for DHCS. We think it's likely DHCS that needs to provide guidance on implementing that. So that's something that would be, some follow up would probably be helpful as well, because we know that there are, like you were saying, communication issues, data privacy issues.

We don't want to get youth off track. And if we're waiting to try to do that communication with another entity, if we could just do it internally under the conditions of the waiver, that would help with those issues, I think, in some ways. So that's something that's really critical to get implemented. We're on the path, but not quite there yet. So I'll stop there and happy to answer questions.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Ms. Short with the LAO.

Thank you. Angela Short with the LAO. As you've heard from the department and from counties, we're still very much in the early phases of implementing FFPSA, particularly when it comes to know, still waiting for that federal approval of our state plan. So we're still very much in the early stages of understanding how implementation is going and what challenges may need to be addressed.

And with that said, I would just highlight in your agenda on pages 25 to 28, it's noted that the legislature did include supplemental report language around FFPSA as part of the 22-23 budget. At this point, I believe we're expecting that first report from the administration over the next month or so, and that data and information will certainly provide a valuable opportunity for legislative oversight.

And again, as this point has already been made as well, prevention services through FFPSA also very much are related to the disproportionalities that we discussed earlier during today's hearing. This will be a valuable opportunity for our state to be able to expand and deepen prevention services, particularly culturally relevant services for disproportionately impacted families.

So with all that just to say, we certainly look forward to reviewing the forthcoming SRL report, and we would concur with the staff recommendation on page 28 of your agenda around convening a briefing once that report is available to really deepen that discussion. Thank you.

Thank you. Department of Finance.

Erin Carson, Department of Finance, nothing to add this time.

Bring it up to the dais for members questions. I'll keep it here at the chair if I can. Ms. Schwartz, I'm going to follow up on Mrs. Schwartz's comment regarding the supplemental reporting language, and I'm hoping you can provide a date certain for the release of the information that we've asked for within that SRL.

Our hope is that we are going to have a verbal presentation at the April 26 hearing, and so we would like to be able to review that content of the update and plan before that hearing and want to see if that's amenable to you to have that SORL reported back to us before then.

It is currently in the review process and understand that you would like that briefing at the April 26 hearing so that we are working towards that goal.

Great. With that, I'm going to follow up. I'd really like to make sure to dig in about those who are experiencing disparities with the subpopulations. And as we're looking at part one for those funds, we heard about some of the culturally relevant examples, but hoping you can just elaborate a little more on what types of strategies we're looking at doing to help us address the Native American and African American disparities present within this system.

A lot of that work is being done through the comprehensive prevention plans that the counties are developing, and we've been providing a lot of sort of TA technical assistance through some of our contractors to really dig in and understand what within that region sort of are the issues that they are dealing with specific to subpopulations and how can we really develop the right service array and make sure that those are culturally appropriate services and not just look at sort of this source of funding? Right.

Because as Kathy, as Ms. Senderling said, you know, we want to look at these dollars, but we also want to look at sort of what are the other dollars and how can we best leverage those and really understand the populations that we're trying to serve. We're doing that also through the interagency leadership teams. So making sure that we're sort of thinking about it through a system of care approach as well.

So it's, again, not just child welfare, because I think that that ultimately doesn't address really the true disparities and disproportionality that we're seeing or allow us to do really the primary and secondary prevention work that we know is really critical to ultimately addressing those disparities. And ultimately the title 4E family services dollars are largely tertiary prevention strategies. They're much more further for folks that are more system involved. But we really want to think about how can we develop and leverage more primary and secondary prevention strategies.

And so the comprehensive prevention plans, really the thinking behind that is like, let's have an approach that's really specific to that county and to the populations that that county is serving that really has some well thought out strategies.

Were there any. Oh, please. Ms. Senderling Mcdonald?

Okay. I have thoughts. Sorry. Thank you, sir. Cathy Senderling CWDA. The good news is just very recently, a couple of things that I think we would consider to be in this category of really community based, culturally relevant services have now been approved as something that we could potentially draw down title four E for, which is excellent. A good example is in Richmond, Familius Unites, which is, I think a lot of the organizations that I've heard about are kind of multi service.

And the idea is to help with not just here, I'm going to provide you a behavioral health service, but also I'm going to serve as a sort of navigator for you to think about how to kind of make your way through what could be a very scary and difficult system and also in the language that you're speaking and also bringing in others in the community who can help to support you.

And so it kind of becomes more of a really community type of focus rather than just a kind of one to one relationship. Now go see this provider. The other example that I've heard is cultural brokers. Sacramento does this. I know they presented at our conference last year about this, where again, it's someone who can be kind of an advocate navigator, be there to help support you and get you those connections to the services.

I think it's in the social work vein, but it's like another person who understands the community, who understands some of the special things that you might be going through and can help to broker some of that and get those services to you. So that's not all that we're talking about, but I think those are a couple of examples that you might think about as we're talking about that type of service.

Those sound very exciting and culturally relevant. How do we ensure that all counties who are submitting these prevention plans are being as forward thinking and were there any patterns when those comprehensive prevention plans were submitted towards regions who may need further attention?

I believe the plans are in the works. I think they're due at the end of July. I confess to not being part of the conversations around the direction, but what you're talking about is very much how we talked about it.

I think as a group with our children's committee, with our directors, as we were putting forward the whole proposal a couple of years ago to say, like we were saying, go to the community and hear from them what is working and how do we then do more of that and bring that in? So it's not just here's child welfare and that's the only way that you're getting these services.

And I do hope we are learning from those best practices that all counties can pull down the lessons learned from counties that are much further ahead. And it sounds like you're aligning and having that type of collaboration, but just want to encourage it as so many of our counties may struggle at times to have this information.

And I think it's also related to the building of the Center for Excellence in family finding, engagement and support. We're very much trying to take sort of the things that are working really well within counties and make sure that we have those available to other counties in a way that sort of makes it easier to replicate and to implement in other counties.

And so that's a huge part of the strategy with the Center for Excellence and not just looking at our counties, but as Cathy just said, like looking at other jurisdictions, like how have we really been successful and what can we borrow from and how can we adapt it for California and how can we make it as easy as possible to implement that in counties that have different geographies, different resources, different workforce challenges, all those things. Right?

So we're trying to, through the Center for Excellence, think through all of those strategies and really make it easier for individual counties to take advantage of what we know are best practices.

And I will just finally end if I can. It would behoove us to spend these dollars effectively and to get as upstream as we.

Can, and I think that's why you're seeing us really wanting to focus on it. I think I'm trying to understand how the comprehensive prevention plans will be able and are focusing on those very disparities and disproportionalities while we see that data at the state level. If it's a county level plan that's doing the prevention, I would like them to share our beliefs of getting us upstream towards those specific populations. And I'm hoping, while you're looking at those plans, that we're passing that information through.

Absolutely. And we will share what is within those plans as we start to receive them.

Perfect. With that, I will. Thank very much this panel, I will make a request. As I stated earlier, we would like the Administration to return and present on the supplemental reporting language information at our April 26 hearing. I would like the Administration to convene a briefing for our legislative staff as we spoke about on the information when it is available, and with that, all other issues will be held open.

We will now move on to panel four regarding updates on implementation for various recent child welfare investments. We will have six presenters on this panel. We will begin with Deputy Director Schwartz.

Okay, thank you, chair Members of the Committee. The first question posed was, are there overall departmental issues that can be shared that could help explain the dynamics around program implementation described in this section? And what challenges does this expose that can be addressed?

As the agenda and the LAO analysis both point out. Over the last two budget years, there have been significant investments to support our overarching goals and ensure that every child is raised in a family, preferably their own family, and to address the complex care needs and the trauma that our youth within our system have experienced.

The work to implement any one of these new programs takes significant time and preparation, and as the agenda points out, there were 16 major investments over the last year, two years totaling nearly 1 billion in new funding.

These investments have required creation of new programs and pilots, the expansion of existing pilots, the creation of the Center for Excellence that we were just talking about, execution of multiple contracts, development of requests for proposals and requests for applications, multiple tribal consultations, extensive engagement and negotiations with our counties, probation tribes, advocates, other departments and providers, as well as the development of infrastructure, operational procedures, and overcoming the barriers to implementation that couldn't be anticipated at the point that we put these things into the law and funded them.

Stakeholders have also shared with us, and Ms. Senderling also shared this, that one of the challenges in implementing some of these reforms is that they are one time investments with limited term funding. The limited timelines for expending the dollars creates challenges given the length of time it actually takes to develop all the policies and infrastructure and contracts and programs that I was just speaking to.

And it also is challenging for counties who must ensure that the additional capacity that they're developing with those one time dollars can be sustained once those one time dollars are no longer available. CDSS has been providing significant technical assistance to our counties across all of those different programs that we just talked about. So the capacity building dollars and the child specific dollars and the Center for excellence and the flexible family support.

So it's not just putting out the program instructions, but really finding ways to innovate in terms of office hours and TA and system of care approaches and use of contractors and consultants to support counties in development of their plans that they have to develop in order to take advantage of those dollars. You've asked about a couple specific programs within the agenda, and so I'll jump to those, but happy to answer additional questions.

And during the course of the conversation, we've actually talked about many of these programs as well. One of the questions you had was around the child specific funding allowances. So that's the 18.1 million ongoing Fund. So this is one of the sources of ongoing dollars available to counties, was first available to counties in the 2021-22 fiscal year. And as I just said, it's ongoing. This is to support sort of the complex care needs of young people, so youth with sort of extraordinary needs.

