Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Human Services

Good afternoon and welcome to everyone. This is the Assembly Budget Subcommitee number two on Human services issues. Today we will be discussing child welfare, foster care and child support issues. Before we invite our first panel to begin, I'll just make a few introductory remarks.

As many of you know, I'm deeply committed to fostering meaningful discussions and productive change in how we approach mandated reporting, best practices and serving every Californian. From strengthening our foster care systems to expanding Promise Neighborhoods or advancing the CWS CARES Automation project, we must continue to push conversations and take actions at every level.

Today we face an unprecedented federal landscape that may pose challenges to many of our state systems. Amid this uncertainty, I remain committed to seeking opportunities for collaboration and progress while steadfastly protecting the services and systems our most vulnerable communities rely on.

California has long led the way in shaping a strong social safety net and we will continue to set the standard for the system we envision. What does a 21st century social safety net look like? That is my guiding question that serves as my North Star as chair of this Committee this year.

In this Committee our focus is on serving the people of California because ultimately those are the people who we work for. Research consistently shows that when we invest in our communities, stabilize our populations and improve our systems, we all benefit.

So once again I want to welcome everyone in attendance and look forward to our discussion and continued collaboration. We will take public comment at the conclusion of all the issues and and each person will have two minutes. There will be an audible beep at the two minute mark. There will be no votes taken in today's hearing.

So I'm going to ask for the first panel to come forward and take your seats at the table. At this time we're going to ask that you introduce yourself before you speak and we'll go in the order listed on the agenda. And Mr. De Leon, you may begin when you are ready.

Thank you. Chair Jackson. My name is Roger De Leon Jr. And I also want to thank all the Committee Members for inviting me to share my experiences and perspectives today. Although I am one person with living expertise, the child for of the child welfare system.

Not just a part of that, but also victimized by the mandate reporting, I'm not here for myself.

I'm here on behalf of the many voices that I've been able to help out throughout the years of service that I've done as a parent partner, as a minister in my community, as well as being a part of the task force.

I want to also, just also remind us all that there are many voices that as I speak I cannot bring every voice here, but knowing that in my speaking out, hear their voices as well. So I personally want to thank you for your leadership to help transform California's mandated reporting system.

Just the fact that people are debating this topic and deeply exploring options and are trusting each other to do what is best for families is huge. Thank you for your platform. Thank you for the opportunity to be here to speak with you.

And so, as I shared, I'm here for the for the many families that have come before me, but also hoping for the few that are coming behind me. And so within my experience, I have seen times when the system is used right and that can help families.

However, I've often seen where the system is not in the right and many families are impacted, traumatized even to this point. I know this all too well as I shared that I also was a victim of the mandated reporting and I carry that trauma every day of my life.

We know that there's bias and structural racism in the system and there isn't respect for the families and what they know need. That's when families and children are hurt. So my first thing is how best can the state support counties in establishing and maintaining this alternative response approach? I'm going to answer the question from a family's perspective.

Just don't do it. I've been in the system for some time as a parent partner working behind the doors. And as I shared, I see many things. One of the things that I also saw was the system unfortunately hurting a lot of families.

So you, the system are trying to create solutions without the people who know what their solution is. The system doesn't have all the answers. The harm to children and families and the erosion of trust starts with the report. Why would you invest in a system when you can invest in a community?

Why would you set up a shadow hotline that still takes reports, investigates reports and and captures people's names in the system when you could put the investment into strengthening communities that can support children and families? Prevention is less costly financially in California and emotionally to families than intervention.

We need to delink the Child Protective Services hotline and mandated reporting reform work. We are not saying the CPS hotline goes away. We know that we do need the CPS hotline.

We are saying that mandated reporting reform, if done right and in the way of the task force has proposed it, its recommendations will safely decrease the number of unnecessary reports. Finally, does this reform capture the need, the needed changes to ensure that we are not over reporting cases unduly causing trauma for families?

This Reform steps us in the right direction in many ways that you again, Chair Jackson and Committee Members for your leader. Thank you again for your leadership.

Specifically putting into statute a gold standard mandated reporting curriculum and corresponding training requirements and oversight is a significant action that will go a long way toward the addressing the racial bias that often, that too often leads to over surveillance and over reporting of black, African American, Native American and Latino families.

Being a professional trainer myself in the child welfare area, I've trained over a thousand social workers in my career and many peers in the community, not to mention as a minister working with families in the community.

And I realized one thing that comes to mind every single time and I'm told that the system needs to do things differently and this is an opportunity for us to take a step in a bold way in a direction to be able to do that. And we're looking once again to you Community Jackson.

That thing caught me off guard. Want to thank you for that and just let you know that trauma doesn't go away. We live with it every day of our lives. And I want to thank you and also leave with you that you know we're in a step in the right direction.

And if we can just continue looking forward in that way, working together, I believe that we can do something that we've been wanting to do for years and that is create change. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Thank you Chair Jackson, Committee Members and staff. My name is Dana Blackwell, Senior Director of Council California Strategic Consultation for Casey Family Programs. Thank you for the invitation to provide technical assistance on transforming mandated reporting in California.

Casey Family Programs is the nation's largest operating foundation focused on safely reducing the need for foster care in the United States. Our mission is to provide and improve and ultimately prevent the need for foster care.

To this end, we are committed to using our resources to lift up data and evidence that will advance systems change to better serve children, youth and families. Mandated reporting reform is taking root across the country.

In fact, in December 2024, Casey convened 13 partner jurisdictions including Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Texas, California and others to share their emerging learnings and best practices towards transforming mandated reporting. The harm to families and the call to examine practices that cause harm is being acknowledged and addressed across the country.

We know that harm occurs when families who do not need CPS interventions are investigated or reported. Our leaders with lived experience, like Roger, continue to elevate this and and encourage us to address the issue. Importantly, ensuring child safety is paramount in any system change effort.

Created by the California Child Welfare Council in 2023, the mandated reporting to Community Supporting Task Force was the vehicle by which California examined what system change was required to reform our current mandated reporting system.

As the co chair of that task force alongside Roger, it was my honor to lead the work that led to a comprehensive set of recommendations that were unanimously approved by the council in September 2024.

The task force recommendations were accompanied by a comprehensive report that was rooted in data and compelled by the stories of families impacted by the mandated reporting system. I want to center my comments on the numbers Our current mandated reporting system has a nearly 90% failure rate. What does it mean to have a nearly 90% failure rate?

It means that nearly 90% of all reports of child abuse and neglect allegations to a child protection agency are unsubstantiated. In what other situation or system would any of us not stop to question where and how we can do better?

Now let's put a face on that Percentage of the 433,817 Children and Youth reported to Child Protective Services In California in 2023. 49,463 children and youth were determined to need the services of CPS to be safe.

That means that 384,354 children and youth were exposed to the trauma of a report and possibly an investigation with likely result of no additional supports or services being provided to youth and family. I want to be clear. Unnecessary reporting is harmful to children, families and community.

It breaks trust, produces feelings of shame and anger, and pushes families away from the very help they need versus inviting them to move toward a community that has supports available for them. The harm impact are even more severe for Black and Native families.

One in two Black and Native American children are subjected to an investigation of child abuse before the age of 18. 1 and 2. Additionally, 45% of all children with an allegation of maltreatment are related to General neglect, an occurrence that can often be mitigated by community supports.

We all want children and families to be able to access the tangible supports and ongoing services that they need, deserve and want. But we need to consider what the harm of a report to CPS does to a child and caregiver, even if the intention is to assess what help is needed.

As we stated in the task force report, for every $1,000 states spent per person in poverty directly addressing financial stability, housing and access to childcare and healthcare, there were tracked decreases 43% decrease in reporting, 4% decrease in substantiations, 2.1 decrease in foster care placement and 7.7% decrease in child fatalities.

These data spotlight that reporting is not the only answer. We can do better than a nearly 90% failure rate. Training is a critical component to achieving precision in our mandated reporting system. Our current system of training lacks consistency in terms of content, frequency and delivery.

It is also true that not all mandated reporters are required to receive training of any kind. Establishing a standard training curriculum and training requirements that ensure that mandated reporting does not incentivize or encourage inappropriate referrals and separation from families is critical. Thank you for inviting us here today.

Your commitment to children, families and community and Casey looks forward to being partners in this work and in future system transformation efforts. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Jackson, Dr. Sharp Collins and staff. Jennifer Troia on behalf of the California Department of Social Services, thank you so much for having us here today to talk about child welfare and foster care.

Before turning to this item, I will just very briefly acknowledge some of the broader context of vision for child welfare and foster care here in California.

Our vision ultimately is for children and families to remain safely together whenever that is possible and when a child must be removed from their parents or guardians for them to heal in the context of permanent loving family and community.

This vision is of particular importance for children who have experienced significant trauma and who may be facing the greatest challenges to thriving. The Governor and the Legislature have made very significant investments in this vision, including the new tiered rate structure which we'll be discussing later today, and a number of other efforts.

Overall, the Governor's Budget includes $10.8 billion 1 billion General Fund in 2526 for children and family services programs. We are projecting caseloads in the 202526 year for Child Welfare Services of approximately 110,000 and for foster care of approximately 42,300.

With respect to this specific item, I want to start by acknowledging that the California Health and Human Services Agency, the Child Welfare Council and CDSS are committed to reforms that provide comprehensive supports to the communities we serve and that disrupt the disproportionality and disparate impacts of overreporting of children and families to the child welfare system.

To support these goals. As you heard, In August of 2023, the mandated reporting to Community Supporting Task Force was formed. This followed more than five years of work, recommendations and reports from the Child Welfare Council's Prevention and Early Intervention Committees, review panels from the Citizens Review Panel and Advocacy and reports from Family Resource Centers as well.

The task force, met 10 times over the course of a year, consisted of 32 diverse Members and wonderful leaders from across seven sectors and 11 counties. In June 2024, the task force presented strategic priorities and recommendations to inform and take actions to address the unnecessary reporting.

The recommendations ranged from monitoring Disproport and disparities to reforming policies, developing standardized training, promoting a statewide narrative shift, and building community pathways.

With that, I will turn it over to Chief Deputy Director Swanson Hollinger to talk some more about what we have been doing since the motion passed in September of 2024 at the Child Welfare Council in response to those recommendations.

Thank you Director Troia Chair Jackson Committee Members again, David Swanson Hollinger, Chief Deputy Director, Department of Social Services and to follow up on what Director Toria talked about. After The Child Welfare Council's motion, CDSS, the Health and Human Services Agency and the P.E.I. Committee began forming a Mandated Reporting Advisory Committee.

The work of that Committee will be led by TRI chairs with representation from the Child Welfare Council, a lived expert in a child and family serving system, as well as a diverse array of Members including Department and Association representatives whose work will be key to successful implementation. CDSS is also working on updates to mandated reporter training.

We are currently conducting focus groups to obtain feedback on the current training.

Our goal is to ensure that mandated reporters have consistent and adequate education and training that does not promote or incentivize inappropriate referrals and separation of families and that mandated reporters know the resources within their communities to appropriately connect families to resources and leaves the decision with the family on how to engage with those those services and supports.

Specific to the question of how the state can best support counties in developing and maintaining an alternative approach, that work is currently underway through the implementation of Community Pathways as part of the Family First Prevention Services Program.

The redesign of the mandated reporter training is also an option by which we can educate mandated reporters of the alternative response approach and information necessary to be collected to support county child welfare agencies in utilizing that approach.

All guidance and training should be developed and implemented in collaboration and alignment with the existing Family First Prevention Services Advisory structure and the Mandated Reporting Advisory Committee that's in the process of being formed.

The State will also work with the with the Mandated Reporting Advisory Committee to assess the 49 categories of mandated reporters to determine if all categories are necessary to assure the safety of children and families. This is in alignment with the recommendations previously discussed from the Mandated Reporter to Community Supporting Task Force.

