Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Human Services

Good afternoon. This is the Assembly Budget Subcommittee Number Two on Human Services. Before we invite our first panel to begin, I'll just make a few introductory comments, and if any of my colleagues are here at the end of the comments, they will be provided an opportunity to do likewise. Today's hearing will cover the California child welfare system, or in other words, the system that helps shape the very future of this state.

For too long, we as a state have failed to give foster youth, which is our children, the state's children, what they need to be successful and to make sure that they have opportunities to thrive. Alongside our massive systems of care, we have massive silos that do everything but give effective and timely service to our system-impacted youth and families. So we must be able to break down these silos and get to what is most important, the welfare of our children.

That is why I have proposed a foster care, multi-agency office dedicated to ensuring that silos will no longer get in the way of supporting California's youth, to get the quality and timely services that they need, that meets their individual needs. While this may not be a season of expansion, as I've said before, it is an opportunity for reform and to make our systems and programs more efficient. This Committee will not dampen its ambitions in terms of these goals.

Not all of these goals require more money. It may require shifts of money or shifts of systems in order for the money that we do have to be more efficiently used to serve the people. Regardless of the budget situation we find ourselves in, the status quo cannot and will not be acceptable because our children deserve better. Also, one quick household note.

You all know that you're in for quite an evening, and so we will be taking a recess at 5:30, but will resume no later than 6:30. And after that recess, we will take all public comment at that time. With that, I'll open it. We will open up and continue on with this hearing. Want to make sure that people also know that during public comment, you do have two minutes each for your remarks.

So I will invite up our first panel on issue number one, having to do with the Child Welfare Council, child welfare disparities, and the role of CalWORKS in the child welfare prevention pathway. I ask for the first panel to come andstake your seats, but then also make sure that you introduce yourself before you speak. And let's try to go in the order listed in the agenda. And we'll probably go rather quickly. And so you all don't start getting calls. Where you at?

When you gonna be home? Where's the food at? You may begin when you're ready.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Chair Jackson. Kim Johnson, California Department of Social Services and today I'm going to provide information related to the disparities and disproportionality in child welfare, the California Health and Human Services Agency's Child Welfare Council, and the role of CalWORKs in additional efforts in the child welfare prevention pathway. As of October of 2023, there are 46,078 children and youth in foster care in California.

American Indian, Alaska Native, and Black families are overrepresented and experience disparities across California's child welfare and foster care continuum. Specifically, Black and American Indian, Alaska Native children are more likely to be the subject of maltreatment allegations. Have those allegations substantiated and be placed in foster care than their White and Asian Pacific Islander peers? The child and family services reviews, often referred to as CFSRs, are conducted by the Children's Bureau in the federal Office of the Administration for Children and Families in five year cycles.

California CFSR self-assessment, completed last fall and based on case review data, showed that California made modest progress in reducing racial disparities on the following measures. Reentry rates to foster care after reunification, guardianship, or adoption declined for both Black and American Indian Alaska Native children. Reentry rates decreased by 2% over three years for American Indian children, decreased one percentage point for Black children, and, interestingly, decreased three percentage points for multiracial children.

Permanency rates for children who have been in care for over two years improved for American Indian Alaska Native children. Permanency in 12 months for children and care 24 or more months, the improvement was four percentage points for American Indian children and on a qualitative measure, preserving connections to the child's neighborhood, community, faith, extended family, tribe, school, and friends. American Indian Alaska Native children have the best outcomes amongst the racial ethnic groups.

California is actively implementing several items to reduce disproportionalities within the Child Welfare Services system and make sure that children remain connected to their communities, cultures, and family of or origin. Some of these examples include, but are limited to, items focused on the Indian Child Welfare Act.

We have a statewide plan for the very first time new investments in tribal dependency representation and tribally approved home, implementation of the Federal Family First Prevention Services program in California's Prevention Services Block grant, intended to be used for culturally responsive programming that will reduce maltreatment entries into foster care and overrepresentation of Black and American Indian Native families.

Launching the Center for Excellence in Family Finding, Support, and Engagement in order to develop programs and supports to further shift California's child welfare system to akin first culture and more. The Committee also asked around the Child Welfare Council specifically what efforts are happening, and I will tell you that equity and addressing inequities are a through line of the work of the council.

As your agenda notes, the Child Welfare Council is comprised of 45 Members representing state and county departments, tribal nations, community-based organizations, advocates, parents, caregivers, and former foster youth. Members join together as an advisory body responsible for improving the collaboration and processes of the multiple agencies and the courts that serve children and youth in the child welfare and foster care systems.

The council is chaired by the California Health and Human Services Agency, Secretary Galley, and Justice Lori Earle, presiding justice of the Third District Court of Appeal. The vision from both co-chairs and the larger council is maintaining a focus on keeping families together and delivering on the goal of a kin-first and family-centered culture practice. The council does not have specific source of dedicated funding and instead relies on the staff support from the California Health and Human Services Agency.

The Subcommittee has also asked the Council's perspective on the role of the safety net programs and can they improve the prevention away from child welfare involvement. Through our work with family-first prevention and the development of community pathways, we are building an integrated statewide system of care that supports community prevention strategies for families. These community pathways will connect families to safety networks of services that include CalWORKs and other resources.

The Council's Prevention and Early Intervention Committee has also issued a series of recommendations in this area and last year established a task force named Mandated Reporting to Community Supporting, largely built on recommendations made by the Citizens Review Panel report and documented in the issue brief from Safe and Sound and commissioned by the Department of Social Services Office of Child Abuse Prevention.

The Council has also heard from presenters such as Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, focused on economic and concrete supports in their prevention of child welfare involvement. They highlighted how family economic stability can be strengthened through public benefit transformation, including coordination of program requirements and providing automatic referrals between programs, data integration, and more. The Committee also asked about the role of CalWORKs in prevention and as referenced in our prior discussion with the Subcommittee, CalWORKs serves an average of 340,000 families and 665,000 children every month.

CalWORKs provides education, employment and training, supportive services, and barrier removal services aimed at building resilience and achieving economic mobility. As we work toward building collaboration among communities, CalWORKs, and child welfare agencies in California, we recognize that although there is no causal relationship between poverty and child maltreatment, children living in poverty experience more child maltreatment than children not living in poverty. There's also evidence that services intended to boost protective factors are ineffective without concurrent provision of concrete supports to address poverty.

Directly providing income support along with CalWORKs barrier removal services such as domestic violence prevention, mental health and substance abuse treatment services, and other supportive services reduce the risk of maltreatment and simultaneously increase effectiveness of family strengthening services. There's a number of things that we've included in our CalWORKs array more recently, such as strength-based voluntary home visiting.

Our initial evaluation results show significant declines in child protective services referrals for families receiving CalWORKs home visiting, and we've also reinvigorated what we reference as Linkages 2.0, an effort to strengthen the working partnership between CalWORKs and child welfare. Linkages case coordination practice has the goal of assisting families in achieving financial self-sufficiency, economic mobility while promoting child safety, permanency, and well-being.

We together, the Administration Legislature, have also looked at policy changes within the CalWORKs program, such as extending the availability of CalWORKs assistance for parents whose children were removed from them through the child welfare system to further support the reunification process. Finally, the Committee asked how the proposed reductions in child welfare in CalWORKs square with the stated goals in our prevention plans. In recent years, the Department has significantly increased the visibility and urgency around establishing a continuum of prevention services and supports throughout California.

This integrated system's primary aim is keeping children safe at home by strengthening families through programs such as CalFresh, CalWORKs homeless assistance, home visiting, and differential response. California plans to leverage these existing prevention planning efforts to embed our FFPSA-funded prevention services into a comprehensive continuum, as I referenced, and we remain confident in our ability to accomplish the stated goals in the part one prevention plan via the block grant funding and other multiple efforts as needed. And with that, I'll stop there.

Good afternoon now, Chair Jackson, my name is Shimica Gaskins and I'm President and CEO of Grace in Child Poverty California. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on how reimagining CalWORKs to be an anti-racist, family-centered program is an anti-poverty solution that can also address the racial disparities in the child welfare system, making it an intervention to prevent family separation in the first place, limit the duration of placements, and support family reunification.

As the powerful testimonies at the March 20 hearing recently highlighted, CalWORKs is a bedrock safety net program, providing life-saving cash assistance and supportive services to, as you just heard from Director Johnson, almost 340,000 families with a significant number of children every year. The adult caseload is disproportionately Latinx, 60%, and Black, 17%, and approximately 90% women, the majority of whom are single women of color not receiving an adult portion of that grant.

But built on the 1996 Federal Welfare Reform and 1997 CalWORKs implementation, the current program has significant flaws grounded in racist, sexist, and classist notions that parents, and particularly in particular Black women with low incomes, abuse the system and must be coerced into work. A body of research has documented both the harmful association between our currently rigid, punitive policies that contributed child welfare placements and the protective potential of CalWORKs as a preventative intervention.

Nationally, more than 60% of substantiated CPS responses involve neglect only, and children in economically insecure households are seven times more likely to experience neglect. States that implement full family TANF sanctions for lack of compliance with work requirements were associated with a 12.7 increase in total foster care entries spotlighting the harm of withholding vital cash aid and destabilizing families. Every study comparing the race and ethnicity of sanctioned TANF recipients finds that Black families are significantly more likely to be sanctioned than their White counterparts.

From the 2021 study by Chapin Hall that we heard about, we know that income status of families is a significant predictor of involvement with the child welfare system, and county-level poverty rates are associated with foster care placement rates among children of all races, and the majority of California families involved with the child welfare system are experiencing poverty.

Fortunately, research also shows that improving access to and raising levels of CalWORKs and other public benefits mitigates potential risk factors for intervention by child protective services when negative earnings, stocks, or other toxic stressors occur. Nationally, the protective effect is especially strong for families with young children ages zero to four and demonstrating a 12% increase in risk for CPS involvement and 50% decline in the risk of physical abuse and investigation.

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%. And anecdotally, children and families that have experienced the child welfare system highlight the fact that resources devoted to communication keeping kids in care often exceeds the monthly amount needed to stabilize a family and move them out of poverty. We know that cash assistance is a pathway to prevent child welfare involvement.

We also know that more is needed to strengthen the economic stability and mobility of our families. In the last few years, the Legislature and Administration have taken steps to ensure that no child enters the system based on poverty alone, narrowing the legal definition of neglect, moving from mandated reporting to supporting.

But the proposed cuts to CalWORKs will have a destabilizing impact on communities, bringing more children and families into child welfare's orbit without the ability to offer them the same level of services to prevent removal or deeper system involvement. There is no doubt that poverty is a driver for child welfare involvement or that experiencing poverty also continues for many young people exiting the system.

With decades of research showing the disproportionate numbers of foster care alumni experiencing poverty and poverty-related outcomes in early adulthood, however, a strengthened safety net can make a difference. Our coalition has proposed interrelated reforms that reimagine CalWORKs away from its current flaws and fulfill the program's potential, which will help stabilize families, prevent child welfare referrals, and support family reunification. We propose to eliminate or reduce sanctions to federal minimums, ensuring parents have the income to afford critical necessities like food, rent, utilities, and school supplies.

Shifting CalWORKs' rigid work first focus to a family assistance model, enabling counties to quickly offer supports tailored to parents and children. Moving from a penalty focus to a participant-centered programs expanding the definition of work to conclude a variety of other activities necessary for families in crisis eliminating the work participation rate pass through to remove the specter of financial penalty on counties, centering family well-being and long term success as the program's guiding goals.

These long overdue reforms can end deep child poverty, address racial disparities in the child welfare system, and prevent the traumatic long-term consequences of thank you, chair, for your leadership on these issues and for the opportunity to testify and highlight these important connections and opportunities.

Thank you very much. Department of Finance.

Good afternoon Chair Jackson Marlon Davis, Department of Finance. No additional comments at this time, but happy to answer any questions.

LAO.

Good afternoon, Chair Jackson. Angela Short with the Legislative Analyst Office. I'll be walking you through a handout for this issue. The sergeant should have passed that out to you and for anyone who didn't get one. This should also be available on the LAO's website as well as the Subcommittee website, I believe at some point. And before diving in, I also did just want to mention our office is working on a full report examining these issues that will be published in the next week or two.

That report will include a focus on specific policy areas and options for the Legislature to consider around addressing front-end disproportionalities and disposal disparities. But with that, let's just jump into our update for today. So turning to page one, foster youth in California are disproportionately low-income, Black, and Native American. As you've also heard from our other speakers on this panel today.

In particular, the proportions of Black and Native American youth in foster care in California today are around four times larger than those children's proportion in California's child population. Overall. For example, Black children represent around 6% of our state's population, but more than 20% of youth in foster care. In addition, recent research has found that cumulative system involvement, that is, any level of involvement by the time children turn 18 years old.

For Black and Native American youth, nearly one in two or 50% of those youth experience some level of system involvement by the time they turn 18. Research also has found that children in families with public health insurance or Medi-Cal, so those lower income families with Medi-Cal, experience child welfare system involvement at more than twice the rate of those with private health insurance or relatively higher income families.

Turning to page three, the data also indicates that disproportionalities and disparities are present from the very initial entry point of the system. That is, allegations of maltreatment and persist throughout all levels of the system, becoming actually more pronounced when we look at youth in foster care. So this figure here is demonstrating the relative rates of involvement relative to White children.

So bars extending to the right indicate higher rates of involvement compared to White children, while bars moving to the left of the figure indicate relatively lower rates of involvement compared to White children. So, as you can see, looking at that top set of bars, Black children are more than three times more likely relative to White children to be the subject of a maltreatment allegation and nearly five and a half times more likely relative toWwhite children to actually be in foster care.

Turning to page four, when we account for poverty, we see that disparities are significantly diminished. In other words, poverty does account for quite a large, to a large degree can help explain the disproportionalities that we see along racial and ethnic lines. However, even when accounting for poverty, we do still see in California that Black and Native American youth are still more likely relative to children of any other racial or ethnic group to actually be in foster care.

Turning to page five here, this figure is really demonstrating trends over time, illustrating that, unfortunately, we haven't seen too much of a change in terms of the disproportionate representation of Black and Native American youth over the past decade or so, although, as Director Johnson did indicate, there are some areas of improvement. But just in terms of initial entries into care, we're not really seeing too much movement over time.

Turning to page six, as has been indicated earlier by other speakers on this panel, we do see very strong correlation between poverty and child welfare system involvement. For example, looking across California's counties, we see that as the poverty rate for children increases, the share of children in foster care also tend to increase. So this figure here, those circles or bubbles are representing individual counties. The larger circles are representing counties with larger child populations.

And you can see as we move to the right on the horizontal axis, as the rate of poverty is increasing, so too does the rate of foster care placement tend to increase, demonstrating that correlation. Turning to page seven, the data also tell us that the vast majority of families involved with the child welfare system are experiencing poverty or other degrees of financial hardship.

In particular, more than half of California families involved with the child welfare system are actually experiencing deep poverty and have incomes of less than 50% of the federal poverty level. And nationally, researchers estimate around 85% of families involved with child welfare have incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level.

Importantly, this is not to say that there's a causal relationship or that these families are in any way less capable parents, but rather this is really indicating that the stressors associated with experiencing poverty are increase the risks that child maltreatment may occur. And finally, I know I'm about out of time, so I'll jump to the final page here.

Given the strong correlation between poverty and foster care or child welfare system involvement, a growing body of research focuses on how providing concrete and economic supports may help to reduce those risks and ultimately help to combat child maltreatment. The body of research has looked at cash aid, tax credits, supportive housing, and other types of programs, and has found a positive relationship between those providing those supports and reducing the risk factors of child maltreatment.

And in particular, Chapin hall at the University of Chicago has really aggregated and summarized quite a lot of this growing body of research focusing on TANF benefits and other types of concrete supports. And they have really highlighted how increasing TANF benefits and access to TANF is associated with reducing the risks of child maltreatment. So I'll stop there, but happy to answer some questions.

Very excited about seeing your full report with the recommendations. I think we need to continue to chip away at this issue as much as possible. And I mean, obviously, we have also seen a huge spike in terms of poverty, particularly child poverty, given the sunset of the federal child tax credit. And so we have to do everything we can. Unfortunately, again, California has to fill in the gap for what the Federal Government should be, should be doing to help us take care of our population.

I'll save my questions for the following panels that will be covering many of these areas. But I want to thank this panel for opening up the discussion and starting us off on focusing on this population. Thank you all very much. And we'll bring up the next panel for issue number two.

Good afternoon, Chair. Kim Johnson. California Department of Social Services. The Committee asked a little bit of learning about continuing care efforts and where we are and where we have work to do. So we have made transformative changes to the way the state cares for children and youth in the foster care system.

The continuum of care reform was founded upon the collective belief that all children served by the foster care system need, deserve, and have an ability to be part of a loving family and not to grow up in congregate settings. CCR focused on ending long term congregate care placements in California's foster care system and increasingly placing children and youth with relatives. As a result, youth placement into congregate care has decreased by almost 60%, while placements into home based settings have increased.

Placement stability indicators for children remaining in their first placement have also continued to grow. 75% of youth that have had their first placement with a relative and are still in care at 12 months are still with that relative. More than 87% of youth in our short-term residential therapeutic programs receive critical mental health and therapeutic services. There is still more to do to develop and strengthen a responsive continuum that keeps children and youth with their families whenever it is safely possible to do so.

That begins with our prevention efforts happening largely through the California Family First Prevention Services Program, which aims to shift the welfare system to a system that prioritizes prevention and early intervention. This work continues via our efforts to shift to be centered in Kin-First Culture because we know that children in kinship care experience fewer health and mental health concerns, better academic outcomes, greater placement stability, and a significantly lower likelihood of re-entering care within 12 months of exit.

In connection with our efforts to keep children and youth connected to their relatives and communities of origin, our efforts to ensure adherence to the Indian Child Welfare Act so that tribal children and youth can remain connected to their tribe. Lastly, the ongoing work to expand our continuum, develop innovative approaches, and invest in collaboration across systems to better serve youth with higher acuity needs.

We also have work to do to ensure that the short term residential therapeutic programs referred to as strtps, when needed, are short term placements and that youth residing within those settings have intensive case planning and family reunification efforts occurring throughout the duration of their stay. As mentioned in the previous issue, there's still work to also do to address the disproportionalities in this child welfare system.