These dollars can sort of support the counties in innovating in terms of how to meet the needs of that young person. For fiscal year 2021-22 we received 233 requests for the use of child specific dollars, totaling 7 million in funding. It may end up being more than that as counties can continue to claim through the end of this calendar year for investments for things that they did during the 2021-22 fiscal year to support youth with complex needs.

For the current fiscal year, we've received 114 requests so far, totaling 6.4 million. So, I mean, it's worth noting, as we've been talking about, and as I was saying, in answer to the first question, there is some natural ramp up to utilizing any new source of dollars. Counties have to develop their own processes and procedures in order to be able to request the funds. We did work through some challenges. The first iteration of the form to request child specific dollars counties found to be too cumbersome.

So we put a work group together with CWDA and probation in order to revise that form and streamline it. That was posted in February and we have seen an uptick in the requests. We're also making sure that we're using this as a TA strategy. So when we have our system of care technical assistance calls, we're talking about, how can we think about this source of funding in order to make sure that we can really innovate and meet the needs of young people.

And there have been examples of really innovative solutions with the use of this funding. Counties are generally requesting the dollars for things like one on one staffing ratios, the high placement costs associated with placements, like the Regional Center placements for youth with developmental disabilities, extraordinary travel costs or intellectual testing and other kinds of assessments that are not covered by medical. Another specific source of dollars that you asked about was the crisis continuum pilot.

So the crisis continuum pilot was the 61.3 million of one time funds available over five years in order to Fund pilot sites that would be putting together the crisis continuum, which is really the theory of change is that if you sort of make sure that within one system, one provider, you have everything from the most intensive type of placement all the way down to the intensive supports that you would need within the family setting, can we better support youth if we sort of have it centralized within that single system, that single provider?

We got eight proposals, and all eight of those counties were awarded funding and they've all accepted, and it actually represents partnerships of more than eight counties. So San Francisco will be collaborating with Solano, Marin, Contra Costa and Sonoma in the development of their pilot. Fresno county is collaborating with Madeira County. Stanislaus is with San Joaquin and Merced. And then we also have San Diego and Los Angeles and Monterey, all developing their own pilot sites.

San Luis Obispo with Santa Barbara and Riverside is collaborating with San Bernardino. The key outcomes that will be tracked will be whether or not we're reducing reliance on hospitals, emergency departments, law enforcement, responding to the acute needs of young people within these settings, reduced absences from placements, the reasons youth were served by the pilot program, or the most common needs among the young people that are served within the pilot, the types of services that they're receiving.

Obviously, the outcomes for our young people related to safety, well being, permanency at six months and 12 months, and the other impact of the interventions and services. I will note that we do have a proposal to have the five years of expenditure authority go from the time that the awardees were notified, which would have been this last month in terms of the 50 million for emergency response. The question was whether or not it's made an impact on outcomes for children.

We have not yet received the annual updates from counties that they're required to send to us regarding the 50 million in funding. Those aren't due until June 30 of this year. We can report that the counties are utilizing those dollars. They were required to submit plans to us about how they intended to utilize those dollars. We had 52 counties that opted to receive the funding in 202122 and they all submitted plans.

And then a handful of those counties actually updated their plans for the current fiscal year, indicating that maybe they wanted to identify new strategies. But the vast majority of counties are sticking with their initial strategies, which may indicate that they are actually having some success in the use of the dollars to promote those strategies. But we'll know more after June 30 when they actually submit those reports to us.

You also asked for an update on the shelter stays for youth and specific information about youth and shelters that are under the age of six. I will point as a threshold, the majority of our counties do not operate shelters for youth in foster care, 47 counties do not have any shelters. And of the 11 counties that do operate shelters, many have reduced their shelter capacity, which is consistent with our goals with CCR to reduce reliance on congregate care and make sure we have a kinfirst culture.

For the 11 counties that operate shelters, there are two different types of shelters that are utilized. There are temporary shelter facilities. Those have a 10 day limit. Those are in placing counties that were operating shelters prior to CCR that had 30 day shelters and they were allowed to convert to 10 day shelters. But we don't license new temporary shelters, so they basically got grandfathered in. And then we have transitional shelter care facilities that are also available as a licensed category.

Under current law, they generally have a three day limit and they have to be short term, and then after the end of that set term, they're reviewed every three to six months. Our oversight of shelters really focuses on the young people that are overstaying those limits, the 10 day or the three day limit that is imposed within those shelters. We did identify many of the trends that we've noticed within those temporary shelters in the report that was submitted to the Legislature in February 2022.

And what we saw for the youth in the 10 day temporary shelters was that the length of stay for youth within the 25th to 75th quartile was between one to nine days. Within that highest quartile, the average length of stay was longer at 12 days. For youth with an overstay, the median length of stay was 42 days, which does suggest that there's a subset of youth being served within these shelters that are taking longer to place.

Approximately 60% of the youth that are placed in temporary shelters are there at the point of initial removal. While they're identifying family, 50% of youth in these placements were female, 49.8% male, 0.2% other. Generally speaking, the temporary shelters are for youth over the age of six. So specific to the question about the under six population, the median age for youth in the temporary shelters is 12 years old, and within that inner quartile it ranges from six to 15 and a half years of age.

We are working on a second report that we'll be releasing in the coming month with the most recent data specific to the transitional shelters. The data there is less reliable because of the different reporting requirements across the facilities. The trends that we've observed are that youth 13 to 18 have the highest amount of overstays within the transitional shelters, meaning more than those three days due to lack of placements for teens and going sort of absent from placement.

We have had a decrease in the number of children under six entering our transitional shelters. And when youth are under six in a transitional shelter, we are seeing that the average day is under three days. Specific to the under six population. We did publish an all county information notice in February 2022 to remind counties of the different requirements that have to be in place. If you have a young person under six within a shelter, it has to be a different staffing model for those young people.

And then we've also been working with every single county that has youth under the age of six within a shelter in order to provide sort of technical assistance and make sure that we're adopting strategies so that we don't have those very young children within those settings. And with that, I think I've answered the questions.

Next we will hear from Emerald Evans, who is a policy advocate with grace and end child poverty, as well as a youth advocate for the John Burton advocates for youth.

Yes. Good afternoon, chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Emerald Evans and I'm a policy associate for Grace and Child Poverty California. And prior to this role, I was a youth advocate for John Burn advocates for youth. I sit before you all as a proud former foster youth who lived through the foster care system from the age of six to 18. Thank you, chair and Members, for allowing me the opportunity to speak today.

My remarks touch on how, as a state, we've taken the steps to protect older foster youth from our state's housing crisis as they enter the housing market. Since 2010, when AB 12 was enacted, California has taken several steps to continuously improve our extended foster care program, but one challenge that wasn't necessarily anticipated back in 2010 is how our state's housing costs have skyrocketed.

The housing crisis has hindered the promise of extended foster care because of the sizable portion of non minor dependents that are in placements that are reliant upon the private rental market. In 2020, championed by Assembly Member field Ting, the Legislature established a housing supplement for transitional housing placement for nonminor dependents, also known as THPNMD. This placement is the second most utilized placement for non minor dependents and is operated by nonprofit providers who most commonly enter into leases with landlords and then place youth in shared apartments.

This is an important placement because THP NMD providers offer youth supporting services like help with school, work, case management, crisis intervention, and independent living skills. But over the years, lack of housing affordability created obstacles to accessing this placement. Providers cited competition in the housing market, rising rent, and hesitation on part of landlords to rent to these programs who sublease to youth when I was in foster care, I gained housing from the THP non minor dependent program.

Participating in the NMD program allowed me to have secure housing without having to worry about what I was concerned with all my life, which is where I'd be living from one week to the next. It also gave me the opportunity to focus on my higher education without the pressures of working full time to pay for my rent. I was able to graduate last year from Sacramento State, being the first in my family to graduate from college. Thank you.

This program was critical to ensure that I received the care and support that all youth deserve, especially foster youth who experience high risk of homelessness due to complex family dynamics. The THP NMD housing supplement provides additional funding on top of the statewide THP NMD foster care rate so that the monthly amount that THP NMD providers receive correlates with the cost of housing in their county versus a flat statewide rate.

This legislation was implemented on a phase in basis starting in 2021 and as of September 1, 2022 it was fully implemented statewide and on any given day, more than 1200 foster youth in California benefit from this policy. Providers and youth report that this policy makes a difference. Not only does it give providers the purchasing power to rent, but it ensures that they have funding to cover the cost of critical supportive services that contribute to youth leaving care who are prepared to live independently.

While THPD, pardon me, is the second most utilized foster care placement for nonminor dependents, the single most utilized placement is called supervised independent living placement, also known as SILP. As of last October, more than 3300 non-minor dependents in our state resided in a silk. The SILP is the most flexible independent placement of all, and in this placement there are no providers, there are no supportive services, and social workers are not required to help youth find housing.

As you can imagine, with their silk payment of $1,129 per month, youth struggle in this placement to secure affordable, safe housing in a community close to their work or school. In some counties, the increase in housing costs have severely outpaced the increase in silk rates. Between 2012 and when extended foster care was first implemented in 2023, the monthly silk rate has increased 41% during that same time period.

In the 15 highest cost counties in California where the majority of youth live, the cost of a two bedroom apartment has increased a full 80% and in some counties even 113%. It is clear that we need to take the same housing supplement approach that was established for the THP NMD program and apply it to Silps.

