Assembly Budget Subcommittee No 2 Human Services

Thank you so much. Good afternoon Chair Jackson and Staff. Wonderful to be here with you this afternoon. My name is Jen Troia and I am the Director of cdss. I want to first start out by sharing a little bit about our vision for child welfare in California. First and foremost, it's our vision that children and families remain safely together whenever possible without entering into the foster care system when necessary. The child welfare system is also responsible for removing a child from their parents or guardians. Undoubtedly, this is one of the most sensitive roles the government plays in our society and once we undertake this role, as the Chair was emphasizing, we bear responsibility for the safety, permanency and well being of that child. Our goal is for children to remain with relatives or extended family whenever possible, as we know they do best when connected to their culture, their community or tribe and to the people they know and love. This vision of a family centered and kin first foster care system is critical for all children, including those who have experienced significant trauma and may be facing the greatest challenges to thriving. Overall, the Governor's budget includes $10.3 billion in fiscal year 2026-27 for children and Family services programs which are overseen by CDSS and administered locally by the counties. In terms of that pillar about prevention, several reform efforts in recent years have furthered these goals of preventing the separation of families, including implementation of state funded Family First Prevention Services Block grants, counties building community pathways with community partners to allow families to receive greater supports outside of the child welfare system, and the efforts of groups like the mandated Reporting to Community Supporting Advisory Committee, which I know the Chair is very familiar with. In keeping with this vision and these concerted efforts, the population of children and youth in foster care is projected to be at a historic low in the budget year of 36,000 young people. Overall, rates of entry into foster care decreased by 43% between federal fiscal years 2015 and 2025. Together, we've also invested in furthering the realization of the Family Care Centered and Kin first foster care system. These efforts have included the continuum of care reform and other reforms that resulted in the decrease of 91% over 10 years in the number of youth with a first placement into a congregate care setting and a 72% reduction in point in time congregate care placements, the creation of a Center for Excellence on Family Finding and Engagement and the launch of kinship Accelerator pilots in eight counties. Among a number of other efforts, the adoption and preparation for implementation of the tiered rate structure which we'll be discussing further on the Next panel also has huge implications for our work to center family based care and to support kin. With that, I will turn it over to Deputy Director Schwartz to talk more about some of those trends and challenges we're facing.

Thank you Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, I'm Daniel Webster, University of California Child Welfare Indicators Project. Thanks for the opportunity to share my perspective. I'll just echo the trends that Director Troia and Deputy Swartz have shared. I fully think they're all correct and they're available on the public website, which I think is one of the great directions of the Department is the accountability and transparency to have those kinds of data points available to the wider stakeholder community for us to have a collective conversation about the direction of the system. I would add in terms of key trends, reentry is something that we've decreased over the past decade or so, but it has leveled off and I'd see that as an area where we may want to focus some of our efforts. Also in terms of the direction of the Department, I fully agree with a kin first culture. It is supported by data and evidence and research and I really think that we need to continue those efforts. And as we move more towards prevention efforts and moving upstream towards a child well being system, I think it will be all the more incumbent on us to build that resource for children with our relatives. I also think that the Department's good faith efforts with the mandated reporting community supporting task Force Advisory committee are laudable. This is again moving towards the child well being system. This is an important direction that we need to go, but it needs to be done planfully. The implementation needs to be done planfully with guided by good evidence and data. And I think the Department is working with the members of that advisory committee to do that. But I want to just make sure that we I underscore that point that there are a lot of great implementation suggestions that are made, but we want to make sure that we support them at each juncture with good solid data to make sure that we're doing the right thing and doing it successfully. Evaluation efforts that are going on in the Department I think are also critical to give us important information on needed target populations such as Those that we're providing guaranteed income to or those that the crisis children's crisis continuum of services. There's a pilot project looking at that. So to the degree that we can get targeted research to understand about the needs and services that are effective for those children, I think will redound to our benefit across the board. And I think we need to apply that same approach to the prevention efforts that we're talking about. Family First Prevention Services act and the mrac. And then in terms of challenges we mentioned racial disparities remains a challenge. We have decreased the rates of system contact in our state across the board. And it's actually at a greater degree and better than our national counterparts. So that is a positive. But we still, as you pointed out, Dr. Jackson, have much work to do. I'd say. The last thing I'd say is around the talk about federal storm clouds on the federal horizon. I do see that as a big challenge, both with the HR one, but also with the administration's recent moves to take offline public data sets that were formerly available and to remove from data reports that were formerly available. And what this does is it cuts down the discourse. It starts to remove the number of diversity of voices that can speak to changes that need to be made. And so I would suggest that we tend to be different in California, but I would really want us not to go in that direction because we've spent a couple of decades building a public accountability and transparency system would really be detrimental to the health and welfare of our kids if we didn't maintain that.

Thank you, Dr. Jackson and members of the committee. Andrew Shane. He him with the county Welfare Directors Association. I'm going to focus on the need to sustain targeted, flexible resources that sustain the front end of the child welfare system and are even more vital tools given the unprecedented threats we've heard about from HR1 that threaten to remove fundamental concrete supports that are proven to stabilize families and lower the risk of child welfare system involvement. First, the emergency response enhancement funding emergency response programs are truly the front line of our system. Social workers respond day and night to reports of abuse and neglect and conduct safety assessments and investigations. Incredibly taxing work responding to the trauma of families experiencing crisis. The 20, 21 and 22 budget acts provided a total of $100 million to stabilize county emergency response. Staffing and operations are nearly completely expended. Counties have used these funds to hire and retain staff and strengthen supervision and safety decision making. In Riverside county, this included reducing the reliance on overtime and emergency assignments, which of course helps Them reduce staff turnover and stability and improve morale. During this period, foster care entries declined by approximately 26%. As we've heard. There are several reasons driving this, but it does underscore the importance of front end capacity to support prevention goals. That includes, for example, in Sacramento county, these funds improve prevention by increasing the number of families who receive child and family team meetings to prevent foster care entry. At the same time, counties report increasing case complexity, including more investigations involving sexual and physical abuse as well as severe neglect. So without continued support, counties anticipate facing greater staff turnover and burnout, higher caseloads, delayed investigations and reduced capacity. We are seeking $20 million one time to continue current funding levels and thank assembly member Crell for her leadership and as the agenda lays out well, the fiscal cliff could not come at a worse time. Giving the looming consequences from HR1 sustained emergency response resources are critical to maintaining the front end capacity as HR1 makes historic cuts to concrete food and healthcare supports that research shows and I provided two recent bulletins actually just yesterday from the experts at Chapin hall which demonstrate the buffering effect of CalFresh and Medi Cal and the removal of those and the effects that has the straight line to the risk of maltreatment of investigations and child welfare system. And I know that we know these numbers, but it's just worth talking about 665,000 people on CalFresh, 1.8 million people on Medi Cal and to think about the progress we've made in reducing entries, the boat swamping effect that that can help that that can have. Moving quickly to family flexible supports Again, $100 million was provided over two years providing county resources to stabilize family based placements that we all agree are so important. This provides incredibly tangible and concrete supports such as In Tulare County 10 caregivers were supported for home safety by paying for improvements such as pool fence installation. The real things that we need to support the stability of placements in Sacramento county, respite services are provided to caregivers of 29 youth to support that stability. This funding sunsets on June 30, 2026. A two year extension is what we're seeking just to extend the ability to utilize these funds that will support not only only the placement stability, but ensure that we can utilize these funds to sustain the transition to the Cheered rate structure. In particular, the types of costs that the flexible family supports allows cannot be sourced to any other funding stream and are similar to the types of costs that can be covered by the strengths building component of the TRS and as families are being served, we do not want to have disruption, but instead have continuity of supports for children and caregivers. Thank you,

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ginny Bella with the Ledge Analyst Office.

I don't know.

Y' all need to stop playing with me. Okay?

Thank you, Department of Finance.

Nothing further to add

I'll start. I want to first emphasize that the vast majority of children and youth who enter into our foster care system do not spend dramatically long periods of time there. They reunify with their families or achieve permanency in some other fashion. There are, of course, a cohort of young people who do age out of the system, and we appropriately spend a significant amount of time talking about their outcomes. But I just want to sort of offer that larger context for the overall system first. With respect to the young people who do age out of care, I think Deputy Director Schwartz was referencing that more than a decade ago we extended the age of foster care from 18 to 21 and allow people to come in and out of the system and to have greater flexibility as non minor dependents in extended foster care, which has made a significant difference. But the bottom line that we were starting from when we entered into that policy is that they disproportionately experience all of the challenging outcomes that you referenced. Food insecurity, lower rates of graduation from high school, higher rates of homelessness, higher rates of incarceration. Extraordinary challenges. And that is something that we have been working for decades to try to address, both in the preparation for adulthood, in the support for them to achieve permanency and not age out of the system. Goal number one is that they shouldn't age out, but if they are aging out, it's the supports as much as possible. We just had a presentation this morning from Dr. Mark Courtney, who is now at UC Berkeley at a Transition Age Youth project, talking about both how much extended foster care has improved some of these outcomes. So I'll give you two concrete examples that I have in front of me. One is that 67% of foster youth graduated in 2425, which is up from 55% in 2020, 21, 73% in a recent cohort earned a diploma or GED by age 19. And in terms of homelessness, 12% of youth reported homelessness in that recent cohort, which is former foster youth for a few years, down from 20% in the prior cohort, but still high. We are seeing improvements and extended foster care is making a difference. Part of what Dr. Courtney was emphasizing this morning is that what is especially successful is when we are providing that extended Foster care inclusive of additional supports like transitional housing programs or other kinds of more wrapped around supports in addition to the foster care payments and continued court jurisdiction.