I also just would want to note for our work at the Department, we continue to grow and expand our office of Tribal Affairs, whose primary responsibility is implementing the Indian Child Welfare Act to Fidelity and we've also created a leadership position and Assistant Director of Equity Inclusion specific to child welfare to address these disparities. You've also asked, in terms of kind of transparency and conversation with the Legislature and legislative staff, how we can continue to ensure that transparency and reporting and engagement is occurring.

We are committed to doing so, and the latest CCR report was issued yesterday. We are working to schedule a meeting to walk through the findings with legislative staff. We've also provided legislative briefings in the interim focused on strategies to address gaps for youth with higher acuity needs related to FFPSA and other topics. We are also developing and look forward to sharing the first iteration of a new data dashboard which will be responsive to much of the original data reporting requirements.

It will contain a STRTP section including but not limited to placements and length of stay, subsequent placements, out-of-county placements, and more data on placement and exits from foster care and resource family approval sections that will have application approval, timeliness, homes with relatives versus nonrelatives, et cetera. The Committees also asked about the priorities for our child welfare system and how we go forward, how we actually engage youth in the proposals that we have.

We have intentionally created numerous opportunities to hear from current and former foster youth. That includes, as I referenced, the Child Welfare Council. We also have the Complex Care Steering Committee where the California Youth connection is represented. The Directorate within the Department, myself. We have regularly quarterly check-ins with the California Youth Connection to hear directly from young people and just complete appreciation for the preparation they have, giving us recommendations specific to many areas of policy and budget.

We also have quarterly meetings with advocates and youth with lived experience, regional peer partner hubs, and of course, the California Citizen Review Panel.

What we've heard in those conversations from youth is that the biggest priorities from them are timely child and family teaming, where the youth's voice and choice is at the center of the discussion, connection to their communities of origin, school and relatives, access to enrichment activities, housing services for older foster youth, a need for peer supports, stability and consistent access to services and continuous supports across all areas of care, education and employment support, and more preparation for the transition into adulthood.

And finally, you've asked us, as you referenced in your opening comments, about the proposal for the Foster Care Multi-Agency Office. We share the perspective that cross-agency coordination is essential to the success of our efforts to improve child welfare services in foster care. We recommend continuing to utilize the Child Welfare Council and as well as the multi-agency. What we reference as the Assembly Bill 2083, System of Care team to benefit children and families.

AB-2083, which was chaptered in 2018, required each county to develop and implement a memorandum of understanding outlining the roles and responsibilities of the various local entities that serve children and youth in foster care.

The legislation also mandated that the Department of Healthcare Services, the Department of Social Services, the Department of Education, and the Department of Disability Services establish a joint resolution team at the State level, provide technical assistance, and produce multiple reports, which we have done and continue to do. So again, we are committed to the success of cross-agency efforts and look forward to having additional conversation about additional ideas. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Committee Chair Members and Staff. My name is Simone Tureck Lee. I'm here with John Burton Advocates for Youth, and I'm here to provide remarks related to the proposed establishment of a foster care multi-agency office. California has no shortage of strong laws on the books related to child welfare. It's clear what our state's vision is for children and youth who are brought into our foster care system.

However, with a county-based child welfare system in a state with 58 different counties, state guidance and coordination is critical. If we want our state's laws to be implemented consistently statewide in line with their intent. This is particularly true when these laws necessitate collaboration across different public agencies. Extended foster care provides great context for this. When California extended foster care to age 21, it unknowingly opened Pandora's box to adult systems and adult activities.

We now have legal adults in foster care who are pursuing post secondary education, filing their taxes, navigating the housing market, becoming parents at a higher rate than they were when they were minors. All of these activities require effort that goes beyond the child welfare system. A foster care multi-agency office would have the ability and authority to direct public agencies beyond the scope of the foster care system to play their role as it relates to the needs of foster youth and related mandates.

One specific example I'll share is in the area of reproductive and sexual health. In 2017, several provisions were included in SB-89 as the California Foster Youth Sexual Health Education Act. One provision required child welfare workers to verify that foster youth in middle school and high school had received comprehensive sexual health education. Then, if they hadn't, the county has to arrange for them to receive this, either by working through a school or a CBO.

Implementation of this provision was extremely challenging for county child welfare agencies because it required local school districts, whom they have no authority over, to essentially establish some standardized protocols for how their school would verify this for county child welfare agencies. So this is just one very specific example of the collaboration that's required and often out of the control of county child welfare or sometimes of state offices where we need that collaboration. Another example is the mental health system.

Many foster youth we know still don't get the mental health care they're federally entitled to, and that's when they're still eligible for children's mental health. We could also talk about when they're preparing to leave the system. We have young people in our system that do have acute mental illness and that do need connection to the adult mental health system of care when they exit. And so that's a whole separate system again, that we have to navigate in order to ensure a stable transition.

And the same thing could be said about housing. For these large systems, foster youth are a very small population, so it's really seen as a very niche issue in these larger public agencies. And so it's not surprising that they wouldn't be prioritized or that there will be a lack of knowledge about the needs of foster youth among these other large agencies. To drill down even further. One last example is considering the population of expectant and parenting youth.

There are only 746 of parenting foster youth in our whole state. How do we make sure these youth are prioritized for home visiting programs like Nurse-Family Partnership? These are all just examples of things that we could strengthen, I think, if we had stronger vehicles for collaboration with a foster care multi-agency office. These niche issues that are big for us in child welfare, but small for sectors like education, mental health, public health, housing, and homelessness, a multi-agency office could play an incredibly important role.

By centralizing efforts and coordinating across multi multiple agencies, this office could ensure the needs of foster youth receive the attention they deserve within broader systems. In times, to build on your comments, Chair, in times of budget deficits, I really think maximizing existing investments and policies becomes crucial, and a foster care multi-agency office has the potential to streamline services, improve coordination, and ultimately enhance outcomes for foster youth while leveraging existing resources more effectively. Thank you.

Department of Finance.

Marlon Davis. Department of Finance as I believe has been indicated previously, this proposal is not part of the Governor's Budget and we have no further comments.

Thank you LAO.

Yes, again, Angela Short with the Legislative Analyst Office. For this item, we would just note that your agenda provides an overview of the overall changes to the proposed budget for child welfare in 24-25, as of the Governor's Budget. This includes a decrease in general fund resources for child welfare programs under the Department of Social Services of around $66 million relative to revised estimates for the current year, 2023-24.

This decrease is driven by a number of factors, including the expected expiration of some temporary and one-time funding provided in prior years, as well as a number of proposed reductions included in the Governor's Budget, which I know we'll be walking through in more detail. So just to note that we'll speak to those as those arise in the agenda, but happy to answer any questions about the overall structure of the budget for this item. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I wanted to make sure that this item was agendized, just to make sure the public is aware of what we are trying to accomplish here as a Committee, obviously, when you read whether it's the Assembly's Blue Ribbon Report in terms of children. When you look at even CDSS's report on the child welfare system and the group that came up with that massive report, there was a few things that really stood out to me.

Number one, our children within the system are moved around way too much, in which they are unable to feel like they have a place called home, which is preventing them from even wanting to establish healthy relationships. Why establish a healthy relationship when you're going to be moved anyway? Many of you already know that I worked at a level 12 group home back in the day, and I will never forget the moment that one of my young people gave me a little wolverine figurine.

And he said to me, I want you to have this because one day when you come to work, I won't be here. And I want you to remember me. Right? And of course, surely enough it happened, but I always have that figurine. And so we have got to find ways to do a better job of making sure that young people are stable.

I know we're working towards that in terms of making sure that they're with relatives and they have more stable places and those type of things. But we can't forget the level of trauma that is creating. We're going to be talking a little bit about the rate reform to making sure that where they are, they have the resources that they need.

But it was clear over and over again the idea that departments aren't talking to each other and these silos exist, and it is preventing young people from getting quality and timely services that meet their individual needs. And over and over again, I've always my pet peeve and. But what is a reality is systems are protecting themselves, and they would rather do what systems are more familiar with doing than to change on the behalf of the people that they're supposed to serve.

That's not a criticism in terms of individuals that's what systems do. That's what bureaucracies do. They're to establish consistency. There's established stability, but it also has unintended consequences as well.

So we have got to build into the system a place that only is looking out for the best interests of the young people and not the system, so that we can make sure that, number one, the Legislature continues to get regular recommendations to improve the experience of young people, that there's a system in place to knock on the doors of other systems and say, hey, pay attention. This young person needs something. But then to also making sure that we really have internal advocates.

There's just so much going on. These systems are massive, and in many cases, many of you are being blamed from things that you can't even control yourself. Right? And so the idea is, and what I'm, my goal is to work with all of you. My job, what I see as my job, you know, sometimes I write my own job descriptions.

What I see, my job is to put something on the table and maybe the end result is not exactly what I've proposed, but this year we have got to make sure that we're not leaving with the status quo being in place when it comes to breaking down silos. And so I'm asking you all to commit to work with me, to figuring this out, to moving us forward.

And I believe that if every year we move forward, at least one more kid will be better off in California. Right? And so I want to thank you all very much for your comments and your information.

We are going to definitely, and also, LAO, we're going to actually ask you for a request or estimate and some technical assistance with first starting off what we're proposing, seeing, you know, what cost might be associated with it, but then also in terms of technical assistance, both Director and LAO will love to begin to, I think we've already begun to do this anyway, but just making sure that the public also knows that this is something we've got to work at.

You know, I've had my own listening sessions when I was Chair of the Policy Human Services, and this directly came out of those discussions. And so, and I know it's hard, but I don't think there's any more easy stuff to do anymore. There's nothing but the hard stuff. So let's roll our sleeves up together and, and get something done that we can all be proud of. Thank you all very much for participating.

Issue number three. Folks, come on up who are part of issue number three. And as always, just introduce yourself and then go. And we will go in the order as it is seen on the agenda.

Good afternoon, Dr. Jackson and Staff. My name is Jennifer Troia and I am the Chief Deputy Director of the California Department of Social Services. The third issue before you relates to the Family Urgent Response System, which we call FURS. It was established by the Legislature and the Governor in 2019. It was designed by youth in foster care and caregivers to to provide crisis support and preserve family placements in homes. FURS includes a 24/7 statewide hotline as well as in-person county mobile response units.

Annually, the FURS hotline receives approximately 5,000 calls from current and former foster youth, caregivers, and other community supporters. You asked about the general fund expenditure trends for this program. In fiscal year 2020-21. The expenditures were $2.9 million. They grew to 8.4 million in 21-22 and 13.3 million in 22-23. You also asked about the implications of the Governor's proposal related to the solution related to FURS funding.

In the absence of FURS, current and former foster youth and caregivers would need to utilize other resources such as those provided by health plans or that are publicly available.

While we acknowledge these resources are not specific to foster youth and their caregivers, I just want to point out that they might include programs operated by the Department of Healthcare Services like CalHOPE, which provides free supports to individuals in crisis, and a hotline, BrightLife Kids, a CalHOPE Program operated by Brightline, which provides mental health coaching and resources for parents and children ages 0 to 12, or Soluna, which is confidential support like coaching and resources for children and youth ages 13 to 25.

There's also a larger context, as we've been discussing already in these panels, and will further in the rest of the hearing today, related to the efforts being implemented across California's child welfare system to increase relative placements, to establish permanency, and to reduce disproportionalities. We remain dedicated, through these broader endeavors and the alternative resources previously mentioned, to providing what families need to to thrive, and to supporting placements with relatives, permanency and enhanced equity. I'm happy to answer your questions at the appropriate time.

Good afternoon, Chair. It's good to see you. And I think given what you just said after the last panel, FURS is a perfect sort of answer to some of the things that you put forward. So it was a good segue way. I'm Susanna Kniffen, Director of Child Welfare Policy at Children Now. Let me start by saying that even in difficult budget years, children and youth must be protected, particularly those the State is legally responsible for.

Children and youth the State has removed from their families, placed in foster care, and then promised to take care of. California's Family Urgent Response System, or FURS, was designed by youth and caregivers to meet their unique needs. It was carefully crafted by counties, providers, and advocates, and it was championed by legislators who realized that our child welfare system needed to be more responsive in order to help families build healthy relationships and navigate a complicated and often challenging system.

A variety of difficult situations can naturally arise as children and youth in foster care and their caregivers seek to build relationships and learn to live together. These situations occur any time, day or night, and have the potential to disrupt stability, which is critically important to the healthy growth and well being of young people, as you noted. FURS is a 24/7 child welfare specific support system, and it consists of a statewide helpline and mobile response teams in all 58 counties.

It is available on demand whenever youth and caregivers feel the need for extra support, including in person support, whenever and wherever they want it, typically within one hour anywhere in California. FURS is unique because it because it is driven by youth and caregivers. They make the calls, they determine what support they receive, and they determine when they receive it. FURS is one of the only services available that they can control with no eligibility requirements other than time and foster care.

This includes young people who have been reunified with their families or who have been adopted and often have fewer supports and services available. FURS is very flexible. It meets a broad spectrum of needs to help preserve stability for children and youth in foster care, such as relationship building, mental health support, which our next panelist will talk to a little bit more, and even connections to community based support such as housing for older youth who are experiencing homelessness.

FURS is staffed by dedicated, specially trained staff who understand the unique needs, rights, and and legal circumstances of children and youth in foster care and their families. Versus having a positive impact right now for youth and caregivers across California, and there are not other services available that can meet this need. We know what the Department has said, but there's no one else who truly understands this population and can handle these situations in the same way.

Eliminating FURS just a couple of years after launching the program as youth and caregivers are beginning to trust, rely on, and use it more and more will be devastating, putting children and youth at greater risk of instability, disrupted relationships, loss, traumatization, unnecessary contact with law enforcement, which is often the alternative, and placement in congregate care, which is exactly what we're trying to undo with CCR.

Eliminating FURS also doesn't make fiscal sense as it would result in increased cost to the system, including an increase in placement changes, higher levels of care for young people, and more engagement with law enforcement. More than 600 organizations are fighting for this program because every young person in foster care should be able to make a call for support whenever they need it and they should always receive a caring and trauma informed response that is tailored to their unique needs.

These youth have been through enough and need our support to heal and thrive. Please show we care by protecting them, even when our state faces difficult budget choices. Please preserve the Family Urgent Response System. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Ed Center. Sir, I was really touched by your wolverine figurine story and what I started thinking about was how my kids have been fortunate because we adopted them as babies from the foster care system and they've only known one home. And yet, a couple years ago, we were pushed to our breaking point and it was FURS that saved my family. And so that's the story I want to tell today.

I don't have any stats, so you can rest that part of your brain for a couple minutes. My husband and I adopted two kids through the foster care system and we led a happyish life until my older son's mental health crumbled during the pandemic. I'll use his middle name, Hoku. In January of 2021, he was 10 years old and nothing like the creative, mischievous kid he had been a year before. He wouldn't go to school. He stayed inside for days, sullen, addicted to YouTube.

If we asked him to do anything inconvenient like get off the Ipad or take a bath, he would devolve into a fit of rage that could last out hours. Behaviors included screaming, breaking things, and painting I hate you dad on the walls. The one that got me the most was when he took a sharpie and blacked out his face on every family portrait in our house. Finally, we were connected to support from the Family Urgent Response System operated by Seneca Center in San Francisco.

This changed everything for us. The first counselors would come to our house when we needed support, often at 9, 10, 11 at night. These crises never happen at 12 noon. They would help Hoku regulate and make a safety plan with him. One night, I told Hoku that he needed to brush his teeth before he watched more TV. This started a two hour violent tantrum. When the FURS counselor arrived, she pulled out her toothbrush and said, I'll race you. They brushed their teeth.

She helped them calm down and get to bed. Another night, when I was really at my breaking point, I called the first line from my car. I had been driving for about 3 hours. I asked the counselor a simple question. Why should I go back? And I'll never forget what the counselor said. He said, I can't tell you not to leave. What I can tell you is that we all have so much respect for you. Our team talks about how amazing you and your husband are.

You matter so much to Hoku, even if he can't show you that right now. I bought some bad gas station coffee and drove home. We healed slowly. The evening episodes lessened, and then they stopped. Hoku went back to school. Things still aren't easy. Hoku is 13, and he's very 13. But we're stable, and most importantly, we're hopeful. The cost to my family and to the State would be egregious if we had to terminate the adoption, institutionalize our son, or if I had kept driving away.

Thousands of California families currently battle for the emotional well being of their children. We must protect first to help families heal from crises and stay together. Thank you.

I think we need to have somebody watch the door because they let the onion ninjas in right now. Thank you for that. Good afternoon. My name is Gabriel Skydancer. I'm a First Coordinator and Supervisor in Los Angeles County DCFS, and a member of SEIU 721. I realize that's a lot of acronyms, and on paper it can seem like FURS is just another hotline, just a call center that can easily be trimmed when the budget gets tight.

But I'm here to help you to understand the outstanding and life saving work our amazing team provides to the community. And teams like us exist all over California, and we're doing this in kids most crucial time with their families needing assistance. First Urgent Family Response System. As you've heard, we are a unique entity that provides 24/7 support, and I stress 24/7. To foster kids and non-minor dependents up until the age of 21 as well as their caregivers

FURS is also available to foster kids who are out of the system for any reason, even if they've already been adopted. FURS is a program that simply does not exist anywhere else in the care system. When a kid or caregiver calls us, they are under pressing need, and they need it right away.

They may have an urgent, immediate need for resources related to anything from stress management, to job interviews, and preparation for job interviews, to any thoughts of suicide and homelessness prevention, and we're there to answer the call. In LA County, I'm frequently the person on the other end of the calls. So let me tell you what happens next. No matter what time of day it is or night, the call is made. FURS responds immediately, usually within under an hour.

And by respond, I mean heading out to meet the family in person to offer support, stabilization, conflict management, and more. You can imagine how challenging that is in LA County, but it doesn't stop there. We also have mandatory follow up, it's case care for days, weeks, sometimes even longer. To ensure that our kids and families are receiving the help that they need.

At FURS, we are considered secondary workers, but it's much more accurate to say that we are paramount stopgap to prevent kids from having to leave their living situation and re enter the foster care system or worse. If we weren't there, these calls would be going 911, law enforcement, fire, creating much more havoc for the foster kids and families who are already dealing with instability and trauma.