This will give youth the purchasing power to secure housing where they feel safe, allows them to gain housing in communities that they have ties to, where they're getting education, and also where they work. Addressing the housing affordability issue for youth in SILPs will decrease incidences of homelessness experienced by youth during foster care and contribute to the pursuit of stable and independent adulthood. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Kristen Power, Vice President of policy and advocacy with the alliance for Children's Rights.

Good afternoon. Kristin Power with the Alliance for Children's Rights the Alliance for Children's Rights is a very active partner with the California Department of Social Services in regulatory implementation, including providing suggested first drafts, reviewing guidance and regulatory drafts to implement our laws and, of course, budget funding. We noted with interest the recommendations in the Legislative Analyst's office child welfare budget analysis related to continuing oversight and seeking information about implementation.

We appreciate that the Department of Social Services has had enormous tasks over the last several years with significant responsibilities, particularly as it relates to implementing continuum of care reform and pandemic assistance.

However, we do think that there are examples showing that there can be lengthy delays in releasing guidance which significantly impacts execution of legislative policy reforms and funding as implementation further lags when counties won't implement statutory changes until all county letters or ACLs or regulations are released that even further delay occur as counties develop their policies, information sharing and training processes following the release of the corresponding ACL or regulation.

To better describe what happens from the time the Legislature passes, the Governor signs and the Department of Social Services issues regulatory guidance I just have two brief examples. SB 612 passed in 2017 and required promulgation of new regulations for the transitional housing Placement program THPP, a placement opportunity for youth in foster care between the ages of 16 and 18. In 2018, the THPP rates work groups met and that was the first part of the stakeholder process in November of 2018.

The first draft was released for comment in September of 2019. The THPP rates workgroup again met with their stakeholders in April of 2019. The revised draft was released in September of 2021. So now we're in 2021. There was an update meeting with stakeholders. There was a new draft released for comment in March of that year and stakeholders submitted their comments in April of 2022. Yesterday, stakeholders were told that draft regulations are with the Office of Regulations Development for final CDSS review.

If approved, it will then go to the Office of Administrative Law for formal rulemaking. Just to recap, five years will have lapsed from the time that the statute passed to the time that we get to final promulgation of regulation. My second example, SB 129, was signed in July of 2021.

This trailer Bill Language included a temporary direct support for children and youth in foster care to promote stability and to meet their needs related to the pandemic. As you know, caregivers took on a very complex and challenging role from the start of the stay at home orders with the children in their care. As critical education supports were disrupted during distance learning, caregivers struggled to prevent the children in their care from falling even further behind in school.

They also had to navigate access to behavioral health and other supports, virtually, keep family and community connections intact, and manage new health care related protocols. SB 129 was chaptered, which included the caregiver pandemic assistance payment in July of 2021. In January of 2022, the ACL was released for stakeholder comment. Stakeholders submitted their comments within two days, and in March of 2022, the ACL was released, meaning that the caregiver pandemic assistance payment was not made available for eight months following chaptering.

As always, we will continue to actively participate in regulatory implementation efforts to support youth, children, and our caregivers impacted by the child welfare system. As I mentioned, these examples of delays in issuing guidance and regulation can significantly delay the implementation of legislative intent and passing bills and budget. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Kathy Senderling CWDA just a few comments as I'm kind of wrapping up this one, and folks have talked about a lot. First, we do want to just thank CDSs for working with us on some of those changes that Ms. Schwartz detailed related to the child specific complex care funding. I think even though the forum was simplified, it does still require a lot of information.

And I think what we're hearing from counties is the structure of the funding is different than any other pot of money that we're aware of that counties receive in that the individual expenditures ultimately have to be approved either before or after expenditure. The state is looking at the very detailed information. Typically we would see some kind of an allocation go out to counties along with instructions for what those could be used for and how to claim them. And after the fact, they do some checks.

There's audits, there's requirements that when we do the claiming, we sign that under penalty of perjury, and we kind of all move on like they get the funding out the door. And this one, it just was structured differently. There's a lot of detail in the statute that says specifically what you can use the money for, and then that has to be kind of kept to.

And so we are hopeful, as Ms. Schwartz noted, that we'll see additional claiming now happening since some of those things have been addressed. I do want to note I had mentioned that we are, along with the probation chiefs, co sponsoring the proposal for that enhanced strtp, as well as the regional health homes.

And here is the third component that I'd mentioned, which is we would propose that the allowable uses of funds, since it is so spelled out in the statute, be broadened a bit, for example, allowing youth and families to access a broader array of services. And we also would suggest that the approval process be more expedient so that we can ensure our families are getting the supports right away. And there's not confusion or an upfront kind of requirement of the work.

But it's all more after the fact, which is more consistent with the way that our funds are typically flowing. I think we all meant well when we worked on that statute together a couple of years ago as part of the budget process. But in practice, that level of detail just doesn't work as well. I also want to note that on the capacity building funding, which is the $43 million, these are one time funds that are available over five years. Those are available until 2026.

However, we know that what counties are being asked to do with those funds, and again, this affects both child welfare and probation, is to build capacity on an ongoing basis. And yet the funds were provided on a one time basis. And so we are again proposing here that they be made an ongoing funding source for counties, and that is something that we're working together again with the probation chiefs to be able to really enable us to better leverage the federal dollars.

We think we really need to be able to ensure that they're ongoing supports and that the capacity is truly built. We appreciate the mention of that in Ms. Schwartz's comments on the list of investments that are on the agenda. We're really pleased to have received the flexible family supports we mentioned that, I think, in the prior conversation and also greatly appreciate the emergency response augmentation as this is helping counties stabilize their workforces.

We are continuing to face severe worker recruitment issues and retention problems just across all of our child welfare components. So these funds remain critically needed for the foreseeable future. In addition, two things that we're still kind of watching out for and working with the Department that weren't on your list is I'd mentioned and we talked about earlier, the CalWORKS payments for families that are in the family reunification and continuing those payments.

This was adopted in the 2021-2022 trailer Bill and had been required for implementation July 1 of last year. We are still awaiting those instructions. We've reviewed two versions and do think that it's past time to get that going and really urge the Department to get that done. We also know that we're very close to seeing the final on the policy of collecting child support. This was AB 1686 we worked on with assuming Member Brian, and we know we're close.

I think Angie has, Ms. Schwartz has signed off on this one, so we're hopeful that's posted soon. So just another thing that we're kind of watching out for so that we can ideally reduce that burden on our families as well as the workload that it creates on our folks. Finally, I just want to say associate myself with the comments that Ms. Evans made and expressed CWDA support for the proposal for the silk housing supplement.

Our youth in extended foster care just cannot compete with others in this housing market. The housing market is terrible for everyone. But if you're a youth receiving these funds, landlords are not typically all that keen on renting to you anyway. And so we need to do whatever we can, I think, to help in these situations. So we support that ask as well. So thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Angela Short with the LAO.

Thank you. Angela short with the Lao. I just want to start by acknowledging, as others on the panel have, that DSS truly has received many significant new investments over the past few years, both for child welfare as well as other areas, program areas for which DSS is responsible, in addition to managing the various programmatic impacts that the pandemic has resulted in.

So within that context, certainly it's reasonable to expect some lead time between funds being appropriated through the budget guidance being delivered, and then implementation actually being able to begin as described in your agenda. On average, it's been taking around six to 12 months for the Department to develop the initial guidance. However, that, of course, varies by the size, the details of the program, et cetera. However, simply the volume of the new augmentations being undertaken simultaneously has created some significant.

Oversight challenges, and it just really complicates the ability to track everything effectively that's happening all at once. So with this in mind, we suggest the Legislature could consider directing the Department to report on just more of the details around what goes into developing the guidance and why it takes the amount of time that it does and what challenges have arisen and may have required additional time to address what any unanticipated obstacles have been.

And with this information, we think that could help the Legislature assess first if the Department actually has sufficient resources to be undertaking so many new augmentations simultaneously, and again, just generally improve oversight and the Legislature's ability to understand how these new programs are being implemented.

And then finally, for the newly funded program components that have yet to be fully implemented, the Legislature further could request that the Department provide anticipated timelines for when the Department does believe those augmentations can really get off the ground and begin implementation again, just to further improve ability to oversee all that's happening. Thank you.

Department of Finance.

Erin Carson. Department of Finance, nothing to add.

Thank you. I will bring it back up to the dais for Deputy Director Schwartz. I'm going to follow up on what Ms. Schwartz was saying there. I've always been under the assumption that if the Department is in need of resources, you do a BCP.

And so I think what I'd like to do is frame it in the way of whether or not implementation delays of six to 12 months is acceptable or normal, or what the Department is looking to do, or how can we get from appropriation to implementation on a faster timeline.

So on many of these, we did build in timelines, and I think on a lot of them, we're meeting sort of the target in terms of getting the allocation and claiming instructions and the initial policy guidance out, which is not full implementation. I mean, then counties also have to do their work to then implement those things.

I do think that there is a natural period of time that it takes to do the negotiations with counties and probation, the consultation with tribes in order to develop the policy, and they have to go out to the stakeholder for review and get that feedback. And that's all a really important part of actual implementation of the policies.

And there's sometimes, oftentimes, especially with these really complex programs, and with meeting the needs of young people that have really different individual needs and counties that have very different resources and structures, you get a lot of feedback. Right. And so that also naturally slows the process down. So I don't know that it's completely unrealistic to say that it takes six months to a year, depending on the complexity of the program.

I mean, particularly with some of the programs that require like an RFP or an RFA or that involve multiple departments that are putting together these things and trying to sort of sort out between DHCs and CDSs, very complicated policy. I think that there's a natural amount of time that it takes to do good policy and good implementation. Same with that county planning.