Director Troy.

What are still some opportunities to that we should be thinking about to continue to increase positive outcomes for these children?

Correct.

I would just add to what Deputy Schwartz is saying around the prevention piece. And as we're again, we're trying to keep kids safely in their communities, so we need to identify what are their needs, what are the presenting complicating factors that these families that right now they come to child welfare for substance use disorder and mental health and domestic violence related things and poverty related things, inadequate housing, that kind of thing. We need to identify those factors as best we can and then identify what are the services in the communities that we need to connect this population to. And so what I'm getting at is that as we build this community supporting network, we need to work with our community based organization, network of people so that we can coordinate do same kind of data understanding of what slots do they have to help what populations in what areas so that we can direct the populations to those places so that we can get the families and children the services they need so that the situation does not, you know, risk levels don't go up and then they eventually come to the attention of the child welfare system. And that is, it's a big lift. But I think with data systems being what they are now, there are some, I think that it's a possibility to build such a system, but it's going to take some resources and some good solid thinking.

So I guess I want to hearken back to our reference to the, for example, the disrupting disparities advisory Committee. So this is a dedicated body of community members and lived experts and professionals in the field who we have pulled together from the department with the ask to have that conversation and to think about in particular, with respect to disparities for African American children and youth, what are we missing? What's working well? So what we often are trying to do in the vein of what you're describing as well, is to lift up the best practices from any individual county or jurisdiction elsewhere in the country and to really try to bring those to scale across the state and to raise information about that. So some of it is about new investments, some of it is about embedding what we know works and works the best and really disseminating that information and making it more consistent.

I would say the Conversed accelerator pilot is one example of how we're trying to sort of think about how do you really prioritize and support children within their own family systems and within their own communities and in their tribes, and how do we increase the number of children that have those first and predominant placements with relatives? So we have eight counties that were selected to be part of the Kin First Accelerator pilot. It's a partnership with UC Davis and Casey Family Programs. And think of us and our we've got lots of folks in our division as well that are working to support those eight counties. And each of those counties, it's an accelerator program. It's called that because we're using data in those counties in order to identify sort of where are the greatest areas for opportunity. So those seeds, as you referred to them, Chair Jackson, and which one do we really want to invest in and figure out how to innovate around in order to accelerate the outcome that we're trying to accelerate? So for most of the accelerator counties, it's first placements with relatives and really trying to accelerate the rate at which we've got children who are experiencing that very first placement with relatives. But the strategies that each of the counties will use will really be dependent on their unique workforce and their culture and their community and the support that. And so it's very much embedded in, like, what is needed here in this county, in this jurisdiction in order to make the meaningful change that we're trying to make. So we're really excited about the work of the accelerator. We're only about a year in, so we've launched in each of the eight counties. But they're all in sort of that design phase, designing those their implementation strategies

Does the emergency response funding or the flexible family supports help in any of this?

But it seems to me one of the weaknesses we still have in a whole, I mean, obviously it seems to me one of the things we still need to focus on more on is building community capacity. Am I right in that?

We also have a couple of organizations that I think are close to getting included in the Clearinghouse for kinship navigation. So speaking to what you were saying about community resources, those kinship navigator programs, I think are really essential to helping connect families to all of the different resources in their community. And then the work that we're doing collectively with the Department of Healthcare Services on implementation of the High Fidelity RAP and then integrating that with the Immediate Needs program is also, I think, a great way of streamlining and making sure there's accessible supports for families. And the whole model of High Fidelity RAP is to try to sort of not be a siloed system, to bring in all of the different systems and community partners to support kids and families when they're in crisis with. Of course, the goal being that that child gets to remain within that family and doesn't have to experience a removal or doesn't have to, you know, experience, you know, residential care or institutionalization. So it's a real investment in how do we make sure that we have high fidelity wraparound that's accessible to all of the kids and families across California that need it.

I think we are extremely fortunate in California to have a very robust infrastructure of data that we do collect and that we make public in a very transparent way. And we get analysis of that data in our partnership with UC Berkeley that is not necessarily federally driven in a way like they are not necessarily pulling back anything that we've seen yet on our capacity to do? I think the things that were raised are more about the federal government pulling back on the data that they choose to publish or that they emphasize in their infrastructure. I like your term of data resiliency. I haven't heard that one before. So we are very committed to continuing to have that kind of robust data here in California. And unlike things like the CalFresh program where we've talked before with the CFAP program, we've talked before about our reliance on the federal government for like running pieces of it through their systems for the payment system. And that makes us very reliant on some of the federal rules. This is more about our state data systems and structures and UC Berkeley partnership. We are, and we'll be talking in the future panels about the rollout of our new automation system, the CWS CARES system, later this year going live. And that will also be a significant improvement in our capabilities. So of course we will have to respond depending on what happens and what the federal government does. And we don't know in advance what that is, but we are well set up at this point, I would say.

That's correct. It's just a no cost extension and I think as has been said, it's it's an important bridge to get to the trs, which we discussed later. But it's funding a similar type of need that the strengths building component will also address once that's in place.

So we are very involved in the continuing work of the Mandated Reporting Advisory Committee, the outgrowth of the Mandated reporting to Community Supporting Committee. There are frequent meetings and conversations among those folks. There's a set of tri chairs who are now leading that work in committee and it is an outgrowth of the Child Welfare Council which you codified in statute as a result of legislation in support of the furtherance of that work. We are doing the work on the revisions of for example, the mandated reporter training that is well underway. So there are a number of recommendations that are in flight in terms of our work together with the Advisory committee to implement There are additional recommendations. There were 14, I think total. So there are certainly many additional recommendations that we continue to discuss, some of which are administrative in nature, things that we can do on their own, others of which as you point out, would take investment or potentially statutory change. So we don't have any proposals before you, but are always listening and willing to engage and have conversations about ideas that people have.

Anything else anyone would like to add before we conclude this? Panel members?

Good. Thank you so much. I really just want to make sure that advocates and the children themselves know or thinking about them. We want to do right by them.

I have something that I tell myself and I always say not on my watch. And so if there's more that can be done, I want to make sure that we're doing it. I want to make sure that we're. This is not just a business as usual thing because I don't think they should need a lobbyist to be able to make sure that they're prioritized. And so let's continue to go about that business appropriately. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I really should have brought that.

Sure. Hello again. Angie Schwartz, deputy director for the Children and Family Services Division. And thank you for having this discussion today. I do want to connect our discussion on the tiered rate structure to the broader goals that we were just talking about in the last panel on how to transform our child welfare system into a true child and family well being system. The tiered rate reform is a first and it's first in the nation reform. It finally aligns our funding with what we know children do best when they remain with their own families, with their relatives, with their tribes and in their communities. We talked about this in the last panel. For far too long we have tied our funding to the type of placement that the child is in. And TRS changes that by allowing children with the highest level of needs to receive full funding and services in family based settings, importantly in the settings of their own relatives and extended family members. It also shifts us to a strengths based model. Children are more than the sum of their trauma and TRS finally invests in building and maintaining a child's strengths through a self determination model. And it also gives us a way to immediately see and respond to a child's actionable needs through the new wraparound immediate needs program. Bringing together child welfare and behavioral health in a way that we've never done before. These are seismic shifts. TRS is a person centered, holistic approach and essential to achieving the long term goals that we just spent the last panel talking about. In terms of the status of implementation, we are on track to release all the foundational TRS policy guidance by the end of this year, which will allow us to focus the first half of 2027 before the rates go live on the training, capacity building and preparation of the workforce. In terms of what might impede our progress, Certainly the broader fiscal climate remains uncertain and is a risk within this context. It's important to note that by addressing needs earlier and supporting children within their own families, TRS will reduce the time youth spend in care, improve outcomes for children and their families, and avoid those more costly interventions later. In terms of the question about CANS and CFT timeliness, we do expect cans and CFTs to be timely by the end of this calendar year. We've added staff, issued updated guidance and fidelity tools, expanded training and technical assistance through the CAL Academies, and are focused on improving data entry, which we've identified along with our county partners as one of the primary needs for technical assistance regarding the readiness of automation. The tiered rate structure functionality within CWS CARES will have been tested and will be ready for launch. This will include training of county staff and it will happen before July 1, 2027. I'm happy to answer additional questions about the implementation of the tiered rate structure and we'll now turn it over to Assistant Deputy Director Wagner to provide an update on the CWS CARES milestones.