For every call that comes in, there are one to two FURS employees coming out to help these families, instead of two to four police officers or four to six emergency responders. Additionally, many of our families are from the communities that have been unfortunately formed a bias against authority figures. So without FURS, they wouldn't want to call any of the other entities to engage with them.

It's life changing for them to know that they can call FURS anytime and there will always be someone there to be offer trauma informed judgment, free help, without bias, and with an open heart. I'm proud and humbled to inform you that LA County FURS has an unparalleled success rate. We account for 25% of mobile responses across the entire state, and we have over an 87% success rate of keeping kids in their homes without having to go back into the system.

FURS is so much more than a hotline. It saves the state from the strain that would be placed on police, fire and other non foster related resources if we weren't there. More importantly, first protects kids from the compounding trauma of moving in and out of foster systems safely, keeping them out of shelters and the streets, and giving them the stability that they need and truly deserve.

On behalf of the kids and the caregivers we are proud to serve every day, I'm asking you to reject the budget reduction that would eliminate FURS. Please consider solutions and look out for our vulnerable kids.

Thank you very much. Department of Finance.

Marlon Davis. Department of Finance. I'd like to attempt to answer question four from the panel. Could there be a potential source of funds for FURS in the behavioral health area or temporarily as part of BH-CONNECT that could allow for the short term or long term scoring of the Governor's budget proposed general fund savings.

The 24-25 Governor budget does not include any funding for the FURS program within the behavioral health area broadly or within the proposed BH-CONNECT waiver, and we don't expect that either area could absorb the cost of the program even on a temporary basis. We also note that FURS is not a Medi-Cal service or a service for which Department of Healthcare Services has waiver authority. Therefore, we don't believe there is a non general funding source to cover this cost.

Thank you very much. LAO.

Yes, thank you. As we begin the portion of our agenda today that's examining the proposed reductions, I did just want to start with a general comment, which is the Legislature faces very difficult budget decisions this year, as well as likely into future years, given the current year budget year and projected out year deficits, the Governor's Budget presents one combination of solutions.

But ultimately, the Legislature may have different priorities in terms of selecting a combination of solutions, including reductions, cost shifts, borrowing, using reserves, and taking other actions to ultimately solve the budget problem. Notably, across the Governor's budget, there are few program areas where the Governor has proposed ongoing programmatic cuts to established programs, and the proposed reductions that we see proposed for child welfare as well as CalWORKS are actually unique in that way.

At the same time, given the significant budget problem facing the State, ongoing programmatic cuts to some area of the budget are ultimately going to be necessary. And in addition, for any of the Governor's proposed budget solutions that the Legislature does choose to reject, it will need to identify a like solution in another area of the budget. So just wanted to start with that general context. In terms of comments specific to FURS. Our comments and questions are included in your agenda on pages 25 and 26.

So I'll just quickly summarize a few. First, in terms of FURS funding, we do note that not all counties have been fully expanding their FURS allocations in the past several years. In part, this could be because FURS really only began implementation in 2019. It may be slow to start up. However, given these expenditure trends to date, one question we have is rather than fully eliminating funding for the program, would it be possible to reduce funding by some degree without any negative impact for intended beneficiaries?

The answer may be no, but it could be something to look into. Another question that we have is for those counties that have not been fully expanding their allocations, why is that the case? Are there implementation challenges that they may be facing? And then finally, a question we had is, are there other potential funding sources, such as behavioral health funding that could be used to offset some general fund costs?

Although I know my colleague from Department of Finance just indicated that that seems unlikely, but it could still be an area to explore. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I will just remind everybody, as well as the Administration that this Committee believes that the number one priority of this State right now during tough budget times, is to keep our population stable and to continue to bring people out of a State of crisis. Therefore, we will be opposing any cuts that we believe will leave people in crisis or will not keep them stable. So we as this Committee is opposing this FURS elimination.

However, as we continue to work through other cuts in other places, we continue to, I continue to lean on LAO, who owes me a whole list of stuff, to be able to identify other places within the budget that does not risk destabilizing people or leaving them in a state of crisis. And so we are opposing this. But we look forward to continuing to work with the Administration to find other ways to making sure there is no doubt in my mind cuts have to be made.

Let me just make that clear, too. But this year and any, well, at least as long as I'm Chair, we are not going to repeat the mistakes that we did in the great recession. We are going to do this thoughtfully. The process will be rooted in justice, and we will make sure that people are not hurt, that don't need to be hurt. And so we are going to do everything that we can to make sure that we protect our most marginalized and vulnerable populations.

So with that, thank you very much to this panel, and we will bring up issue number four.

Issue number four is the governor's proposal to eliminate the housing supplement for foster youth and supervise independent living placements. You may begin when you're ready.

Good afternoon again Doctor Jackson and staff. Jen Troia on behalf of the Department of Social Services. The supervised independent living program, or SILP, provides options for non minor dependents between the ages of 18 and 21 to have flexible, non licensed foster care placements. These placements are intended to be utilized when youth are ready to live more independently. It can include settings like a solo or shared apartment, a rented room in the home of someone else, or a college dorm.

The intended goal of the SILP supplement, which was adopted in 2023, is to better align SILP rates with counties fair market rents. It's important to note that the supplement has not yet taken effect and it will require automation to occur before it does take effect. So presently, youth and sops continue to receive funding that is equal to the level of care basic rate under the current reimbursement rate structure. In current law, that equates to $1,129 per month.

The supplement was budgeted to cost around $19 million in General Fund resources annually. While the Governor's Budget is no longer proposing to Fund the SILP supplement in the out years, it's important to note that the Governor's Budget does propose significant investments in SILP rates along with other rates in the permanent foster care rate structure proposal, which you'll be discussing in greater detail soon.

The proposed sIlP rates under the Governor's Budget in the out years would become $1,788 for care and supervision and and another $500 for strengths building for a total of $2,288 per month. Again, the comparison to existing SILP rates is $1,129 per month. This proposed significant additional investment in silps under the Governor's Budget includes approximately 33 million General Fund annually at full implementation.

Finally, in response to questions in the agenda, I would note that while the counties are responsible for providing case management, foster care payments and support services that we oversee to non minor dependents, our primary child welfare case management system does not track data in a way that allows us to know how frequently these youth experience homelessness or housing insecurity.

In terms of the data you asked for regarding the use of temporary shelter care facilities among foster youth with respect to that usage among children of all ages in 2023, there were approximately 2,555 youth who had at least one entry into a temporary shelter care facility. By comparison to 2022 data, that was a 17% decrease in the unique numbers of youth entering and staying temporary shelter care facilities and an 11% decrease in the overall total number of entries.

In closing, we look forward to working with the subcommitee and all of our partners on the proposed changes to foster care reimbursement rates and to addressing any further questions you have related to the funding associated with SILPs.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, committee chair and members and staff. My name is Simone Tureck Lee with John Burton Advocates for Youth, and I'm here to ask you to preserve the supervised independent living placement, or SILP housing supplement in the state budget, which would increase the monthly payment foster youth and SILPs receive based on the local cost of housing. The SILPs housing supplement was established last year and is due to take effect in 2025 pending automation changes.

I'd like to start with some background on the SILP and the housing supplement, and then I'll share the impact of eliminating the SILP housing supplement, and I'll end with how the SILP housing supplement relates to the current rates reform effort. As background the SILP is the single most utilized foster care placement for 18 to 20 year olds or non minor dependents in California, with 3152 youth, or 43% of them in this placement. The SILP is the only placement where youth identify and secure their own housing.

They receive their monthly foster care payment directly, which in the current fiscal year is $1,206 per month. And this rate is intended to cover food, clothing, shelter, daily supervision, school supplies, personal incidentals and reasonable travel. As you can imagine, this $1,206 a month does not cut it. Most of our state, these youth are often head of their own household. They aren't joining an existing caregiver's home, leveraging the existing utility bill, meals, transportation. They're covering their costs all on their own.

For this reason, California's housing crisis has had a unique impact on these young people. In the general population, a full 81% of 18 and 19 year olds live with their parents, and over 61% of 20 to 24 year olds do. But foster youth don't have this option and in fact, non minor dependents can be particularly under resourced. You see, they did not reach legal permanency while they were in our system, meaning they were not reunified, adopted or taken into guardianship.

And in these last three years, we have with them until they turn 21, we have this opportunity to help them prepare for successful adulthood. The most basic step toward this is stable housing. The SILP housing supplement was adopted last year for three key reasons. 1st, 1200 is not enough to achieve stable housing at this rate, foster youth are living in deep poverty on an annual income of less than 15,000 a year.

Second, it's not an equitable approach to have a statewide uniform rate for a placement where youth are navigating the rental market as head of their own household with the vast range of rental prices across California's 58 counties. By providing county specific rates, we're not under or over compensating, which is a smart use of state and federal funding. Third, these are youth that we have a current legal obligation to, no different than minor foster youth.

So what would happen if we don't follow through on the commitment that was made in the state budget when it established the SILP housing supplement? Well, we're watching those consequences right now because it has not yet taken effect. The consequences are homelessness litigation and increased state General Fund costs. Research shows that one in five youth in California experience homelessness between 18 to 20 while in foster care. Currently, the state and the County of LA are being sued in part for not providing adequate placement.

Research also shows that the single most common pathway to chronic adult homelessness is having first experienced it as youth. The state General Fund cost of the SILP housing supplement is on average less than $6,000 per person annually, and that's without the rate increase that Miss Troia referenced. That is seven times less than the $42,000 that California spent last year per person on homelessness. One of the questions raised by the Administration in proposing to eliminate the SILP housing supplement was, is this still needed?

As was just discussed with CDSS proposed foster care rate reform, the answer to that question is yes. While the proposed foster care rate reform would raise the care and supervision rate paid directly to youth and SILPs from $1,206 month starting in 2627 that is not adequate in 50 counties in California, where 99.7% of the youth in soaps are placed according to fair market rent and affordable housing standards, the current trailable language makes the additional $500 available for extracurricular activities by way of a third party.

In the current trailable language, it is not provided directly to young people. If that should change, we'd love to revisit this discussion. We're, I think, like everyone is. We want to see youth be resourced in whatever strategy that takes, so we'd love to continue that conversation. We also want to note that additional 500 is supposed to be for extracurricular activities, not for housing.

The methodology for the SILP housing supplement was written in a manner that would ensure its compatibility with any variation in the SILP rate and under this rate, reform. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Wednesday Pope and I am a former foster union.

Yeah, today is Wednesday.

Thank you. I'm currently a student at Folsom Lake College, and in case you missed it, I am a former foster youth. When I was in extended foster care, I experienced homelessness for a year while placed in a supervised independent living placement, or SILP. When I first turned 18 in 2018, a SILP was my only option. There were waiting lists for transitional housing placements and no foster family options available. When you're placed in a SILP, you were required to find your own housing.

So I first tried finding people I knew that I may be able to live with as my SILP. What I found is that there was no one in my circle that I could trust to obtain safe and stable housing with at that time. Back in 2018, the monthly foster care payment for youth in SILPs was $960. Given the cost of apartments, I first looked for room rentals, but found that I didn't feel safe in any of those arrangements.

I tried apartment rentals and found that I didn't meet the income requirements for them, despite both working and receiving my SILP payment. I then searched for apartments that didn't have income requirements, but found that they were requesting a 700 or better credit score plus rental history. Between income and other requirements, I, like most other foster youth and frankly, most 18 year olds, could not qualify. My saving grace was that I was lucky enough to own a car.

I figured living in my car would be safer than living in some of the arrangements I may have been able to afford, such as renting a room from a grown man who had placed an ad for an 18 to 25 year old roommate and then said to me that he didn't like closed doors in his house. I would like to emphasize this point.

After being removed from my homes due to safety concerns and the subsequent lifetime of unsafe living situations, I should not have been faced with a choice to be homeless or live in unsafe places out of desperation. So I lived in my car for a whole year while in foster care. Living in rural communities, we don't have accessible homeless shelters. So at least owning a car, you're not freezing at night, you can still get to work or school.

Maybe you can get to a friend's house who will let you stay for a night or shower. My social worker didn't know I was homeless. I feared that if I told her I didn't have housing, I might lose my SILP payment and then I would have been sorry, I would have been in an even worse situation. I wish I could say this was a rare occurrence, but many of the other foster youth I knew were also facing this reality.

We simply cannot continue to offer the promise of foster care to provide safety and a better home from which we were removed and then inadequately Fund that promise. It's simply not reasonable to say that the average 18 year old can navigate California's economy, especially when you're saying this to a person who has already experienced significant trauma, or in my case, had already experienced homelessness with my family before being placed in foster care. The experience of homelessness again after being placed in care was re traumatizing.

I felt lost and alone, but I was supposed to have all of this support. It has become commonplace for people to expect housing instability for youth and SILPs. I had people say to me as I approached 18, the odds are low you'll find an apartment at 18. They were mentally preparing me for the reality that I would be homeless. It was confusing, even though I did everything I was supposed to be doing. I was working a part time job.

I was even in school, but I was still homeless while in foster care. If this still housing supplement was in place when I was in foster care, I would have had a higher monthly payment that would have enabled me to secure, safe, stable housing. I could have avoided re traumatization. I could have stayed in college full time. To ensure my future financial security and transition into adulthood successfully, I would be further along in my pursuit of a career.

The SILP supplement will give foster youth the chance to not only survive, but to thrive in all of their personal, educational, and professional endeavors. I'm encouraged by the possibility that the SILP rate will increase from the $1,206 it is now to the $1,788 proposed in rates reform. But unfortunately, this does not address the range of housing costs across our state's 58 counties.

As a former foster youth who experienced the impact of an inadequate monthly payment to cover shelter, I strongly recommend that the Legislature preserve the SILP housing supplement. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Department of Finance.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Marlon Davis, Department of Finance. No additional comments at this time, but happy to answer any questions.

LAO.

Yes, thank you. We did want to really just kind of underscore one comment regarding the administration's proposal for the new rate structure, which I know we'll be talking about in more detail later in the agenda.

Our understanding is that regional variation to reflect local rental markets is not included as part of the new rate structure proposed however, as we heard from the Department of Social Services, the new proposed rate that would be that children, excuse me, that non men are dependents placed in SILPs would receive is somewhat higher than the rate that they currently receive. However, in some counties it would not be as high as the rate they would receive should the silp rental supplement implement.

So overall, we just wanted to make that comment that the proposed new rate structure would benefit some youth relative to current rates, but not all youth would be made better off relative to what they would receive under the rental supplement. So I know that's a bit technical and happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Again, given this committee's goals, we are also rejecting this proposed elimination. We believe that the SILPs actually should actually be expanded. We need more expanded eligibility, we need less guidelines to be able to even get into selfs, and so we will be rejecting this item as well. But again, we don't believe in just rejecting. We hope we want to be helpful in solving our budget solutions as well, but we will be in continued communication, Wednesday, well done today.

Thank you all very much. Issue number five.

Good afternoon once again, Doctor Jackson. Jennifer Troia on behalf of the Department of Social Services. Issue number five before you relates to the LA County Child Welfare Services Public Health nursing program. This program was created as an early intervention program by SB 80 in 2019. The purpose of the program is to improve outcomes for youth at risk of entering the foster care system by maximizing access to Healthcare, health education and connecting youth and families to safety net services.

SB 80 identified CDSs as the state agency responsible for passing through General funds to LA County DPH in order to create this program. While CDSS doesn't have more active involvement in or oversight of the program, the statute does specify how the funding is to be used, including specifically for hiring public health nurses, supervisors and support staff. You asked about the causes of delays in implementation between 2019 and when implementation began. In the first year of the allocation

the statute required that the Public Health Department in LA work with the State Department of Healthcare Services on two things, developing a plan for implementation and with respect to how they would claim federal funds. The county began developing the plan, but it was not yet complete. When the COVID-19 pandemic began began and that caused delays. Changes were made in 21-22 to allow LA to claim the State Dollars without requiring the securing of the federal match.

The implementation plan was ultimately completed by the end of 2022 calendar year, and we subsequently developed a claiming process for the funding in January 2023 we sent the county Department an allocation letter detailing how the funds could be spent and the process for reimbursement. In October of 2023, we received the first invoice from LA County for the service period of July through September 2023. To date, we've received five invoices for a total of around 500,000 out of the $8.3 million annual allocation.

This includes employee benefits, salaries, as well as services and supplies. You also asked about the implications of the Governor's Budget proposal on the ground. LA County would need to identify alternative funding sources to support the work that they've begun in 2023 through this funding or to reduce the services being provided. Happy to answer questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Deborah Stewart, and I am a public health nurse supervisor for the Vermont Corridor Regional Office in LA County of DCFS. And I'm here to talk about why we desperately need the public health pilot that we were working on, the early intervention program, and the threat of it being eliminated due to the budget deficit. We play a very crucial role in DCFS, working directly with our social workers to help keep children from entering the foster care system.

By that I mean we put in interventions and we work with our families as they are in the beginning process of the referrals that we receive. In our region alone, there are 10 emergency response supervisors who oversee six to eight social workers in each. For each supervisor. Now, each one of those social workers handles about 40 cases, so that's around 3000 cases at all times. When a social worker visits a family for an emergency response, they need a nurse with them to perform a medical assessment.

That assessment is common interventions that we do because their parents generally have not received the assistance from our community partners. They may not understand. Our nurses go out and provide a very critical role in assessing and placing those interventions, such as connecting parents back to their medical providers, providing on hand education in the home, working with the families to connect them to the right services that are desperately needed.

For example, in my particular office, I'd like to say that there are only two nurses on my team who cover that whole region. Because of the shortages, public health nurses, we don't have a case limit. DCFS wants to hire more nurses, but we just don't have the funding. And sometimes other offices do help support my team, but they really can't spare themselves either. My nurses do everything possible to get the job done every day.

They are absolutely fearless and always go above and beyond to make sure that every single child they see receives thorough, loving care. But there are so many children, and just so many hours in a day, every day is excruciatingly painful because, you know, there are children we won't be able to get to who will be taken from their homes when a simple medical intervention could have kept them there and kept them safe. It's something that I have to carry home every night.

And when you find out that a child has died, you cry. Because, you know, if that child would have receive the proper interventions, the things that we do on a daily basis, maybe it perhaps would not have happened. When I heard that we were finally getting the funding for the early intervention program, the pilot we had been begging for for so many years, I can't even tell you the excitement that I felt. I was overwhelmed with excitement.