We are committed to ensuring families are not over reported and that there's a robust array of community supports in place to ensure that families can be served in their communities without the need for formal welfare involvement as detailed, there's a lot of progress, a lot of work in progress to achieve these goals and we are happy to provide additional technical assistance about additional reforms being proposed.

Good after. Good afternoon, Chair Jackson and Dr. Sharp Collins. I'm Diana Boyer on behalf of the County Welfare Directors of Association. Thank you, Chair Jackson, for your leadership to reform our mandated reporting system.

We look forward to working with you, the Legislature, Administration and stakeholders to implement the task force recommendations which we supported as a Member of the task force and the Child Welfare Council. CWDA and county child welfare agencies have long championed prevention work.

We have seen a profound cultural shift in the child welfare system, one from one emphasizing child protection to instead promoting abuse prevention. But this work has come in fits and starts largely due to limited funding to build the kind of capacity needed to support families, a problem that exists to this day.

Counties implemented what was known as a differential response approach in the early 2000s, only to have to severely curtail those efforts due to the Great Recession. We restarted our prevention work in 2018 by establishing a statewide prevention cabinet with CDSS to tackle the serious and persistent problem of disproportionality and disparities in the child welfare system.

In 2001, we co sponsored with Children Now a budget request for 100 million to implement the state's Family First Prevention Services program. And we were fortunate to have the Legislature and Administration support to expand that investment to $222.4 million in one time funding. This was much needed seed money to begin to build capacity and prevention programming.

Our state's collective efforts are yielding some success. In the year 2000, there were 108,000 children in the foster care system. As Of October of 2024, there were 40,000 children in care. This is a 63% decrease in the last 24 years, largely driven by lower entries into care.

And the trend continues downward because families of color and Low income families are more likely, as was noted, to be subject to an abuse investigation. We must continue to invest in efforts to reduce child poverty. Research shows that anti poverty programs like CalWORKS and Cal EITC are child abuse prevention programs.

The task force recommendations focused on reducing calls to the hotline, which again we wholeheartedly support. But it did not seek to change what happens after a call reaches the hotline. Mandated reporters recognize their duty to report and consequences for not reporting means potential civil and legal penalties.

Training is critically needed and important to help them fulfill their duty without bias and consistent with the law.

California has already taken significant steps towards reforms through enactment of AB 2085, for example, which changed the definition of General neglect to a higher standard that the child must be at substantial risk of suffering serious physical harm or illness and clarifying that a parent's economic disadvantage is not on its own a basis for a child abuse investigation.

AB 2085 seems to be working so far. Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services notes that that their in person investigations have decreased from 50,000 in 2022 before the law implemented to 34,000 in 2024.

Their hotline staff are taking more time to ask more questions because a report that looks like poverty could mask deeper issues in the home.

AB601 would allow for an alternative response to General neglect referrals that pairs a county social worker with a community based worker both trained to provide trauma informed response to jointly engage the family and work together to support child safety.

This can lead to a warm handoff to a CBO that ideally will keep the family out of the child welfare system. Reports that don't meet that threshold for an investigation can directly be referred to a CBO for connection to services that strengthen the family.

We believe AB601 is an important first step towards supporting children and families to meet their needs, prioritizing child safety and ensuring accountability to connect children and families to concrete services while monitoring our progress to reduce disproportionality.

We also note that in order to focus on upstream approaches such as what was discussed to ensure families do not enter the child welfare system, significant investment needs to occur in prevention based services.

This includes being able to claim federal funding under the Family First Prevention Services program, something we have not been able to do to the date to expand capacity in staffing, training and services. This will strengthen our existing partnerships with CBOs and promote a robust prevention continuum.

We believe the timelines and approach in AB601 align with the reform efforts because it strikes the right balance between not taking our foot off the gas pedal for much needed statewide reform while keeping child safety at the forefront. Thank you.

Good afternoon Mr. Chair and Members. Tiffany Whiten with SEIU California, representing over 750,000 workers across California, including workers within county child welfare agencies. First, I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank you Mr. Chair, for your continued work to address the needs of the state's most vulnerable populations and your commitment to always wanting to find solutions.

We also applaud the MRCS Task Force for their dedication to such an important issue, one that ultimately is centered on protecting and supporting children and families. The goal to create an alternative approach to address General neglect is One that we are supportive of and believe, when done correctly, will benefit children, families and county workers.

There must be a balanced and measured approach that keeps children's safety at the forefront of the discussion, but addresses the issues of over reporting, racial bias, distrust of the county and equating abuse with living in poverty.

In order to be successful with an alternative approach, we would highlight just a couple of things that would be helpful to ensure counties and their employees have the necessary tools to carry out the reform, but also want to caution that there may be some unintended consequences that we should be aware of.

First, the counties will need to have training to learn the new policies and procedures. This training is vital to ensure the goals of the reform are being realized. Training is also necessary for all mandated reporters reporters. But honestly, this task seems very daunting.

So we would urge there to be a discussion about how this realistically would be done to ensure we get the best outcomes of the training so that it's not just a check of the box to say that we did it.

To give a real life example, I have a worker in Southern California whose county is currently participating in alternative response. However, they are noticing some issues specifically that many cases are falling under the definition of alternative response.

So training is necessary so everyone understands and has a has a clear understanding of what should be done through an alternative approach and what should not. In the county, when something in this particular county, when something is done through an alternative approach, there is no referral to the county agency.

So our workers are left to wonder who does the follow up? Who ensures that the child and the family receive the services that they need. So the training is vital. It needs to be specific, it needs to be detailed and it needs to be well thought out.

Our workers have cautioned while there is a lot of over reporting within the current system, sometimes that initial call was unsubstantiated. But upon further review, there may be abuse and neglect that would have gone unnoticed if it weren't for that initial call and follow up. We have seen that food insecurities often are connected to an underlying issue.

For example, our worker received a call because a student had not eaten in what seemed like many days. Once our worker went out to investigate it, she noticed that actually he was being abused and there was visible evidence of a black eye.

So as we think through this alternative approach, we must be mindful of the unintended consequences and perhaps do a cost benefit analysis to ensure that children are always being protected and that the state's investments ultimately benefit children and their families. Secondly, there will need to be the appropriate financial resources to carry out this very important reform.

Counties will need to be adequately funded to do the work. Funding will also be needed to do outreach and the training. There's a lot at stake here, especially at a time when our fiscal outlook is a bit uncertain. So we encourage the Committee and the state to prioritize our children and families always above anything else.

So overall we are supportive of the concept and the idea of having an alternative approach to mandating reporting. We look forward to the continued discussions that not only protect children and families, but also supports them. But the same goes for the workers as well.

I would be remiss if I did not say how important it is to have the feedback from the workers that are actually doing the job and can give real life examples of what is currently happening in ways that it can be mitigated.

So while we were not on the task force, we thank you for this opportunity today and we welcome the continued engagement moving forward to be included in those conversations. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Department of Finance.

Kia Cho Department of Finance Just noting that this is not an. Administration proposal, so we do not have. Any comments at this time. Thank you.

Lao thank you.

Good afternoon. Chair Jackson and Members Angela Short with the Legislative Analyst Office as noted in your agenda, last year our office published a report examining disproportionalities and disparities within the state's child welfare system.

Within that report, one of the policy areas we focused on as a potential lever available to the Legislature to address these disproportionalities was mandated reporting.

In considering how the Legislature and other state actors may wish to approach potential reforms related to mandated reporting, we suggested first the state could review policies and consider standardized trainings, particularly for the categories of the most frequent mandated reporters, such as teachers, law enforcement and medical professionals.

Related to training, we would also note that a number of counties, notably Humboldt County, Los Angeles County, San Diego, county, either have implemented or are working to implement standardized decision making tools for mandated reporters, which essentially would guide mandated reporters in a structured way to help them determine when a case rises to the statutory level of maltreatment versus when a case could be appropriate to divert to community supports.

So we flagged that the Legislature may be able to learn lessons from these early implementers of such tools and could consider, based on those findings, whether it could be appropriate to expand a similar initiative.

Secondly, we also suggested the state could consider what mandated reporting reforms will be needed as community as the community pathway is implemented, as has been referenced by a number of other panelists today.

This of course is the initiative that the city state is opting to implement as part of the Family First Prevention Services act, essentially allowing counties an option to refer eligible candidates to community based services rather than through the formal child welfare system.

Also has been noted by a number of panelists today an important question around mandated reporting as well as the community pathway will be how to ensure that child safety continues to be prioritized and that cases truly meriting child welfare system level resources and responses are not unintentionally diverted.

Accordingly, careful legislative language, including oversight and accountability mechanisms will be needed in tandem with any such reforms. Finally, as it relates to the chair's specific proposal, we would just note we're happy to offer our technical assistance as needed. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Any questions from Members of the Committee on this Item? Seeing none, my first question is for the Administration. My office has requested a scoring of this specifically, particularly in regards to developing the training modules to be able to, you know, do everything the current language is asking it to do.

When should we expect that scoring?

We are working on that estimate right now and we'll send it for review through the Administration likely next week. So you should have it very soon.

Okay, thank you very much. Obviously this is a very sensitive issue, literally because it is regarding some of our most sensitive populations.

And the language that is currently in print really reflects a whole lot of listening and from to the best of my ability to be able to try to find, I think a balance that I believe the majority of folks would be able to support.

But I wanted to have this panel to making sure that on record advocates and all those involved have an opportunity to put their concerns on record as well as their advice and recommendations on record as we go through this process.

And certainly one of the things that I'm always concerned about and just thinking about my own historical traumas that I carry with me, I always am trying to make sure that I'm balancing how do I prevent people, organizations, systems from hurting others the way I've been hurt? Right.

But at the same time, how do I make sure that I'm not allowing my traumas and biases to get in the way of progress that can actually be made, even though those same systems may actually can do some better good than what they've done with me? And I certainly understand some of the concerns.

So I just want to first just ask our panelists a question. Number one, what part of the language do you like and what part of the language are you concerned with? Who would like to go first.

I'm going to try to walk a fine line. Casey Family Programs is not able to advocate. We are here to educate and uplift the data that we have been able to bring to bear.

When you think about the investment in communities and the impact those investment have on the decrease of families that are brought to the attention of child welfare, including the decrease of child fatality, you can see that investment in communities has a great impact versus investment in expanding a system.

And I would offer that that is something to keep in mind as you move forward with this legislation. Investing in communities I think has a greater return both in terms of the trauma that will not be experienced by families and not bloating a system that currently is causing harm to families. And good.

I mean the child protection agency is there to protect and they do that well and referrals to them cause harm. And that's what our families tell us. And so we have both the quantitative and qualitative data to speak to that.

The State of California, I would also suggest, and it's been said by some of the Members here, is already investing in communities through the community pathways and FFPSA through BH connect through AB 2083.

There are many ways in which this Legislature has invested in a coordinated system that supports the communication across agencies because many agencies have the responsibility and accountability towards children and families. So building on those investments instead of creating new investments may be something that you want to consider as well.

You know, one of the things that I realized and as I was debating this with my colleagues last year is the number one, just given the sheer size of our state, that in many cases there are some communities in my own district who have service deserts.

Yes.

Meaning whether it's a child or a senior or anyone else, if they had a need they would have to travel outside of their own community in order to fulfill that need, number one. So to create a system based upon those realities may be lacking.

Secondly, even when there are community based organizations, I used to run one before I got here, a good one I might add, there is a lack of confidence that when a referral is made to a community based organization that they have the capacity and the expertise to be able to do it in a research based, research informed way, following best practices.

How do we overcome those type of things? Because in many cases it is the reality. And then the usually I'm told, well then that means we're just going to have to pump a whole lot of money into community based organizations to develop them up.

And I'm still trying to keep some of these programs currently right now that are on life support that we'll be talking about in this agenda also now we're talking about a couple of billion just for keeping what we do have. How do we get, how do we overcome that? Any suggestions?

So if I can, I can respond to that. So first and foremost, respectfully, I see where child welfare is needed. I am not here to speak against it or abolish or anything like that. We know it's needed. The one thing that I've seen was the impact, you know, that it's had not just in my life.