Hello. Rolling deep today?

All right. Okay.

Good afternoon. Carlos Marquez on behalf of the County Welfare Directors association, the successful launch of TRS is predicated on two precipitating events that CARES goes live smoothly and without delay and that the Legislature and the Administration fund the appropriation necessary to implement trs. Not piecemeal, but comprehensively. Implementing just one of these generational changes to the child welfare operations in California would be transformational on its own. But the fact that TRS is being implemented concurrent with Cares Go Live and at the same time as HR1 implementation is understandably being met with some anxiety by counties. But there is also an equal sense of opportunity that when we emerge on the other side, we can finally retire a legacy case management system that no longer serves our kids, our families, and the needs of our workers.

see how it goes.

I hope I'm reclaiming my time.

With the implementation of trs, we're going to be positioned to better meet the individual needs of each child in foster care in their community, together with or as close to their family as possible, and with a renewed focus on minimizing the negative developmental impacts associated with child welfare involvement, TRS county readiness activities currently include making progress toward improving KANS fidelity overall and ensuring staff are up to date on the retraining the training requirements related to KANSA and CFT fidelity. We're also working with the state, philanthropic and other partners on a capacity assessment. However, it's important to note that until we receive additional state guidance related to key TRS provisions, county planning can be challenging in the near term. In terms of concerns that we continue to discuss with the state, counties remain concerned about the possible gaps between existing service delivery capacity and the eventual demand for intensive services, including high fidelity rap, but also other services outside of rap, like family finding, for example, or respite care or specialty mental health services that are non rap. Additionally, because CAN doesn't effectively measure the needs of medically fragile children, counties remain concerned that their resource families may receive less than under the current rates. Furthermore, for counties that are currently administering effective programs at reducing the involvement in congregate settings for youth and children, it's unclear how these programs, like intensive Services for Foster Care, will continue. CWDA continues to request that counties have access to the latent CLASS analysis data so that we can identify cost and service gaps in preparation for TRS implementation. As I mentioned earlier, TRS is predicated on the successful launch of cares. Delays in access to needed information in CARES can be dire to child safety. CARES is significantly different, it should be noted, than cwscms. This is the system that workers have been used to using for 30 years. Because the stakes are so high with this conversion, we are actively in communication with our partners at CDSS and OTSI along with our child welfare leadership and we're messaging an all hands on deck approach to counties so that we can maximize full participation of all counties in the production simulation that our colleagues mentioned. So thank you for the opportunity to detail how the state and counties are partnering to ensure TRS is implemented and that CARES can go live on time.

Just a technical Note really. As Mr. Marquez noted, the the appropriation for the tiered rate structure it is subject to an appropriation by the legislature and as such it's our understanding that those numbers that we all heard from the administration in January about the size of the structural deficit in the out years, they do not yet include the cost of the tiered rate structure in those. So that's just something to keep in mind is that the sort of default is that it is subject to an appropriation by the legislature. And so as such I think we're laid out in your agenda. Pose some questions for the legislature to ask about what that means if the appropriation is not made by the legislature. Clearly the administration and counties are going forward despite this uncertainty. An enormous amount of work is being done to prepare for the tiered rate structure. So what happens to those resources? Currently the implementation is phased in over three years. Is there a different phase in schedule that the legislature could consider that would not cost as much initially or are there different components of it that could be rolled out first? So these are the some of the questions that we pose as you think about these out year implementation effects and the costs and how they work with the structural deficit numbers that you're hearing now.

Department of Finance so currently the administration does not have a proposal to change the implementation approach. The governor's budget maintains the funding to

to share on that.

What's the latest multi year? I think I have that.

implementation the latest multi year, and the full implementation doesn't happen until fiscal year 2930, but it's projected to be about 890 million full implementation.

And the state cost for that would be around 705 million.

I'm not

Did we see positive outcomes from the emergency response program utilizing those funds?

Yeah, I would agree with that. And it's important to note that while our caseloads have reduced overall, the acuity and complexity of our cases during and after the pandemic have actually worsened significantly. The types of cases that we're seeing are, in no uncertain terms, fairly egregious and are taking a great deal of staff Time. So some of the strategies that our counties are putting in place are not just hiring new new child welfare units, but also making sure that the existing investigative units are being properly compensated so that we can retain them in the first place. The turnover for these staff is the highest of all staff within child welfare departments. So we are seeing positive signs. I think we're seeing improved redirection to CBOs when necessary. We're seeing improvement in terms of kin based placements when we can make them. And because of sort of those incidental. One of the incidental benefits I think is also reducing some of the disproportionality that you discussed in your last panel.

Some specific county? I think we actually have a Riverside case study that we can share with you as well and statewide data.

I'm going to defer to department of finance on that.

so we're aware of the requests

to continuing conversations with the legislature on these requests.

flag that there's going to be some

We continue working to approve a balanced budget.

Sure, we can take that back.

Awesome. Okay, that's enough of that. That was more than I even thought it was going to be. But. But we'll continue that. Just know that we are, this committee is taking those two requests seriously and so we want to make sure that we have some thoughtful and thorough discussions on it moving forward. Thank you about on that. Let's come back to this panel in terms of the trs. First committee members, do you have any questions or comments at this time in regards to trs? Obviously it seems like TRS in terms of all the technical things and all the foundational system things seem to be on track. We are now in the stages of making sure that is working as intended and all those good things. Tell me about. I believe you also said that the CANS assessments and the CFT meetings, making sure that they're occurring on a timely basis by July 1st. We're on track with that as well.

work with the counties and CWS cares. Obviously as we are moving forward with that, is there going to be any piloting involved before we do full wide?

and when we think about the tiered system, obviously there, I remember last year, and we have talked about this discussion, that there seemed to be some concerns from our ear, from our providers in terms of how the tier rates will go, whether it will be enough. When we're making the assumptions in terms of base funding versus the additional funding based upon the population and the needs, have we gotten closer with advocates and providers in terms of understanding whether it'll be enough? And so that as we transition that we are actually not putting ourselves in the position where we might lose additional providers when it comes to these items,

The one thing I would just add to those remarks is that you had asked us to look in greater depth at the costs of providing services to young people who have a higher level of needs and what services and supports they do need. And we did take that look. We both ourselves and with a contractor and in quite a bit of engagement with providers themselves and with variety of stakeholders. And we submitted that report to you in January. So it's another resource to look to for that additional detail on sort of spelling out what the needs are and how that overlays onto the tiered rate structure. The conclusion of that report ultimately was that when these things are all layered together contingent on that high fidelity rap rollout from dhcs, that it does meet the needs that are outlined in that report.

segue into our next panel, which is issue number three. Thank you very much for this panel.

Just gonna hang out up here.

It's all right. You just get to sit up here all day. I mean, this is what I do.

Hello again, Angie Schwartz, Deputy Director of the Children and Family Services Division. I want to start in our discussion of the critical issues facing the STRTPs and FFAs by noting that our foster family agencies and short term residential treatment programs play a critical role in California's continuum of care. Based on the most recent Point in time data from October 2025, about 17% of youth are placed through an FFA and about 3% are NSTRTPS. The expertise of these providers and supporting youth with complex needs will remain essential as we move to implement the tiered rate structure. We anticipate these providers will be able to better serve a broader range of youth by expanding their services to better support children living with relatives and with extended family members, as well as serving the youth that are within their facilities. In terms of the report that we were just discussing and that's also referenced in the agenda, after the enactment of the tiered rate structure, the legislature required CDSS to complete an analysis of the needs of youth in Tiers two, three and three plus. We worked with the center for Innovation and Population Health, the Public Consulting Group and the Public Works alliance to complete that report which was submitted in January of 2026, so just a couple months ago. The immediate needs analysis focuses squarely on understanding what the needs of those young people are, what services most effectively address those needs, the factors that drive additional supervision, the reasonable administrative activities that providers must perform in meeting those needs, and the cost of meeting those needs. A core principle throughout TRS that we've been discussing in each of the last three panels is ensuring that the child's needs can be met in any setting. This is essential to allowing to the goal of allowing children to live within their own families and not tying the services or funding to any particular placement type to deepen our understanding of the youth in those higher tiers. As I mentioned, we partnered with the center for Innovation and Population Health and they conducted a fractured analysis of the IP CANS data. That fractured analysis identified subgroups of youth whose needs clustered together and helped clarify what supports were required. We also convened an expert panel to help us interpret that data, identify what the unmet needs are, and recommend the services that would need to be in place in order to meet those needs, the panel found that high fidelity wraparound is the most effective foundation for meeting the needs of youth in Tiers two, three and three plus because it's a holistic cross system teams based approach. Financial modeling also showed that coordinating wraparound with the immediate needs program is effective and sustainable when medi cal is maximized and the flexible funding is preserved for the non medical services. In terms of the insurance crisis, CDSS continues to engage sorry to engage with foster family agencies, counties, consumer attorneys and the California alliance and the Department of Insurance to address the long term insurance availability and affordability. We have about 7.5 million left of the 31.5 million that was allocated last year to support the FFAs, and the agencies are able to continue to apply for these funds through June 30, 2027 or until they're fully utilized. As of March 3rd of this year, 28 FFAs have closed. Importantly, all of the active homes that were part of those FFAs were successfully ported to either another FFA or to a county, preventing placement disruptions and allowing those families to continue to support those children. Once TRS is implemented, foster family agencies will also receive administrative funding tied to the use tier, better aligning the resources and the needs that shift funding following the child as opposed to the placement type will significantly strengthen the financial stability of FFAs and enable them to serve the full spectrum of youth's needs because those administrative costs are much higher for, well, for all kids actually. So starting at tier one because it's higher than the level of care administrative rate for FFAs and then also within the tier three and the three plus, it's a level of administrative funding that has never been available to Support youth and FFAs before because that level of funding has always been reserved for strtps.

providers that serve them.