I knew at that point we would be able to do much more for our community and really help our social workers in healing these families. Instead of just putting on a little band aid to cover up a bigger problem, we could finally help those parents navigate their issues and put a stop to the multiple referrals that are coming in and out. We get so many of these kids back into our system because they're sick, and these parents so desperately need our help.

So can you just imagine how devastating it was to hear that our lifeline was being pulled before we even got the chance to get it up and running in the fashion that it should? So there just has to be a way to fix the budget without putting our children and our communities at risk so they can have a chance at thriving at home and not thriving in foster care.

I want you to know that I have faith in you that you will not let these kids go into the system if they really don't have to. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Department of Finance.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Marlon Davis, Department of Finance. We have no additional comments at this time.

LAO.

Yes, thank you. Our comments related to this issue are included in your agenda on page 32. But one question I did want to highlight that we have regarding this program. Program is, are there potentially any other funding sources that could offset General Fund Dollars for this program? For example, given that this is specifically an early intervention program, would it be possible for Los Angeles County to utilize any of their family first prevention services, state block grant dollars for this program?

Or are there any federal funding sources that could help to offset the General Fund costs rather than eliminating the program? Finding those alternative funding sources? Thank you.

Thank you very much. I just have a few questions for LA County. Obviously, there has been some hiccups, including the pandemic and other things. But there does seem to be an issue with the rate in which you're drawing down funds to be able to do the programming, and I think that's part of what the Administration is saying as well. Am I correct in that assessment in terms of just the rate in which they are not spending the funds that have been allocated?

You are correct that I did observe what the current expenditures are and that they are significantly lower than what the allocated funding is.

So LA County, are you suspecting that you would be able to draw down all those dollars in order to be able to, do you actually need it all?

Absolutely, sir. The reason we need it, you know, as you may or may not know, nursing, you know, it comes at a cost, you know, and we, in my particular region, I can speak for this, we would say would need at least five to six nurses to really adequately just touch the surface of all the children, those referrals. We're not even counting the other things that we do. This is just one snippet.

When you talk of early intervention, in that early intervention, it means that we are able to rapidly go out within the 30 day allotment time to assess and react and put those interventions in. If we had the staffing, we would be able to do that in a more rapid fashion.

That is what's, one of the things that slows things down is that because of the shortages, we're not able to respond in a quick manner and we haven't had a chance to really, we had just begun the hiring processes for this program.

Okay, so basically you have two nurses right now, but you know, you need five to six. Right. And I'm just going to be honest with you, this is meant to be a pilot program.

Yes.

Right. And so it's my hope that the county is doing what it needs to do to continue this. This is one of those things where LA County is getting, is doing what LA County does. And we need to make sure that we are not treating this pilot as something that is going to expect that it's going to be ongoing.

If the county is not spending down the funds in a manner in which we think that it needs to, meaning if there's a need but yet there's not the spending being brought down, then I would just urge that there's more of a sense of urgency to hire who needs to be hired to serve who needs to be served and those things, because at this rate, I can't fully agree that I would oppose this cut right now.

I think there's some work that needs to be done and just say, this is a tough year, but we need to make sure that we are doing everything we can and that we are being responsible with the monies that we're being given as well. So I just want to make sure that that is said. I totally believe in early intervention. I think it saves money, a whole lot money in the back end. But again, systems have got to move faster. Right.

And when systems don't move fast and we're in bad budget trouble, you end up on my agenda. Right. So we'll continue this item and we'll continue some talks between the Administration, between LAO and between LA County, but we need to see better progress.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll hold this item open and we'll bring up the next panel. Issue number six.

Good afternoon, Chair. Kim Johnson, California Department of Social Services on the Bringing Families Home Program, which provides resources to children and families experiencing or at risk of homelessness who are also involved within the child welfare system. The goal of the program is twofold, to keep families together, which you continue to hear, as well as to support them in remaining or becoming stably housed. Bringing Families Home has greatly expanded across the state since its inception in 2016 when only 12 counties operated the program.

As of 22-23, 53 counties administered bringing families home. Additionally, 25 additional tribal entities are in the process of operating or establishing new bringing families home programs across the state. The resources that the program offers families includes housing-related financial assistance and wrap-around supportive services. This could include, but not be limited to, rental assistance, housing navigation, case management, security deposits, utility payments, moving costs, legal services, and credit repair. According to program updates collected from grantees, grantees are providing individualized and intensive case management and housing navigation services while building relationships and creating partnerships between child welfare agencies and local housing authorities.

Bringing Families Home provides flexible housing assistance to meet the needs of each family, including those again at risk or experiencing homelessness. In terms of the proposal in the governor's budget, it is intended to smooth out funding into 2025-26 based on how expenditures have been trending and provide grantees an additional year for the expenditure.

To implement the proposed delays, we are extending the timelines for spending the fiscal year 22-23 funds for an additional year such that they will not need to be expended by June 30, 2026, instead of June 30, 2025. This proposal does not reduce funding from these programs, is not intended to have an impact on service delivery for families served by the program. The data used for the proposal was point in time, and we recognize the need to review updated data at the May revision.

We do not anticipate this proposal will impact tribes and tribal entities implementing the program. On a county level, the department will continue to work with CWDA and counties on how to mitigate local impacts and maximize the use of funds on a statewide level. The committee also asked about service and outcomes. In fiscal year 22-23 the program served nearly 2000 families. As of December of 2023, there are 2855 active families participating in the program.

Bringing Families Home families with a child in foster care and receiving family reunification services were 68% more likely to have a family reunification at the 180-day mark than those not in the program. Additionally, another recent study from the Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago evaluating San Francisco's program as it pertains to the rates of reunification found that 86% of the 145 children and families referred with the family reunification case had exited out-of-home care by December of 2022.

A majority of these children were reunified with family. Most other children exited via adoption or legal guardianship. Additionally, of families who exited the Bringing Families Home Program, the reentry to out-of-home care rate among children who are reunified with family was very low. Only 6% of the children who were reunified reentered out-of-home care within one year of reunification, and only 9% had reentered out-of-home care at the final observation date of the study.

Preliminary view of the program data conducted by the department has also found similar trends of improved reunification amongst families enrolled in the program. Again, it is working. Related to the evaluation, we are working with the University of California, Berkeley, California Policy Lab, and the University of Southern California Children's Data Network.

The evaluation compares outcomes of families served by this program to outcomes of comparable families who did not receive the program services and leveraging administrative data from both the child welfare and homeless systems, this project examined patterns of family reunification, child welfare referrals, homelessness, and housing assistance over a two year period. The latest update from research partners on the evaluation has been that the final evaluation results may be expected to be released in the next two to three months.

Key preliminary findings on housing outcomes. Enrollment in this program reduced the use of emergency shelter and transitional housing by 50% and doubled the use of rapid rehousing services in the six months following program entry. Most families that exited the program by the end of the program's second year left to permanent housing and only 3% reported exiting to homelessness. And with that, I'm happy to to answer any questions.

Good afternoon. Eileen Cubanski with the County Welfare Directors Association. I apologize. We had intended to have a county individual here to share their direct experience, and that fell through at the last minute. So you are stuck with me and I will instead share a statewide perspective which is informed by our implementing county child welfare agencies.

The Bringing Family Home Program is based upon research that shows that the risk for child welfare system involvement is higher among families experience homelessness than amongst similar low-income but stably housed families and that housing supports and getting families who are homeless or unstably housed into stable, safe, permanent housing prevents foster care placement and furthers reunification with birth families. And you've heard Director Johnson highlight all of the various program successes.

I will endeavor not to repeat those, but I do think that the outcomes so far are bearing out what the research has shown is the goals of the program. Housing is just one of the many services that families receive who are involved in child welfare, family reunification, family maintenance programs. It's one of many, but it's often the most critical service that they receive.

The BFH program allows counties to provide trauma-informed housing services following a housing-first model that combines concrete supports and wraparound services with more intensive case management that can be offered alone by our child welfare social workers. Director Johnson described the types of supports and services that are offered. I won't go back into all of those just to say they are both kind of tangible supports as well as housing case management and navigation.

Another though key thing is it allows our counties to build stronger partnerships with local housing authorities and we are able then to leverage those relationships with other housing assistance programs to provide really more seamless and critical resources to piece them together locally to provide permanent, ongoing housing for families, which is a difficult resource occasionally to pull together. The additional recent significant one-time investments, as Director Johnson noted, did allow us to significantly expand the program.

We had 31 counties join in addition to a number of tribal entities. In addition to that new funding, I'd say the elimination of the matching requirement was really key here. It enabled more counties, particularly our smaller, less resourced ones, to serve more families in need, expand existing contracts, provide more comprehensive services, hire additional staff to support the operations, and increase our collaboration with other local entities. I will say that the experience has been overwhelmingly positive, as reflected by our counties.

Many families, as Director Johnson noted, secure permanent housing and exit foster care program to reunification. It's also kept many families together. We've had challenges in implementing the expansion. It required many counties to start from scratch to staff up, execute contracts, develop program service offerings, establish referral processes, identify leveraging opportunities, and so forth. And our community partners existed these same startup challenges. I will say at this point, though, we've overcome a lot of those challenges, and so spending is picking up in the program.

And so I appreciate Director Johnson's reflections that her estimates, their estimates were point in time. And so we have been working with the department around the governor's proposal to defer $80 million from next fiscal year into the following fiscal year. I think we're feeling at this moment that that amount is probably too much to defer without having actual programmatic impacts that would result in the curtailing of actual service levels and limiting those that we're able to serve.

We know some counties in particular are cutting off their programs now, but I do think that we can do some work to smooth out the impacts on a county-by-county basis, make it work on a statewide basis, and ultimately some deferral of funding, delay of funding I think we can make work. I don't know, though, that the $80 million is the right amount that may be too high and are continuing to engage in those conversations with the administration and appreciate their willingness to engage in those with that. I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you very much. Department of Finance.

Marlon Davis, Department of Finance, no further comments.

LAO.

First, just a quick comment to tie back to the first issue that we discussed today, racial and ethnic disproportionalities and disparities, as well as economic disproportionalities and disparities. As we discussed earlier, supportive housing is one of those types of concrete supports that the research does find can have a positive relationship in terms of reducing the risk factors for child maltreatment.

And so just making that connection, that Bringing Families Home is one of those programs that the research does support, can have that positive relationship in terms of maltreatment. We also did just want to note, really underscoring the comments made by the department as well as CWDA, the intention of this delay, as we understand it, is to really smooth the spending, not actually reduce overall spending. Therefore, the proposal to us seems to make sense, as well as the approach to revisit at my revision and consider those county-by-county spending trends. All of that seems to make sense to us and happy to assist in answering any questions.

Thank you very much. I was just checking my list. One of the things that my, as we were briefing the rest of our colleagues in the Assembly on the budget, one of the things that they wanted to make sure and gave us clear direction, those of us who are budget subcommittee chairs is to really understand, before we agree into anything, what are the impact on the people who is meant to serve.

And I'm sure you've begun to notice that if we've asked questions in regards to how this would impact, and we were not provided with adequate information on how it was impact, it automatically makes us oppose it. Right? We are going to make informed decisions this year. And so I am happy, Director Johnson, that we can continue to look into it, making sure it seems like there might be some wiggle room here.

So I don't, at this point, I won't have an official position in terms of what that number should be, but it should be a number that does not affect the people we're currently serving. Right? We have, housing is the number one issue in California, and our budget should reflect that. And so, looking forward to the continued conversations. Of course, we know there's still some data and some information we need to still come into in terms of the May revise as well.

Well, and so I look forward to looking at that information, looking at the position that we're in, and hopefully we can find some room to be able to add to the budget solution, but it won't be at the expense of people for being housed. Okay, thank you very much for that information. We'll hold this item open and we'll move on to issue seven. We're rolling, y'all. Every time I go to another issue, I just get all more happier. We're rolling.

Good afternoon, Chair. Kim Johnson, California Department of Social Services, and this item in particular we are just grateful to have to put in front of the committee this afternoon. Consistent with earlier comments made today, this proposal is focused on keeping families together, assessing and meeting the individual needs of each youth, and advancing equity.

The proposed permanent rate structure invests in strength building and addressing the immediate needs of children and youth, allowing us to greatly increase the number of children living with their own family members and tribes with the support necessary to ensure the success of these placements.

The positive experiences that youth are more likely to have when cared for by their own family and when they have connections to enrichment and cultural activities have been proven to help mitigate the mental health damage caused by adverse childhood experiences and to help youth heal. We want reimbursement rates to be responsive to what youth and families need to thrive. So the proposed rate structure support services in place based on the child's assessment and identified needs.

If adopted, California will be the first state in the nation to take this approach. The proposal also invests in new approaches to rates. Until now, the rate structure has only paid for care and supervision, and again, the proposal adds investments in strength building and addressing a child's immediate needs.

Participation in enrichment activities have been proven to help young people heal, as I referenced, promoting supportive social connections and providing opportunities to develop valuable skills, and is consistent with what we've heard from youth asking that they need to be supported. This proposal does make significant changes to the rate structure as it stands today.

As such, we look forward to not only engaging with interested parties in the short term, but also to having focused efforts on capacity building and other details to operationalize the success of this proposal over the next two years, as full implementation is proposed to begin in 2026 to 27, and I'll turn it over to my colleague, Deputy Director Angie Short.

Good afternoon, Chair Jackson. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. As Director Johnson said, my name is Angie Short. I'm the deputy director of the Children and Family Services Division. I'm excited to be presenting this proposal to you today, which has been in the works for many years and is a key component of the continuum of care reform, which is centered around ensuring that all children can be supported within families.

In response to a question in the agenda at full implementation, this represents a $1.1 billion investment in our children's strengths, in supporting their immediate needs, and in ensuring there's appropriate support in homes where children do best in the homes of their relatives and extended family members. And this proposal was not designed in isolation. It is sincerely responsive to the stakeholder feedback that we sought and received through 24 workgroup meetings that were held in the fall of 2022.

The consensus coming out of those workgroups was that our rates should be based on the assessed needs of the child, not where they're placed, and that assessment should come from a validated tool. We also heard clearly that there needs to be funding for services and supports, which has never, as Director Johnson said, been a part of our rate system, and we heard directly from young people that we must invest in their strengths and maintaining their strengths when they come into our foster care system.

As Director Johnson noted, there are three key innovations central to this proposal that are also very responsive to that feedback. First, the rates will be based on the CANS, which is a validated functional assessment tool that's been implemented within our counties and required since 2018. Second, there are two new investments.

First, the strength building component, so that investment in young people's strengths and maintaining their strengths, and second, the investment in immediate needs for those children that are within tiers where their CANS has identified an urgent needle. And finally, the funding shifts away from being based on where the child is placed and is tied and connected to the child, meaning that all children, even those with the highest acuity of needs, can be supported within the families where they do best.

Since the release of the trailer bill on March 7, we've been engaged in extensive stakeholder feedback sessions with more to come. The trailer bill is lengthy and complex, and as expected, with such comprehensive reform, there's a lot of feedback that we're receiving in our stakeholder workgroup. So far, there has been no opposition and only support for the investments in strength building and the immediate needs of the young people.

There is also broad support for having the funding based on the child and not on the placement so that all children can be supported in family homes, particularly the homes of their relatives. In terms of pain points, we acknowledge that there are many questions about the administrative processes to utilize the funding and the need to structure the funding in a way that is efficient. We are committed to working through implementation to ensure that we don't increase administrative burdens on counties or providers.

With regard to the immediate needs funding, we've received questions about whether and how providers will receive that funding, as well as how to best enable counties to set up their networks and their contracts. Finally, there are questions about how the rates will be paid to STRTPs and foster family agencies. Under the proposal, FFAs and STRTPs will continue to receive funding to support their administrative expenses, which they do right now under existing law.

However, the administrative component of the rate is being restructured for youth within tiers 2 and tiers 3 and 3 plus in order to ensure that there's dedicated funding to support the child's immediate needs instead of bundling all those dollars together within the admin rate. Structuring the immediate needs dollars this way ensures that the immediate needs funding travels with the young person.

It enables us to make sure that the immediate needs will be met even when children are in settings that are not associated with a foster family agency or an STRTP like the home of their relatives. In this way, it's an investment in community services and support, and it facilitates providers creating new models in order to serve children in community settings and family settings, not just when they're placed within their own facilities.

Finally, having dedicated funding for immediate needs also means there will be more statewideness and continuity of services. For example, when a child's being stepped down from an STRTP, the immediate needs funding stays with the the young person meeting the services and the treatment team, and those supports that they were receiving within the STRTP can continue to be provided to that child within that family setting.

We acknowledge that this is a big shift with levels of complexity, but it takes a big shift to accomplish the goal of having a rate that follows. The child ensures that the child can remain and be connected with their own families and that invests in strengths and needs. Many additional details can be worked through implementation, and we're committed to doing that in partnership with tribes and stakeholders.

Having said that, what the administration has proposed in the trailer bill is what we believe to be essential to have completed as part of this year's budget process in order for the rates to be implemented in 2026. We're very much looking forward to continuing discussions with the Legislature and all of our partners about this historic proposed investment. Happy to answer questions.

Thank you. Ms. Power.

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this discussion of the proposed permanent foster care rate structure. I'm Kristin Power with the Alliance for Children's Rights. It's very clear the department has spent significant time developing the proposal and we very much appreciate the investment in our children and youth and foster care and their caregivers.

The proposal is an improvement over the current interim rate structure in several key areas, including it is a much more realistic approach to rates, engagement and involvement in youth and caregiver in the strength building and maintenance funds and investment in the health and well-being of our children in foster care with the immediate needs funding. We appreciate the acknowledgment of the role and needs related to emergency placements by providing a tier-two placement for emergency caregivers.

This substantial shift in the manner and method of payment will require significant implementation investment across the system from the county to the state to caregivers and to youth. We have identified concerns related to accountability and technology which will require analysis and time to successfully implement the proposal and encourage the Legislature to engage proactively throughout the rates structure development and implementation

For the purposes of today's discussion, I've broken our high-level concerns into three funding sources and allocations, assessment and transitions in the area of funding sources and allocations questions for considerations in response to your question about pain points, what are the fund sources for care and supervision, strength building and maintenance and immediate needs allocations and are they sustainable? What are the CDSS administrative implementation costs? Are they absorbed in current funding and is there additional costs that must be budgeted?