I mean, the county plans take a while to develop, but they also give us really critical information for how we're actually thinking about like going back to the comprehensive prevention planning. Without those plans, we don't have a good sense of how we're addressing the disparities and disproportionality within our system.

And so even though it takes time to do that work, it's really important to do in terms of informing the Legislature and informing our own implementation efforts to make sure that we're actually addressing the disparities and the disproportionality. I mean, specific to the 18.1 million of the ongoing funding, we're approving those requests within a day or two that they come to us. So it's a really fast turnaround and really important information that we're getting as counties are making those requests.

When we're thinking about these really complex needs that young people have and trying to put together not just an approval of the request, but what's the appropriate TA response? And how can the system of care team now wrap that child and that county with additional supports and services? So sometimes this implementation work, it does take a while to ramp up, but in that implementation process, you're actually getting really critical information that's enabling you to build better programs that effectively serve families.

Addressing earlier the need for us to have urgency, I do believe it's important for us to simultaneously be implementing many of these programs at the same time, but would like to hear from the CWDA if I can, is there a need for prioritization so that implementation is going smoother, or how can we simultaneously be working on multiple program improvements?

Great question, Dr. Arambula. I would say I don't know that it's, I mean, maybe in some cases prioritization. I mean, the word that came to my mind is communication. In that regard, I think working together to think about those priorities and how long are things realistically going to take both upfront as things are put forth. Like for example, we're proposing an entirely new licensing category. If we get five or six of those facilities stood up I think we consider that a victory, to be honest.

And yet we know that doesn't happen overnight. Like say we get it approved, say everyone goes, great idea. Here you go. Well, we obviously have to work together with DSS and with DHCs to figure out what are the licensing standards and what are the staffing standards, and then how do you figure out a rate for that? And we know that there is also this rate conversation going on for the STRTPs and other facilities in general.

And so how do we think about how that fits in and plays in? So you can see those things do take time to play out. I think on the complex care funding issue, it's a lot of work to put the requests in. And so I think that's one where I would gently push back a little and say if it was a quicker process, we could still provide the information after the fact to help with some of those things.

I feel like there's maybe a balance to strike a bit more than we've gotten. But I don't disagree that in many of the cases it does take a long time to do the work right. It's just, I think communicating and thinking about what happens in the meantime as those things are being worked through. The process is something that we probably would want to continue to do on an ongoing basis as partners and the ones who are running it on the ground.

So thinking like, okay, then what can we do in the meantime? That might be a conversation that we could have even in this setting or during the budget conversation, so that we don't just have the money and then there's nothing for this long period of time. And it's not like nothing in the sense that no work is being done to get it out the door.

But you don't necessarily see the fruits of that labor for some period of time, and it can be a long time depending on what the issue is.

I'll take a moment to appreciate the advocacy of Miss Emerald Evans. I think it's important for us to hear lived experiences, particularly to drive at parity between programs. So to get us from THPNMD to SILP requires that type of information that you provided. And so that advocacy is very important for us policymakers and wanted to make sure that you heard that from us directly. My final question is going to be regarding the pilot projects that support minor victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

There was a children's legacy center that was going to run the rural regional pilot and was hoping you could explain that a bit further in detail.

Sure. So the Children's Legacy Center is out of Shasta and is operating our CSEC pilot and is also expanding that pilot based on the most recent appropriation. It's implementing a licensed foster family agency, a licensed STRTP, a licensed emergency placement model, and a coordinated response team. The evaluation portion of the pilot will be providing data and showing outcomes for the operation of the CSEC continuum across the entire region.

It utilizes the principles of harm reduction, meeting the needs of each individual child, where they're at, whatever their needs are, with the long term goal of incremental change towards lasting safety. It's designed to serve a range of needs for those in residential treatment and in needs of placement resources.

We actually went on a site visit and visited several of their sites and are looking at sort of the different ways that they're innovating with the foster family agency, with their different approaches to how they're interacting with the children and the youth and the harm reduction model, and obviously working closely with them to collect the data and identify what outcomes we're seeing through those pilots. But we don't have that data at this point.

I always feel obligated representing the Central Valley to make sure that rural incorporates communities like mine as well. We have a major issue with sex trafficking up and down the 99 and need some specific strategies that are helping us. And so seeing that we have a Bay Area pilot, a Southern California pilot, and a pilot out of Shasta, I'm trying to figure out where our needs and concerns will be addressed, and so look forward to working with the Administration on that.

Appreciate that.

With that, I do want to appreciate the LAO's report that I believe is on page 30. I found that summary incredibly insightful for us to be able to get that information, and I'm wondering if we're able to get that on a more regular update in writing, as I'd like to get that higher level view of where we are in implementation status going forward. It may be from the Department, actually, instead of the LAO. So for the Department,

Sure.

Thank you. With that, we will hold this issue open and move on to issue five. Thank you very much to this panel.

You're leaving?

Yeah, I know.

Issue five is regarding the governor's proposal on child and family training for families at risk of child removal. We will have three presenters on this panel for issue five, and we will begin with Deputy Director Schwartz.

Good afternoon. So the first question was whether or not we can provide an overview of how families will be served through the child and family teaming for families at risk of removal.

The Child and Family teaming for families at risk of removal corresponds to DHCS's Cal-BH CBC Medicaid waiver, specifically the joint home visit component in which a specialty mental health provider will accompany child welfare workers during home visits occurring after a substantiated allegation of abuse or neglect, but before the child is removed, or to support the child and the family after the child is returned to the home.

The purpose of these joint visits is to coordinate and develop intervention plans that will prevent entry or reentry with the child welfare system. It will require child and family teams to be available in family maintenance cases, which is currently not funded. Right now, CFTs are only funded for children after the child has been removed when they're in family reunification status, but that's when they're still within the foster care system with the case plan goal of being reunified.

That limits our ability to do the effective coordination of care and support in order to prevent the removal or to support the child once they've been returned home and prevent the reentry. In terms of the timelines that you asked about, the funding for the CFT for the FM cases would not be available until the waiver request is approved by CMS. While we're waiting for that approval, we can begin developing guidance for the counties.

We were just talking about the implementation process, so the all county letter and the county fiscal letters, we would defer to DHCS with regard to your question on whether or not it's likely that the waiver will be approved by January 1, 2024. Both departments are operating under that assumption, and we anticipate that there will be some ramp up time once the waiver is actually approved in terms of the specific objectives and outcome targets.

It will allow for earlier care coordination between providers and child welfare agencies, again, to support prevention of entry into foster care and to support prevention of reentry, and we do not have trailer bill proposed at this time.

LAO

Thank you. Not too much to add here. Just to note that we would agree with the staff recommendation on page 40 of your agenda, specific to trailer bill detailing more specific timelines, implementation details, and measurable outcomes. We think this would certainly help to improve legislative oversight as well as better inform expectations for this specific proposal. Thank you.

Department of Finance

Erin Carson Department of Finance nothing to add, but happy to answer any questions on this proposal.

I'll bring it up and to the Dais. Keep it here at the chair. It may be a better question for DHCs, but at the bottom of page 39 there's a need for us to improve statewide county accountability for medical services. And there is a comment that the Administration is working to amend the county managed health plan contracts. And so I'd like to know, have we amended those? Are we doing that through the reprocurement process? How are we able to.

I think I would have to refer to colleagues at DHCS on that.

With that I will. Let me then frame the question slightly differently, if I can. It sounded as if there wasn't going to be Trailer Bill language submitted on this proposal that I'd like to understand how we can have a level of accountability regarding this going forward. How is the Legislature going to be involved as there are appropriations of significant funds, it's $314,000,000 General Fund, but it's $6.1 billion total funds that we're discussing. How can we have meaningful input if we don't have TBL before us?

Erin Carson, Department of Finance on the issue of TBL, there's no TBL proposed for 23 Governor's Budget. The Administration is monitoring whether statutory changes are needed. But no, it may be premature at this time because the waiver has not yet been submitted and approved by the Federal Government. So we would just need to see the final terms of the final waiver. Before.

It would greatly increase your chance and likelihood, if there was TBL submitted that the Legislature could evaluate and determine whether it was appropriate. And so while I understand you're awaiting the federal approval, I would just encourage that communication between co equal branches of government as well. And I will just add TBL can be contingent upon the passage of the waiver. And so while it's not being discussed now, would that be something the Administration would be amenable to?

If you were to receive the waiver, would you then be submitting TBL to the Legislature?

Again, we would have to wait to see the final terms of the approved waiver as it goes through the CMS approval process. But we would also note that this component is just one component of a larger waiver demonstration program being led by the DHCS side. So we would also have to work with our colleagues with them because they are the lead department on this whole waiver demonstration.

With that, we look forward to seeing that proposed TBL when it is available, including the details on the proposal that we heard. Otherwise, all issues will be held open on this item. We will now move on to issue six regarding the adoption facilitator program, unit BCP and Trailer Bill Language. We will have three presenters, beginning with Deputy Director Schwartz.

Thank you. So the first question was to explain the types of complaints against adoption facilitators that necessitated this proposal. The impetus for the proposal was partly from advocates and stakeholders who approached CDSS with concerns about adoption facilitators operating within California.