Years ago, matter of fact, I did not get any resources. I was not giving anything. It was actually my, my church and my pastors that stepped in and really helped me and my wife get through it. Years later, I've seen some, some progress. You know, there are things that has taken place.

The one thing that I've seen also that does not get recognized is those faith based community as well as, you know, community based organizations that are not recognized by everyone else but that the families trust. Right. So the one thing that's missing that I've seen throughout the years is what do the families think?

Families of the community who go to, whether it's, you know, Park Rec center without, you know, the county involvement of that piece just. Or some organization that is out there that is doing the work.

And they may not do it exactly the way that we look at things, right through the system, as I work through the system and I understand that piece, but the outcomes to that, as of right now, I can even share for myself as a youth minister for the past 18 years, working with juvenile probation.

I don't have a system that's fully developed in a way that is traditional, but it has produced a different effect with the juveniles as well as their families. The approach is different. So what am I saying?

What I'm saying is that we've been doing things for so long, looking at things so long that we forgot to ask the families in the community what is it that you feel that's needed? Because the work that I do, I don't get paid for, nor does my church organization get paid.

We do it because it's a genuine love of our community. Have we gone down that road to look at what families, who families go to for that support? If there's an organization or if there's a faith based organization that's willing to step out, who is stepping out and doing that?

As I shared with you, I'm also an assistant and so, assistant minister. And so I've worked with families within my church who've come to me confidentially and shared with me that they're navigating the child welfare system. And because they knew that I worked for the child welfare system, I no longer do. I'm an independent contractor.

But I still have the knowledge of understanding that. I still counsel them and have given them the ability to be able to navigate the system. We don't get paid for it. I do it because I'm an individual that has lived experience, and I understand all too well that trauma.

I may not understand the same thing that other families do, but I understand the trauma. I understand what it feels like to be lost, especially when the child welfare system is overwhelmed. I know that. We all know that, right? We all know that.

The thing is, is that if we're pouring more money into the child welfare system with individuals who are overwhelmed, what are we doing to stop that? Stop those families from coming in who don't need to?

Now, I know we've seen some numbers and all that, but I've been in the community sitting down, face to face with families and even with social workers as a trainer, where we've had conversations and they're overwhelmed. So no matter how much money we pour into it, the overwhelmingness is not going away.

The families are still being traumatized and they're not trusting. And this is why I say we have to look at things differently. Now, I don't have to as in my perspective, I'm not forcing anyone.

But if we don't look at things differently in our communities and really look at the families who are being impacted, when a county car pulls up, whether you have a social worker from the community and a social worker from an agency, trauma has began. And what we see with those families is the reaction of that trauma.

And a majority of time, that's what gets reported, not the actual individual family. Not to mention that if it's a continual calling.

And so in order for us to really look at things differently, like I know some of the school districts are doing some things different that I've heard, where they're actually providing resources rather than calling in, they're doing things differently, I think it's time to start looking outward, rather inward and seeing how we can meet the families where they're at and even allow them to tell us what is it that is that's missing.

I appreciate that. My next question is, if all we did this year was implement the training framework and requirement, is that a little step or a big step, in your opinion?

That is a big step. That is a very big step. Any step that we take forward is a big step because we've been sitting here for many years and I've heard this from others that have been here before me in this capacity of looking at how we can transition and do things differently and said the same thing.

We're right back at the same place when we have something that we're discussing right here, which the language I'm loving. It's a big step. And I'll tell you, the big step isn't just for our systems. It's for our families, those of us with lived experience. We can't go backwards and change anything. That's not what I'm here for.

I'm not here for me. I'm a man of faith. I've dealt with my situations. I'm here for the many families that are coming behind me and even those who are being impacted today.

Training is a big step forward in how we look at things to develop for the sake of the children that we're protecting, that we swore to protect, as well as their families that they need.

Ms. Blackwell, little step or big step?

Big step.

Big step. Currently, our training system does not is not consistent. Not all reporters are even trained or. Required to be trained. We don't have. Consistency in the understanding of what should be reported and what shouldn't be. It's a big step. It's a big step.

Big step.

SEIU little step or big step?

I think we would say that it is definitely a step in the right direction. I think how the bill is currently written, the training says that it would be done with new hires within like three months. I guess I would question what happens to the folks that are there now that are currently doing the job.

When do they get the training? The Bill currently states that the training would be done and placed online. Is that the best? I would question if that's the best approach to do the training. I know oftentimes when somebody put something on the Internet for me to watch. I can do laundry.

I can do all kinds of things while I watch that Internet. So am I really going to be focused on the training that could potentially save a kid's life, or am I going to be doing something different? So I think it's a step in the right direction. I think we should look at how the training is done.

What's involved with the training and what's the best way to roll out the training? I think to your prior question about other concerns within the bill related to CBOs.

I think, you know, we always have a concern of pouring money into CBOs and not getting the bang for our buck, if you will, for what we are putting into it. There is definitely a role for CBOs to be played. Our county workers have checks and balances and accountability.

So we would just encourage that if we are going down the road and we're partnering with CBOs that those CBOs also have checks and balances and accountability and standards because they are dealing with our most vulnerable population within our state. And so are there that many CBOs across our state to do this? There might not be.

There might be small counties where we don't have that ability. So I would just again question and ask for further discussion on what does that look like in Inyo? Like what does that look like in a small county that may not have a CBO that has standards and checks and balances. What happens to the children in Inyo?

So those would be the concerns that I would have that we would have around the CBO portion of it and those would just be the questions I think we would raise around the training.

Yeah, I'm going to ask my office. I see my Michael here talking to everybody but I want to make sure I'm only playing relax. Number one, we do need to make sure that we clarify that retraining component especially for those who are not new hires.

Secondly, the intent of the Internet based training is not for it to be like a training that you go online to do, but the curriculum is available to download from the Internet so that it can be used in a. Correct. Got it. Correct. Yes, I know that game too. I'm just saying.

And then we probably need to add language that talks about making sure that we have a train the trainer type component to it as well. Now that I'm thinking about it so that we can make sure that it has been the training is done with the Fidelity that is necessary. CDSS Little step, big step.

I mentioned this a bit in the comments. Our goal is definitely to move towards more consistent and adequate education. Sufficient education that doesn't promote and incentivize inappropriate move into the child welfare system. So that is consistent with work that we're already starting to do within the Department and moving forward.

So we are looking for more consistency across training. CWDA.

Yes. Important step. Over the years of our changes in the mandated reporting law, all we have done really is to add entities that are required to report rather than to give them the support they need to fulfill that important job in a way that does not harm families.

So it is critically important to provide the training we wholeheartedly support is something that CWA is partnering with LA County on a bill.

We're co sponsoring AB 970 to implement and test what was shared earlier, which is both training combined with support for the mandated reporter to go through that decision so that we are not getting that call at the hotline if it is not supposed to be coming to us. We can hold, I think multiple things as true.

We absolutely acknowledge the harm that has happened to children and families over the years. As a child welfare system we do good things and there also has been harms. We have worked very hard and diligently to improve on our responses. It is critical to build to the prior question the community based supports and services.

It is also really critical that when those calls come to the hotline because there always will be those calls to the hotline because it's impossible to know every aspect of that individual's life.

So it is important for us to not only train our staff and give them the skills to be much more trauma informed at the same time working hand in hand with our community based organizations to lift them up to this important role and task and to ensure that we are supported supporting our CBOs and building out that continuum.

We do have challenges not only in those rural counties where There are no CBOs and good luck getting them stood up, but we have not been able to fully maximize drawing down federal funding to build out that continuum.

We're waiting on things like CARES to be able to do our 50% match to the federal law that allows us to draw down more federal dollars. In the meantime, those one time dollars for Family First Prevention services are start run out.

We appreciate the extension to 2028 to spend those dollars but we have to acknowledge that there is a lot more we need to do to invest in those important community pathways. I would love for us to have fewer and fewer calls to the hotline.

As a child welfare system I love to just run myself out of a job. That would be fantastic. We have some work to do and it really does include investing and having a plan for that investment over the long term as well as building capacity with our community based organizations.

LAO, I'm not sure if you can answer this but I thought it would be fun to ask you. Little step or big step?

Thank you for the question. This is, you know, mandated reporting and particularly training is an area that we highlighted within our previous work work which could be an important mechanism to help address the long standing disparities that we see within our system.

As others have noted, requiring training and standardizing training certainly would be significant departures from current statute. So in that way, I do think it would be significant. As others have noted, I think we would also emphasize, however, that of course, course effectiveness ultimately will depend on all of those implementation details.

And because we do have a county run child welfare system, how things are implemented, of course, always look a bit different across the state. So, you know, I think these are areas where we would want to consider monitoring and ensure the Legislature has sufficient oversight into those areas.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Any additional questions or comments from my colleagues? Yes.

I just want to say thank you and thank you all for being here. One of my questions is just when it comes to reported cases of neglect, is a majority of those just on the hotline? Do they report online? Which. Where do the majority of the reports come from?

Mostly they're coming through a phone call to the hotline.

Okay. When it comes for the people on the reporting side, are there potentially education, things that we can do for people who call in? This is something I'm familiar with and I thank you that you bring up churches. I grew up in low income housing. I was the product of a secret family. And so we would.

There were times often where some people would see that, you know, you have holes in your shoes or you don't have clean clothes or their ideals of neglect is different than having the lived experience and just being a child who grew up in, you know, I didn't know any different that are there potentially programs or things that we can look at for somebody reporting this is what neglect looks like.

You know, just trying to help, especially if 90% of the cases are actually deemed as neglect. You know, have we looked into different options that way?

So I guess I would say that first and foremost that this Legislature thankfully did pass a law 2085, where that call that comes in that says there are holes in the shoes would not likely trigger us to go out. It needs to be a serious risk of injury for us to go out now.

And poverty cannot be a determining factor. So that is where we really do need to rely on then.

And about 30%, I'm sorry, 30 counties, probably more than that, have some sort of a process now where when they get that call, they are referring it to an outside agency to do some follow up or they're giving that information to the mandated reporter to say, hey, why don't you pass along this information to the family or even sending a letter to that family to say, hey, this is something we've heard.

Here are some community resources that you might want to reach out to to obtain some additional assistance. So there are a number of ways that our hotlines are engaging families to ensure that if it's not going to meet our investigation threshold, that we're still trying to connect them upstream so that we don't get that second call.

And the data shows for some counties that are doing this, that we do are likely to not get a repeat call when we do that. So it does really work. When we invest in these community services.

Do we have any where somebody can, if they want to investigate further, they really want to make sure that they're doing their due diligence of what is identifying neglect on the website. Can they find an area that informs them of, you know, what is legal, what's not legal, anything like that?

DSS does have some mandatory reporting training that's been available to mandatory reporters, but as the task force found, it's not enough. And so we could do a better job of that. Thank you.

I just had a comment. Please excuse my voice, but I wanted to thank the Chair for making this a priority. It is really appreciated and I appreciate all of you guys coming in today and adding a little bit more to this particular topic as well. Hearing about training and also reform, that's something that is extremely important.

But also, as you guys stated, keeping families together is another area that we need to continue to do better at. And community support is also critical. It is extremely critical as we continue to work to understand different people's cultures and different people's experiences. And that's too often what our policies sometimes forget.

It's about the whole diversity side of things. And there's no one size fit all model approach to how we do this work. And Roger, is that your name? Thank you.

I wanted to highlight something from what you said that reminds me something that I used to say to people when I was doing my trainings, when I was working for the county office event. You were saying that, you know, people don't always come to you, you know, come to our communities and ask these questions.

And I've always told them one thing you do when you go into a room, one stop jumping to problem solve Dnier. But I would always say, ask the question, what is it about you that you wish I knew? And just sit in it.

You will learn and hear everything you need to know because that's one way of gaining trust and that's important to do this work is to gain the trust of so many people. And if it's not just the individual, ask the community itself, what is it that you wish I knew?