Does the CDSS administrative cost incorporate the cost for the third party administrator or the financial management coordinator? Does the third-party process establish for the strength building and maintenance funding add value relative to the additional administrative costs? What can be done to minimize administrative barriers and confidentiality concerns related to third-party payments to activities vendors related to the fiscal cap on expenditures of state building and maintenance allocations? What is planned to minimize impacts of over under expenditures of the funds?

For example, what happens if the allocation is overspent, are over expenditures the responsibility of the caregiver from care and supervision funds, and can overpayments be clawed back? If the county-managed care plans or fee-for-service don't offer specific immediate needs services identified by the child and family team, how does the youth access and pay for those services? How does the strength building and maintenance funding interact with the reasonable and prudent parent standard?

How does the proposal account for the current intensive services, foster care or ISFC placement parameters, for example, home capacity or training requirements? In the area of the CANS assessment, questions to consider. What does fidelity mean in terms of the relationship to the CANS assessment and how will that be reflected in training and communicated to caregivers, administrative law judges who hear cases related to rates and to caregivers and youth?

Is the CANS uniformly administered across counties and youth populations, including probation-supervised youth, youth and juvenile halls, and reported to ensure information accurately reflects needs? As more CANS assessment data becomes available? Is a recurrent latent class analysis-based plan on to review and update the tiers and rates? And what timing is appropriate for that review? Questions to consider related to the transitions. The level of care protocol was rolled out incrementally. What is the transition plan from the current level of care protocol to this new structure?

And how will youth and caregivers be supported in the transition if there's a change in their rates? What can be done to minimize the impact of loss of immediate needs funding when a youth transitions between tiers? Does the proposal create inadvertent disincentives to to reunification and permanency through the loss of strength building and maintenance and immediate needs allocations? And if so, what can be done to minimize those disincentives?

Given these outstanding implementation questions on this new structure, we suggest the Legislature adopt the funding parameters as part of the budget, but take time through the summer recess to consider the trailer bill language and perhaps consider adding trailer bill language proposal for next year as well. We also suggest that given the extensive delay in executing the proposal due to technology issues, including claiming the Legislature consider whether regular updates on implementation, including the technology infrastructure process, should be required.

It's difficult to state a position, although we are supportive of the overall structure, but given the open questions, we are very appreciative of the work that's been gone into developing the proposed rate structure and are committed to continuing our engagement to ensure our children and youth and caregivers who step up for them are supported. Thank you.

Thank you. Eileen Cubanski with the County Welfare Directors Association. The shift to a placement based from a placement-based structure to one based on the needs of the individual child or youth, regardless of the placement type, has the potential to be truly transformational, and the significant investment of state general fund and services is welcome and from our perspective, long overdue. As noted, the full proposal was just recently released. We are still digesting that with our members.

We have lots of questions that we've asked as well, and we are continuing to engage in conversations with the department through stakeholder meetings and directly. So we're hoping to provide more specific feedback and recommendations later this month, but in the meantime, I wanted to share a few high-level observations about the proposal, the first being that it's predicated on the transition to a system of home-based care that doesn't currently exist broadly.

It's unlikely to be successful unless investments are made to build capacity throughout the child welfare system, including implementation of high-quality child and family team meetings, fidelities in the use of the CANS tool in coordination with county behavioral health agencies who also use the CANS. Standing it up is going to require a significant amount of upfront work and investments in staffing capabilities capacity.

Second, the proposed rate structure also depends on having widespread availability of community and family-based care and services, and efforts to build this capacity are still nascent and underfunded. Building the types of evidence-based services and promising practices requires an investment into capacity building that includes building staffing expertise and infrastructure to support services in counties and local providers, including our FFAs. The disparities are particularly acute and challenging for smaller and rural counties.

Third, the proposed rate structure does not fully support the continuum of care options needed by children, youth and families, particularly our older foster youth, with proposed cuts to FURS and the SILP housing supplement as examples. We don't believe that the rate structure is a full substitute for those reductions and believe that we still need those critical supports and services. We're concerned that the rate proposal may render residentially based providers, and potentially FFAs, as well as unstable.

And many of these are the same providers that we're going to need to transition to provide the home-based care in communities, and we know that we will continue to need short-term residential care and treatment for a small number of youth with very intensive needs. And this proposal does nothing to support the smaller-scale, innovative models of residential therapeutic support that's been promoted by DSS in the recent past.

Fourth, the proposal continues to predicate sustainability on access to behavioral health, but payment reform by DHCS has been problematic and leaving our providers caught in the middle. CWS and county behavioral health agencies need to understand the vision and expectations for coordinating and leveraging funding with behavioral health services and Medi-Cal funding, and we need to acknowledge funding and workforce challenges on our behavioral health side as well. Fifth, the rate tiering connected to CANS scoring.

It's not easily understood and will require further discussion to determine if these are the correct levels and groupings and ensure that they adequately reflect the needs of youth and families. We also have concerns about potential lack of flexibility to tear up quickly for youth with higher needs to avert worsening conditions and want to have more conversations there. We're concerned that the amount of new guidance, technical assistance and direct administration by DSS is unrealistic and could cause further delays in implementation.

It's predicated on a number of new deliverables by DSS before we can even start implementing. There's several areas where standards would need to be developed. There's no detail in the language about those or contemplated consultation with placing agencies or other stakeholders. We think there's a need to simplify some of the operationalization and better integrate it within current planning and payment processes while still ensuring appropriate guardrails and accountability. And lastly, we have some concerns about unintended consequences negatively impacting children, families, and youth.

The proposal has the potential to increase disproportionality and disparities by reducing incentives to family reunification and permanency. Since the strength building and immediate needs dollars will not be available post-permanency, we believe there are ways to address that, but it will require additional flexibility in the use of the funds and leveraging other fund sources as well, and building capacity. We've learned through our efforts in implementing the many facets of CCR that it takes time, thoughtful planning, and capacity support to implement change of this magnitude. But we definitely look forward to continuing work with the administration and Legislature on this important and exciting proposal and to the many more conversations to come. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Jackson thank you so much for the opportunity to speak. My name is Christine Stoner-Mertz. I'm the CEO of the California Alliance of Child and Family Services, an association representing over 160 nonprofit member organizations serving children, youth, and families throughout the 58 counties. Our member organizations provide a wide array of services to children and families at risk of or involvement in the foster care system. They run family resource centers, provide school-based mental health, and in-home services that keep families together.

Our member organizations also provide foster family agencies that recruit, train, and approve individuals and families, including Kin, who are committed to supporting youth until they can return to biological family. Over 70% of children in alliance FFAs provide reunification services, and over 60% are ultimately reunified with family. We appreciate the vision that underlies this permanent rate proposal.

Focusing resources on foster youth and their families is essential, and allowing families and caregivers to determine how to best meet the children's needs provides a pathway to less children and youth requiring Child Welfare Services over time. That said, we believe that this proposal, as currently structured, will decimate programs working with our most vulnerable foster youth and their families. These are often older LGBTQ youth and youth of color.

These programs are rooted in communities and staffed by people of color living in their communities, often with lived experience in the foster care and probation systems. Our specific concerns include there's no clear method or requirement for youth's behavioral health needs to be met and to support families remaining together through wrap-around or other behavioral health supports paid through by paid for through Medi-Cal.

Without that intentional integration of these resources at both state and county levels, our most vulnerable youth will continue to be underserved for their behavioral health needs. The immediate needs portion of the rate could be used to draw down additional Medi-Cal funds when a behavioral health service is provided, but the proposal provides no mechanism for this. We recommend that there's a state-level approach to this integration to ensure that foster youth, wherever they reside, have access to the behavioral health services they need.

Secondly, the rates for the administrative and care and supervision components for youth who need short-term residential therapeutic programs are wholly inadequate to serve youth determined to have needs at the tier 3 plus level. Workforce shortages due to wage limitations are impacting these programs today. The current proposal would result in STRTPs receiving $3,000 less per month than they receive today beginning in two years. This will result in closures of programs and organizations providing these services, and we will find more foster youth in need of hospitalization.

Thirdly, rates for the administrative components at all tiers are inadequate to ensure that foster family agencies and family support agencies can provide the highest quality of services and supports to families, pay competitive wages, benefits cover escalating insurance costs and organizational costs for providing high-quality services. The administrative and immediate needs components of the rate also do not include an annual cost of living increase.

The alliance's counter-proposal includes an additional $178 million to ensure that organizations providing our services for our most traumatized youth are able to pay their staff a competitive wage. Fourthly, there is no funding in the proposal to support capacity building, which everyone at the table has spoken about, and the fiscal structures for reimbursement to FFAs and STRTPs limit their ability to provide direct services to youth as they transition to biological families or kin.

Alliance members are highly motivated to provide services to families directly, such as wrap-around or other in-home services, or become service providers for immediate needs. But this requires capacity-building resources and bridge funding like we've seen implemented through the governor's California Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative.

The alliance's counter proposal includes $300 million of capacity building supports to assist organizations in changing their business models to become family service organizations, foster family agencies are already underfunded and have received only two one-time COLAs in the past 20 years. They are facing an 8% cut this July unless the Legislature approves the continuation of a COLA approved in the 23-24 budget process.

A just-completed survey indicates that that 68% of FFAs are currently at risk of downsizing due to the lack of funding, and without this immediate support, there will be far less service providers in 26-27. I know what to do. Ensuring that the way in which the children and adolescent needs and services assessments are implemented in a significant way. It is a significant issue.

As outlined in ACL 1809, a child and family team meeting in which a CANS would be completed must be done within 60 days of a child entering foster care and then a CANS completed every six months. Currently, there is wide variation in the completion of the CANS, and alliance members report regularly having youth referred and placed in their care without a completed CANS.

We've been working on this for six years without consistency across our system, so we wonder how that's going to work out in the long run. We also have not seen the methodology for the tiered structure. We're interested and excited to learn more about that, and again, we applaud this overall vision, but we have to think about the implementation and the risks of losing current providers through the process.

Thank you very much. Department of Finance.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Marlon Davis, Department of Finance, we have no further comments.

LAO.

As you've heard from this panel, this is very much a live and evolving issue that the administration and stakeholders actively are working on. We will continue to monitor this process, and we're working with the administration and stakeholders to ensure we're fully tracking the various issues, particularly with the trailer bill language, as the process continues. One area we did want to flag that we will be working to better understand is the specific methodology for the proposed rates.

In other words, how did the administration arrive at these specific amounts for the various tiers and for the various components? So we'll be working on this and other issues in the coming months, and we'll certainly raise any new issues for legislative consideration as we become aware of them. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Director Johnson, I know you are very excited about it, and I'm very excited about it as well. This is truly a reflection on how much we are making sure or trying to make sure that the young people are getting what they need, no matter where they are and no matter what setting that they are in.

And due to the humongous effort that this is only just reflects all the different input and questions and, you know, all that kind of stuff, which means you're on the right path. To me, this is the kind of big work that we should always be doing and so however I can be helpful, please let me know.

I'm sure the stakeholders are ready to be helpful as well and I think that we should probably do a check-in in some type of way, including with the stakeholders sometime, maybe right before the May revise before the craziness begins, if this is not already crazy.

But you know, but I think overall, just so that we can make sure we have the time to pay attention to details, making sure we hear the intent of what everyone is asking for, making sure they understand your intent and all that kind of stuff. But the idea is we've got to make this work and we've got to take the initial steps to get us on this journey that you're all leading us on. So well done and looking forward to the journey. Thank you all very much and we will hold this item open for future discussion. Issue number eight. Issue number eight, if you are on the agenda, Mr. Chavez, is that you? Come on up, don't be shy.

Good afternoon, Chair. Kim Johnson, California Department of Social Services. Glad to speak to the Promise Neighborhood Program implementation. Four promise neighborhoods were funded for a total of $12 million as part of the 22-23 governor's budget to advance place-based cradle-to-career investments to help families and their children thrive. The four grantees include Chula Vista in San Diego, Corning with the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians, Hayward in Alameda County, and the Mission in San Francisco.

I had the great privilege to join the Mission Economic Development Agency, or MEDA, hosting a tour of the Promise Neighborhood in San Francisco, which is a great display of community partnership with housing, with early childhood, with schools and more. And again, great to see the phenomenal effort that they've grown in that space.

We have also executed a $1.5 million contract with the California State University East Bay Foundation to support capacity building and technical assistance, endeavoring to institutionalize the promise neighborhood model as a best practice for evaluation, systemically documenting evidence of impact, and for communications, building visibility through communication channels such as social media, videos, blogs, events, and more. The steering committee for the Promised Neighborhoods also endeavors to institutionalize the model as a best practice while continuing to engage in improvement efforts along the way.

The committee asked related to expenditures, I will say they've totaled $455,096 for the period of January of 23 to June of 23. Our next report we have a full year cycle, so our next reporting period will be in October of this year. For the current fiscal year, they have that full-time and allotment to expend. In the meantime, we are eager to look at lessons learned along these initiatives along the way and what we can apply kind of in real-time.

We certainly heard on that site visit around the challenges to your point around silos of connecting families to the whole totality of the array and how really combining those efforts and creating kind of a one-stop shop really makes those efforts even greater, but a lot more lessons to learn in the effort along the way and look forward to hearing more, learning more as we go forward.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Jackson. My name's Edgar Chavez. As the executive director of Hayward Promise Neighborhoods. I proudly serve and live in the community I grew up in. Coming from a mixed-status immigrant family and as a proud grandson of California farmworkers, I became the first in my family to earn degrees from Stanford and Harvard three generations later.

As a child, I experienced the stress of moving every six months, mental health impacts on family, and the fear of navigating social services. Where I learned to overcome these challenges through self-advocacy, my story is not typical in my neighborhood. Here, children grew up in poverty, still face low college enrollment rates and housing instability. I'm speaking on behalf of more than a dozen California place based cradle to career initiatives.

Our communities range from rural to urban, from Del Norte County near the Oregon border to San Diego in the Mexican border. And from the coast of Monterey to the valley in Fresno County, our reach is extensive. The lead agencies guiding these initiatives are as diverse as our communities, including nonprofit organizations, federally recognized tribes, and universities like mine, California State University East Bay. Three elements define our place-based cradle-to-career model. First, we focus on place.

We know that the zip code or census tract a child grows up can predict their socioeconomic life outcomes based on the proximity to well-funded schools, home ownership, basic needs, and pathways for economic mobility. Two, we work together. We engage public and private agencies to collectively implement funding on prenatal to career programs in designated regions and schools, work that is often siloed by procurement systems, and lack of community engagement. Three, we invest in what works. We research, pilot, and measure evidence-based practices in our communities.

And we know through national research by UPenn that the earlier we invest in families with children, zero to eight, the greater the return on investment over time. Hayward, Chula Vista, Corning, and Mission Promise Neighborhoods collectively serve 165,000 residents, including nearly 50,000 young people aged zero to 24, have partnered closely with CDSS to successfully manage $12 million in appropriations. Together, we are developing essential tools and practices, including scopes of work, reporting templates, and technical assistance toolkits.

This year, we're also initiating an evaluation and return on investment study to inform the state framework. Some examples of the ongoing work in our Promise Neighborhoods include Hayward has coordinated with various agencies to expand food access and monitor CalFresh enrollment. Seeing the South Hayward Zip Code Food Insecurity Index drop 19.1% since 2020, falling twice the rate of our neighboring zip codes. Mission Promise Neighborhoods school-based supports have increased graduation rates at its high school.

John O'Connell the Latinx graduation rate at O'Connell High School outperformed SFUSD's Latinx graduation rate by over 10 percentage points. The state's 12 million investment not only averted our funding crisis at the start of 2023, it also brought us time to seek additional resources, proudly securing new federal appropriations funding through Senator Padilla and late Senator Feinstein member's request in the 2024 federal budget.

However, we're facing another fiscal cliff by June 2025, as more place-based anti-poverty initiatives like Bright Futures in Monterey and Stanislaus Cradle to Career continue to be left out of critical funding. We also know that this is a time to add California, the map of states like Minnesota, Florida, and Maryland, where the governor introduced the Enough Act and codifying place-based strategies addressing child poverty through direct state funding and legislation.

Even in a challenging budget year, this is the kind of investment that pays off and makes sense based on what we've learned about this work. Over $400 million of existing state investments are coordinated by our networks, ensuring the highest poverty communities meant to benefit from these services are accessing these resources. A return on investment study by the Wilder Institute from the Northside Achievement Zone, a promised neighborhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota, found that every $1 invested yielded a $6.12 return on investment through benefits like higher earnings, reduced crime, and lower health costs.

Minnesota went on to legislate the promise neighborhoods model and fund it through the state appropriations. I'm so proud by the work that we do every day to make systems work better for our families and children and our community and communities often left behind. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Department of Finance.

Thank you, Chair Jackson. Marlon Davis Department of Finance. No further comments.

LAO.

No comments to add for this issue.

I am very interested in this area, as you know, usually, and one of my things I'm trying to do is making sure that we know that when this model is done correctly, that it truly can transform lives and create a path or a pipeline of thriving people and thriving children. I believe that we're at the point now, and maybe if we're not, I would love to get your feedback on it, that it's time to start looking at, okay, what is now that best practice?

How do we create a replicable model that we can begin to establish throughout the state? Right? We know this started off in terms of President Obama's Promise Neighborhood Initiative. California was all in. We checked that box and then we kind of said, okay, great job, but it's time for us, if we really, if we know this works, what are we doing it to take this on the road. Right?

And so I am going to, I am proposing, and I have proposed some trailer bill language to the administration to begin to look at how do we begin to create a framework that creates the foundation for it to be replicable. And as the budget improves, we have something ready to go so that communities know, what does it require to be a part of the Promise Neighborhood network and how to receive the funding for it, whatever funding that might be.

And then what are the requirements to prove that they are maintaining the fidelity of the model as well? What are those key components we know needs to be a part of every model? And what are the parameters do we have in place that we can put in place to making sure that people understand that, okay, if we are going to do this, this is what the fidelity means and this is the requirement in order to be able to maintain or be able to receive additional investments from the state?

So I look forward to begin discussions with your office director to find out how we can start crafting some language, trailer bill language to talk about what does the future look like. Right? Great work, a lot of great gyms throughout the state. Right? But now, how do we make it systemic? Right? That's our next challenge. Thank you all very much for the work that you do. And I will move on to the next item, issue number nine.