Good afternoon Chair Jackson and members of the Subcommittee. I am Victoria Kelly and I'm the CEO for Redwood Community Services, a multi service organization based in rural Northern California serving Mendocino, Lake and Humboldt Counties. Through our FFA and STRTPs, we address local needs by building strong relationships with children, families and county partners across child welfare and behavioral health. Our commitment to individualized services and caregiver support has led to remarkable results in the past year. Every child placed in an RCS home maintains stability without any placement disruptions. Strtps like ours play a pivotal role in the child welfare continuum, providing safe and therapeutic environments for youth in need of stabilization before moving to family based homes. If our FFA or STRTPs were to close, many youth, especially those with complex needs, would have no other place to go. Even with family finding efforts, we are unable to find family with the resources to support every child's needs at every step of their journey. Probation departments and county social workers rely on our services to ensure that youth receive the necessary support to address challenging behaviors with the goal of preventing future placement disruptions and promoting long term stability. And without these resources, many youth would face multiple placements and ultimately potentially homelessness. Nevertheless, FFAs and STRTPs continue to face significant obstacles. Thank you for last year's FFA Bridge funding. Your support helped keep our doors open. Though ongoing challenges with insurance costs remain. Without a long term fix to the insurance crisis, me and many colleagues may need to make the very difficult decision to close our doors. The complexity of our work is further compounded by TRS implementation. This payment shift threatens our ability to offer critical services, retain staff and fulfill regulatory obligations due to the insufficient reimbursement structure. If left unaddressed, the current TRS structure could also force FFAs and STRTPs to close, further limiting access to community based care. Another additional challenge with TRS is in regards to wraparound immediate needs expectations. RCS is working toward high fidelity wraparound certification and maintains two contracts with two counties. However, one county's ongoing decision to not contract wraparound services threatens our ability to meet requirements and raises concerns about whether a sole wraparound provider will deliver the best care for children and youth. In closing, I urge the subcommittee to recognize that FFAs and STRTPs are not optional, they are essential. We are the sole FFA provider in one of our counties and the sole STRTP providing services to the three rural Northern California counties we serve. Addressing the impacts of TRS and insurance challenges is not about preserving our programs. It's about ensuring that children and youth in California have access to safe healing and community based care that make true permanency possible. And I think we all share that goal. Thank you for your leadership in allowing me to speak today and share our perspective of rural providers.

Assemblymember Lee thank you.

Chair Jackson, I have a question for the Department. So I understand that when you were doing the re tiering process for foster Youth, you categorized 74% of youth to be in tier one, the lowest tier of need, right?

Yeah. So I wanted to ask what would your Plan B be if this was an underestimation of the needs of so many foster youth? I am just quite surprised that 74% of them are in the lowest low cost here.

Okay, well, since we are in the budgetary context, it's just important to, I think, in a sense to budget the maximum need rather than budgeting the minimum need for children. A second topic to be this was brought up a little bit with the FFAs and the insurance aspect. You know, Lafayette, last session last year we also passed immunity for the FFAs. Do you believe, does department believe that extending the immunity from 2027 to 2030 will stabilize the FFAs?

Okay.

That's all I have for now.

We do to draw down from 7.5 million has not been spent yet or not been allocated yet to the FFAs, and they can apply for that through June of 27th.

Well, that represents a pretty small percentage of the 31.5 million that was allocated for this year. And so those dollars are only available either until June of 27 or until they're expended. And so we're continuing on a rolling basis to accept applications from the foster family agencies to apply for those dollars as their needs continue to arise.

And

I think that's partly a question for my colleagues at the Department of Health Care Services. I mean, we are in conversation with them about the integration of the two programs. And then they are really the experts on the Medicaid funding. So I would have to defer to them.

Well, so we have our investment, the immediate needs dollars, our Entirely state general fund investment.

So that's all new dollars in order to meet those immediate needs of those children. What we found in our analysis, and we believe to be true, is the most effective model in actually seeing and responding to the needs is through integration with high fidelity wrap and that the integration of those two things is going to one, allow us to expand those dollars and leverage additional federal dollars, so make them go farther. But that also High Fidelity wraparound as the model with or without federal Medicaid dollars. That High Fidelity wraparound is the right model to actually see and meet the needs of our children. Because it is that integrated model that combines, you know, different systems in order to meet the child's needs. And so we have our dollars and we also have existing high fidelity WRAP programs, some of whom are not using Medicaid right now. And so combining it with that high fidelity RAP model, I think is really what's essential is building it as that RAP program. That said, it's also really important that some of the dollars remain flexible. And so our proposal is not that everything get integrated into a RAP model, but that you also have some of the dollars set aside that do not have to be integrated and that can meet the other sort of flexible needs that come up in any individual child or family's case in order to really have that holistic model. So I'm not sure that there would be a plan B in terms of the model itself. I think you're asking about like the funding streams to support the model. And so I think again, we'd have to continue those conversations with our Medicaid partners.

Are we talking about the immediate needs program itself still within

cost of the cost analysis?

So I think our cost analysis has shown, as we mentioned, that the care and supervision component of the rate is sufficient to meet the licensing standards for the STRTPs. And we're continuing to have conversations about how we arrived at that and sort of the numbers that were utilized. And so we'll continue to have those conversations and be able to share those as well. And then you've got the strength building dollars that are all new. And then the High Fidelity immediate needs dollars, I think is part of the conversation that's really at the Heart of what you're talking about, which is when and how are those dollars available to support the child within the strtp? Because keep in mind that the tiered rate structure is not built on current assumptions about how dollars flow and how we meet the needs of kids. And so there is a shift in terms of how we're going to meet those needs and what our provider community will be able to do to meet those needs. So right now the STRTP rate is a bundled rate that's only paid when the child's within that strtp. But the tiered rate structure breaks it apart and says the immediate needs funding is one attached to the child and integrated into a high fidelity RAP program. Which also means that our providers can serve kids with those dollars who are not placed through their programs, but can also serve them in relative homes, in the homes of extended family members and tribes. And that's really key to the model is that we don't want a provider community that only serves kids that are within their facilities. That we want something that's building a team for the child and then that team stays with that child even if their placement changes. So even if they have to go into another setting, they don't have to lose everything and start over. And you don't have to say the only way we can get those services is if the child is placed in that setting, that we can actually bring those services to the child where they are. That's the whole point of the tiered rate structure, which also means the business models of our foster family agencies and our STRTPs can evolve and expand to also provide those services through those community settings and to actually be able to meet the needs of kids that are with their relatives and expand our ability to support kids in the settings where we know they do best.

what

So I think we talk about that a lot as well and a lot of folks, I mean I heard in your testimony saying like we have a hard time recruiting families to care for the needs of youth with more complex needs. We also don't have a system that provides funding or supports to the families when we are able to recruit them. So there's a complete mismatch right now in terms of like you can recruit a family, but the most funding that you're really going to be able to provide for that family is usually within LOC 1 or 2, most of our relatives are not within the ISFC program. They're not getting that level of service and support because that's a place based rate. And so. And there is no immediate needs program to support kids in relative homes right now. And there are no strength building dollars to support kids in relative homes right now. So you really are talking about a completely different world in which we're recruiting family members to step up and care for kids. So I don't know that it's that we're not seeing families that want to be able to care for their own family members who have a high acuity of need. I think they don't feel like it's possible within the way that we've currently set the system up. But if you have the care and supervision rate at the levels that the tiered rate structure allows so that you can actually take the time off work and really dedicate the time that this child's going to need in terms of care and supervision and you have a high fidelity rap team and you've got strength building dollars, your ability to care for that child has fundamentally changed.