And I can help you understand as we continue to plan out and identify different tracking mechanisms and reporting mechanisms, because now we have understanding and clarity of what things are like culture to culture, families to families, and that's important.

So thank you for highlighting that because it brought that back to me again of why I would tell people, ask the question and stop being quick to have a response for them. Listen to that and you will learn. And I can help inform the work that we're going to do. So thank you all so much.

I want to thank this panel so much for this engaging conversation. I think the public deserved to make sure that we had it. We will all continue to engage in our process to find out what the final language will look like. But again, thank you very much.

A lot more conversations to have, but certainly a conversation worth having. Thank you all very much.

Thank you.

Next up, we will have issue number two for the panel to come on up.

Multi agency office on Foster care and while they come up, this is this is a proposal to establish the foster care multi agency office within the California Health and Human Services Agency to improve foster care placements, placement stability and access to comprehensive health care, including mental health services.

This proposal would create a chief foster youth advocate to lead the office with the authority to direct state and county agencies to ensure children receive required services and stable placements. We will first have Ms. Lee to start us off when you're ready.

All right. Good afternoon. My name is Simone Tarek Lee. I'm with John Burton Advocates for Youth, and I'm here to provide remarks related to the proposed establishment, excuse me, of a foster care multi agency office.

California has no shortage of state laws related to child welfare that ensure young people have access to resources to meet their basic needs and to thrive.

It's clear what our state's vision is for children and youth who are brought into our foster care system, and we're continuing to see reform that's increasingly responsive to what youth are saying they need.

However, with a county based child welfare system in a state with 58 different counties, state guidance and coordination are 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 or and especially when the child welfare system is reliant upon an entirely separate system to achieve its goals. 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.

We now have legal adults in foster care who are pursuing a post secondary education, filing taxes, navigating the housing market, becoming parents at a higher rate than they were as minors. All of these activities require effort that goes beyond the child welfare system, Some of it frankly outside the scope of child welfare, but nonetheless absolutely necessary.

A foster care multi agency office would ideally have the ability and authority to direct public agencies outside 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 to illustrate this is in the area of reproductive and sexual health.

In 2017, several provisions of the California Foster Youth Sexual Health Education act were included in SB89. One provision required child welfare workers to verify that foster youth in middle school and high school had received comprehensive sexual health education consistent with the standards of the California Healthy Youth Act.

If they haven't received this sex ed, the county has to arrange for them to receive this, either by working with the school they attend or through a community organization.

Implementation of this provision has been extremely challenging for counties for county child welfare agencies, because it really required local school districts, whom county child welfare has no formal authority over, to establish some standardized protocols for how their schools or their districts would verify this for county child welfare agents.

So bringing in that partnership is great, but it creates challenges because if the mandate is at the child welfare level, but it requires external activities, someone has to make sure that those external activities are happening that has that authority. Mental health is another great example.

You know, many foster youths still do not get the mental health care that they're federally entitled to. And again, this is something that is somewhat external to child welfare. These large systems, you know, in these large systems, foster youth are a very small population.

So this is really seen as a niche issue for these larger public agencies that themselves grapple with significant challenges. And so it's not surprising that foster youth may not be prioritized for these larger systems or that there would be a lack of knowledge to drill down even further. Consideration the population of expectant and parenting youth.

There are only 667 Parenting Foster youth in our whole state as of last October. How do we make sure these youth are prioritized for home visiting programs like nurse family partnership with the 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, homelessness. A multi agency office can play an incredibly important role. By centralizing efforts and coordinating across multiple agencies, this office can ensure that the needs of foster youth receive the attention they deserve within broader systems.

In times of budget deficits, maximizing existing investments and policies becomes crucial. 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.

And lastly, with foster care rate reform, Cal AIM and other behavioral health reform, this need for collaboration is only going to increase. How impactful these reforms are will all be reliant on how coordinated we are across systems. Thank you.

Thank you very much CDSS.

Good afternoon again, Jennifer Choia with the Department of Social Services. First, I just want to acknowledge and appreciate the Committee's interest in ensuring that we have coordination, collaboration and accountability in the operations of our foster care system and convey that we are happy as always to provide technical assistance with respect to your priorities.

I do also want to take a few minutes just to highlight some of the efforts that are underway now that are reach across multiple departments and entities to collaborate our work with respect to how we serve foster children and youth.

The first that I would highlight was enacted under AB, Assembly Bill 2083 in 2018, along with some changes to it in 2021. That bill established a key framework for collaboration at both the state and the local levels. There are parallel structures.

It mandates the formation of interagency leadership teams and Memorandums of understanding that include tribes, County Child Welfare, County Behavioral Health Regional Centers, the County Office of Education and county probation departments and then the parallel state departments at the state level have a joint resolution team at the state to coordinate information and policies and planning and practices related to the care of children and youth in foster care.

Another key function of this support at the state level is that we provide a tiered technical assistance framework including child specific technical assistance across all of those systems and with all of those partners at the table. Additionally, CDSS has convened and facilitated a Complex Care Steering Committee.

This is a group that now meets quarterly it used to be even more frequently and brings together representatives from multiple state departments as well as across different county entities, probation and community based providers to coordinate activities around supporting youth in particular who have unmet complex care needs.

The Child Welfare Council is another entity that establishes a framework for interagency collaboration and planning. The Council was established in 2006. It is co chaired by the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Agency and a designee of the Chief Justice of the supreme the California Supreme Court.

It includes membership from multiple state departments, county departments, nonprofit service providers, advocates, parents and former foster youth. The Council is charged with monitoring and reporting on the extent to which the agencies and the courts are responsive to the needs of the children in their joint care.

Finally, I would emphasize that CDSS houses an office of the Foster Care Ombudsperson and although we house that office, it is an autonomous entity that advocates on behalf of children and youth in foster care regarding their care, their placement and services.

They are empowered to investigate and to informally resolve complaints impacting foster youth, to increase awareness about foster youth rights and to make recommendations to help support systemic changes.

Just want to emphasize the importance of these existing collaboration structures and of building upon the strengths of the multi agency and cross cutting accountability and coordination with those structures that exist now and then. Again, emphasize finally that we are still happy to provide technical assistance with respect to the effort that you are putting forward.

Thank you very much.

Department of Finance Kia Cha Department of Finance Just noting that this proposal is. Not an Administration proposal and we have. No comments at this time.

Thank you. LAO.

Angela Short with the Legislative Analyst Office. We have no specific comments, but would note we are available to work with staff and provide technical assistance as needed.

Absolutely. This proposal has come from the many reports and many studies that say many things.

But one of the central things that people that keeps being repeated is that there are multiple departments and agencies that serve the same person, but yet they do not talk to each other and coordinate to ensure that there are individualized and timely services to these young people. I've said it before and I I'll say it again.

California should be ashamed of how it is treating and taking care of these children. As many of our families treated and cared for their children the same way as we do. They would have CPS called on them. We must do better and the status quo. It is not acceptable.

This is to make sure that there is someone within the system whose only responsibility is to make decisions based upon what is best for the child, not what is best for the system.

And I'm very, very passionate about ensuring that we get there. I believe we had this language scored last year and I believe we have an updated score on that or we will be getting one.

But I think the most important part is that we must continue to find ways to make sure that we dust off those reports and we put them into action. That is what we have to do. I was fortunate enough, Director, to talk to work out this language with your predecessor who has been a great partner.

And you are, you're not skipping a beat in terms of our level of communication and your passion for this issue and the many issues of your Department. And so I look forward to working with you and continue to working with the advocates to continue to make progress on this.

These young people do not have the high paid lobbyists like other group, other subjects and other people do. They don't have government relations people. They don't have all the things that it takes to sometimes get our attention. But they do have this Committee and we intend to deliver. Any questions or comments from colleagues at this time. Yep.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to echo the statements made by Chair Jackson. I too feel very passionately about this issue and I do think it's quite shameful the way we've, where we've ended up in this situation. I'm heartened to hear in full support of creating this accountability in this position.

I guess, although I just, you know, the, the main questions I have are about sort of implementation of this position itself because in my brief time in government, it seems that when we do want to create these positions, if, because we're trying to address this need, because our bureaucracy is not, as you said, there's no coordinating body mandating, enforcing these kinds of interactions.

I can already tell you what the next step is going to be, which is we're going to spend the next several years devolving into making sure we empower this position, that we have further oversight of this position to coordinate with the rest of the social service agencies and the counties.

We're going to need to Fund this position more so they coordinate. So my consciousness, my concern is absolutely this position is needed.

But I guess I just would ask some of the representatives here today how you see this position being able to effectively move the bureaucracy so that this is empowered to actually make and effectuate the change we want to see rather than we're just going to create another position in government and ask them to coordinate.

Or is this position actually going to be empowered to do that? Because I just want to be cautious about making sort of performative statements and creating positions that they're not set up for success. Because in theory they have this position that we care about. We want them to address these issues.

But if we're not funding it properly, if we're not clarifying their authority oftentimes, which is true, it will take years and years and years to see the results that I know this Committee would like to see and what so many advocates would like to see.

So I guess I just would like a little bit more clarity of, you know, wanting to see if this position is actually empowered to have that authority. Because as I understand it, creating the position is great. It's gonna, it's gonna force more conversations.

But I think we're at the point where we need the position and the entire government Administration to move. And creating a position or a Department without the proper funding and the proper authority is not setting it up for success.

I think the most important part is there is some quite. I don't know what the proper word is, but unusual language that gives them direct authority to tell folks, make decisions. But I think I would love to hear what JB has to say about what their thoughts are on the language. Does it have sufficient powers?

Does it have. Know what are some things that you have seen that you would like to comment on?

Sure. You know, when I think of this, this office, I think of some of the work that, that we do and some of our partners do at the local level. Once we work on legislation or budget investment and we work with the Legislature on something, we want to make sure it rolls out as intended across the state.

And so that usually means working really closely with whatever, you know, public entity is charged at the local level with carrying it out. And we do that informally. Obviously we have no formal authority. We're a non profit. But I think it would be fantastic to have more of that work happen within an entity with formal authority.

So right now the Department of Social Services puts out an ACL or an acin and that. And that is the, you know, the, that is the bible for county child welfare agencies. Right. For. Sorry, that's not the right word. But you know, that's what they look to, to implement laws.

But sometimes they need more than that, particularly when it's about partnering with other entities. And so I think it has to sometimes go a step further.

And so we do really need an office that, like you're saying, Assemblymember that that has the authority to, to get other public agencies and entities to do things outside of county child welfare or Juvenile probation.

We need an office that can work with school districts, K12 we need an office that can work with various, you know, health Department, you know, like the various. It looks different in every county, right? A little bit. But you know, we need an office that has far reaching authority across different, you know, fields, different agencies.

And to me that is what we're. That is the piece that is often amiss. Sometimes you have a county that has a very, like the child Welfare agency is 100% committed to getting something done.

But if they don't have the right partners at the table, like if office of education is not being helpful in that county, you have issues or vice versa. And so really being able to have an entity that can reach across those systems, I think that's what we're currently missing.

And I would also say Assemblymember that if you notice, the original proposal called for it to be in cdss, but through many conversations it was recognized that it needs to be elevated to the entire agency if it's going to have responsibility of coordination and communication with all the various other departments because it is so far reaching in terms of the various departments that interact with serving that child.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. And that's exactly the point that I was getting to. I'm really pleased to see the latest iteration.

But I just want to make sure that as serious as we're, as we believe this issue to be, and the way that historically we have not treated a sense of urgency and not have taken care of taking care of these issues and our kids the way they should be, are funded the way that they should have been funded, that we are being intentional in trying to get as much right as we can on the first go around.

Absolutely. Because you know, frankly, we know it to be true that there are going to be differences of opinion about how the Department of Education, how different counties, how the state is going to respond when we create this new position. Because we know government is adverse to change at times.