Hello again. Good afternoon again. Angie Schwartz, Deputy Director with the Children and Family Services division at the Department of Social Services. I've been asked to provide an overview on the CDSS components of the California Behavioral Health community-based organized networks of equitable care and treatment, also known as BH Connect. So those components include, first, the joint county child welfare social worker and mental health plan clinician home visits.

Specifically, there's an allocation within the DSS budget for the social worker time involved in participating in a new joint home visiting process in which a mental health provider, a social worker, will conduct a home visit within 30 days of a call to the child welfare hotline that requires an investigation. It's an activity that's jointly led by DHCS, county mental health plans as well as DSS and county child welfare.

The associated funding with the Joint County Child Welfare social worker and mental health plan home visits at full implementation in fiscal year 25-26 through 27-28 is $4.6 million state general fund. The second is the activity stipends, the Medi-Cal funded activity stipends for children and youth involved in child welfare.

Again, the allocation within our budget is for the social worker time associated with the implementation and coordination of the DHCS Medi-Cal funded activity stipends that allow children in child welfare to participate in activities that promote social and emotional well-being. Again, it's a jointly led activity between DHCS and county mental health plans as well as DSS and county child welfare.

The associated funding for this component at full implementation is 14 million state General Fund and the final component is the child and family teen meetings for children with open family maintenance cases. So those are children that are still in the home of their parent, they're not foster care cases. This is an allocation within the DSS budget for the increased social worker time and workload associated with the implementation, coordination and facilitation of the CFT meetings during FM cases.

It's an activity led by DSS and child welfare and the funding associated with it at full implementation is the $19.4 million state general fund. In terms of the question about the authority these activities take place and how they will be measured, all of these involve cases after the substantiation of the abuse and neglect that are active cases.

County child welfare agencies and mental health plans will be collaborating directly to implement these initiatives once policy guidance and funding becomes available. In terms of how it will be measured, those policies, outcomes and reporting requirements are still being developed by DSS and DHCS. We're actively partnering in meeting to develop further detailed guidance, policy outcomes and reporting requirements regarding these initiatives in anticipation of federal approval of BH Connect and an anticipated implementation date of January 1, 2025. Happy to answer questions.

Thank you very much. Department of Finance?

Thank you, chair. Marlon Davis, Department of Finance. No further comments.

LAO?

No comments to add for this issue.

Can you tell me a little bit about what was the impetus about why we, the program is important, but then also what is the overall vision in terms of where is this going to be headed? Does that make sense? Meaning are we trying to make sure that this is provided in every county? Is this something that obviously, home visitation is a great best practice into a whole host of things. Do you plan on including any community health worker type infrastructure?

Can you tell me a little bit more about?

These are all key components in terms of where that intersection is with BH Connect and child welfare, in terms of expanding, like you said, the access to home visiting, to making sure that we're doing child and family team meetings, not just once a child enters foster care, but actually as a preventative measure in order to support children and families in the family maintenance cases and avoid them having to come into our foster care system, as well as making sure that those activity stipends, when it's connected to sort of that Medicaid eligibility, that we have that additional funding to make sure that children have access to those kinds of activity stipends.

So that's the intention, is really focusing on those specific components that relate to child welfare and making sure that we have expanded services across the state in terms of the details of the implementation. Like I said, we're still working all of that out in anticipation of the federal approval of the waiver.

Got it. Okay. Now what do you anticipate the number of counties participating be?

I believe we're expecting it to be across all 58 counties.

Okay. All right. Fantastic. If we can, I'm wondering if there's a need to be, I mean, to be, I wonder if there's a need for trailer bill language to be done on this particular program. But let's continue to discuss whether that need exists. I think at this point it's going to be about, really about continuity, right? I mean, obviously this governor is running out of time, and how do we make sure that there's going to be consistency amongst administrations as well?

And so some trailer bill language might be helpful in terms of continuity so that we can make sure, and also counties can make sure that there's something predictable and reliable in terms of making sure that they have the confidence that by them going all in on this program, right. That things won't change drastically based upon administration. Some things that we want to make sure we have some discussions about. Thank you very much. We'll move on to issue number 10.

All right. Still me.

Still you. Oh okay, let's do it.

Angie Schwartz, Director of Children and Family Services. In terms of this issue, we've been asked to describe the new activities and requested six positions as part of the governor's budget change proposal on our case review allocation adjustment. The six new positions will be completing child and family service reviews, those case reviews associated with the CFSR and quality assurance for small rural counties who are currently contracting back with us with DSS, plus an additional five counties interested in contracting back with CDSS to complete the reviews on their behalf.

Additionally, these positions will develop resources and desk guides for completing the onsite reviews. And without the requested resources, the Department risks not being in compliance with the child and family services review and risking federal penalties. Happy to answer questions.

Department of Finance?

Department of Finance, Marlon Davis. No additional questions or comments.

Going great.

How's your day going?

Having a good day? Family, friends, okay?

They're okay, thank you.

Okay. It was a beautiful day today, don't you think? Okay, moving on. LAO?

We've reviewed this BCP and don't have any concerns to flag at this time.

Okay, awesome. I actually have no questions on this either. We'll move on to issue number 11.

Still me.

Still you. Hello.

Hello. Angie Schwartz, Deputy Director of Children and Family Services Division and we've been asked to provide an overview or an update on the Family First Prevention Services Act related to the spending and why limited funding has been utilized so far. Counties were allocated a total of $198,775,000 and have expended $11,789,654 as of February 2024.

Expenditures of the block grant are below anticipated amounts due both to the fact that the counties had to submit comprehensive prevention plans to the Department and those comprehensive prevention plans were developed in coordination with their local interagency leadership teams, inclusive of tribal consultation, and I think the development of those plans took longer than anticipated. In addition, counties are using those dollars in anticipation of the Family First Prevention Services Act funding becoming available, which is contingent on the care system being implemented, which is expected to occur, go live in 2026.

And so this is really extending the timelines for the expenditure authority for that block grant in order to allow counties additional time to expend the funds and to build the bridge towards when they'll be able to actually claim the dollars through part one of the Family First Prevention Services Act when CARES goes live, I'm happy to answer additional questions.

Eileen Cubanski, the County Welfare Director's Association. As Angie said, the block grant expenditures have been delayed due to the development of the county the comprehensive prevention plans. Once the state's plan was eventually approved. That triggered our planning efforts as well, but we've ramped up quickly since the plan's been approved, spending is picking up of these funds.

We've recently surveyed our Members on this and based on that survey, we're estimating almost $70 million will be spent by the end of this fiscal year, and another, or approximately 152 million of the total, will be spent by the end of the next fiscal year 24-25.

So the extension of the expenditure authority for these state General funds is essential for counties to keep the promises that they made to the community in developing their CPPs and to provide for the critical services to prevent child maltreatment and foster care. And if the funds are not extended, we do have concerns that newly existing evidence-based practices would be curtailed or terminated or not implemented at all.

Prevention plan activities would not be sustained and discontinued, and the investments that we're currently making now in community based services would have limited impact. But the reality is that we will likely exhaust the state block grant funding well before 2028, so appreciate the long runway. Think that that is an excessively long runway in terms of how long it will actually take us to spend it.

We're estimating that two-thirds of the funding based on our survey will be gone before we go live with CARES automation that would allow us to draw down the federal funds. And that inability to draw down those federal funds is concerning to us and we fear it will jeopardize the availability of, or the sustainability of the investments we're making now.

As we start to run out of the state block grant funding, we've proposed an interim solution or proposal anyway, a claiming system to draw down for in advance of the CARES functionality being completed. If we were able to draw down FFPSA part one funding now, the Title IV funding, we estimate we would have nearly $50 million in additional federal funding available to us between now and when CARES goes live to actually support and sustain these prevention investments that we're making.

We've been in discussions with DSS about this approach. They've been very open to having these conversations and we've identified a number of barriers and we're working through and hopeful that we can work through those issues so that we can start drawing down federal funds sooner. Because in the absence of that and running out of the state block grant funds, we do believe that we will have difficulty in sustaining these programs.

Someday, the budget picture will brighten again, and at that point, we will be coming back and asking for ongoing state general fund investment and prevention. I think that's really critical. I know, right? I'm just foreshadowing future requests that we would make. But I think that state investment in prevention is truly going to be needed in addition to the county and federal investments that we're making. So just a little preview for that. Investments in prevention generate savings across multiple systems and are clearly better for youth and families.

So look for that someday. Anyway, that's all for my comments. Happy to answer any questions.

Department of Finance?

Department of Finance, Marlon Davis. No further comments.

LAO?

Yes. Regarding the proposed trailer bill language to extend the expenditure deadline for the state block grants, we agree that this makes sense, as you've heard, given the slower than anticipated expense expenditure trends to date. So no concerns with that. Thank you.

Okay. I agree with that assessment. Any other feedback in terms of what we're hearing from counties and other stakeholders? Everyone seems to be on the same page here. Okay, we'll move on. Thank you very much. Issue number 12. Can y'all believe how fast this thing is going? Need me to slow? Maybe I should do a recess, huh? No? Okay. All right. You may begin when you're ready.

Good afternoon, chair. Time to bring it home with some child support issues. The Child Support Program. I'm sorry, David Kilgore of Child Support services. The Child Support program is a federally mandated state pro-state program that establishes, collects and distributes child support payments to enrolled persons with children. These tasks include locating parents, certifying parentage, establishing, enforcing, and modifying child support orders and collecting and distributing payments.

In California, the child support program is administered by the county and regional local child support agencies, affectionately known to us as LCSAs. In partnership with local courts, the program operates are overseen by the State Department of Child Support Services. The California Child Support program is budgeted at $1.2 billion, of which 66% is federally funded and 34% is funded with the state general fund.

LCSA receive approximately 77% of the budget to cover personnel costs for approximately 5,677 positions and operates a total of 47 local agencies across the state. In fiscal year 2223 DC distributed $2.5 billion in child support collections, with more than 2.1 billion going directly to families. The remaining $400 million was returned to the government as well for recruitment, which is something we'll be talking quite a bit about today.

Statewide caseload for fiscal year 23 was just a little over 1,058,000 cases, which is an increase of 1.2% compared to last year. The Department is currently working on six major initiatives for the State of California. The first is formally assisted pass through. This is based off of AB 207, which amends family code to add new sections that allows the collection on arrears owed to government to instead be passed through to formerly assisted families.

DCSS will implement the child support system changes this month, which will apply to collections being received May 1, 2024. Moving forward second item is on FEM final rule in December of 2016, the Federal Administration of Child Support Families, the Office of Child Support Services, issued flexibility and efficiency and modernization in child support enforcement, known as the FEM final rule.

This final rule requires changes to state's child support guidelines and child support pleading procedures to make sure parents ability to pay is considered at all stages of the child support case. California codified these requirements with the passage of Chapter 213, which requires LCSAs and DCS stakeholders to currently implement the changes to the guideline calculator in the CSE system and then provide that training of the guideline calculator to all those that are using it. This is an item that goes beyond the child support program itself.

We're responsible for the calculator, but it affects all child support guidelines in the State of California. Third item we are focusing on is foster care. In July of 2022, the federal Office of Child Support Services issued an updated policy encouraging child welfare agencies to implement across the board policies that require an assignment of rights to child support for children in foster care only in very rare circumstances. In September of 2022, it was amended in family code, imposing new requirements which align with the updated federal policy.

These amendments require CDSS regulations to presume that the payments of child support by the parents is likely to pose a barrier to the proposed family reunification. DCSS anticipates the changes implemented at the federal and state level will result in drastically reduced future foster care case referrals over to the child support program. Fourth item we're focused on is uncollectible debt effective of January 2023. It provides that we no longer no longer, as a reduction to aid and payment of custody parents would result.

The LCSA can choose to waive or remove that uncollectible debt from our system. DCSS is contracted with the University of California, San Diego to develop a collectability determination methodology by which we'll be able to follow and make those determinations about what child support collections are uncollectible. DCSS has also partnered with stakeholders and LCSAs via work groups to develop this policy and procedures. It's being implemented in two different ways. The mandatory categories based on sole source income was implemented in January of 2023.

The balance is the circumstantial categories which we are dependent upon the study completed by UC San Diego. Once we receive that, we will promulgate procedures and policies and get that out to the local child support agencies. Fifth item is on driver's license based off of SB 1055.

This prohibits DCSS from including in the monthly state license match list sent to the Department of Motor Vehicles the information of paying parents whose annual household income is at or below 70% of the medium threshold for the county in which the Department or the LCCA believe the parents paying support resides. This program will be operative by January 1, 2025 is on schedule for implementation at that time. Our final major initiative is on incarceration instances.

This removes the requirement that a child support order resume on the first day of the first full month after the person that was incarcerated leaves the institution. This bill now requires that the child support order resume on the first day of the 10th month after incarcerated or involuntarily institutionalized person paying support is released, giving them that span of time to get back up on their feet.

This bill will also authorize the person's order to receive support or the LCCA to seek a court order reinstating the child support obligation if the person paying support obtains employment or there's otherwise a change in circumstances prior to the date of reinstatement, allowing us to adjust the order to the appropriate amount. That concludes our overview of the program.

Department of Finance?

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

Angela Short with the Legislative Analyst Office. I did want to respond to their question in the agenda regarding raising any significant issues for the Legislature as to the child support collections for foster care cases. As you heard from Director Kilgore, this is a relatively new policy or guidance that was provided by the Department of Social Services last year, indicating that essentially we will no longer be referring foster care cases to the state child support program, except in very rare circumstances.

So this guidance is essentially meaning that no new cases will be referred. Further, their guidance directed that the Department of Child Support Services should work to cease enforcement of existing cases. However, one area that the guidance did not address is any debts that those previously existing cases had accrued. So we did want to raise for the Legislature.

This may be an area where the Legislature would like to provide input or inquire with the Administration as to the anticipated timeline for providing any future guidance related to this issue of existing debts. Thank you.

Okay, Mister Kilgore, any feedback on the forgiving of debt? What is the vision or the intention of the administration in regards to that issue?

There was a bill that was heading through this past year to address that, but I ultimately don't think that will be necessary. Based off of the bill on uncollectible debt, I believe it's our understanding that the guidance and direction from UC San Diego is to be identifying these as uncollectible in their nature, allowing us to just uniformly go back.

And so long as Department of Social Services doesn't see that that case should have still been referred to us, we should be able to remove all of that uncollectible as uncollectible debt.

Would you agree that hoping to forgive this debt might will be helpful to families?

I do, yeah.

Okay.

And I think we have a mechanism to do it.

Awesome. Thank you very much. We will conclude that issue. We'll hold it open for future deliberations. Issue number 13, Mr. Kilgore.

Yes. This is uniformly assisted cases passed through. I've mentioned a little bit about this. Federal law provides states with an option to pass through collections of permanently assigned arrears to formerly assisted families and waive the federal share of recoupment if the state passes the entire collection to the family. In 2022, California passed that law authorizing DCSS to implement former assistance arrears pass through of child support collections to formally assisted families when payments are made to arrears assigned to the government.

The statute leverages a federal provision that provides states an option to pass through collections of permanently assigned arrears to formerly assisted families and waive the federal share of the of that recruitment if the state passes the entire collection of the family. DCSS anticipates implementation of this this month, which will apply to payments beginning May 1 of 2024. DCSS estimates that the pass through amount will be approximately $160.7 million to formerly assisted families in the 24-25 year.

In federal fiscal year 2023, approximately 108,000 formerly assisted cases received collections towards an assigned arrears balance, which would have been passed through had this been implemented in the past. So based on actual collections in 22-23, that's where we've gotten that $160 million estimate from.

Department of Finance?

Omar Sanchez, Department of Finance. Nothing further to add. Thank you.

Yes, we would just note, as you heard, this is a policy change that we'll be implementing this month. So this is something that we will be monitoring in the future, and we'll certainly circle back with any concerns as they may arise. Thank you.

Mr. Kilgore. Everything's on track? In terms of timelines?

It is, yes.

Any red flags or anything?

No.

Not that you would tell me, I don't think, but we're ready to go. Okay, great stuff. All right, moving on to issue number 14.

This is on the consideration of passing through the current assistance cases. This is trailer bill language that's based on budgetary conversation. We don't know if the intent is to move forward with this or not, so we don't have an update at this time on current assistance we'll pass through.

Omar Sanchez, Department of Finance. Nothing further to add.

LAO.

Yes, we would flag that given the significant budget deficit that is projected for the budget year, we would anticipate that at some point this spring, Department of Finance will make the determination that the state will not be able to move forward with the full pass through to currently assisted families because the statute or, excuse me, the budgetary language from the prior year indicates that implementation is subject to that determination. So we would just flag most likely this will not be moving forward.

Furthermore, our read of the language is that should the Legislature wish to continue to prioritize implementation of the full pass through to current cowards families in a future year, new language would be needed because the current language that puts into place that implementation subject to Department of Finance determination becomes inoperative July 1, 2024. Therefore, new language would be needed if the Legislature wishes to essentially put into statute or trailer Bill a future determination based on the budget in order to implement this pass through.

Mister Kilgore, any feedback in terms of implementation, possible future language or action that might be taken to make this happen?

It's difficult to kind of assess when that budgetary impact will occur. This is an 18 month to two year implementation cycle from a technological perspective for both Department of Social Services and Department of Social Services and Department of Child Support Services. So there's a larger impact to the system on Department of Social Services, unlike the arrears full pass through. So there's some coordination that needs to happen there. The budgetary impact, aside from system changes, will be probably two years out, I would guess.

Okay, Miss Gonzalez.

Is it my turn? You are going so fast.

You know you gotta stay on it. I know you see the Mountain Dew in the house. Come on. I made it. I made it. Have mercy.

Rebecca Gonzalez. And I'm here today representing the Truth and Justice In Child Support Coalition, which is a statewide group of 50 plus organizations that seek to bring equitable reform to our state's child support system to better support low income children and their families and reduce child poverty in California. One of the coalition's central priorities is ending the government interception of child support payments and implementing full pass through.

While there is broad support to end this practice and implement full pass through, we are in danger of losing our way as we enter a period of leaner budget years. I want to share the true cost of this misguided policy and why we cannot afford to take our foot off the gas. Child support should be for children, but for almost 50 years, California has required parents who receive public assistance to repay the state by intercepting their child support.