I think it's why high fidelity rap is such an important model that's part of this. Because you can't do it alone, right? Like we can't just turn on the care and supervision rate and say more dollars alone is what's going to enable you to care for this child. You need a team, you need that team, you need that support, you need to be able to get the respite and the other things that you need. And so the integrated approach, all of the different components of TRS and how they come together to meet the needs of that family is really important. So I couldn't agree with you more. I think what you said is right on. And it's why we didn't just say we need to change the care and supervision rates when we looked at this. And actually when we met with more than 40 work groups back in 2023, when we were looking at our current rate system and saying what doesn't work about this rate system? We heard that so loudly from people like we need more like one, the needs need to be linked to the child and not the placement. And two, we need services. We need a team. These families need more than just dollars. And so those things were integrated into the tiered rate structure.

Yes, thank you. I just, I agree with most of what the department's saying. I think the challenges for providers is the predication on the certification for High Fidelity rep. As being part of that whole, whole funding structure that we would be able to draw down. And I think the challenge that many STRTPs and FFAs face is the continuous operational costs rising back to insurance and even the discussion around like what the TRS rate structure is based on assumptions of our current LOC rate structure that already has shortfalls for providers. And so we're setting it up from the get go on a system that is a shortfall for providers with additional expectation for providers to have an additional certification which is going to have costs associated for maintaining that certification, maintaining staff training to be a High Fidelity RAT provider. And I think that that's a significant challenge for many providers. We have high fidelity RAT programs, but it takes a significant investment for us to maintain that. I don't think it's being considered when we're adding that expectation on to providers in the rate structure.

two things I would say about it. One, we are convening a group to look at the licensing standards and the certification standards and the mental health and making sure that there's not duplication that we're streamlining. So I think that, that that work is really important to do and it's underway. And then in terms of the capacity, I think we are also was mentioned in one of the panels about to embark on a landscape analysis of High Fidelity RAP and look at sort of what capacity we have across the state right now within existing High Fidelity RAP providers and then what capacity do we need to build and to bring online. So I think on both of those points I would agree that's really critical that we make sure that that providers that want to provide those services can step into that space and that we have the capacity to serve kids. And so that capacity analysis is underway and will be completed this year.

now

There is a work group that is meeting in order to discuss some of those long term solutions and it involves our partners at Department of Insurance and us. And I think it's being led by the California Alliance. And so those conversations are continuing. I think with regard to the foster family agencies, there is more admin dollars available through the tiered rate structure overall because the admin funding for the tier one youth is more than LOC 1, 2 or 3. Right. So like it raises that for all of those youth. And you also can get the admin dollars at tier 3 plus equivalent to the work that they're actually doing right now often in serving the youth with the most complex needs through ISFC programs. But we're seeing that many of those youth are probably going to fall into a higher tier and actually should be supported with a higher amount of funding. And so there is a right sizing that happens with the tiered rate structure as well in terms of those admin dollars.

I'm not sure that I have a timeline per se. I mean we are actively meeting and working to come up with those solutions.

Sure.

I don't know.

Good afternoon. My name is Hana Azamati and I'm the Deputy director of the California Department of Social Services Housing and Homelessness Division, or hhd. The Bringing Families Home program, or bfh, aims to reduce homelessness and housing instability amongst families in the child welfare system, including tribal child welfare systems. By improving housing stability, the program also intends to prevent foster care placement and support family reunification. Nationally, BFH is one of the first large scale programs focused specifically on the housing needs of child welfare involved families. It provides family centered support such as housing, navigation, case management and rental subsidies. To answer your first question in the agenda, BFH has no ongoing funding but has received two tranches of 92.5 million in time limited funding in Budget Acts 2021 and 2022 which led to an increase in grantees from 23 in 2019 to 78. Now, counties and tribes spent several years building up staffing and infrastructure before reaching peak scale in fiscal year 20. That year, counties supported a caseload of 4,754 families. That included 2,641 newly enrolled families. Counties expended 56.8 million in that year. Maintaining that level of service would require similar annual funding as was expended that year. To the second question on the agenda, where is the program faltering due to infinite due to finite resources? In terms of the impacts of receiving recurring time limited resources, county and tribal grantees have shared with CDSS that it is challenging to sustain staffing, local partnerships, and program infrastructure. Over time, funding uncertainty has required some grantees to scale back services or narrow the range of supports that they offer, for example, reducing the availability of emergency housing, reducing the length and duration and depth of rental subsidies, and cutting supportive services. These funding fluctuations can lead to service interruptions, disruptions for families, and reduce efficiency for programs as grantees must repeatedly scale programs up and down instead of focusing resources on serving families. To the third question as to what families will do if BFH funds expire with no new investment. I want to just provide background. As you know, that BFH serves a uniquely vulnerable population. 2024 External evaluation of the program found that BFH families had substantially deeper child welfare involvement compared to other child welfare involved families and were less likely to be connected to homeless response programs. Despite these complex needs, the program delivers very strong outcomes. In fiscal year 2425, BFH participants exited to permanent housing at a rate of 68%. That's up from 57% the year prior, and that's compared to 35% on average across local homeless response systems in California. The BFH evaluation also found a 68% increase in family reunification for children in foster care at entry into bfh, underscoring the foundational role that housing plays in the lives of families that are in general but also in particular who are engaged with the child welfare system. Since the program has no ongoing funding, BFH programs would shut down as counties and tribal grantees exhaust remaining funds if there were no further investment and more families could be at risk of prolonged homelessness as well as reduced chances of reunification. Thank you for your time and happy to take questions.

Thank you Elio.

It's coming. Department of Finance.

to cut to the chase on this one, this committee believes that this is an essential part of a 21st century social safety net. We will not allow anyone to be a part of our social safety net or be or have to enter our social safety net simply because they didn't have the support that they needed. And so LAO and administration, we do want to make sure and the critical number is this. How much will it take to ensure that funding levels will last the entire fiscal year? I know some counties, they, they ran out of funding before the fiscal year ended. We want to prevent that from happening for the next fiscal year. What number will it take to ensure that all counties have the funding necessary, including any unmet needs that have that would, that there were possibly. How much would that cost us? And so I know that we might need to do some digging and speak more with our county partners on this. But we want to make sure that we we right size this to ensure that that that this gets done.

Lao? Thank you. Hold on. Did anyone have a question? Did you have a question? Administration.

No?

thank you.

Hello. Angie Schwartz, Deputy Director of the Children and Family Services Division. Let me start by noting the intent of the proposed trailer bill on the adoption assistance program out of home placement and wraparound services. The intention is to align with the Continuum of Care reform initiative which eliminated the use of group homes and requires youth in foster care to be supported within short term residential therapeutic programs or STRTPs to provide standardized guidance for the requirements that must be met anytime the adoption assistance payment is funding either the out of home placement in the STRTP or the wraparound services to decrease the fraudulent use of AAP payments. To clearly define the criteria for wraparound services paid by adoption assistance and ensure that the providers who provide those services are meeting the high fidelity RAP certification standards. And to clarify that if a child and family reside in another state, a wraparound service provider in the child's state of residence may be utilized if the eligibility requirements are met. In terms of the overall reaction to the trailer bill, I would say that we engaged in the four listening sessions in four listening sessions with with stakeholders in August, September and December of 2025 to hear about what they wanted to see in the trailer bill. And the trailer bill as introduced is largely reflective of the input received from stakeholders. And so we are hearing a generally positive reaction. There have been some requests to discuss or extend the 60 day transition period out of an STRTP to be 120 or 180 days. As was noted in the agenda, I would say the other area where there's been significant discussion is on how to ensure that adoptive families can easily access the wraparound services without delay and unnecessary administrative barriers. This may be more of an implementation question than a question for the trailer bill language itself, but I would note that we share that goal and also would note the extensive work that we were talking about just a couple panels ago about how we're developing standardized and accessible high fidelity wraparound services across California through the development of the certification standards and also through the work that's being led by the Department of Healthcare Services in terms of specific areas where stakeholders are seeking changes. We're continuing these discussions with stakeholders about where we may need to refine the trailer bill and in terms of outcomes expected. We expect children who are adopted to spend less time in congregate care, allowing them to heal within their families with strong wraparound support and with services like wraparound enhanced care management and other post permanency supports. We anticipate greater adoption stability and fewer disruptions before an out of home placement is ever needed. Happy to answer questions.