And when we're creating a whole new position or Department, how they interact and what authority they're speaking on is going to be a challenge for implementation. I appreciate the witness stating even themselves of not having this position or even struggling to implement current law.

And it's so startling to hear that even right now of the one position, the one new Department we're going to create is going to seek to help with that. But even now, and laws that we passed, we are still struggling to achieve and fully implement the decisions that we're trying to make in this space.

Moving that bureaucracy is going to be challenging.

I know that, but certainly would want to partner with you and other advocates and the Administration and this Committee under the chair's leadership to sort of make sure that as we are advocating for this new position, as we're advocating for, frankly, forced conversations of coordination, because it's not going to happen in the abundant free will of different government entities and that we do so in a way that, again, it's set up for success.

Because I just know, you know, being intellectually honest with ourselves, that there are going to be differences of opinion once the position is created about how it's implemented. And I just want to make sure that we're not coming back to this Committee a few years later if we get this through.

And we're going to have to do cleanup language. We're going to have to invest more authority or more money because we know what will happen, which is there'll be resistance or less. There'll be there's less clarity on the authority outside of we just want you to coordinate better and employ someone to coordinate.

That's just not gonna cut it. We need to have this position have real teeth so that when it's created, they're set up for success.

Thank you so much for that, Assemblyman. And we'll make sure that we also send you the language as well so we can make sure if you have any amendments you would like to make, we'll make sure that we we have those included. Any additional. Yep. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. So I come from the county level recently, and I've done some work with the Foster Care Oversight Committee, which is appointed by the local board.

And one of the questions I want is there what are some of the reporting coordination or if there are any, like, state mandates towards the local level to report back to the states for, you know, whether it's DSS working together, DBH, you know, what have we seen out there?

Because one of my fears is that we create duplicity on, you know, what layers are out there. And so but I also share the same sentiment that Assemblyman Ahrens shares as well, is that we could potentially create another position. And it adds an additional layer, but it doesn't solve what we're looking for.

Are there examples out there that actually show where coordination has worked either on the local level? And maybe sometimes it may seem that mandatory reporting to the state, we can actually take a look into that without always creating another layer?

Because again, one of my fears as well is with the budget issues that we've seen and with, with what we've heard a little bit is that there isn't they haven't allocated any dollars and there's not much to comment on that part.

But my worries is we hire to fire sometimes, especially when we see a little bit of a downturn in the economy. And I want to avoid that, especially if we're creating a position that needs teeth to take care of those who are most disadvantaged.

Go ahead, I'll start. And you can add with respect to a few things in terms of account, I would highlight the children and Family Services review process. So this is a federally mandated system. We in California have also added to it with a California CFSR that has additional measures.

And this is our main method of measuring performance within the child welfare system. There's a wide variety of data that is reported by each county related to each of the cases that they oversee.

That data is publicly available on UC Berkeley's website and also is used to report to both the Federal Government and for our purposes, on both process and outcome measures for how are our children doing? What do we know about each of the cases? Where do they live? How frequently do they move? What are the outcomes they're experiencing?

So there's a very robust array of outcome measures that are currently reported between the counties and the state and the Federal Government.

In terms of the coordination across systems, I think what I was describing related to the implementation of Assembly Bill 2083 is the closest parallel in the sense that we have entities from education, health care, child welfare, probation. Who am I missing?

I think that's most folks and tribes who may be in the area and have children who are involved, who are all coordinating at the local level through their memorandums of understanding as well as at the state level, those departments and parallel coordinating. And that can be to work on an individual case and technical assistance.

But it's also related to reporting on the overall system. And there are a number of required reports related to gaps in the system. And then to the point that you raised, we have citizens oversight panels where certainly there's additional perspectives that are provided from the community.

So there are within the foster care system, there is a wide variety of ways that we are assessing outcomes and receiving reporting relating to how youth are doing. If you want to add, please feel free, but those were the ones that jumped to mind for me in response to your question.

So in that with this new position, what would it do to streamline and connect all of those agencies, especially if we already have a federal reporting, mandated reporting on the state level, and citizen oversight I'm just trying to figure out where this solves or takes the next step for modernization.

Is that what it is, is where I'm trying to figure out. And I need to review the language as well, even more so that way, again, we can see just looking to avoid layers of duplicity.

I mean, I think the, to answer the question you just asked, and of course this is right now an idea, a proposal, and it could mean probably a lot of different things in, you know, months down the line.

But I think the way that I've envisioned what the language that I've reviewed is, is not creating new data systems. But the reality is we have a lot, we have a lot of data. And like some of our laws, I think we are, we, we could be doing better with the data we're reporting. We have.

We've even in the last, you know, decade, we have new data systems that now share across. Like we have a, you know, we look at homelessness data. We draw from the federal homelessness data system. We now have a state one.

We, there was talk of bringing in other data from other systems to that so we can compare who is experiencing homelessness, what are the demographics of those individuals, what other systems do they touch. We also have data on how many foster youth are at post secondary education. We know about course completion. We have a lot of data.

I think the question is how do we use that data? For example, a newer report that we have that we are supposed to get annually from the Legislature, and I think it's. I think we're on year two or three of this is back related to reproductive and sexual health.

Just to kind of stem from my example that reports on outcomes for young people across those areas. So we look at how are they doing, how are foster youth doing that have experienced pregnancy with prenatal care and STDs and, and all sorts of other really critical outcomes.

We learned a lot from the first data report that CDSs put out and from that report we should take action. Right? We need to look at where we're not doing well and figure out why. And then we need to look to what we're doing well and do more of that.

And so I think that I see an opportunity also for this office to draw on some of the existing data we have and say, okay, these young people receive this resource. How can we develop a more intentional collaboration between these two entities to make sure that all young people receive this resource?

I would hope that this office would be able to look at the laws on the books and say, where There are implementation gaps due to challenges with collaboration and coordination. They could come in and play a role. And. And with any new laws coming down. Cause like we've kind of discussed, I think there are.

If we pass no more laws, we'd have our hands full with just maximizing what's currently there that we're not fully tapping into. But yet there will continue to be new laws every year. I mean, the Department knows well and the counties know well, every year there's new mandates rolling out that they then have to figure out.

So I think there's a lot this office could do, even with just existing data and existing laws, to make young people's experience better.

Thank you. It's just the part that seems somewhat confusing is that DSS or the Department of Behavioral Health, it's more, you know, I would say that they understand a lot and I support the local level a lot because, again, they know the General community fairly closely.

It's just I'm trying to understand, in the sense of this would be streamlining it more to the state level to then help the individuals at the local level work closer together to implement those type of laws. And that's where.

That's what I'm trying to figure out is, again, is this another layer on top of what DSS is already supposed to do, what DBH is supposed to do, what our county offices are supposed to do, and now we're creating an. A larger one at the state level to then go back and ask them to work together again?

Well, I think what happens is DSS gives, frankly. Right. Marching orders to, say, county child welfare. We need their counterparts in other agencies or other departments to give their marching orders to, at the local level, to all of those departments. And so I think that, you know, every agency is going to send marching orders to local.

Their local counterparts based on the things that are in their camp. And I think that we have to do more to look at maybe what's not in our camp, but where we're implicated. Again, I'll stick with my example here. We need response from school districts and schools on making sure that foster youth receive comprehensive sexual health education.

They're missing it because they're missing school. And there's a whole bunch of reasons, but we need not just county child welfare to have that on their radar. We need the districts. And so that obviously, that's not gonna come from Department of Social Services. That's maybe gonna come from education. Right. So just thinking about how to.

I think at the state level, having those entities use whatever communication format they do to provide guidance to their local counterparts for issues related to foster youth.

Yeah. I would also say, Assemblyman, that when you read the Assembly has a great blue ribbon report as well, that was done a few years ago. And my office will make sure that you get it because it articulates the complexities of everything that it takes to just serve one child. Department of Education.

Then you have CDSs, and then you have health care services, and then you have behavioral health. You have all these different ones. And it all comes to the conclusion that we could do better if they talked better together. And what is the mechanism to be able to do that?

I would also encourage all my colleagues, if you have a Netflix account, to watch the trials of Gabriel Fernandez that talks about what happens when systems fail children. And in many cases, what you will see when you conclude when you watch it is that too many times systems protect themselves instead of protecting the clients.

I mean, this is not blanket. I don't want to get all these emails and stuff. Relax. But. But it's true. And so the goal here is, is to create a disruption to help to ensure that we do ensure more coordination that we do have.

Someone whose only responsibility is to look out for what is best for the child and not the system, with additional responsibility to come back and ask the Legislature, what additional powers do you need to do your job effectively? What additional pieces of legislation that needs to be done?

What additional monies do we need to allocate to making sure that we're doing right by the kids that are literally our kids as a state? I think that this is very complex, but I think at the same time it's worth the complexity as we still try to get this right. Right. And so what.

We'll also make sure you get the language. And then if you have additional recommendations, of course, I think this is the appropriate time to do so. Any additional questions?

Thank you. Yes, and just last one, especially on the top of making sure that services are provided and where we're looking at trying to make sure we have that type of coordination. So some of the conversations I made a few calls with the, again, foster oversight committees as well, and talking to other foster parents.

And one of their main difficulties that they've shared with me is that it's the, you know, really specifically related to Medi Cal and then the access to doctors and treatment and trying to make sure that. That the wait times are. And again, when they're seeing so many children as well, has really been heavy on them.

Does this Committee, what would be potentially one of the portions and where could it help with some of the parents that are looking at finding either additional services to make sure that their kids can get access to doctors, you know, trying to figure out where does it help a situation like that when they're trying to wait and utilize the services, medical services for their kids?

I mean, I know the language references health specifically. I don't know that there is an answer to that question at this time, if it's fleshed out enough to know that this is exactly what it would do. But I know that in the language, health is a specific component that is mentioned.

So I think that if that's something to flag, you know, that's something to look at and see if there is an opportunity to do that.

Thank you.

Any additional questions or comments?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to say please sign me up for causing disruption on behalf of our kids in California.

Appreciate it. Troublemaking is my profession. I want to thank everyone for this item. Very good, robust conversation and looking forward to continued discussion as we move forward with this item. Thank you so much for this panel. Next we have issue number three, our proposal to continue and expand promised neighborhoods.

If you're on this panel, come on up, Mr. Chavez. You're leading us here. And you may begin when you're ready.

All right. Good afternoon, Chair Jackson and Members of the Committee. My name is Edgar Chavez and I am the Executive Director of Hayward Promise Neighborhoods. I was here just one year ago testifying on an issue that is more urgent than ever.

As a grandchild of farm workers and growing up as an immigrant child in a mixed status family in the 90s, I know what's at stake right now. Today I also speak on behalf of more than a dozen California Place based initiatives from Del Norte county to Sun Ysidro in the south, from Monterey's coast to Fresno's valley.

Thanks to the $13.5 million investment funded by Governor Newsom and the Legislature, administered by the California Department of Social Services. In two years, four state supported Promise Neighborhoods have served over 73,000 children, 57,000 adults through comprehensive services in schools, childcare and community settings.

In just two years, we've seen dramatic improvements, including a decline in chronic absenteeism by up to 30 percentage points and a rise in high school graduation rates with a notable 5% increase in Chula Vista. Specific achievements in our communities underscore the breadth of our impact.

In Hayward, there have been 184% increase in families accessing food and a significant reduction in food insecurity. In San Francisco's Mission District, 23 families now have affordable housing. And in Corning, nearly 2,000 therapy sessions have been held to bolster K12 mental health. Our collective efforts align diverse stakeholders, including nonprofits, tribes, universities to implement evidence based practices.

Studies such as by the Wilder Institute have shown that every dollar invested in programs like ours yield over $6 in societal benefits, from higher earnings to reduced crime and health costs. However, despite efforts to attract diverse funding sources, our networks face a severe funding crisis.