We've received complaints reporting instances of false and misleading advertising by adoption facilitators defrauded prospective adoptive parents or adoptive families defrauding them out of tens of thousands of dollars, violations of state law soliciting children for adoption, false and misleading statements from facilitators to match them with a baby of a specified race, facilitators who matched adoptive parents with a birth parent who was not fully assessed, and misrepresentation

as a licensed adoption agency. There's been an increase in complaints since 2020 in terms of whether or not it's correct that the program has existed without a complaint process. We've been able to receive complaints and complete preliminary reviews of these complaints, which we do, but we don't currently have the funding or staffing necessary to fully investigate those complaints offer the sorts of due process and levy fines and assessments against individuals found in violation of the law.

This is the first year that we've requested stateops resources for these additional functions, and in addition, we think that we also need to strengthen the statute itself in order to make sure that we have the authority to do the guidance of oversight that's envisioned, as well as to levy the fines as has been proposed in the Trailer Bill in terms of the timeline for establishing the procedures. We've currently posted guidelines for submission of adoption facilitator applications.

Again, with our existing resources, we can receive those applications and process them and post those folks on our website, but the Trailer Bill enhances our ability to have those stricter requirements. Revising the information facilitators would need to give us in order to be on the registry, give them the right to submit complaints, allow us to fully investigate those complaints and actually have a process by which we can levy those fines. It will be implemented if approved and passed. Our goal is by July of 2023.

LAO

Thank you. Just very briefly noting this is newly released Trailer Bill Language, and so at this point, we're still very much in the process of working to ensure we're fully understanding all of the challenges and the proposed solution and furthermore how that fits with the budget change proposal that was included as part of the Governor's Budget. So no additional comments at this point, but we can certainly follow up if there are any concerns to raise as we continue our analysis.

Thank you.

Department of Finance, Erin Carson Department of Finance nothing to add this time.

I'll bring it up to the Dais to see if there are any Members questions. I will just urge the Administration to consult with the interested stakeholders as we have just released that TBL so we can make the appropriate decisions through this budget year. We will also look closely at that recently released TBL with the BCP. Otherwise, all other issues will be held open and we will now move on to issue seven regarding the bringing families home implementation update and proposed Trailer Bill proposal.

We will have three presenters on this panel for issue seven. We will begin with Director Johnson when you are ready.

Thank you chair and Members Kim Johnson, California Department of Social Services your agenda does a great job outlining the Bringing Families Home program, one of those components that I referenced earlier. That's just a key component of helping keep families together and provide supports. I'll answer the questions outlined in the agenda. This is one of the seven housing and homelessness programs that we have the privilege to support and as you know, families with children represent 35% of California's homeless population.

Supporting families in obtaining and retaining stable housing leads to better outcomes for parents as well as their children across multiple other systems, including education, workforce, child welfare and health. The Bringing Families Home program provides resources to some of the most vulnerable families in California, those experiencing or at risk of homelessness who are also involved with the child welfare system. The goal is twofold, to keep families together as well as support them in remaining or becoming stably housed.

The Budgets acts of 2021 and 2022 each appropriated $92.5 million in one time funds for a total of $185,000,000 for bringing families home, available over multiple years. Of these funds, the Department has allocated $165.75 million to counties and tribes and has established a $10 million tribal set aside. As of 22-23 current year, there are 53 counties and one tribe operating a bringing families home program, with each program tailored to meets the needs of their local community.

25 tribes and tribal entities have requested funding through the tribal set aside to establish new programs, and we expect to finalize those awards this spring. Since its launch in 2016 through November of 2022, this program has served over 4700 families and permanently housed 2200 families. In fact, the majority of families served through this program exit the program into permanent housing. The largest proportion of families participating in the program are female caretakers and caregivers with children ages five and younger.

Over half of the children served by the program identify as Hispanic or Latino, and racially over half of the children identify as white, and nearly one quarter identify as black or African American. Program operators have attributed specific system improvements to this program, including improved leveraging, as was referenced earlier in the Committee of Federal, State, and local resources for more integrated and cost effective services, including greater utilization of federally funded family unification program vouchers.

Also, they have identified increased coordination between the Child Welfare Services systems and housing and homelessness programs. As referenced on page 45 of your agenda, the Department recently collected program updates from grantees operating the program last year, and according to those updates, grantees are providing individualized and intensive case management and housing navigation services while building relationships and creating partnerships between child welfare and local housing authorities. Grantees reported that these actions have contributed to family success in finding and maintaining stable housing and increasing family reunification.

Grantees plan to use the majority of funds awarded to serve families experiencing homelessness, while about 30% to support families facing housing instability. The most common challenge among grantees continues to be the lack of affordable housing. In fiscal year 21-22 the Department has continued its partnership with the University of Southern California Children's Data Network and UC Berkeley California Policy Lab to evaluate the impact of this program, and we anticipate final evaluation findings to be available this spring.

While we believe in the importance of quantitative data, I also wanted to highlight the story of one family. A couple with a child that had been placed in foster care were referred to the program. The parents faced several challenges, including substance use, mental health issues, and unemployment. The mother was temporarily housed in a sober living facility while the bringing Families home program assisted with the father with a voucher in section eight as well.

With the bringing family home support, the father secured housing that met the section eight guidelines and the program paid for his rent and security deposit for seven months until the voucher was approved. After the mother exited the sober living facility, she found an apartment with a family member and both parents are now living close to each other. The mother has remained stably housed since May of 2022 and has now been approved for SSI. With the help of case management.

The child welfare case was closed and the child was reunited with the father. The mother continues to have regular visits with the child, so both parents are set to complete supports. Yet the program is still regularly checking in with the family and ensuring that they are doing well. As it relates to the proposed Trailer Bill Language, page 44 of the agenda provides again a robust overview of what we are trying to accomplish.

In summary, this makes technical statutory changes to our statute to support equity, tribal engagement, and impact of state investments towards ending homelessness. There are no known concerns that we're aware of.

Specifically. Again, there are four components. It's clarifying program eligibility to include a tribe or tribal entity or agency under the definition of homelessness, individuals fleeing domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, or other dangerous or life threatening conditions that relate to violence against the individual or family member, including a child. It also updates the outdated definition of permanent housing in the statute to align with housing best practices.

Third, it extends the sunset date for the grantee match exemption related to onetime funds from June 30 of 2024 to June 30 of 2025 to align with expenditure timelines. And finally, it requires the Department to develop regulations to implement the changes by July 1 of 2024 and clarifies the scope of our authority to do so. Thank you.

Ms. Short with the LAO.

Thank you, regarding the Trailer Bill Language, we've reviewed the proposal and have no concerns to raise at this time.

Department of Finance

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

Bring it up to the Dias for members questions. I'll keep it here at the chair if I can, and for the Administration. I'm following up on our comments from our March 8th hearing, where we wanted to receive a comprehensive assessment of the implementation of the housing programs, which are administered through DSS. You mentioned seven programs. We talked about several of them on March 8th.

I'd like to be inclusive of the bringing family homes to be reported back to the Legislature on February 1st, when you will be reporting on the other programs. And our expectation would be to follow the questions we had here, really trying to address the unmet need and out, um, so the housing availability or not, and also just year over year trends in utilization. That's helpful for us to analyze and both hold to be transparent, but also to have accountability for our housing programs and.

Would like to ask if you would be amenable to that.

Yes.

With that, all other issues will be held open and we will move on to issue eight. Issue eight is regarding the California Statewide Automated Welfare System, CalSAWS, ongoing support, BCP, and stakeholder priorities for CalSAWS. We will have six centers on this panel for issue eight. We will begin with Deputy Director Brandon Hansard when you are ready.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, committee members. My name is Brandon Hansard. I'm deputy director of the Office of Systems Integration. I'm going to briefly review the budget request before you and answer question one before handing off to my fellow panelists to highlight the many project successes over the past 12 months, the current status of stakeholder priorities, and the remaining questions. First of all, I do want to thank your staff for the detailed write up on this proposal.

So I'll just briefly highlight the request for the specific state Administration budget proposal. We are asking to make permanent five existing positions whose funding expire June 30 of this year. These positions, three at the Department of Healthcare Services, one at the Department of Social Services, and one at the Office of System Integration, are a vital part of the state's ability to continue to engage on the CalSAWS project through CalWIN migration and post-migration enhancement activities.

The Office of System Integration staff will coordinate with key state program sponsors to plan, develop, manage a prioritization process that may include facilitating meetings, presentations involving problems and issues, considerable consequence and importance, and collaborate with our sponsors to resolve critical, complex, and sensitive consortium management issues.

For the DHCS resources. they will continue to provide the oversight of the Medi-Cal eligibility policy functionality in CalSAWS, which includes serving as the state-sponsored representatives for the Medi-Cal program, providing necessary policy guidance and technical assistance during the SAWS activities related to migration ancillary systems, and then again, the ongoing system enhancements. The CDSS resource will be providing technical knowledge and is responsible for providing technical planning, preparation, review, documentation, and support on the project as it relates to various CDSS programs and applications.

By making these positions permanent, we'll be more capably positioned to make the most prudent and timely policy implementation decisions, both during this CalSAWS migration, but even more importantly, throughout maintenance and enhancement to continue the support. With the position securely in place, the state will be equipped to monitor future CalSAWS's risks and issues and be able to respond promptly to mitigate any potential impacts to programs or to participants.

So, in response to your first question, these specific positions are part of our larger state engagement on the CalSAWS project, and together the requested positions will provide state oversight for timely implementation of policy and programmatic changes, including how the functionality supports client access and the ease of use. As this project moves forward, the staff will be focused on assessing and identifying system gaps in post-implementation phases of CalSAWS to confirm that alignment and make sure that we're meeting policy objectives and outcomes. And with that, I really want to turn over to John Boule, the executive director of CalSAWS, to highlight the last 12 months of successes and to answer some of the subsequent questions.