thank you Chair Jackson and members for the opportunity to respond to the AAP Trailer Bill language My name is Chantel Johnson and I am the directing advocate at the Youth Law Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization that works to transform foster care and juvenile justice systems so that you young people and families receive the support they need to thrive. For many years, Youth Law center has worked with youth families and advocates and policymakers to address the harms associated with out of state residential placements. We helped lead prior efforts to prohibit the use of these facilities for youth in foster care because of the well documented abuse, neglect and trauma children experience in many of these programs. And we were closely involved in last year's trailer bill language addressing the use of out of state residential placements for families receiving Adoption Assistance Program benefits. Through our work with youth who have experienced these placements, we've heard directly about the lasting harm many of the children have suffered in these settings. We appreciate the Administration's attention to the needs of adoptive families and youth impacted by recent changes to aap. As you know, legislation last year in the budget restricted the use of these funds for out of state placements as A result, counties and adoptive families are now working to identify alternative supports for these youth whose needs previously led families to seek these care out of state for many years, one of our core concerns has been that families who adopt children from foster care are often left largely on their own to find services for children who have experienced significant grief, loss and trauma. In many cases, the services families needed simply were not available early enough or in the right form to support children and families before challenges escalated into crisis. For some families, turning to residential programs out of state was not a first choice. It was a last option they could find when the services their children needed were not available closer to home. It is also important to acknowledge that many of these facilities used by California's families have extensive histories of abuse and harm to children. We know that many youth returning from these programs were left with greater trauma than when they left left. No child should have to enter these settings and not receive the help they need. Children heal best in the families and communities and not institutions. Ensuring successful transitions home will require thoughtful planning and strong supports for both youth and their families. We appreciate that the proposed trailer bill seeks to clarify how AAP payments can be used for in state placements and wraparound services. Strengthening access to high quality wraparound across the state for youth receiving AAP is a positive step, but this proposal represents only the beginning of what these youth and families are likely to need. During our recent conversations with CDSs, the department shared that this proposal was not intended to address the full range of needs of youth and families who relied on out of state placements. We appreciate their openness and their commitment to continue working with stakeholders on these broader issues. For Youth Law center, the most urgent priority is ensuring that the youth currently returning to California and their families have the services and supports necessary for successful transitions. It is critical that the Legislature and CDSS prioritize learning directly from these youth and families who experience these placements. Their experience can help us identify the gaps in services that contributed to these crises and their early supports that could have prevented youth from ever reaching the point where residential care or even a wraparound appeared to be the option. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Mr. Chair, we're still reviewing the trailer bill in front of you here. We understand the intent and concept, but also understand the concerns raised today and we see the staff recommendation to convene meetings to work through some of that and we're happy to participate in those two.

a couple of things here. Obviously, despite passage of the State law to establish the psychiatric residential treatment facilities. We have yet to be able to do so. Am I correct in that right.

How do we plan on rectifying that?

When do we. Do we have a timeline on how? We're trying to. Because it seems like these are important facilities to have. I know it might take a while to kind of to get some. Get the skeleton together, but do you have a sense of when we should be expecting these facilities to be available?

Yeah, I mean maybe we can just set up an update. Sure, that would be helpful so that we can make sure that we're have a full grasp of expectations and those type of things for this trailer bill. There are some concerns in terms of the fact that the AAP payments being narrowed to only being used for short term residential treatment facilities, as well as the capping of the payments to no more than a 12 month cumulative period, The wraparound caps, those type of things. The social worker in me just says that whenever you have cookie cutter caps someone's going to get hurt unnecessarily because humans are on their own timeline. And so I'm fundamentally opposed to just caps just for cap's sake. And so I would like to see some more work on that. Also. There seems to be additional possible burdens when it comes to being able to access wraparound services. For instance, the trailer bill requires adoptive families to search for providers, provide proof that providers meet certification and state standards, and enter into contracts with service providers. This seems that it could serve as a barrier for timely access. And so I want us to take another look at that as well. Just with those concerns. This committee is going to be rejecting this proposal under its current form. But we are going to be looking forward for the administration to convene some meetings on the trailer bill proposal just to assure that questions are answered before we make final decisions on this. I know that. I mean we've proven we can work through these before, before showtime and after the May revise. And I hope we can get there. Okay, that's all I have. Thank you very much.

We will jump ahead to issue number seven. So issue number seven, panel, come on up. And then we will return to issue number six. That's a bit easier since it's my proposal. Issue number seven. And this is a proposal for tribally developed foster prevention services and I think are the first ones to. The first one will be. The vice chair. Ms. Chacon, you may begin when you're ready.

Boozhoo hello Chair Jackson, Assemblymember Rogers, thank you for having us today. My name is Michelle Castine. I'm a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. And I'm coming to you today in my role as the co Executive Director of the California Tribal Families Coalition. So I'm wearing both the hat of the staff lead representing 50 member tribes from across the state who have unified around issues that impact tribal families and as an attorney who's in courtrooms across the state pretty much every day and very much seeing the immense need that we need to invest in services prior to families coming into contact with the child welfare system to really prevent the impact that that's having on an investment in the prevention services. And for tribes to provide prevention services directly is very much needed. We've heard from colleagues and other panels today that the child welfare system generally is moving in the direction of investing in prevention services and that there have been good outcomes to that extent. Unfortunately, tribes have largely been left out of that infrastructure building and currently only two of the 109 tribes federally recognized tribes here in California can access prevention services funding. 1574, authored by Assemblymember Rogers, would fix that and it would make funding available to all tribes to be able to administer their own prevention services funding programs. We know that investing in prevention services works. We've heard today that investments through the Family Services Prevention act has driven down the rates of foster care generally in California by about 30%. And we know even more that tribally driven programs can have great success too. There's a program called the My2Aunties program. It's a tribal program that the San Diego County Welfare services invested in heavily and they saw a reduction in foster care rates of their families of 98%. So almost no families entering into child welfare because that tribally driven and tribal consortium led program was working with families before they ever became system involved. And I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Leo. Nothing to add, Department of Finance.

this is not an administration proposal, so

other proposals, any new proposals requiring new

Thank you very much. Looking forward to working with you all on that. Assemblymember Rogers, any questions or comments? Yeah, I'll just make a couple of quick comments. And first, I want to start with thanking the chair for his interest in this topic and for all of the work that he's done on this. As he and I have discussed numerous times, this is a huge issue in my district. And as we try to right some of the wrongs of California's history towards our tribal governments that we partner with, we need to make sure that we're also continuing to stop the bleeding at the same time. And we see that a concerted effort and a culturally relevant and responsive effort can, in fact, do that and address the overrepresentation that we see of tribal youth in our communities. And so I've been very proud to partner with him on this as well. We did work on this last year. There was a bill that was vetoed. So the proposal that's before us for funding is responsive to the concerns from the administration. And we know just even from an economic and a budget perspective, it is treating. Treating with preventative medicine before somebody gets to the emergency room in the social sense, that this will, over time, save us money in the state of California, and that it is responsible budgeting, and it's the moral and right thing for

So I want to thank you for holding the panel. I want to thank you all for your advocacy, and I'm very supportive of it. Thank you very much. Actually, you know, it wasn't until at the end of last session that I even realized that there wasn't even a such program to ensure that we're providing enough support for our tribal brothers and sisters. And so after learning that, it just reminded me of the adage of. Of asking a bootless person to pick themselves up by their bootstraps. Right. And the idea is that we know, and my own academic studies show me, that culturally specific interventions is the platinum level that you can achieve. Ensuring that people are able to receive the interventions in a way that is culturally specific and in a way that allows them to get those services provided by their own community is the best practice. And so it is our intention to ensure that not only do we continue to make sure that we atone for the. The history that the state has done to Native people, I think this is a moral responsibility that we have, and it is my intention that we deliver on those needs as well. And so we want to thank you for bringing this to our attention. And there is nothing better that I think we can be using our dollars to be able to do so. Thank you all very much and we look forward to continue working with you throughout this process.

Thank you.

Angie Schwartz, Deputy Director of Children and Family Services I would just say that we greatly appreciate your interest in this topic and absolutely share the goal of facilitating employment opportunities and creating more professional pathways for foster youth. We do have a number of initiatives that are currently in place and so I think that might be one place to start is looking at those and seeing where we can strengthen them. Those span activities of child welfare transition services and then also workforce and apprenticeship program programs, education and training supports and public sector employment pathways. So just to name a few, we've got our independent living program, which is all about employment readiness and career exploration, referrals to work and training opportunities. Our transitional housing providers also work with youth to sort of develop those career pathways. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Youth in America's Job center for California are also locally operated workforce programs that provide that kind of job readiness. Importantly are the Chaffey Education and training vouchers, which provide not just for support in community college and college, but also can be used for vocational training as well. We've got state hiring preferences for foster youth. And then we also have Resource page. There's been an interagency apprenticeship coordination, which is a cross agency collaboration collaborative that is trying to align child welfare outreach with California's registered apprenticeship programs and services. So that's underway. So there are things. And then of course there's things that happen at the county and the community level. So there are things that are in place right now. And I think part of the conversation is how to strengthen those things and make sure that young people are actually able to utilize them. We could think about different ways to do that through expanding and formalizing paid government internships and apprenticeship programs, creating those structured career pathways within government, which I think is part of what you were just talking about, aligning government workforce programs with apprenticeship programs. I think some of those conversations are the conversations that are happening within some of these collaboratives. I would also just note, and this goes back to the conversation that we were having in the first panel, another one of the most impactful things that we've done for non minor dependent for young people aging out of foster care is not make them age out at age 18. So that extension of foster care until age 21 had a significant impact on young people's ability to both go to college and enter the workforce and also increase the amount of earnings that they had. So we do see that just the ability to have stability and support in a place to live was incredibly impactful in terms of career and college readiness and actually entering the workforce and taking advantage of educational opportunities. So I'll leave it there.