This federal policy is the result of anti welfare and racist stereotypes about black families. The state extracts 150 million a year from the poorest families, disproportionately impacting families of color because almost all impacted parents are very low income. This system is also ineffective and has resulted in 6.4 billion in government o child support that is uncollectible and traps parents and in turn their children in financial uncertainty.

The payback problem a 2019 report found that intercepting these payments does the following deprives low income children of valuable resources, pushes parents out of the formal economy, reduces their employment opportunities, causes financial and housing instability and disproportionately harms families of color and is ineffective because, as we said, 95% of this debt is uncollectible. According to an urban institution study. California is on the path to become a national leader in redressing this injustice.

It is morally the right thing to do because intercepting child support payments by the state is actively causing lasting harm and financial stress to low income families and children. It's also fiscally the right thing to do because not investing in families now will cost the state more in the future in terms of supportive services and interventions.

Further underscoring the importance of this, there was a pilot project in San Francisco that eliminated non custodial parents government owed debt and allowed 100% of the child support payments to go to families. The pilot showed that parents make more consistent and timely payments, children receive more financial support, parents employment barriers are reduced, parents housing status and credit scores improve, and co parenting relationships improve. I want to share a story from a member of our coalition, Renell Hampton, founder of Growing Greatness now.

When Renell was growing up, his father wrote a $600 check every month to pay his child support, but only $50 of that amount made it to his family. Rennell talks about how much his family could have used the extra money. When I think of that $550 additional into my household growing up, that would have helped out much and increased our overall quality of life.

He recalls days with the electricity turned off, selling candy and pumping gas to make ends meet, and missing out on sports activities, tutoring and school outings. The policy also created a vision in the family because they weren't aware that his father was contributing the full $600 since that money wasn't coming into the household. This story illustrates why we need to keep the commitment and momentum going on pass through for all families. And it means we need to do one thing, three things.

Renew the budget trigger language which reaffirms the state's commitment and prioritizes pass through as part of the 26-27 budget support necessary DCSS and DSS automation by providing necessary funding and support for both departments to continue the automation and system change work necessary to implement this policy and pass legislation in 2025 to address unintended consequences. I think it was already mentioned that there's a report coming out on that the Legislature should prioritize making these statutory changes in 2025.

In conclusion, we look forward to working together with the Administration, the Legislature, and both departments to develop trailer bill language to keep California's commitment to full pass through of child support to CalWORKS families so that the two departments can continue their preparations for this important policy change for low income families and children in California. Thank you.

You talk about a report, who's releasing this report?

It's the Department of Social Services.

And when do you expect that report to come out again?

That should be coming out in the summer.

In the summer. Okay. LAO, can you make sure that you send us a copy of your remarks specific to this item so that I can kind of digest it a little bit more? You started talking numbers and you know, I'm a political science major. We didn't have time for that. But then also I'm just trying to see whether we should be considering doing trailer bill language now or not until next year.

But want to kind of have more discussions about this because obviously we want to make sure that we're providing folks that need it with the financial assistance that they are entitled to in order to be stable. So want to continue to dive into this issue into the future and we'll definitely hold this open and let's bring this back for the May revise discussion agendas. Okay, thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Issue number 15. Whoa.

So we're going to adjourn for 2 hours and we'll be back. All right, number 15, whatever.

I expect it to be here afterwards anyway.

So there you go. All right.

This is on the trailable language for the Child Support Trust Fund overpayment Family Code section establishes a child support payment trust fund to deposit child support payments received by the state disbursement unit for processing and providing child support payments to the parents receiving support.

The collections are received from various sources for court orders, court court ordered child support obligations, most notably wage assignments, direct payments from persons ordered to pay support, and intercepts from IR's refunds, etcetera, to perform these functions, the child support payment trust fund maintains an adequate balance of funds to disperse collections with the federally mandated two day disbursement timeframe. As part of the child support casework and payment processing, situations arise that can result in overpayments of support to case protection.

Participants in these circumstances are included, but not limited to IR's negative adjustments. Payments inadvertently applied to the wrong case of the participant, payments collected and dispersed in excess of the child support order credit card chargebacks errors for which the SDU vendor is not responsible collections dishonored by the bank resulting in unfunded collections since the transition to a statewide payment processing center in 2008, the amount of undistributed collections has grown slowly over time.

This is due to a lack of a recovery mechanism for those funds, which has resulted in a growing balance of overpayments each year. This situation poses a risk of DCSS's ability to meet existing service levels and the federally mandated two day timeframe for disbursements. Failure to maintain these minimum federal standards provided for in Title IV of the Social Security act jeopardizes the continued receipt of federal funding for the program.

The statute statutory authority this statutory authority would give DCSS the ability to implement procedures for offsets of overpayments with future collections. The proposed statutory authority would allow DCSS to recover overpayments in a similar manner to other California departments that disburse payments, for example, the welfare and institution code sections, and lastly, it sets relevant thresholds for recovering based on its determination. Cost effective effectiveness in essence, over time we have slowly accumulated about $20 million of a hole in our bank account.

We are concerned in the future about running a negative balance and not having enough funds to distribute out. This is particularly concerning as it relates to arrears full pass through and current support full pass through. If we were to implement both of those, that's the money we use to kind of float in this account to keep things whole. So this is progressive.

And making sure that we don't end up in that situation allows us to take a maximum of $500,000 of our budget at the end of the year, unspent, and kind of socket away into this account to make sure that we never end up in that situation.

Okay. Department of Finance.

Omar Sanchez Department of Finance nothing further to add.

LAO.

Upon reviewing this language, we did have a number of questions. Those are noted in your agenda on page 67. We posed those questions to the Department and we did want to share. They did provide responses and additional information to those in response to those questions and as such, at this point, we don't have any further questions or concerns with this language. Thank you.

Awesome. Okay, well, thank you very much. Is there anything else in terms of stakeholder feedback, anything that regarding this trailer bill language?

No, this is strictly processing of payments and doesn't affect stakeholders.

All right, we will hold this item open for future discussions, and this ends the panel presentation portion of our hearing for today. And so with that, we will move on to public comment. Now. Dang. Okay, before we begin, everybody listen up. Listen up. Remember I said we were going to recess at 5:30. I've also said that your comment should be no more than two minutes. You do the math.

If you can make it shorter, I would suggest you do so, because I would hate for the last few people to be stuck with me during a recess. Okay, name and affiliation, please? Go.

Kristin Power with the alliance for Children's Rights. We want to support rejecting the administration's proposal to eliminate the family urgent response system and the supervised independent living placement market rate adjustments. Issues 3 and 4 on your agenda.

Thank you very much. Name and affiliation, please.

Jan Judson, I'm with Make it Happen for Yolo County. We're a nonprofit organization providing, pardon me, household items and furniture to transition age youth. And we are here as part of a coalition with the John Burton Advocates for youth to oppose any child welfare cuts and also particularly interested in supporting the SILP housing that was in issue number four. Thank you.

Thank you. Next. Name an affiliation, please, and the other name?

Hi, I'm Judy Mandolfo. I'm with California Alliance of Caregivers. We represent relative and non relative caregivers. And I have a statement, but I think we're going faster. So I just am going to say that we're here to ask the committee not to cut the budget when it comes to FERs, issue three, SILP with issue four, and especially the permanent rate structure proposal. When it comes to caregivers. We need

these supports, particularly so in my community. I support caregivers, and I mentor in my home county, I'm the late night phone answerer in the middle of the night for almost 90 families, FERs is imperative. There's no way for me to help these families without FERs. So we just ask that you really think about before you cut these things that we as caregivers really need.

Absolutely. As we remember, this committee is right now in opposition of FERs and self and family stabilization, and so we will continue to be in opposition, but of course, we'll be in continued discussions about it. The name of your young person, please.

We. For confidentiality, I call him mister.

Okay. And does mister have any comments that.

Mister is a handful, but he's very sweet and when it comes to the rate structure, I will say that it would make all the difference in the world for little people like him too.

So absolutely, mister is now on record. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Name and affiliation, please?

Thank you Mr Chair. Dylan Elliott on behalf of the counties of Kern and Humboldt, appreciate your concern with respect to issues 3 and 4, they are in opposition to both of those, as well as in opposition to issue six on behalf of Humboldt County. Thank you,

Thank you. Next up, name and affiliation please.

Yeah, Kim Lewis, representing Aspearnet and we serve foster youth in 35 counties, including Riverside. And on issue 3 and 4, we stand with the chair around rejecting the cuts to FERs and SILPs. On issue seven, despite significant investments, we know that the current system of care means that we have an inadequate number of resource families to meet the needs of our children and youth entering into and being served by foster care.

And that current crisis is bringing into attention the challenges of finding stable and appropriate family based care, especially for our teens, sibling sets and children with complex trauma. The gaps in family based options required to meet the vision of CCR has created instability and the continuum of care for our children and youth that they deserve. So the DSS proposal, we know is a really great start with additional investments and stuff, but there are many outstanding questions and lots of implementation work still left to do.

We share the concerns raised by your panelists at CWDA and both alliances and are committed to strengthening the proposal and providing feedback through the working groups.

But at a minimum, we'd recommend that in the gap between now and when we see these new rates come into place, that we invest additional resources into our foster family agencies and our strtps to be able to make sure that they are here and available to support our families when these new rates come into place, and that this opportunity is really giving us the chance to really fix inadequacies in the current rate structure, such as addressing the lack of cnis across all the different placement programs.

And I just want to thank you for your time and having this hearing.

Thank you very much. Hello name and affiliation. Oh, I know you do.

Rebecca Gonzalez with the Western center on Law and Poverty. I want to be here to oppose the cuts to the FERS program to silp, and also once again to talk about full pass through for CalWORKS and setting up the system so that could be implemented. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up name, affiliation, please.

Hi, my name is Tranecia Jones, and I am a former foster youth attending Sacramento State. I'm also a youth advocate for the John Burton Foundation.

And have you decided on a major yet?

Yes. Right now my bachelor's is in criminal justice and my master's is going to be in social work.

Go on, girl. Oh, I forgot we were in a hearing. Okay. Name and affiliation, please.

Yes. And so today I asked the committee to reject all cuts to child welfare and especially to preserve the funding for the SILP housing supplement heard under issue for today for my current siblings who are in foster care, and they are under SILP. So I'm advocating for them today because they can't speak for themselves. Thank you.

Well done. Thank you. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon. My name is Mara Ziegler. I'm here on behalf of Public Council. We also appreciate and stand with the chair and urge you to preserve all funding for the silp housing supplement. As we heard earlier today, it will prevent homelessness for our youth, youth who are currently under our care, who are 18 to 20 in the system. I'd like to highlight something we heard the youth advocate speak so eloquently earlier about how difficult it is to navigate life when you're facing housing instability.

Well, for youth in foster care, these young people who are parents, it's exponentially more difficult. Every day I work with these amazing young folks. And too many of the nearly thousand custodial parents who are in care in our state struggle to find secured, safe, stable housing for themselves and their children. And then they experience, as a little family, extended periods of homelessness.

When I work with them, I see too many of them are forced to relocate to a more affordable county, or sometimes even a totally different state, becoming separated from their community, which includes their childcare, their healthcare, their job, their school, and most significantly, the baby's other parent. And for the non custodial parents, those who are working really hard, I see it every day to reunify with their children. These barriers too often become impossible to overcome.

And then there's another generation entering the foster care system, and I am left outraged every time I see this intergenerational cycle wheel spin again. Because countless times, doing this work for 100,000 years, I've seen, with just some stability and some support, staggering resilience and the ability of these young families to remain together and thrive. So, please, thank you for listening. Thank you for saying you're going to oppose any cuts.

Please do your best to preserve the silp housing supplement in particular, not only to prevent youth homelessness, but as a message to these young people that their potential is seen and we care about their future. Thank you.

Thank you very much. You age well for 100,000 years. Next up.

Well, I won't try to show up, Mara, cause that was amazing. I'll just say that we are issues 3 and 4, FERs and the SILP housing supplement. Thank you so much for stating your opposition to the cuts. And I'll just say that we hope that in the rates reform effort that we can all come to a good solution. As a group of stakeholders in State Department that I know cares a lot about this issue and I think we can get there together. Thank you.

Absolutely. Next up, name, affiliate, age.

You don't really want my age.

Come on. I almost got in trouble.

No, not really. My name is Anna Long. I'm from the Department of Public Health in LA County. And LA County opposes all the cuts to child welfare, particularly item five, the public health nursing early intervention program. I know you heard something about that early today. We actually have 12 staff on board. We're ramping up hiring, but we put it on hold when we saw the budget.

This program will aim to reduce entry into child welfare and reduce recidivism when kids leave foster care by pairing a public health nurse with families that are not eligible for the public health nursing HCPCFC program that I'm sure you've heard about. It is a demonstration program. We think that once it's fully implemented, it'll be a model for the state. But right now it's only in LA County. So we're urging you to oppose those cuts.

Thank you very much. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Hello, my name is Daisy Madrigal. I'm with Lutheran Social Services of Northern California, and I'm here to one, I want to thank you for opposing the elimination of SILP, and two, I just wanted to highlight a bit of information, and if this program was to be eliminated, our current California COC bed capacity can only accommodate one out of every seven youth experiencing homelessness. So it is crucial to maintain this funding in order to further burden the already overwhelmed systems in California. So I just wanted to highlight that and thank you for opposing the elimination.

Thank you very much. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Veronica Paloski, Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, here today to oppose all cuts related to child welfare budgets and thanking the committee for your position on item on issues 3 and 4. And just want to emphasize one more time that FERs is an invaluable and irreplaceable tool in our county's efforts to reduce reliance on congregate care. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Hi, I'm Cara Kusian. Well, I guess I'm representing Los Angeles County Board of Supervisor Janice Hahn. We worked on emotion that kind of, when the budget cuts in preliminary came out for these three programs, the three items that were held today around public health nurses and the early intervention and the overall strategy around primary prevention and how to divert people from our child welfare system. And it just, it's a fun fact that I was kind of touting today.

We get over 200,000 calls to our child protection hotline every year. And if we can provide wraparound services with public health experts, it would really impact lives, especially for our communities of color and people who are impacted by the child welfare system. Obviously, we're here also opposing SILP and any cuts. And thank you for opposing that today too, and rejecting the proposed budget cuts. So thank you for that and looking forward to seeing how this all plays out. Appreciate it.

Look forward to it too. Next up.

Mr Chair Martha Guerrero, representing the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Echo the statements from my colleagues for the SILP program. Really appreciate your opposition to that. It'll help preserve housing for over 1100 youth who are benefiting from that program in Los Angeles County and for the public health early intervention program. As you hear, this has been operational not for long, but operational as a result of receiving the funding. So we're trying to keep it going.

And I look forward to a conversation with you about why we need to sustain this program.

Absolutely. Let's schedule some time.

Will do. Thank you.

Yep. Next step.

Eileen Kabanski with the County Welfare Directors Association on behalf of all 58 county human services agencies in opposition to the cuts to the FERS program and the SILP housing supplement. Thank you for your support for restoration for those programs.

Thank you. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Doctor David Baker, CEO of Sacramento Children's Home. I'm just going to thank you for supporting the continuation of fers. It's really making a difference. For the first time we see real reductions in placement changes and you talked about how important that is in terms of, as was shared by Chris and Eileen, the concerns I have around permanent rate structure.

Really just hoping that folks will take a look and make sure that there's enough funding in there to preserve the highest levels of care for the kids that need it the most. The last thing we need is for those programs to go away and for kids to be in unlicensed homes or offices or former detention centers, as you know. So thank you so much.

All right. Thank you very much. Next up, any affiliation, please?

Good afternoon, Chair Jackson. Kevin Clark with Good River Partners here to thank you for your support in rejecting the administration's proposals to reduce the SIlP housing supplement in the FERS supplement or the FERS program. And the SILP housing supplement is just a really, really important program to really support young folks as they're looking and transitioning out of child welfare and gets housing in very, very expensive states. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Next up, name, affiliation, please.

Thank you. Hello, my name is Maya Mesa and I'm here on behalf of First Place for Youth and myself as a former foster youth who utilized SILP for years until I had to transition out due to the minimal funding that wouldn't allow me to find decent housing, housing in Sacramento. I oppose the proposed child welfare budget cuts, in particular the cuts to the SILP housing supplement and FERS. FERS is already a program that not enough foster youth or providers are aware of.

If FERS was around when I was in foster care, it could have prevented several of my housing relocations. I also know this to be true of the youth I work with. Thank you for opposing the cuts to the soap program inverse.

Thank you. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon, Kate Hutchinson with Lutheran Social Services. Thank you so much for your support of SILP and FERS. I know it's shocking to me that 50% of foster youth leave the system and enter into homelessness. And paired with that, the Chapin hall study, that 50% of chronically homeless adults had their first incidence of homelessness when they were young adults. So we have an opportunity to put a stop to a big portion of homelessness, and I thank you for your support.

Thank you. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Hello. With the California alliance of Child and Family Services. We represent 160 different community based organizations across California that serve current and former foster youth. And just wanted to thank the Committee so much on the opposition to cutting child welfare cuts and just making sure that we are preserving furs and silks, making sure that these services to youth are maintained to prevent youth homelessness, which would end up costing the state much more in the long run. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next up, name, affiliation, please.

Hi, my name is Esperanza Segeda. I'm the policy advocate with Seneca Family of Agencies, and I'm here to urge the Legislature to include a continuation of foster family agency bridge funding. This is a budget assets championed by Assemblymember Shiavo, and we also want to make sure that we ensure the permanent rate structure sufficiently funds FFA activities like family finding and things of that nature. Both of these things are really vital to keeping kids in family based settings. And we also really want to thank you and your leadership in opposing the cuts to FERS and SILPs. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Next up, name affiliation, please.

Thanks. Hi, my name is Agnes Perez. I'm a clinical director with Pacific Clinics. We are a statewide private, nonprofit organization. We serve children and families. So thank you for your support for FERS. Our resource parents also wanted to let you know how important FERS is to them, and they report that the immediate on call support has has helped them preserve youth in their care and have reduced the need to contact law enforcement.

And regarding issue seven, while we understand there's a significant budget deficit, we're also hopeful that you will invest in our most vulnerable youth by continuing the FFA bridge funding. Without the continued funding, our agency, along with many other ffas, are at risk of closing our foster care doors. And what this means is that for my agency, this impacts more than 180 youth and 150 resource families who care for these youth. So thank you for hearing us today.