Mr. Chair, many members, my name is John Boule. I'm the Executive Director of CalSAWS, which is a joint powers authority that has membership of all 58 counties that is overseeing the implementation for the county users of the CalSAWS system. I'm happy to be here. Over the last two years, I've been before this committee, we've talked about the challenges of getting to a single statewide integrated welfare system in California.

And once it's complete, it'll be the largest integrated eligibility system in the country and quite possibly the world as we go forward. And we know that it has to meet the needs of vulnerable Californians. Last year, I talked about challenges that we have as we move forward.

And I'm happy to report we've had a lot of success this year and that we are on track within the next eight months to be able to achieve that goal of an integrated eligibility system, just one in the State of California for the first time in its history. As I look at the agenda, the first question posed was, will CalSAWS be able to provide language access in all 19 threshold languages?

Currently, CalSAWS provides language access in all 19 threshold languages in our public-facing portal BenefitsCal. And we did this through working with our stakeholders and our counties on the requirements for BenefitsCal. And we included that as part of our RFP and had our vendor actually be able to provide that. So that was part of the baseline requirements.

As we rolled out BenefitsCal, we went live in September of 2021 with 12 languages, and since April of 2022, we've had all 20 languages available to the public. So when they go out to that public portal, they can choose their language out of 20 languages, and that is in their native language as they can go through the online process. Well, the CalSAW system can produce notices and forms in all 19 languages. For these, we are dependent upon translation received from CDSS and DHCS.

So once they modify the form, change the form, update the form, it has to be translated into the 19 threshold languages. And once that translations are provided, they provide that over to CalSAWS and we have to prioritize that with all of the other changes, the migration work that we have, the enhancements with policies, and those other items.

We look at the capacity and we really look at what is the frequency of the form, how often is it used, how often is it generated and those types of things to be able to roll those things in within the existing budget. As I look at your next item on the agenda, what are the client-facing issues still under development undergoing problem-solving attention as we near completion of CalSAWS? First of all, the adoption of BenefitsCal, our public-facing portal has been fantastic.

Each and every day we have 100,000 Californians that are logging on to BenefitsCal. We just have 45 counties, we still have 13 very large counties to be able to go and implement the BenefitsCal and CalSAW system. We have over 500 CBOs every single day that are successfully transacting business with our 45 production counties online. So the public response has been fantastic. We think that this can be and is starting to be the transformational portal that we all envisioned as we went into this.

Now we're continuing to build out additional functionality for large items that didn't exist in our prior portal, such as the abilities for customers to see their time on aid for CalWORKS programs or to apply for CalWORKS homelessness assistance online. As we build this new functionality and BenefitsCal, we need to make sure that that front end transacts with the back end, which is CalSAWS, and that the workers have the data and the information that they need in order to take action on those things timely. And we need to have full and complete policy on those items.

We've had to defer some of those enhancements until after we're done with the migration of all 58 counties to that platform and to be able to make sure that we're taking care of all of those items as we move forward. Now, advocates also have raised some concerns about the requirements to provide an email address when signing up for an account on BenefitsCal. Now this isn't unique to BenefitsCal whatsoever.

It's also required for the EBT system, Social Security system, unemployment, disability insurance programs, and many other programs. But we've heard the voices of our advocates and their concerns, and we're exploring other options such as voice biometrics, where an individual could use their voice as their password. Now, there's some limitations to that and there's some complexities with that, but we've heard some of the concerns of our advocates and we're starting to vet through that and see if that is a potential option.

Now, many community-based organizations are looking forward to new functionality coming in May of this year that will allow customers to release information in accordance with state policy to authorized community based organizations to support customers accessing and maintaining benefits online. It's a release of information, ROI, so May will be the first release of this functionality. We anticipate it will be the first release.

We anticipate we're going to have to do releases after that because the administration continues to explore policy with the counties and with stakeholders and we expect that there's going to be changes as they go through that engagement and we have yet to have final policy guidance on that. So we're going to have to be nimble and react as the policy changes because that impacts the automation.

Thank you. Next we will hear from Jennifer Tracy, who is a co-lead for the CalSAWS Advocates Group. I believe they are joining us via Webex.

Thank you so much. My name is Jennifer Tracy. I'm the co-lead for the CalSAWS Advocates Group. Thank you Mr. Chair and the committee members for the opportunity to speak today. First, we want to thank the CalSAWS project and the counties for leading the CalSAWS migrations and launching BenefitsCal, the public-facing website for consumers to apply for and manage their benefits.

We're also grateful to CDSS and the DHCS staff for their work in supporting the development of BenefitsCal and stakeholder engagement. In 2018 and in 2020, the Legislature established that stakeholders must have a process to provide input into new or changing public-facing elements of the CalSAW system. And we continue to be grateful for these requirements and for the opportunity they present for innovations in technology that reflect the needs of all users.

In alignment with these legislative requirements, and based on our experience and five years of advocating for consumers in automation, we're lifting up four goals for the CalSAW system. Number one, to develop a strategic approach to process the hundreds of backlog changes to BenefitsCal that emerged during the design and development phases of the website.

Many recommendations that advocates and application assistants have made for critically needed features have been sent to the backlog list, and they now must be reassessed and re-budgeted because they were not included in the original design. We're grateful that the CalSAWS project created the enhancements team about a year ago to prioritize these hundreds of backlogged items. However, the group still lacks a strategic and transparent approach for how BenefitsCal will be improved over time.

We're recommending that the group be reorganized around best practices for product management and transparency, with all of the BenefitsCal priorities and with collaborative engagement with stakeholders. Our second recommendation, thank you, John, for touching on the May release of information integration that's coming up. We do need to develop an improved process for consumers to share their information. The state has invested millions of dollars in community-based organizations, or CBOs, as an important part of the benefits ecosystem.

CBOs serve consumers who've been unable to navigate the benefits system on their own, including people who are elderly, non-English speaking, immigrants with disabilities, college students with complex application requirements, and people who just aren't really very good at technology. BenefitsCal has developed a unique portal for CBO assistors, which is great. We really appreciate that, but the portal's capabilities do not fully reflect the needs that consumers bring to assistors.

We need improved functionality for CBOs to support people and deliver on the state's investments in these areas. The third issue is regarding consumer needs, and John also touched on this in terms of the need to have a way to create an account in BenefitsCal without an email address. It was surprising to me that this was an issue that some people just don't use email.

But we know that there are protected classes who are struggling to maintain their benefits because they can't access these key features and benefits Cal. So we would like to see an alternative method that is easy for people to use for low tech-savvy customers. And then our last recommendation is regarding the development of a data dashboard that has meaningful data points. We've been asking for this for quite some time.

The dashboard should have interactive data points such as the number of applications and renewals, their outcomes, denial reasons, and the information should be sortable by the county language, population type, and month. The dashboard should be updated quarterly at minimum, and this will help us to continuously identify the successes of BenefitsCal and make data-driven improvements to address pain points. The Legislature has regularly demonstrated their support for access to public benefits and their support for innovative partnerships between the state, counties and the nonprofit sector.

There are millions of dollars at stake, both in terms of the state's investments and with consumer access to resources. We believe that if we can center the needs of consumers in partnership with the counties, we can develop systems that work for people and support their access to services. Part of doing that means having technology that's built toward successful outcomes, not just meeting a minimum requirement. The current structure of stakeholder engagement needs to be revisited. We request support from the subcommittee to navigate a process that aligns with the legislative intent. We appreciate your support of these efforts and look forward to celebrating our shared successes in future sessions. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we will hear from Cathy Senderling-McDonald,

Great. Thank you, Mr. Chair, members. Cathy Senderling, CWDA. So I was asked to kind of come at this from the county perspective. So the first question is how we think the CalSAWS stakeholder engagement process is going and also talk about some successes and areas for improvement.

So I would say, and I think others in the county world, especially those who've seen multiple implementations of various types of IT systems, would say that the level of engagement with our community-based organization partners, end users of the system has been tremendous. It's more than I've seen in the past, far beyond the quarterly sessions that were initially envisioned, and I think very responsive to the conversations that we've had in recent years.

It's really been great to see BenefitsCal get developed with the input and feedback from actual customers, potential customers, as well as the CBOs who work with those individuals. As far as improvements, I think it seems like our collective appetite for change has outpaced the resources that are available in which to make those changes. Also note that we, I think at CalSAWS developed an instant backlog because, remember, this federally mandated development and migration is still going on.

And so in order to meet those federal requirements where they threatened to pull funding if we didn't meet these requirements and meet them on the time frame that they specified, we saw a backlog almost instantly get created because the other work had to be done first. So we're still in the process of that work. And the question then becomes, we know we want changes.

There's changes that are being prioritized that the Legislature put in and that the administration put in, that CBOs put in, that counties have put in. And there's a group, it's called the collaboration model, and it includes counties, CBOs, our IT representatives, both from CalSAWS and the state, the vendor CWDA staff are on it. Individuals who are actually users of the system are on it.

And so I know a recent meeting, there were some decisions made that I think Ms. Tracy might have referenced related to prioritizing pain points in particular. I think the discussion there ended up with things that are really tied to the unwinding of the continuous coverage requirement for Medi-Cal being kind of popped up to the top because we know that's going to be a significant amount of work and people stand to lose their benefits if we can't dial in their ability to do things.