The potential fiscal cliff we and other three Promise neighborhoods face annually threaten 55 vital roles within the California Promise Neighborhoods Network organizations and services to 130,000 of the most vulnerable children and family across California this year. Many of our services provided are deeply concerned about the impacts of new federal guidelines and funding regulations.

I did not come here to promote new programs. Instead, I urge us to continue investing in enhanced coordination, collaboration and collective care strategies. At the neighborhood level. The stakes are high and the urgency is real. As we approached another fiscal cliff by June 2025, we are aware of the state's challenges fiscally.

So the statewide Network is requesting 17.51 million 1 time dollars to prevent the fiscal cliff at 4 Promise Neighborhoods, close equity gaps for some underserved communities in new areas such as Salinas and Central Valley and sustain important evaluation and oversight work at DSS.

We remain inspired by your Vision Chair Jackson that we should support 1 million children through more place based partnerships like Promise Neighborhoods which we estimate to cost approximately 188 million ongoing. We believe that we can get there with the longstanding champions like Assemblymember Bonta who led this work in Oakland. Our work is far from done.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much again, Jennifer Troia on behalf of the Department of Social Services as you heard, as part of the 2022-23 budget, the Governor and Legislature provided $12 million in funding to four Promise neighborhoods across the state. This funding is currently scheduled to sunset on June 30th of this year.

The Promise Neighborhoods, as you also heard from Mr. Chavez, provide place based and multi generational strategies to saturate target communities with early childhood education, K to 12, academic support, college and career readiness, and family supportive services.

What we have heard from the Promise Neighborhoods in this second year are that many have successfully increased kindergarten readiness, reduced chronic absenteeism and improved standardized test scores. They also report having provided vital community services including supports to newcomer students, the distributions of food for families facing food insecurity and wraparound services to migrants at the San Diego border.

In terms of lessons learned for the future from Promise Neighborhoods, the Neighborhoods have reported to us appreciation for the flexibility of the funding received that allows them to tailor interventions to the needs in each local community.

They've reported interventions ranging from the use of promotores to academic advocates food distribution programs and that community based solutions have contributed to progress across a broad range of outcomes.

In terms of challenges, what we have heard from the neighborhoods we are funding is that the one time nature of the funding that was provided impeded their ability to advance long term planning and ensure the continuity of multi year services.

They've also shared that they are generally observing a worsening of students mental health and are highlighting the need for expanded and affordable counseling services in particular. Finally, some of the Neighborhoods reported to us that they are struggling with the impacts of chronic absenteeism and the academic achievement and graduation rates.

The last thing I'd like to highlight is that we have executed a contract with the California State University East Bay foundation to provide evaluation, technical assistance and communication support to the four Promised Nations Neighborhoods that are funded through these grants Currently.

We expect the evaluation produced from this funding and the contract to highlight additional lessons learned and to inform any future Promise Neighborhood work. The Research Triangle Institute will produce the final evaluation report which we expect to receive this summer.

Department of Finance?

Kia Cha Department of Finance this is not an Administration proposal and we don't have any comments at this time.

Thank you very much. LAO?

Angela Short with the Legislative Analyst Office. No specific comments but available to assist as needed.

Thank you very much. We are joined here by Assembly Member Mia Banta who this is part of her life's work. I want to give the floor to you.

Thank you so much Chair Dr. Jackson for inviting me to be able to participate in this informational hearing today. As, as Chair Jackson indicated, this is my life's work.

I started the work of Promise New Roads when I was 21 years old back in Connecticut and fully know that when you have a place based strategy that ensures that you're able to see the whole child and deliver services and supports with systems really responding flexibly and with intention to that child and that family's needs, that it leads to better health outcomes, better educational outcomes, better wealth generation outcomes, not only for that child and family but for their future generations.

And I know in the room today we have Sandra Ernst from Oakland Promise, an organization that I was with Grace, able to lead for a while and it is now in her capable hands. And of course, of course we have our partners in Hayward who have been foundational to this work around Promise Neighborhoods.

I just wanted to set the stage a little bit with what is happening at the federal level right now and the impacts of the closure of the Department of Education. Just got to chat with one of the other consortium Members and you know the Promise Neighborhoods grants are may or may not be there from the Federal Government.

The ease with which they are able to get those resources may or may not be there.

And when California takes a stand and a last stand around some of these supportive services, we would really be doing that with this additional ask that is being made for $17.5 million to be able to support the ongoing infrastructure of these programs.

And I also just want to say that this work is built over many, many years and it builds the collaboration, the systems alignment that Chair Jackson, you were referring to the programming, the investments in our children and youth from baby bonds, child savings accounts, scholarships, wealth building opportunities.

And it is very hard to rebuild that infrastructure once it gets taken away. Collaboration takes time, energy and resources. And I would hate to see the amazing work that is happening in Hayward, in San Francisco, in Oakland, in North County, in Yuba county and Sacramento to be taken away from our children.

And so I want to thank you all for taking the time to put forward this request and Chair to be able to have this be something that the Human Services Subcommitee considers.

Thank you very much, Assembly Member. You know, one of the things that I am also concerned with is that we have infrastructure built up in communities. And while we. I think it's my understanding that we're still waiting for the formal results from a study to come out. When do we anticipate that study? This summer. Fantastic.

And the last thing that we want to do is get phenomenal outcomes, which I'm sure we will. But then we've killed the structure before we even seen the results and. And then it will take so much more money to try to get back off the ground again on this item.

I want to request that Lao work with us to find out what's the, what dollar amount do we, at the minimum, we're going to need to be able to keep this infrastructure going and keep it alive. At the minimum. I want to restate my goal.

You know, when Promised Neighborhoods was brought to this level, we had of course wanted to participate on something that was shiny and sexy. In California, I say sexy a lot, so relax. And so, you know, but then we just check off the box, we did it right. And it's hard for us to follow through with something.

What is supposed to happen is we bring forth and scale this innovation. We then see the results and when we see positive results, we're supposed to make it replicable. We're supposed to expand the number of children and communities who are participating in a pilot such as Promise Neighborhoods. Right.

And so if we know that it works, we should be finding ways to expand it, not just say that we did it, it was a good thing while it lasted. We've got to be better than that. And again, it is my personal goal to making sure that at some point we reach.

We need to have, at least in a state like California, at least 1 million children in California participating in some of our most challenging communities in which systems are failing them, in which there's vibrancy and great human capital that just needs a little bit more help to be released to ensure that there's a plan for a child to follow them through childhood, all the way to adulthood to help them to achieve the type of outcomes that more wealthy communities are able to have and benefit from.

I think my question is also though is what have been some sustainability efforts that have been done to try to ensure like times like these, when an Administration is no longer proposing additional funds, what has been done to be able to create your own self sufficiency?

Well, part of the investment through Cal State Spay to be the fiscal Agent of these technical assistance funds was the vision of how do we create sustainable tools? And one of those was partnering with the Urban Institute.

So we developed an online toolkit to make sure we capture all the best practices so not just Promise neighborhoods have access to that information, but any organization or program trying to start this work across the state.

Of course we have our evaluation work to really understand what is the data needed to make sense of collective support systems for children. We've also built communities of practice amongst promised neighborhoods. So we've identified making sure kids feel like they need to show up to school every day with chronic absenteeism. We know that's been a crisis.

So there's been a community of practice around that. Aligning college and career resources to make sure all children are on track for economic mobility and our collective family support systems. How are we developing referral systems infrastructure in communities and how are we codifying all those three areas?

So part of it our work is not just the implementation of work. It's what are the tools and systems and people, smart people across the country we need to bring to help us reinforce this.

What happens, what happens if we do not find the funds to continue the to continue this effort? Is there any Promised Neighborhood currently right now that will still be able to survive?

We will have a fiscal cliff by June. Many of our partners will close their doors for collective resources by June. As Assemblymember Bonta mentioned, the Department of Ed that is no longer a secure resource for our state for promise neighborhoods work.

And we know that there are models out there across the country that have implemented promise neighborhood type infrastructure in their states. Maryland with the Enough act really identifying the need to look at every community where child poverty is highest and invest in those communities.

And it just started with $20 million investment and private partnerships to expand from that. So there are models, a pathway for us to sustain this across. But we need to keep the current neighborhoods running.

Absolutely. Any additional questions or comments from my colleagues on this item? Singh, you're good. All right. Seeing none. Thank you so much for this item and we will we will have additional proposals moving forward. Thank you.

You. Thank you.

Next we have. Thank you very much Assembly Member Bonta for joining us on this this issue.

Thank you so much. Chair.

Now we have issue number two. Implementation of the new foster care tiered rate structure. And with that cdss. You may begin when you are ready.

Thank you. Good afternoon Chair Jackson and Members of the Committee. I'm Angie Schwartz, Deputy Director of the Children and Family Services Division at the California Department of Social Services thank you for creating the space to discuss the implementation of this important and transformational reform.

I would like to take a moment to touch on the purpose of the reforms within the Tiered Foster Care Right structure.

At the core of recent foster care reform efforts is an understanding that children who must live apart from their parents do best when cared for in committed, loving, nurturing families, especially those of their relatives and extended family Members.

Under CCR, California began the process of refining how foster care rates could be better based on the level of need of the individual child creating the level of Care system. However, under that system, children with the highest acuity of needs have to move into a specific type of placement setting in order for those needs to be met.

So, like an ISFC home or into an STRTP, the tiered foster care rate structure that CDSS is now working to implement will further our collective vision of ensuring that all children can be supported and raised within a family.

This is done by making sure that the services and supports are based on the individual child's needs, not the placement type, ensuring that all children can have their needs met at any level of acuity within a family setting.

It also enables our providers to develop more community based programming to serve children within all different types of settings rather than having to move into a specific setting in order to have those needs met.

The Tiered rate structure also invests for the first time ever in the strengths of children through the creation of the Strength Building Program and making sure that the immediate needs of children that must be addressed in order for that child to benefit from their school, social or home environment are met through the creation of the Immediate Needs Program, both of which are critical to child development and recovery from trauma.

The critical steps underway in the current year and that will continue into the 25-26 year are focused on the development and the release of all the program guidance necessary to implement the tiered rate structure.

Our goal is to have the majority of guidance that will be core to implementation for each aspect of the tiered rate structure released by July 2026 so that we can spend that last year working to develop the infrastructure, doing the necessary training and readying the field for the full implementation once the rates go live in July 2027.

I will briefly overview each of the components that we're planning on developing over the next year.

Let me highlight first that creating that guidance we know needs to be done in a transparent manner with robust engagement from children from youth, from caregivers, parents, tribes, our county partners, our probation partners, and our judicial partners to this end, since passage of the Tiered rate structure in July 2024, we've hosted 28 listening and work group sessions which more than 1000 individuals across all the different systems of the child welfare system have participated in.

The priorities emerging from those workgroup meetings and discussions are that we must ensure that the Strength Building Program allows children and youth to access those enrichment activities in a flexible and efficient manner that we must make sure that the child and family teams and the CANS are conducted to fidelity that we have to develop an Immediate Needs Program that streamlines access to a robust array of services and doesn't create additional administrative barriers for counties or providers and that we must ensure adequate supports for permanency.

We're addressing these concerns and the others that are being raised through the specific guidance that's being developed, which is including the guidance related to the automation of the Tiered Rate Structure that needed to be released by January of this year in order to give enough time for the automation to occur. It was released in December of 2024.

We also have guidance related to care and supervision, specifically the conditions by which a family who receives AAP or KINGAP could negotiate for funding up to the Tier two benefit. We convened a work group to inform those specific conditions. The first meeting was at the end of January and will be continuing through the end of this month.

To engage that work group, we're also discussing the ways to support access to post permanency services for families that exit foster care to guardianship, adoption or guardian or or reunification. Sorry.

Specific to the Strength Building Program, the CDSS and the Department of Healthcare Services are preparing to release a joint RFI to solicit information for a spending Plan manager for both the Strengths Building Program and the BH Connect Activity Funds Initiative, which we'll be discussing a little later today.