Elio, nothing to add.

We just want to echo our comments from the previous issue because those comments apply to this issue.

Yeah, let's hope so. Chairman Jackson, thank you very much. Kevin Gaines, CDSS Deputy Director for Community Care Licensing thanks for the opportunity to provide an update on licensing programs and our performance, including our status on backlogs, inspection timeliness, complaint response and areas of ongoing continuous improvement. Just to recap for this committee, the community care licensing mission is promotion of health safety and quality of life for each person in community care through an effective and collaborative regulatory enforcement system so overall workload is stabilized after the pandemic and our programs. And just as an aside, being a responder of last resort, especially in adult and senior care programs, we were deeply affected by the pandemic and infection control response requirements, but our programs continue to meet key inspection mandates. Adult and senior care, children's residential, childcare and home care services programs have each made significant progress in maintaining inspection schedules, improving complaint response and supporting program capacity. So we'll start with backlogs and an update on that. So the adult and senior care program continues to work through a complaint backlog that began during COVID 19 using cross regional support. And there are about 14 offices across California where those those employees there lend each other a hand workload balancing and overtime and and with those we increase complaint dispositions and reduce that those backlogs still struggling. The child care program doesn't have a significant complaint backlog at all. In children's residential, we reduced the complaint backlog to by 32% over the last fiscal year 2425 and we expect continued improvement this year. In home care services, which is a relatively new program, they've reduced complaints pending more than 90 days by 83% thanks to added staff. Thank you to this committee in particular for that and process improvements. As far as inspection timeliness and complaint response are concerns. Adult and senior care program met its annual inspection mandate for calendar year 2025. Child care program exceeded its milestones, inspecting 63% of all its licensed facilities, although it's only required to inspect 30% of those facilities annually. Children's residential program met its biennial inspection mandate and the home care services branch completed 700 inspections in fiscal year 2425, or about a third of its biennial requirement. And with recent staffing increases and more efficient inspection protocols, the branch expects to meet the full two year mandate starting in 2028. It's going to take us a while to kind of get better across programs. Complaint response times continue to improve, especially in Children's, residential and home care services. We're also seeing shifts in facility growth trends. Adult and senior care facilities increased by just over 4% last fiscal year. Childcare licensing continues to grow as well with a nearly 4% increase in facilities. As far as our staffing, our vacancy rate is now 5.1% as of February 1st. And the workforce stability there is really helping us achieve our statutory mandates. Where do we need to improve? So continuous improvement priorities for us include further reducing adult and senior care complaint backlog, strengthening our ability to manage emergency related disruptions, and refining long term inspection strategies as programs grow in number and in complexity. For home care services, that's a specific target of mine, stabilizing program funding and maintaining fiscal solvency remain our key goal. That's supported by increased enforcement and an 11% rise in licensed home care organizations in fiscal year 2425. So increased increase in licenses means increased fees, which means, you know, additional revenues which support our operations. And with that, thanks for your time. Happy to answer any questions you have, Leo.

Chair.

Please let me know. Let's make sure we do a debrief on it.

Thank you so much you all. I'm reading here that June 30, 2025, you all stopped accepting new county contracted complaints. Is that still the case?

So, and is there any danger to that?

So now they're doing it now, picking up that response. So it's not that no one's getting a complaint, it's that it's just, okay,

Okay. Are you going to do any of the quality control on that to making

All right.

You're very welcome.

Thank you so much. Chair Jackson, Director Kristin Erickson Donady and Chief Financial Officer Nan Chen, who will start our remarks.

Thank you so much. To address the question about what we can do to make our program more family friendly, I want to share that our commitment is to provide a holistic suite of services for all families regardless of their income level. The most any family can be charged for these services is $35 per year, which is a federal requirement. Any family who is currently or has ever received CalWORKs benefits does not pay anything for the services. We have greatly reduced the need for families to take time off by shifting to remote services. For example, every time we open a new case, there's a requirement to interview parents. And for many local child support agencies, these can be done remotely via video calls. Now, we've also worked with our courts and have many of the options to appear via video as well. Gone are the days when parents had to take an entire day off of work to come to court, so they're able to call in and reduce those administrative burdens to get the formal orders. We've also worked to be more family friendly by changing the terminology we use. We no longer say things like non custodial parent and custodial parent. We speak to parents using their names. They are parents or they are the person who receives support. We've simplified our enrollment process and shifted away from language like an application. Nobody has to apply for our services, they merely need to enroll. And we're working on ways to make that enrollment process much easier for these families. We've also expanded our options for making payment of child support and exploring what the future of payment of child support looks like using money such as digital wire wallet. Seeing what the future holds and what might be possible in terms of family friendliness. We also want to focus on getting a good job and training if necessary. California was awarded 2 out of only 10 grants that were awarded by the Office of Child Support Enforcement. At the federal level, these are next gen employment grants being operated in Los Angeles, Sacramento and Stanislaus counties providing holistic wraparound services to assist families in providing in training and employment services. We're also collaborating with several counties led by Contra Costa in San Francisco, seeking a waiver from the Office of Child Support Enforcement that would allow us to provide in kind support to satisfy child support orders. So for example, if the person receiving support offered to have goods and services satisfies that order. So it's kind of one of its kind coming in the future in terms of the HR1 impact. I want to note that child support is a critical source of income for many low income families raising children out of poverty. When we look at the administrative burdens that are posed by the new work requirements, we understand that many families will be shifted off of those benefits. They will no longer be able to meet them, some of them if only because of the administrative burden of doing so of meeting those compliance requirements. We did participate a member of our staff on the inaugural Governor's Innovation Fellowship, lending our expertise from the child support perspective and how to find income administratively without having to bother the family. So that was really great to have a member participate there. We do think that there is a lot of overlap with these families and that as families are not able to access benefits such as CalFresh, the need for child support will be greater and so we need the staffing levels to maintain so that we're able to meet their needs needs. For the last two questions I will answer briefly but then Defer More to Ms. Peck, the Director for the Solano County Department. As Nan noted, the actual staffing levels decreased greatly over the past few years and LCSA staffing is primarily spent on staffing. So the funding it's 85 to 90% sent on staffing without an Sorry, without. With the reduction, there could be meaningful impacts to the services delivered to families without the consistency of support to support that staffing level. Thank you.

Chair Jackson Leeann Peck, Director of Solano County Child Support Services and also Cal CSA Board President. So as Kristin mentioned, the impacts of the cut we've had reduction in staffing statewide of nearly 300 staff and it's had a trickle down approach to the local level and to service delivery. We've reduced our work with outreach and partnerships and our workforce programs. We've reduced our lobby hours. In Solano as an example, we're focusing solely on compliance timeframes and the niceties that we've been able to provide when we've been adequately funded are disappearing. We are becoming less proactive and more reactive with our customers. Staff are doing more with less covering multiple assignments. They're stretched really thin. The unfunded mandates that have come down in the past, specifically and most recently with fem, requires far more manual intervention by caseworkers, and it's taking upwards of one and a half to two times longer to manage the cases as they were in the past. There's longer wait times for families, slower establishment and modification of orders, fewer opportunities to prevent arrears from growing and respectfully. Our ability to secure consistent support depends on a balanced set of compliance and enforcement tools that encourage engagement, cooperation, resolve non compliance and maintain accountability when needed. Over time those tools have become more limited or more difficult to use in practice and so at the local level we leave with service, engagement and problem solving. However, when the set of backstop tools becomes more limited, it's harder to secure that payment and it can take longer. All of this requires human contact. Child support work is highly individualized and requires time to manage cases effectively and address the specific barriers parents face in meeting their obligations. Caseworkers are spending significant time contacting parents directly, meeting with them in person or virtually, as Kristin mentioned, or on the phone. When local funding is constrained, as it has been with the existing Cut. It doesn't just impact and reduce the administration. It reduces the outcomes for children and families and may push already fragile families closer to poverty.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There are no new proposals in the Department of Child Support Services. There is this restoration of the prior reduction to administrative funding for local child support agencies. Of the 6 million general funds, 17 million total funds. This really is part of what was a multi year effort to increase administrative funding for local child support agencies that had been frozen in funding for decades at the time. So in 1920, the legislature authorized this multi step increase that was supposed to take three years and it was going to give local child support agencies enough funding to get their caseworker to case ratio to about 180 cases per caseworker. But because of budget constraints and other reasons, we haven't fully funded what was originally envisioned. We're about 90% there, but in the meantime the target's sort of moving because the cost of getting there is increasing and the caseload is decreasing. So that's what you're hearing today is that even with this restoration of 6 million general fund, you'd be at about 90% of what was originally envisioned for that option augmentation, but you still wouldn't be at that 180 cases to case worker ratio. Because of those changes, you're around a little over 200 cases to case worker. So there would still be cost to fully realize that case worker ratio that was originally envisioned.