And so those are kind of number one on the list. My understanding is that there was a consensus-driven process that the majority of people in the group agreed with that model and approach, and not everyone did. And so I assume it's going to be an ongoing engagement. However, for now, there was a prioritization for those pain points and specifically those ones that seems reasonable in light of the extremely high stakes for 15 million of our Californians, neighbors, friends, and recipients.

So I think we're going to be continuing to make sure that we're planning effectively for all of that new functionality to go in. It isn't all going to be able to go in at once. We know that. And so just kind of making the priorities be those things that are the most urgent in sort of the rubric that has been used seems to be the way to go.

So that changes on the front end in the BenefitsCal portal also track to changes in CalSAWS, the back end that our workers use to be able to make sure that everything talks. You can't just make a change at the front end if you don't think about how that affects the back end. And so it's more work than folks might think. Another example is we are excited.

I think Mr. Boule might have mentioned the idea of adding the ability to apply for housing assistance through CalWORKS at the front end through BenefitsCal. That's going to be really exciting. But we also know it's got to carry through all the way to CalSAWS so that our CalWORKS worker sees that request coming in and can actually respond to it and get that authorized and then take the necessary steps to get that assistance to the person.

So that's just one example of how the entire process really has to work. The other question was, how is the overall migration to a single system going? And I'll say overall it is going well. There were a lot of fears, us, counties, probably everyone, about how this would go, especially in the middle of a pandemic for so much of the development, but for it to have maintained an on-time migration, for it to be working well, 100,000 unique users a day accessing the system from wherever they might be, don't tell their employers or maybe in their bathroom at home.

We are, I think, again proving that a county-led system with support from our state partners is able to be stood up on time and effectively. And yes, you know, as we work kind of moving forward, nothing's perfect. There's going to be some glitches. But so far, I think Mr. Boule, his team, and the vendors have really been able to roll with things that have come their way, and we've been really impressed. We've still got, as he noted, 13 counties over the next several months.

By January of 2024, the goal is everybody in one system. For the first time ever. I've worked at CWDA, as you know, now almost 23 years. We were in four systems when I started at the Senate Budget Committee. For us to get to one, I truly never thought it would happen, but kudos.

We're close, and then we're going to be able to just get it stabilized and then start to improve it through those different processes that you're hearing about and that I'm sure we'll continue to talk about for some time to come. But overall, thinking about how we best support our customers, our workers and get them the benefits, we're really pleased with what we're seeing. So thanks for the opportunity to comment.

Next, we will hear from Brian Metzker with the LAO.

Brian Metzker, LAO. We've reviewed the budget proposal and have no comments. Happy to answer any questions.

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

Hi, Jenean Docter, Department of Finance. No additional comments, but happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. I'll bring it up to the dais if I can. I'd like to follow up on Ms. Tracy's comments, and I'm hoping for a response if I can, either from Mr. Boule or from both of you, Cathy Senderling-McDonald as well. We heard your overviews, but how can we incorporate and meaningfully utilize the information being provided through these CalSAWS teams that she is a co-lead of through their advocate group? Hoping you can respond to the four concerns that she raised. I know you touched on a few of them in your opening comments, but wanted to see if you had any other further comments.

Yeah. Mr. Chair, as I've stated and Executive Director Senderling-McDonald stated, this has been a balancing act. I'll admit, this migration, the build-out of BenefitsCal as we've gone forward, the training and working with the counties to get them ready during the pandemic, it's been challenging and it's been a balancing act. Our processes, our new processes that Ms. Tracy talked about, yeah, they need to mature and we need to continue to work together. We're spending a significant amount of time together working through that.

Just a month ago, probably a month and a day ago, I got a list of recommendations. I'm working with my team twice a week because it's the same team that's working on all of these rollouts and preparing the counties for these rollouts to be able to work through these items, make sure that we have responses so that we can go together.

The consortium is committed to continue to work through these processes and mature these processes, but it's going to take some time to be able to do that as we work together. One of the things that's been brought up here was we know that our advocate community, our stakeholder community's biggest concern as we went in was we can't repeat the same items that we've had on past migrations. They've been challenging, they've impacted clients and customers and things like that.

We need to have a better way to prepare our counties and our systems to scale, and we've been pretty darn successful in doing that. But we have to be diligent as we move forward. I think for the four items that we've talked about on the BenefitsCal sign-on and being able to use that for folks, I've talked about exploring voice biometrics to see if that is a reasonable item.

The other thing is we want to actually get some lists from our advocate partners of some people in this population, so we could send out some people to do some user-centered design with them because this is online and it's a very complex application process that they must go through. And if they can't get a free email address, we're concerned that they'll be able to make it through the application process as we go forward.

That's why the counties have other access channels available to these populations to go through. But we want to continue to work and partner to see if we can make BenefitsCal one of those application channels that can streamline those items on data and data dashboards. We don't want to replicate and have dueling data. There's a lot of things through open data portals that CHHS provides, that DHCS provides, that CDSS provides. We need to look at those items, see where the data resides, and do that.

We've just started publishing on our calsaws.org, just some usage statistics and things like that. And we need to explore that as we go forward with the partners to say where is and what is the right data as we go forward. So we're not replicating those items going forward. We're committed to working through that. So we need to mature these processes and work through that.

But we can't have them consume all the time and jeopardize our commitments to the Legislature, to our state partners, to our county partners in continuing to deliver. It's going to take a little bit of time, but I know together we'll work through that. We're committed to do that.

Ms. Senderling-McDonald, wanted to see if you have any further comments.

Sure. I think Mr. Boule, of course, his answers are excellent. I will share in thinking through the email address. I heard and we've discussed internally a bit in our office about that issue, knowing, I mean, I have a lot of online accounts and they all require an email address, but I understand that there are going to be individuals in our large state who may not feel comfortable for whatever reason or may not remember their email address.

And so I do think it makes sense to explore. I think we need to remember that there's going to be a tension between access and security. And so one of the reasons for the email address is to do that added layer of security in order to ensure that someone really is who they say they are.

And so thinking through, if we're going to create a structure in which in order to access online, you do not have to provide that email address, are we replacing it with something that will be secure as well? And what will that mean? We certainly look forward to John and his team making those recommendations. And at this point, though, just abandoning that requirement seems like without a good alternative in place would not be a good idea.

We see, for example, I mean, look at how many, it's a different issue, but like, how many millions of dollars are our customers losing to EBT skimming every month and scamming and anything that you do that could make it potentially easier for someone to access erroneously and inappropriately that information, whether they be a well-meaning CBO or a person who's out to really do wrong, that information gets out there and then you can't put that genie back in the bottle. That is a big deal.

And so we would recommend that we err on the side of security, knowing that if an individual is uncomfortable going online, they do not have to. They can send things in by mail, they can call us, they can come in person, they can work with a CBO who does feel comfortable having a CBO account and working with them. And so we do think that there are options and you can submit, I believe, an application without having to use an email address.

You at least can get the process going, protect your application date, which is number one in our world, so that your benefits go back to that date once we get you approved. So we've tried to make accommodations where we can, but I do think that that security, especially in this day and age, and what we're seeing elsewhere in our system. Yes, we're a little touchy about it, but I think you probably understand why. Thank you.

With that, I'm going to turn to the LAO, if I can. I'd like to ask for your assistance in being involved in what I hope will be a new ongoing dialogue between the stakeholder coalition who spoke so eloquently here today, the Office of Systems Integration, which may have a new name soon, DSS and CWDA. Regarding the stakeholder concerns, I'm appreciative of what was brought forward today, but I'm hoping to get a report back to us at the April 26 hearing and then on an ongoing basis, for us to make headway on the problems which were identified today. The LAO able to assist us with that?

Yes, happy to help.

Thank you. With that, we will hold this item open and move on to issue 9. Issue 9 is the TBL regarding the OSI name change, the Office of Technology and Solutions Integration. We will have three presenters on. Director Dondro, begin when you are ready.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate it. I'll be rather brief. It's a pretty straightforward proposal in terms of changing the name. Currently Office of Systems Integration. Proposing changing to Office of Technology and Solutions Integration. On the surface, it seems rather small, but for us, systems integration is very much a term of art when it comes to technology, and it's very limited in scope.

And in fact, it doesn't even accurately describe what we historically have done, which is large-scale, complex IT projects on behalf of the Health and Human Services Agency and our departments. Now, as we look forward, I am now the AIO for Health and Human Services Agency, overseeing all IT strategy and visioning, as well as the Director for the Office of Systems Integration for those particular projects.

And the goal there, in combining those positions, and thus combining the offices, is to be able to take the expertise we have, which, based on the name, people assume is strictly project management, when in fact, we cover the entire lifecycle, we deal with the governance. Related to the previous conversation, that governance is key, that planning up front is key, and that's not the system integration. Right?

We have procurement experts, we have legal experts, all in the areas of it that are unique because of the structure of our office. And so in combining those, we're looking to continue to provide the excellent service that we have around project management, but expand that and better utilize those expertise across the agency. And so that's the rationale and the agenda. Asked particularly about the benefits that we're going to achieve from that directly it's being more clear about what we do.

So when people think about our office, they better understand the opportunities that are there across the agency so that we can better facilitate providing those expertise, be a center of excellence, so to speak. From that, those changes that we intend to make and providing those expertise more broadly in providing those services, those are where we'll see the direct benefits in terms of accelerating our projects, having better planning up front, having better resources within the state.

We've already seen opportunities where we have expertise that we can provide the departments previously would have contracted out for, and that was a great service to get. But if we can do it with state staff, let's do it with state staff. Those are the kinds of things that we'll be able to see the benefits from.