Additionally, we're convening another work group to inform the development of the Strength Building Program. That group will convene for the first time on March 27th and meet every other week through Thursday, May 22nd.

Specific to the Immediate Needs Program, the Tiered Rate Structure mandates that we conduct an analysis of the children in tiers 23 and 3 and the types of services necessary to address those needs. We're working with the Public Consulting Group to conduct this analysis and that work is underway.

In addition, we'll be convening a work group beginning March 28th focused on streamlining access to the robust array of services that young people need through the Immediate Needs Program and ensuring implementation of the Immediate Needs Program does not create those Additional administrative barriers. There were lots of questions in the agenda about how we're working to ensure cft.

There were lots of questions in the agenda. I see nodding, but specifically I'm trying to answer specific to the cans and the CFT fidelity and making sure that we'll have fidelity in those processes because they're very essential to the tiered rate structure.

Since the tiered rate structure, the tier is designated by the child's cans assessment, so making sure that there's fidelity is clearly very important. By way of Background, cans and CFTS have been required for use in California since 2018. Work has been underway for several years to support cans fidelity and training activities.

We've already released several all county letters and information notices specific to that work, and we're continuing to do an even deeper dive into how to make sure fidelity will be part of cans and CFTs as we work to implement the tiered rate structure.

To that end, we released a draft Fidelity plan in January and got a lot of feedback from the wide variety of stakeholders that I mentioned previously. There was a request for a second draft to be released before we finalized the Fidelity plan.

So we've agreed to go out and post a second draft of the Fidelity plan, taking account of the feedback we've received in response to the first draft. For example, there was a lot of concern of the use of the word audit in the draft Fidelity plan. We did not intend for the Fidelity monitoring to include traditional audits.

We're removing that term from the plan and we'll be specifying how monitoring of Fidelity will occur. We also had a request from counties to conduct additional listening sessions and make sure that the timelines associated with implementation of the Fidelity plan are feasible and achievable. And we'll be doing that as well.

The counties will have all the core guidance they need to begin implementation of the Fidelity plan by July of this year 2025, and that will give us that two year Runway in order to make sure that all of the Fidelity is in place, those tools are in place, and that we've achieved Fidelity before the rates go live in 2027.

In summary, we've heard from many youth and caregivers about how transformational these investments will be to ensuring youth in foster care are able to participate in all types of activities. Activities that will build their communities, that will give them meaning and purpose, that focus on their potential instead of the deficit based system that we're currently operating under.

In order to ensure that all stakeholders have access to real time information about progress towards implementation We've created a website where all of the upcoming workgroup meetings and listening sessions are posted.

Notes from the prior meetings are also available to be read by people that weren't able to attend, and it also hosts a bimonthly newsletter that details all of our progress to date on implementing the Tiered Rate Structure, as well as all of those upcoming engagement opportunities.

Our goal is to continue this robust level of engagement already underway over the next two years in order to co design and make sure that everything that we're trying to achieve through implementation of the Tiered Rate Structure is successful. And I'm happy to answer additional questions.

Great. Thank you. I'm Kim Lewis representing Aspiranet and we are celebrating our 50th year of providing services to children and youth in the child welfare system and we serve them across 31 different counties. We're one of the largest foster care providers.

As an FFA we serve approximately 2,500 children and youth and foster homes, residential programs and transition age youth and we have a short term residential therapeutic program located in Turlock and I really want to thank you for the opportunity to participate in the discussion on the new foster care rate structure.

We are really deeply appreciative of the Legislature and staff who worked tirelessly last year to strengthen the structure and for embedding various opportunities for oversight as the state shifts from the current planning phase to the implementation phase of the new system and most importantly for your work in preserving and protecting numerous programs that serve children and youth in the foster care system that were slated to be cut year.

The agenda outlines many questions that Aspiranet and other stakeholders share as implementation of the tiered rate structure continues. We need meaningful opportunities to have engagement on the outstanding questions listed in the agenda.

And to me, a robust and successful engagement process would provide participants with advanced information on the topics and questions to be covered at each such meeting so attendees can come prepared and in particular when youth are participating.

We applaud the inclusion of youth with lived experience in the stakeholder consultation process and we hope the Department will stay true to the principles of authentic youth engagement. Well, I don't have time to talk about every area of concern, I just want to speak on a few of them.

One current work stream is focused on determining under what conditions a child who is closing to permanency in AAP or KINGAP benefits may receive the tier 2 care and supervision rate instead of the default tier 1 rate. It's imperative that the process developed does not create barriers to permanency and supports children and caregivers in permanency.

The process should be child focused, streamlined and transparent, that is Providing information on the decision making and appeals process. The agenda raises also some key questions around high fidelity rap, which are concerns that we share. For example, will RAP be used to provide students step down in aftercare services to foster children as they exit SDRTPs?

In order to be high fidelity, there needs to be really one model, not multiple versions based on the tier that the foster youth is in.

There are times when a youth needs more rapid intervention for a day or so because of life events such as breaking up with a partner or failing a test or talking to a bio parent.

So having more than one level does not make sense or support the youth where they are county mental health plans have the authority to have different contracts with different RAP providers, which could mean in a world where there are different levels of rap, a youth could be required to change RAP teams every time they change tiers.

This does not support continuity of care for our young people. We are eager to see the analysis around the immediate needs component of the children in tier 2 and up which is not due until next January 2026.

We know that the Department has mentioned that the dollars could be potentially matched with MEDI Cal Dollars and which we would anticipate the analysis would spend speak to as well as to what resources are necessary to bring that match in.

STRTPs are a critical therapeutic intervention for our foster youth who are needing high levels of care in a temporary residential setting with the goal of stabilizing and enabling foster children and youth in transition to home based care and permanency.

Research on the relationship between residential youth and foster care and caregivers and and the outcomes for youth in residential care demonstrates the importance of both stability and quality of residential staff. The development of these relationships requires stability and the assurances of health and safety for both youth and staff.

We are not convinced that the Tier 3 Plus rate fully provides for the increased supports, services and skill sets needed for the program to support their complex and ever changing needs while keeping youth and staff safe regardless of whether the immediate needs dollars are matched with MEDI Cal Dollars.

Which is really why the analysis is so critical into identifying barriers and gaps that can be addressed prior to final implementation and there should be appropriate lead times.

The contracts can be in place prior to the new rates rolling out on July of 2027 and in speaking of the adequacy of the rates, I did want to take a moment to talk about the increased insurance cost all providers serving children and youth in the foster care system are experiencing.

With NIAC's recent decision to pull out of insuring foster family agencies, we experienced a half $1.0 million increase in our premiums for less coverage with higher deductibles. This is putting an unsustainable strain on resources and a long term solution is needed.

Since AB 2496 was signed, Aspiranet has only participated in one meeting with CDSS on the issue this past December. We recognize that the LA wildfires have appropriately taken precedence and we hope that discussions can recommence shortly as FFAs are a key provider of services under this new rate structure.

Finally, while CWS cares is also on your agenda, I just want to iterate that it's really the linchpin of seeing that the system can actually be operative and take place for our caregivers and just want to thank you for your time and commitment to our children and youth in the child welfare system.

Good Afternoon Chair and Members. Diana Boyer with CWDA. CWDA supports the vision and goals of the TRS tiered rate structure. I'm just going to use TRS. It builds on prior CCR efforts to bring direct services supports into family based settings.

TRS is also ambitious and complex and requires extensive planning leading up to the July 1, 2027 implementation date. CWDA appreciates DSS's engagement through their listening sessions and their openness to working through county's questions and concerns.

As noted on the agenda, the CANS tool will now be used to determine the level of funding to support foster children and non minor dependents. Counties have embraced the can since 2018 to guide case planning and identify needed services and supports for those who we serve.

Aside from CANS training and certification requirements, though, we've never really invested in the fidelity related work that's needed to ensure that both the CANS and CTFs are implemented as envisioned. The TRS is an important step in this effort and we do welcome a state investment in this area as proposed in the state budget.

We believe this is a very important opportunity to support child welfare workers and our partner agencies who all share in the role in CANS and cfts. This includes our mental health Clinicians, circumstances, CFT facilitators, foster youth families, resource parents, provider agencies and other service providers.

It's important to ensure all family sorry, all voices in the CFT meetings are lifted up and heard and reflected in the CANS assessment because when that does occur to Fidelity, it will lead to improved outcomes of safety, permanency and well being.

Because Fidelity to practice is critically important to the success of the TRSas, we do want to lift up our concern that the proposed $1.2 million proposed for this investment in state General funding may not be sufficient to support the type of Fidelity activities that we have seen work in the counties that have pursued this on their own.

We have seen improvements with approaches like direct coaching to social workers and their supervisors, paired with support from the Regional Training Academies, which are the entities overseen by DSS to deliver training to all of our new and existing child welfare staff. CWDA continues to engage with DSS on their proposal for CANS fidelity monitoring of processes and outcomes.

We have urged for streamlining of the proposed tools and leveraging existing mechanisms to support Fidelity monitoring and accountability. This includes existing processes like the Child and Family Services Review, which includes a review of data and outcomes, case reviews, key informant interviews and county peer reviews.

We also note there is no additional proposed funding to cover New County mandated activities that are set to begin July 1st of 2025. This includes expedited entry of data into CARES within 10 days and updating the cans based on new triggering events including case closures.

Timely CANS completion and data entry is currently a challenge due to capacity issues and the need to coordinate with our mental health partners who are also mandated to complete the CANS for many of our foster youth.

Currently there is no process for data sharing between our agencies, meaning the data must be entered once by mental health and again by child welfare. New and unfunded mandates exasperate an existing concern in that the state funding currently we believe is insufficient to cover the existing CFT and CANS workload.

County child welfare agencies are overspending currently the CANS and CFT funding allocated by the state by 25%. This is equal to about $17.5 million of a gap as of fiscal year 23-24 data. The underfunding is at least in part driven by an outdated workload methodology that uses a 2017 cost of a social worker.

We estimate the actual cost is at least 50% higher based on our 2024 county data pursuant to Prop 30. If state funding is insufficient to cover the workload, counties may ultimately need to make difficult decisions of what mandated activities they will or will not be able to implement.

These are difficult choices that counties prefer not to have to make for any new state policy or program in child welfare. But we also understand the reality of a very difficult state budget this year and for future years.

So ultimately we hope to be able to work with the Administration and Legislature to address this discrepancy in the funding to ultimately support the successful implementation of the TRS. Thank you.

Department of Finance?

Kia Cha, Department of Finance no additional comments. We're happy to help answer any questions.

LAO?

Angela Short with the Legislative Analyst Office we think there are a number of good questions raised in your agenda, some of which were also mentioned by stakeholders today and of course not all of which can be answered at this time given that the tiered rate structure is a very extensive and complex, really entire kind of rebuilding of our foster care rate system that's going to take place over the next two plus years.

As noted in your agenda, the Administration has shared an initial implementation plan in terms of breaking down implementation into five categories and has identified three broad phases of implementation between last fall and initial implementation in June 2027.

We we suggest that the Legislature may wish to request from the Administration an even more detailed roadmap, really specifying within each category and within each phase what are specific milestones that are intended to be achieved, what are the steps being taken and what are opportunities for stakeholder feedback across each step.

We think this information could facilitate the Legislature's ability to better track where we are in the process as we work toward implementation over the next couple of years and also help ensure the tracking of stakeholder feedback and that questions are appropriately answered across time.

Also, as noted in your agenda, statute does require various reporting to the Legislature throughout the next couple of years and as noted by the Department, DSS is also providing regular updates through a newsletter.

So we think this additional detailed information could be provided through the reporting and the regular communications that the Administration will already be providing to the Legislature. Separately, we did also just want to highlight a few other higher level questions that we have at this initial implementation phase.

First, we are looking to more fully understand what exactly is being proposed in terms of the CANS training and model Fidelity tools as referenced by the Administration. We'll look forward to reviewing the updated draft language once that's available.