Thank you. Next up, layman affiliation, please.

Hi, good evening. My name is Carol Ramirez. I'm the chief program officer at Wayfinder Family Services. We are a statewide organization serving over 160 youth in foster care, 80% of whom are with relatives. Thank you for your support of fers and also ask that the Legislator prioritize nonprofits in the permanent rate structure. And as Agnes said, and to what Chris from the California Alliance mentioned earlier, it is absolutely critical we acknowledge the huge budget deficit.

But we asked and urged the Legislator to include the continuation of the FFA bridge funding championed by Assemblymember Schiavo. We serve 100% of youth in ISFC. We have masters level social workers. We have 24/7 access and care. We provide care to the highest, most vulnerable youth in California. And we ask that you continue to support the bridge funding. We want to be here in two years as part of the new rate structure to provide immediate needs and services.

We will be decimated if that bridge funding doesn't continue. So thank you for your support.

Thank you very much. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Victoria Kelly, CEO for Redwood Community Services and we support the Committee's opposition to the FERs program cuts. My organization has been providing FFA and youth residential services in California for 29 years, and we've seen many critical points, but none as dire as the ones we're facing now. FFAs must be provided security through bridge funding to ensure our continued ability to serve foster youth with critical needs throughout California.

Without this bridge funding, as you have heard, many, many more ffas will be closing, resulting in less family based care for foster youth on permanent rates. I'm greatly concerned about the administrative and regulatory burden, additional regulatory burden on ffas and strdps. We already, through CCR, have to meet national accreditation standards in addition to DHCs mental health approval and CCL licensure.

And this proposal will add additional burden to meet compliance as an immediate needs provider and what information we've received around what immediate needs means are services and supports we're already providing in these services. The last thing I just want to say is we serve as a central component in the safety net for our state's foster youth. And without community based providers like ourselves, more youth will be sleeping in county social services offices, living in unsafe situations, and ultimately entering into homelessness.

Thank you very much. Next up, name, affiliation, please.

Good afternoon. Sabrina De Santiago with Think of Us. And I'm here in support of item number seven. And the why is simple. It's because we help connect 3700 families across California with help, and they reach out to us with stories like one family, two foster parents, three kids, two of them have special needs. They would love to be able to sign their kids up for extracurricular activities like football, baseball, the things all the kids in their classes do.

But they don't have access to that kind of money quickly now. And we think that under this reform, we can make that change so that these kids can be like everybody else in their class, have an opportunity to build bonds that help heal from trauma. And we know that those kinds of experiences are so important for children in the system to overcome the aces that they have lived in their short lives.

So we thank you for your support and hope that you will be a champion for it.

Thank you very much. Next up, name affiliation, please.

Tiffany Whiten with SEIU California. Hey. Hey. Appreciate your support for SILP and for FERS and also for the LA County PHN. We would just highly encourage you to take a second look at that and know that, yes, it is a pilot, but it definitely can set the groundwork and have some best outcomes that we can replicate throughout the state.

And then for issue seven, related to the rate structure, have many questions and look forward to working with your committee as well as the department to address any questions and concerns we have. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next up, name, affiliation, please.

Ann Quirk, Children's Law Center California attorneys for children in the foster care system in Los Angeles, Placer and Sacramento counties appreciate your opposition and joining your opposition to the cuts to FERS and to the soap rates. And I have a whole little blurb, but I just wanna say that I was really moved by your comments and your true commitment to children.

And I look forward to working with you to move it better for our kids and also just assure you that I've already seen FERS help some of our kids in ways that no other call or emergency line could have because they understood their unique situation and I appreciate your commitment to it.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon. Good evening. My name is Pete Haviland Adewa, representing Oakland Promise, a member of the California Cradle to Career Coalition. Today I joined my colleagues from across the state offering unwavering support for the inclusion of the It Takes Village act in the state budget aimed at benefiting children and families in California. The It Takes a Village act seeks to enhance existing and establish new place based anti poverty partnerships in frontline communities throughout the state.

Despite being the wealthiest state, California still grapples with the highest poverty rates, leaving many communities lacking the resources, services and support necessary to thrive in Oakland. We see and feel these pain points acutely, and the families we serve often face hardships and the struggle through no fault of their own. Today, we're here to change that narrative and empower all Californians to take charge of their future, starting with our young learners.

The It Takes Village model, a community specific approach, has demonstrated substantial improvements in early literacy, high school completion and college enrollment. By investing in this model, we invest in California's future, empowering children and families and paving the way for economic mobility. We urge your support in providing children and families with a viable pathway out of poverty by allocating these funds to cradles and career organizations. These organizations offer vital programs and coordination is essential for ensuring economic mobility.

Thank you for your consideration, support and leadership on this matter.

Thank you. Next up, need an affiliation? Please.

Hello, my name is Emerald Evans, policy associate with Inch On Poverty California and as a former foster youth, but then also an advocate. Now I just want to thank you for your support with standing with us to reject the proposed cuts for soap and furs. We understand that this is a tough budget season. The lives of youth and families should not be at risk of instability and poverty due to a dollar amount.

Our priorities at Inch On Poverty California are to reject all proposed cuts to vital programs serving foster youth and preserve funding for FERS, SILP, the Housing Navigation maintenance program and then also the LA County's intervention program. We also would like to see a one time support investment in the place based anti poverty strategies from Cato to career.

We would like to see the state to provide dcss with the resources to prepare the system, changes required required and provide a timeline for fully funded and implemented 100 pass through of child support to families who are currently receiving CalWORKS. We would like to see the double cut to the safety we would like to stop, pardon me, the double cut to the safety net reserve and life saving CalWORKS services.

And lastly, we would like to build on the governor's TANF pilot proposal to reimagine CalWORKS as a family center program. Thank you for your leadership and your time.

Thank you. Name an affiliation, please?

Thank you. Dawn Koepke with Mchugh Koepke Padrone, on behalf of the Child Abuse Prevention center and California Family Resource Association, voicing concerns with the elimination of FERS in issue number three as well as SILPs issue number four, and we appreciate the chair's comments and feedback with regard to that.

Additionally, the Child Abuse Prevention center regarding issue number seven, rate structure, the CAHPS center shares some of the concerns of the provider community with the proposal and the impacts it would have on providers, while at the same time also appreciating the direct supports to children and families, similar to some of the benefits of programs like guaranteed income programs that help address some of the stressors that children and families can find themselves grappling with that can oftentimes lead to childhood child abuse and neglect in the first place.

So we look forward to continuing to work with the administration and our colleague organizations on that proposal. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, name Affiliation please?

Amanda Miller McKinney with Children Now I just wanted to say that as Children Now, we stand against all of the child welfare budget cuts and greatly appreciate the chairs and this Committee's opposition to the cuts to agenda item three, FERS and agenda item four. The SILPS greatly appreciate that stance and would also encourage to oppose cuts to the LA PHNEI program as well. I think that will be a great model for the state moving forward. So also.

Encourage opposition to that. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Hello, my name is Carolyn Travis and I'm with California Youth Connection. I stand here today as an advocate as well as a former foster youth, and we strongly oppose the cuts to the SILP, the FURS, and the Housing Navigation Maintenance Program. I myself received SILP while I was aging out of care and it was really crucial to being able to have safe and stable housing as well as provide for myself long after I aged out at 21.

So I would strongly encourage the preservation of this funding and thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Hello, my name is Marissa Arias and I'm here with California Youth Connection to ask the Committee to reject all cuts made to child welfare programs and in particular to preserve funding for the SILP housing supplement heard under issue four today. These cuts directly endangered the stability and essential support crucial for foster youth transitioning into adulthood. Having aged out of the system myself, I understand the importance of this assistance. It was the lifeline that kept me and numerous others from being at risk of homelessness.

This supplement is crucial to help youth meet the growing cost of living and to be able to focus on other things like furthering their education and have the ability to thrive without worrying about how they're going to afford their basic needs. These cuts are not just financial decisions, they're jeopardizing the futures of our youth. That is why I urge you to stand alongside CYC and oppose. Thank you.

Name and affiliation, please.

Nicole Wordelman on behalf of Orange and San Bernardino counties, in opposition to the cuts to FURS and SILP, we are very appreciative of your comments and perspective on those programs and really hope that your perspective rubs off on everyone else.

Thank you. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Hello, my name is Amber Wei. I am a current member of the Legislative Committee for California Youth Connection. I am here to oppose the proposed budget cuts towards foster youth. As a former foster youth myself, I have found it very beneficial to have the SILP program. I am currently a full-time student, a full-time college student, and working two jobs. Unfortunately, there are foster youth that worry about where they will lay their heads the next night.

I am very fortunate to say that I currently do not have this worry or this situation in hands. The SILP program has helped me immensely and limited my worries of housing. This is why I am here to ask the Committee to reject all cuts of child welfare and in particular to preserve funding in the SILP housing placement supplement. Heard under issues for today, we all stand together and say, not these cuts, not these kids. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Hello, I am Brianne Hartley and I am part California Youth Connection as a policy member and I would like to oppose the child welfare budget cuts, and particularly the PHNEI program. I would like not to cut this program, mostly for the fact that I never got a chance to be part of this program, but it would have been nice to have the mental health stability and the chance to improve that and which some youth always don't get... and like all mental needs are always met.

So I would strongly consider you to rethink this budget and not to cut it. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Awesome. Hello, my name is Clarissa Pena. I am the Statewide Membership Co-Chair at California Youth Connection, a nonprofit made up of current and former foster youth between the ages of 14 and 24.

You got too much energy, girl.

I'll cool it down. But today I'm here to ask the Committee to reject all cuts to the child welfare system, particularly to preserve funding for the SILP housing supplement heard under issue for today as a youth who currently receives SILP and has received SILP for two and a half years, I can say that it has had an enormous positive impact on my life.

I am a full-time college student attending Cal State Long Beach and I have been able to secure my first apartment, buy my first bed, sleep on that bed, buy my first car, get multiple internships and jobs at CYC, and have been able to even pay for funeral expenses related to the passing of my father, which none of that would have been possible without SILP. And as the prices of rent are going up, so should SILP and other sources of income for us.

So to ensure or I urge you all to reject these cuts to the child welfare system to fund our future and ensure the growth of all of the foster youth in the system in the State of California. So thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon. My name is Aaron Polanco. I'm a recent graduate of Cal State University Fullerton, a member and co-organizer for CYC's southern region, and a former foster youth. I'm here on behalf of CYC to ask the Committee to reject all cuts to child welfare programs such as SILP, FURS, and the Housing Navigation Maintenance Program, particularly preserving funding for the SILP housing supplement heard today under issue four.

Aging out of foster care and specifically legal guardianship with no familiar support or access to SILP funds, I was subjected to years of financial insecurity and homelessness. Even with a job and school grants, I could still not afford to pay rent in Orange County. I'm a cookie-cutter example of what a foster youth who struggles to meet the rising cost of living and experiencing housing insecurities here in California looks like.

Not having access to the Supervised Independent Living Placement in its supplement was a vital reason why I experienced poverty and homelessness in my late teens. Unfortunately, this will be the reality for many youth that do not receive the supplemental program if it is dismantled. If you do not want to see foster youth perpetuates cycles of dependence.

If you do not want to see youth in safe placements or on the street, if you want youth to have stability to not only survive but to thrive, then I urge you to oppose the $18.8 million cut and sustain critical programs that are a lifeline for numerous foster youth. Thank you to the Committee for your support and standing with us in our campaign for not these cuts, not these kids.

Thank you very much. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Hello, my name is Julian Jimenez and I'm here as a former foster youth with 10-plus years of lived experience representing CYC, formerly known as California Youth Connection. I'm here today to ask you all to reject the Governor's proposed cut to eliminate the Housing Maintenance Navigation program funds. Although this is important across the state, I want to focus on LA County. These funds are vital and provide case management services which are required to access FYI vouchers.

Currently, LA isn't accessing enough vouchers which can and will lead to an increased percentage of homeless youth on the streets if we lose these funds today. I ask you all in support with CYC's community partners as well as 24 Assembly Members in supporting and not in rejecting these cuts. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Hi, good evening. My name is Gabriella. I am a youth of the California Youth Connection and I want to express my firm opposition to the proposed child welfare budget cuts, particularly the elimination of Family Urgent Response System discussed in agenda item three. For me, I experienced being kicked out of a foster home at 18 and my social worker and team were unresponsive.

FURS, family urgent response team was able to step in and contact my team and help me move to a new placement, make sure I was safe. I wouldn't want that to be cut off. Thank you.

Thank you. Good job. Next up, name and affiliation, please.

Hello, my name is Lamari Weatherby and I am here on behalf of California Youth Connection to ask the Committee to renounce all cuts to child welfare and in particular to preserve funding for the SILP housing supplement heard under issue for today. Most kids coming from DCFS do not have the option to go home or request for help. The increase of SILP money would contribute to long-term stability on behalf of all foster care kids, stability is something I've always prayed for.

You never know truly when your time is up at placement. You could be stable one day and then packing your stuff up in the trash bags the next. With SILP, now we have apartments that we can call our own. I believe it is urgent that we reject all cuts for child welfare. The cost of living will continue to go up while most of us are already in financial insecure situations and or trying to go to work or school.

DCFS kids do not get the same opportunity to be nurtured like many other kids do. The SILP budget would be severely detrimental. Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Why is it always up here? I'm sorry.

I got that issue, too. Don't worry. Don't you just hate them tall people?

For real.

Yeah.

Okay. Hello.

Sorry. These are short people talking. You'll have to let us talk.

Hello, I'm Jackson and I'm here with California Youth Connections. I am a college student and a Butte Chapter chair as well as a volunteer organizer in Butte County. I am a foster youth and work with other foster youth. I know that the youth I work with in Butte County need these programs and they are critical for their success. Therefore, I stand against cutting these programs.

I believe that SILP and FURS are very important because they both provide youth and young adults with support to be safe and independent. You see, I wasn't always independent. I wouldn't be standing here if it wasn't for these programs. I faced poverty, I faced homelessness as well as mental health challenges. However, thanks to these programs, I am able to be successful today. I think that without these programs, youth are not only vulnerable, but could end up homeless.

So I am here to ask that these programs to not be cut because they are crucial. Pay now so you don't have to pay more later. Thank you.

Thank you. Well done. Name and affiliation, please.

Hi, my name is Parker and I am here on behalf of CYC to ask the Committee to reject all cuts to child welfare and in particular to preserve funding for SILP housing supplement heard under issue four today. If these programs were cut, I would be at risk of losing my apartment and being homeless, same as well as other foster youth in different regions. Thank you for your time today.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

My name is Sam and I'm here on behalf of California Youth Connection to ask the Committee to reject all cuts to child welfare and in particular to preserve funding for the SILP housing supplement heard under issue for today. I believe it should be rejected because I know foster youth that are benefiting from SILP and if it were to be cut, it would affect many foster youth. It also adds to the risk of foster youth being homeless.

We will always stand to say, not these cuts, not these kids. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Good evening, my name is Shay Della Majorie and I am a current foster youth. I also here representing California Youth Connection as well as foster youth in Madera County and across California. I stand here opposing all cuts relating to child welfare, specifically the cuts to Supervised Independent Living Placements, Housing Navigation and Maintenance Programs, and the Family Urgent Response System. As a youth who is entering extended foster care in the next month, I am terrified for what is to come in my near future.

This fear is only reaffirmed by these proposed cuts. Not only would you be cutting funding to vital programs, you would also be cutting thousands of youth access to stability, education, a career, and individual Independence and success. Youth across California are relying on you to protect and promote their well-being. Not these cuts, not these kids. Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

My name is Adriana. I don't know if you can hear me.

I can hear you.

Okay. Good evening. My name is Adriana Villalobos. I am affiliated with California Youth Connection or also known as CYC. I'm in foster care and I'm here to speak about the proposed budget cut of 18.8 million in SILP, which stands for Supervised Independent Living Placement. As a 17-year-old who will soon enter college in a few months, along with having no familial support, I heavily rely on this program, SILP.

The impact of having this resource taken from not only my life, but thousands of others is drastic. Housing, stability, our support and safety, the ability to thrive, these essential and critical parts of our lives are being threatened at a statewide scale. I am against the proposed cut. Not these cuts, not these kids. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Hi, Jackie Rutheiser with the California Alliance of Caregivers, and we represent foster parents, resource parents, adoptive and guardianship. So just like everyone else here, no cuts to FURS, no cuts to SILP. I'm super impressed, by the way, with California Youth Connection bringing out their whole team. I just want to say, oh my God, incredible. So, yeah, kudos to the youth who are showing up, and I, you know, I don't have to go on and on about that.

It's so important, but it's so important to the caregivers because FURS is one of those programs that is really specific, trauma-informed teams that talk to you and come out. And it really is not the same as, for instance, calling 911 or even 988, because when you rely on other systems, they often use the tools at hand and they often are law enforcement.

And when emergencies happen with our families and our youth, they're usually in the evening, in the middle of the night, on the weekend, on the holidays. And so you want a team out there that calms everybody down and doesn't use the tools that law enforcement often has to use because they have their own protocols. So I just want to really say thank you. Like everyone else here said. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for strongly supporting, not making those cuts.

But I also am here to say we. Not me, but we. My organization. Our organization strongly supports the rate proposal. We love everything about it, practically. And what I really want to point out is my colleague already talked, my colleague Judy, already talked about all the amazing innovations, the once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-generation. Not a lifetime. That's like 100 years. Hopefully not.

But one of the major things is not just the strength building and the innovation behind that and the immediate needs and what that will do for youth to offset and mitigate the effects of trauma. And that's why those are so critical, but that the funding also supports everyone equally like the emergency caregivers.

And I know she already talked about that, so I don't really want to go in there, but I want to just mention it's the data and outcome measures that are also needed to ensure standards of care are consistent statewide. And very briefly, in a county-administered child welfare system, it's common to have significant inconsistencies in service delivery and gaps. And you have to have state oversight, accountability, model contracts with standards of care to help provide equitable supports and services to all counties.

And that's one of the things we really love about this proposal.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up. Name and affiliation, please.

Hello, my name. Sorry. Hello. My name is Tyra Cabrera, and I am here. I am from Madera Chapter of California Youth Connections, and I urge you to reconsider any proposed cuts to child welfare programs. I want to specifically focus on. Sorry, hold on.