LAO.

Brian Metzker, LAO. We have no concerns with this trailer bill language.

Department of Finance.

Nina Hong, Department of Finance. No concerns.

I'll bring it up to the dais, keep it here at the chair. I'll begin by applauding the efforts to find a name that is more clear about what it is you do. As many of you are aware, I'm similarly trying to do this within CalWORKS and focusing on Cal families so we are able to speed the needed culture change. And so I get it and am supportive of it and just want to say we will hold all issues open on this item and move on to issue 10.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Issue 10 is regarding the Department of Community Services and Development overview and the governor's proposal to revert unspent utility arrearages funds. We have three presenters on this issue. We will begin with Director Scribner when you are ready.

The primary focus of CSD is the Administration and development of programs that serve and lift up low income Californians. Our programs almost exclusively serve low income individuals and families and are oriented towards assisting those considered most vulnerable achieve and maintain economic security. Historically, the department has almost been 100% federally funded, with the majority of funding coming from two annual federal grants that are focused on antipoverty services. First, the community services block grant, or CSBG, and the low income home energy assistance program, or LIHEAP.

In addition to these two core programs, CSD administers energy efficiency programs funded with both federal and state dollars. These include the Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program and California's Low Income Weatherization Programs, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions through the installation of solar PV systems and energy efficiency upgrades for farm worker households and residents of multifamily affordable housing.

CSD also launched last year the Low Income Household Water Assistance program, or LIWAP, and that was a new limited term federal program that provides financial assistance to low income Californians to help manage their residential water utility costs. Beyond CSD's existing programs that help low income Californians with energy and water affordability. The department has recently had the opportunity to administer two rounds of funding to address energy bill rearages accrued during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under the California Rearage Payment Program, or CAP, CSD has distributed over $1.6 billion in state funds to assist over 3 million Californians that had struggled with energy costs during the pandemic. Now there have been two phases of CAP. The first phase was established through the 2021 state budget, and we were able to distribute $989.5 million in federal American Rescue Plan act funding to customers through January 2022 in the form of bill credits.

This phase reduced or eliminated residential and commercial energy customer arrearages occurred during the program's COVID-19 pandemic bill relief period, which covered arrearages incurred from March 4, 2020 through June 15, 2021. As a result of this first phase, CAP assisted in paying down approximately 50% of eligible customer arrears reported by participating utilities. The second phase of CAP was implemented last year and addressed 100% of eligible residential customer arrears as reported by participating utilities.

Funding for this phase of CAP was based on a spring 2022 survey of energy utilities, and in that survey, the arrearages reported was a little over $1.2 billion, and that was residential customer accrued utilities between March 4 of 2020 to December 31 of 2021. The 2022 state budget appropriated 1.2 billion to address these arrearages, and in November of 2022, CSD distributed $647,000,000 in CAP funds to energy utilities.

Now, if I may, I'd like to address the issues that were raised in the agenda related to the CAP reversion. From the point in time the spring survey was conducted to the fall of applications for 2022 CAP funding. Energy utilities reported a significant reduction in the total amount of eligible customer arrearages. While 1.2 billion was appropriated, energy utilities identified 647,000,000 in qualified arrearages when they applied on behalf of their customer.

CSD does not have specific data on why there was a decrease in total arrears for the pandemic bill relief period covered by 2022 gap. However, some factors that may have contributed to the lower reage levels include customer payments between the point in time survey and the time at which utilities applied for cap assistance, as well as the disconnection moratoriums being lifted, availability of arrears, payment plans, changing economic conditions within the state, and the availability of other assistance, including LIHEAP.

Because the available funding exceeded qualified customer arrearages, the governor's proposed budget identified 400 million for reversion. This was a conservative point in time estimate prior to funds being dispersed to utilities and provided flexibility in the event there were adjustments. The administration will provide an update at the may revise on the remaining funding.

Taking into consideration updated revenue projections regarding current arrearages, CSD has incomplete data, but based on reporting submitted to the CPUC by the investor owned utilities, as of February of 2023, households enrolled in IOU low income rate programs represent roughly $770,000,000 in arrearages. This is energy debt held by over 1.5 million low income Californians, and I should note that this is not a complete picture of arrearage or customer numbers as this does not include those figures that would be added by publicly owned utility utilities.

Moreover, the department cannot speak to how this level of energy debt compares to the historical norms that would be covered or carried by IOUs or the POUs due to recent increases in the price of natural gas, which will likely impact electricity rates in the future as well. The Department does anticipate that energy debt will increase in the coming months and demand for energy bill assistance through our LIHEAP program will increase with it.

CSD is working closely with its network of local liheap service providers to support their efforts to prepare for the increased demand and utility bill assistance. CSD is also coordinating with energy utilities to ensure department continues to reach households eligible for assistance.

While the causes of higher energy costs are complex and LIHEAP is just one of the state's tools for helping families keep the lights on, there are also additional programs available for eligible customers that include energy utilities, low income rate discount programs, energy efficiency programs, and payment plans to address energy debts.

Program coordination is critical and CSD will continue to provide the most complete and holistic services to address the energy needs of low income Californians. Regarding feedback about CAP payments, through the successful development and implementation of both phases of CAP, the state was able to significantly reduce and in many cases eliminate the arrears of every residential utility customer that qualified.

This made a significant impact on the lives of millions of households struggling to afford the cost of energy, addressed unprecedented levels of energy debt, and helped to mitigate the risk of disconnection for many vulnerable households. In my opinion, CAP fulfilled its statutory purpose, which was to help Californians economically impacted by the pandemic afford the cost of energy and CSD met the statutory requirements and timeframes for CAP administration, thereby ensuring the timely and equitable delivery of cap assistance to eligible customers. Related to the CalWORKS and calfresh.

The community based organizations and local governments that deliver services under CSD's programs at the local level play an important role in connecting their clients to other public assistants, such as CalWORKS and CalFresh. They regularly make referrals to other programs and services as part of their core course of business, including the counties for Cal Works and CalFresh.

Many of CSD's CSBG agencies also incorporate calfresh screening in their client intake process and are engaged with other community and other community partners in intake processes and devising and executing strategies to increase CalFresh participation. CSG agencies that operate food banks also are looking at many comprehensive ways to support families struggling with the cost of food and will work and continue to reach out to CalWorks and CalFresh entities.

As far as the perspectives discussed in issue one, CSG, first to its sister Department, CDSS on specifics related to the Child Welfare Services system. That said, when there are opportunities for CSD and its local partners to collaborate on issues of child well being, we do, such as through the department's participation in the Essentials for Childhood initiative, sharing resources with our network agencies, and leveraging the CSBG network to act as key informants in studies conducted in the ages of the initiative.

And finally, with regards to what we're hearing in the field about food and housing. It is clear the low income families continue to feel the negative effects of inflation and face difficulty coping with the higher costs for the necessities such as food, utilities, and housing. It won't be a surprise for you to hear that the need for affordable housing continues to be something CSD constantly hears about from its agencies. The higher cost of living across the board only adds to the need for affordable, stable housing.

Meanwhile, on the energy side, as I noted earlier, we know the state's severe winter season and the dramatic increase to natural gas prices over recent months will significantly raise home heating costs for many Californians, especially those low income families. CSTU will continue its ongoing collaboration with the CPUC and state energy utility companies and has placed organizational focus on ensuring LIHEAP is positioned to meet the needs of low income Californians. Thank you, and I'm here for any of future comments or questions.

LAO

Thank you, Angela Short with the LAO. First, just a quick note that we appreciate the questions in the agenda and the conversation in terms of the connection between CSD program participants and other public safety net programs, including the child welfare system. And then just one brief comment regarding the Governor's Budget proposal to revert the unspent cap funds to the General Fund. We have reviewed that proposal and it seems reasonable. And as noted by the department, we will also be anticipating an update to the specific reversion amount at the time of May revision. Thank you.

Thank you. Department of Finance.

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

Bring it up to the dais. We will continue to monitor this proposal as it goes forward and see how it changes with the May revision. All other issues will be held open. This will end the discussion portion of our agenda for this evening. I am not aware of any issues about the nondiscusion agenda that members want to move to the discussion section, so we will move on to the public comment portion of the hearing.

I'd first like to thank very much all of our panelists, and we will start with any in person public comment that's here in the hearing room. Please come forward to the microphone if you would like to make a comment.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Kathy Senderling Mcdonald, on behalf of the County Welfare Directors on issue number seven, bringing families home. CWDA supports the proposed clarifications through trailer Bill to ensure that tribes and tribal agencies are eligible for funding and that individuals leaving domestic violence situations can access these housing resources.

Additionally, CWDA would like to work with the Legislature and Administration to clarify that foster youth who are pregnant or parenting can also access these supports and services as they are exiting care in order to ensure they have access to stable and safe housing for their own families. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. Anna Johnson with John Burton Advocates for youth here for issue number four related to the 16.5 million budget request to ensure that foster youth do have housing stability and can purchase housing at a fair market rent in our system so that we can really actually change those odds instead of expecting them to beat the odds unlike all of their other peers at that age of 18.

We also want to make a comment in support of the reimagined CalWORKS issue number one and those changes there. And on issue number three, in terms of Families First Prevention Services act, we did want to point out that counties can include in their plans, services that would support parenting foster youth. They're categorically eligible, and we would like a way to ensure that every county that does have parenting youth is putting a support of an evidence based service into their plan. Thank you.

Thank you.