Another question we would raise at this stage is other than the cans, are there other components of CCR, for example Chatham Family Teams or the Resource Family Approval process that will be important to implementing the tiered rate structure and around which counties may also need assistance in terms of model Fidelity or other assistance?

And knowing those areas could help the Legislature ensure there are appropriate resources and oversight of those areas as we work toward implementation over the next several years. Thank you available for any questions.

Thank you very much. Obviously this is a quite an undertaking. Obviously there's a lot of moving pieces here. I think my first question just would be in regards to. I just.

I'm trying to make sure that we do more of a paradigm shift in terms of how do we ensure that the rates that we are going to be proposing is going to be robust enough to ensure that it does not further weaken the already fragile systems that we have.

I would rather us be more robust than trying to do, for lack of a better word, the bare minimum for these different tiers. Right.

I believe last time we had this hearing there was a real big concern in terms of the rates specifically for STRPs as well, and that making sure that it's going to cover the full cost of what the STRPs are going to need to do making sure that, you know, for the based upon the cans assessment, making sure that those who are going to when the assessment turns out that they're going to need some more robust services which we should already assume is going to be necessary, will it cover the full cost of those services to making sure and not put them at financial risk of them having to possibly close down those type of things.

What are we doing to ensure that the rates that are going to be proposed is going to be robust enough to ensure that it does not put further strain on the already fragile system that we have?

So as mentioned, there's the immediate needs analysis that's currently underway and we're working with the public consulting group to do that analysis of the services that will be needed for children within tiers 23 and 3 plus. So that's examining some of the questions that you just raised.

I would say importantly also this is a tremendous investment that's never been made before in terms of children being able to be successful and have that intensive level of services within family settings. So the strength building dollars are new.

We've never invested in strengths before and you've heard from young people last year about how important that is to like a different way of really thinking about interventions and addressing trauma from some of the more traditional, more deficit based approaches that we have funded previously.

So those strength building dollars I think are going to really enable us to invest not just in enrichment activities but really in how do you help children heal and thrive and really, you know, heal from the trauma that they've experienced.

And then those strength building dollars and the immediate needs dollars are all available to support children within family settings, as are a significant expansion of the care and supervision rates that have previously not been available at that levels to support children within family homes. So within kinship settings and extended foster care.

But I think the most direct response is the evaluation that's being conducted of the immediate needs within tiers 2 and 3 and 3 plus.

CWDA. Are counties being funded adequately now for CANS and the child and family teaming?

So thank you for the question. And as noted in my testimony, we do not believe that is the case just based purely on looking at the spending rates in counties, they are overspending the allocation right now for the CFT and CANS.

So based on what we are getting versus what they are contributing and adding to it in order to try to meet their mandates and they are funding with county just putting additional county funds by over 25% of what the state is providing. So that is 17.5 million. They were overspending in 23-24.

And that is before we do this additional work of ensuring that we're inputting the CANS on a timely basis, that we're working closely with mental health departments so that we're getting that information very quickly and that we're doing updating the cans at triggering events, trigger events, such as when there is a Regional Center determination of eligibility or at case closure.

Not to say that we were not updating our case plans or adjusting our case plans in some way and conversing with youth and families, but that very act of updating that CANS and having to ensure that's entered in a timely basis is also a new activity.

We understand the reason to do start doing that in July 1st of 2025 is to start to build that muscle memory for counties so that we're ready to go starting July 1st of 27 with the tiered rate structure.

But we just need to reconcile that we do have some gaps here that we need to fill because again, we do want to see the success successfully implemented.

What is your budget ask for to make up for this discrepancy?

So we would want to work with the Administration and the Legislature. We were looking at 23-24 data because that is the data that was submitted to counties in terms of their claiming. So we haven't don't have 24-25 yet. Of course, we're still in that year.

I would suggest that you have an ask next time I ask you. LAO, you have any ideas in terms of what would be the appropriate amount to ensure that we are funding these items adequately so that when everything is ready to go, that everyone's ready to go.

That is not something we've looked at, but we could certainly work with counties and the Administration to just to better understand your question, Chair.

Yeah. I would love for you to help us find that what that number is. Because if counties are already overspending the dollars that have been allocated to ensure that they fulfill their responsibilities, I want to know what that Delta is to making sure that we can. I did that. Right, Right. It's Delta. Oh, dang. Okay.

I can handle money. To making sure that we can. I just want to make sure that as we are making decisions on this budget, that we are capturing that and taking that into account.

There's no doubt that when we ask counties to do things, sometimes we think we know the number and it turns out we don't get it right. But we want to make sure that we are setting everyone up for success. I think that is the most important thing that we want to be able to do for that.

So LAO will ask you for that assistance to work with the Administration, the counties and my office to be able to make sure that we have that number moving forward through this budget process. We are doing something new. There's always uncertainties, there's always anxieties.

I want to caution everyone not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We must move forward with this. And so will we get it 100% right the first time? Absolutely not. Will we continue to monitor it and make course corrections and continue to perfect the system? Absolutely.

And so please, let's make sure that we continue to have constructive dialogue. Let's make sure that we are listening appropriately and let's make sure that we're also offering constructive criticism as well as we go through this process. Advocates have posed a series of additional questions that are included under the staff comment section for this issue.

If these are not sufficiently addressed in the hearing, I would like to ask that the Administration communicate directly with the advocates and other interested stakeholders and response to these inquiries as soon as possible. I believe in an item as complicated at this as this, there's no such thing as over communicating.

We have got to make sure that we are communicating appropriately. We also understand that the counties have raised some serious concerns about adequate receipt of final policy and guidance and adequate funding for required activities. I would ask that the Administration engage further with the counties to try to reach resolution on this for the may revise as well.

And I am more than happy to roll up my sleeves to get in the mix, but I stress people out so that may not be a good idea, including myself. Any further comments from Committee Members at this time? Dr.

I will keep mine brief. Chair so thank you guys so much for shedding light on this. Me being a brand new Member, I wasn't here for the conversations that took place previously.

And so one of the questions that was actually put inside the packet as well was going back to what priority issues are stakeholders, including foster youth and caregivers raising that require discussion, clarification and additional policy settings for the tiered rate structure.

I think Kim, you were touching on that a little bit more, but also Jen, you was going into that too, but it was just so much. So I'm just wondering, I'm not asking you to take up a lot of time, but just to kind of give me a little bit more insight.

Cause I'm also a former foster parent, so a caregiver and I come out of a household that my entire family were foster parents for 30 years plus. So I've seen a lot and I've also experienced a lot as well.

And I would like to just know more information about what are some of the discussion and clarifications that they were bringing and even some of the questions that were even asked.

Because as I'm saying, as a former caregiver too, there are some questions that I would probably have asked, but I just don't know what was already laid out because I was not here.

I can try to summarize a little.

Bit more as quickly as possible, but just kind of giving a little bit of insight without.

We had hundreds of listening sessions and work group meetings at this point, first to try to inform the development of the rate structure and then once it was released in the Governor's Budget last year, continuing throughout the entire legislative process.

And then as I mentioned, since the implementation has begun, continuing to convene listening sessions and work group meetings, which sometimes include everybody and sometimes we'll have county specific sessions or sessions with only young people with lived experience or just the caregivers.

And so we're getting a lot of feedback, everything from sort of the high level summary that I provided that the strength building program needs to really be flexible, it needs to be super responsive, it needs to meet the needs of children all the way from infants all the way up to our 21 year olds who are participating in the extended foster care program.

And so we're really trying to think about how to design the strength building program and about to launch another work group in order to get even more feedback about the ways to do that and releasing the RFI so that we can get feedback from organizations about the kinds of things they could do in being a spending plan manager for the strength building dollars for children and youth across California.

So that would be specific to one of the areas that we're focused on think with immediate needs. We're really hearing that there's concerns about creating administrative barriers and duplicating some of the things that providers and counties already have to do in order to meet the needs of young people.

So as I mentioned, we're kicking off another work group at the end of this month in order to bring together counties and providers and our licensing folks and our mental health partners and really say how can we make sure that we're not adding to the things people have to do, but we're streamlining and making it easier to access the services that young people need?

There's also been comments about making sure that we're not supplanting current investments. There are services that are already available to children in our foster care system and significant investments on the health care side through Cal AIM and BH Connect, which we'll be talking about in a minute.

And we want to make sure that these dollars that are really intended for our youth are an expensive expansion of those services and not a supplantation.

And so how are we going to work to make sure that the way that the immediate needs program designed is an expansion of the services that children would otherwise already be getting through all of these other programs.

And so we're really mindful of the need to have that robust expansion and really looking at what is the cans data telling us about what children within tiers 2 and 3 and 3 plus really need that's maybe different than the General population. Okay, I can keep going.

And then also I would just say that we know that report is. We're still on track for report to come out in April in regards to some of the stakeholder feedback and those type of things. And so we want to make sure that. I'm sure, I'm assuming that it'll also cover some of the areas that.

Dr. Sharp-Collins is also is raising. So if you can please make sure that you directly get that report to her office as well so that she can review it.

Absolutely.

And then if you're coming down to my part of town, I'm in San Diego.

So if there's anything else that's happening down there or even, you know, our areas and so forth, just keep me abreast of that because there's a lot of other groups that are in San Diego who are talking about this same work but may not be aware of some of the work that you're currently doing.

I just want to make sure that they know that they can at least participate if it's open to them.

Absolutely. And as I mentioned, we have the website that has all the upcoming listening sessions as well as notes from all the prior sessions. And we also have the newsletter so that people can track all the progress that's been made to date. So I agree with you, Dr. Jackson, that we need to over communicate and we're trying.

Absolutely. Do you plan on going down to San Diego for a listening session?

At this point so that anyone can from across the state can participate.

Most of the listening sessions have been virtual.

Oh, they're virtual.

Okay. I was going to put San Diego on my calendar.

I'm ready. Please put it on your calendar. But if there's a way. I know I'm asking probably too much, but if there's a way for me to know the number of participants from San Diego, County, I would really appreciate that. Okay. Sure.

All right. Any additional questions or comments? Want to thank you all very much for this item and looking forward to doing some additional follow up. Thank you.

Thank you.

We're at the halfway mark, baby. Issue number five.

All right, CDSS, you may begin when you are ready.

We're getting the technology understanding of whether we push a button or someone else does.

I'm so sorry, I didn't hear. Are you ready? Thank you so much. Hi, my name is Jessica Rougeux. I am the branch chief of the Child Welfare System branch at CDS. Good afternoon and thank you so much. My name is Jessica Rougeux.

I'm the branch chief of the Child Welfare System branch within the Children and Family Services Division at CDSS and we serve as the project sponsor for the CWS CARES build as well as the oversight over CWS CMS, our current child welfare information system. We're very glad to be here today.

We want to speak about the briefly about the critical importance of the project and where we're at in the development of the new system and then move into addressing some of the questions that were brought to us from the panel. And I'll be co presenting here with my partner from the Office of Technology and Solutions.

Integration Through Agency. Can you hear? Is that better? Thank you. Thank you very much. We really want to emphasize what a critical. Okay, can you hear me now? Is that better? Okay. Thank you so much.

We really want to emphasize the importance of CWS CARES in the modernization of the child welfare information system space, but in how it impacts the child welfare system as a whole.

We have struggled over many decades and many previous attempts with modernization efforts to update the child welfare information system to support practice changes, new legislation and modernization in child welfare. It's been a struggle collectively and CWS CARES is at the point where we are 18 months away from the implementation of our system.

This is the closest we've ever been through lots of starts and stops and we recognize the criticality of the time in this final push to get the system over that finish line and in the hands of users.

We have the development of the tiered rate structure contingent on the go live of CARES as well as the implementation of the federal match drawdown for ffpsa. It also represents the inclusion of the resource family approval process into the statewide automation as well as other critical mandates and updates.

So this isn't just the replacement of our legacy system, but it's also the incorporation of those key tools that will be time savers for social workers that will add direct communication with partners and really support the move to a more holistic system of care approach in serving children and families.