Kayla Knott, Department of Finance.

Thank you for that and thank you all for being very clear on your answers and resolving, answering the questions that we had. You know, there's not a year that doesn't go by that I get a call from a constituent and I meet with them personally where, I mean, as you know, these things can be messy. And I know because as a child, my family was a client of your department. There's always issues that come up with, you know, the parent who's not the supportive parent who's receiving support. There's always an issue that comes up in regards to visitation. And I know these things can be messy sometimes, but there's always the constant reframe. I'm providing this support to the child, but I don't even get to see my child the way I'm supposed to. How are we dealing with issues like that? I mean, is there a mechanism, is there a way that we can improve those situations? Obviously, sometimes when the parents are not getting along, you know, unfortunately the child is caught in the middle and sometimes is being used as a punishment towards the other parents and all that kind of stuff. What are we doing in those cases? Is there a way to resolve that?

Totally understand that. I'm just one. I think my question really was just if I am a parent who believes that I am not getting the visitation that I deserve with my child, is there a mechanism that helps to resolve that issue? And I'm hearing not right now.

So they need to engage the court to be able to seek remedy.

Thank you for that. My second one is there are times when there is an over withdrawal of funds from a parent who's supposed to

meaning it's more is withdrawn than what they're supposed to than they need to in a month. And there's sometimes issues, at least this is what I'm told. I know there's the devil's in the details, but I'm just telling you how I hear it, that when they call to say, hey, you withdraw more than you supposed to, that and now that puts them in danger of paying bills and things like that, that there is not a real timely solution when that happens. And now they're scrambling around trying to pay bills and things like that, which I'm sure is not helpful for the family as a whole. Again, I know devil's in the details, but I'm just saying is there how can we resolve these things quicker so that we are not further harming the family when this is meant to help be helpful?

Do you think there's room for improvement in these things? It seems like sometimes it's one of those issues because I remember, and I don't think you guys are doing this anymore, that if someone is behind on their payments, they could actually have their driver's license suspended. Right. And then it was like, why would you do that? Now? How are they going to get to work? And it's like you're starting to set them up for failure. Right. And so I'm wondering if issues like this, in terms of withdrawal issues, and I mean, even if they may be behind and you're taking. You're trying to catch. Get them and force them to catch up, that it could still be destabilizing, that might be overall more harmful than trying to seek some other type of remedy. Do you think there's room for improvement here?

And it could be a case by case basis, right?

As it should be. So I'm just thinking, you know, I mean, you have all have made a number of reforms that you all should be proud of. There's no doubt about that. I'm always thinking about ways we can continue to Be improve and making sure we're setting up families for success. Right. And making sure everyone's needs are being met. Do you have an advisory group or anything like that that kind of continues to give you recommendations on how to improve the system?

Well, certainly this committee wants to be supportive in any additional ways to improve. And so I just ask that, you know, just be ready for next year to kind of give us a little things on what, what else you would like to improve on or you see the next step of improving. So thank you so much.

Thank you all very much. Appreciate it it.

We have one other item. If you're looking to go through the.

Thank you, Dr. Jackson.

You may begin when you're ready, Dr. Jackson. We're asked to provide a brief presentation of our supplemental report. This was required as part of the 202425 Budget Act. It was submitted in February 2026 and we hosted a briefing, I believe last week for legislative staff to summarize this report. It looks at the challenges and successes of implementing the full pass through of past due support to families, provides data about families who are currently receiving CalWORKS and describes the cost estimate and changes necessary to implement full pass pass through for currently assisted families. The system change for this, which was larger than anticipated and all of the policy surrounding it was fully implemented in May of 2024. Since that time, cumulatively we've passed through. We've distributed over $200 million to these cases and that's at least 110,000 unique cases received at least one payment under this statutory change. The report provides detail about the families who received the pass through payments. The persons receiving support were overwhelmingly female, 92% which tracks with our caseload demographics. The majority of the support was also passed through to families who identify as either being black, hispanic or Latinx. So that's 57% of the population that received those payments. And that outpaces the percentage that we see those folks in our caseload generally. So we see those impacts there. One of the questions that's come up is about the number of emancipated children or conversely, in which of these cases are there still minor children? And I wanted to explain that briefly that I think this is not a glitch in the system, but rather how the system was designed. And it was support from the legislature, in fact act, which allowed us to implement a federal option, which is the family first distribution. So this says that when there are arrears or past due support that's owed to the government, that will be the very last thing we collect. So we wait until the family has been made whole, they have all of the support that was owed to them before we collect what is owed to us in the government and for the arrears pass through. We maintained the assignment of those arrears so that we could resolve the debt to the extent that extent possible through the debt reduction and other options. So I think that's a kind of a. That's how the system was designed under family first distribution, because it's the last thing those cases will skew to cases with all emancipated children. In terms of challenges, one that's noted is the inability of the person receiving support to decline that support. Now, if the case were entirely unassisted, they could voluntarily close their case. They could say, I no longer want these funds for whatever reason. When we'd initially contemplated and requested this statutory change, we believe that we could implement that via regulation. We were mostly concerned at that time with benefit cliffs and with people's ability to make choices about their life. We have seen reports through our local child support agencies of individuals who called. While it's not a very large percentage, there are really real reasons why people would not want these funds. We've heard, for example, of family violence concerns, not with concern about the relationship with the parent paying support, but in their current relationship. We've also heard about instances where a step parent has adopted the child and they no longer want the funds from the biological parent. We've also heard about situations where the child has unfortunately passed away and it's a really painful reminder of a very terrible loss to receive those funds. So that was one of the recommendations that we be allowed to Allow folks to opt out of receiving those funds if they wanted to. We've also been asked about the amount of recoupment in the law. If we're not able to find somebody or if the person who receives support predeceases, then those funds are automatically recouped. So the government retains that collection. That is about 10% of those collections. So it's not a huge amount, but it does go to the government if we're not able to find you or that person is pre deceased. The report talks about some of the unintended impacts and potential impacts. I think it was notable with CalFresh. The Department of Social Services participated with us in this report and a prior report. They found that only 0.1 to 0.2% of families receiving CalFresh would become ineligible because of this additional child support income. For most people, they would receive more in cash child support than they would be losing in the CalFresh benefit. Moving on, in terms of what a pass through for currently assisted families could look like, I do want to say it's notable and I want to congratulate the legislature in California for expanding the pass through to currently assisted families. As of 2022, we passed through the maximum allowed under federal law, which is 100 for families with one child and 200 for families with 200 or more. Over 20 states still pass through nothing to those currently assisted families. However, of course, as you know, Dr. Jackson, there's a trend of states for going to full pass through for currently assisted families. So this report talks about the cost options. So what would the fiscal impact be of backfilling that federal and county share, the loss of the state share, potential impacts to eligibility, et cetera. Our average collections for currently assisted cases were $11.5 million last year. The average is skewed slightly by the months when we received tax intercepts. So that's generally March, April and May. But the amounts passed through averaged $2.7 million. So if we were able to fully pass through, it would be an increase of $8.8 million each month to these currently assisted families. And these numbers, just to be very clear, contemplate passing through up to the amount of current monthly support as well as anything that's collected that applies to past due support for those currently assisted families. The estimated fiscal impact of that full pass through would be $150 million if we fully pass through. And that would be the foregone state recoupment as well as the federal backfill. And the impact if we pass through just the state's share of those collections would be $80 million to the general fund. In terms of potential complications, the Department of Social Services had submitted a report in September 2025, as well as a data addendum. First, I want to state there's no anticipated impact to medi cal because of the way that the eligibility is calculated on modified adjusted gross income, which excludes child support income. They presented three options that were discussed at a stakeholder group. One is to pass through fully without any change to the disregard amounts. The Department of Social services estimated that 130,000 families would lose their CalWORKs eligibility if we did that, and approximately 1400. I'm sorry, 130,000 would have their grants reduced and 1,400 families would be discontinued entirely. The second option was to increase the disregard to 100% of what was passed through. This would mitigate many of the effects, but we do in California have a unique ability to untick months of support as we recoup funds towards that 60 month time limit, the federal time limit. And the third option was to increase the disregard to 100%, everything we're passing through, but also provide a time on aid exemption. The estimate is that that would cost an additional $20 million. Increasing the full two full pass through would require automation change on our side as well as the calwork side for CAL sos. So that would require close coordination in terms of the timing. We did estimate in the report that that could take up to three to five years to do the automation for both of those systems as well as all the policy changes. We did have a request though, to provide a more detailed timeline of that as well as the automation cost estimate. I will note though, that the estimate would depend on the policy decisions that were made as we talk through those options.

Department of Finance.

You're not looking for that? You're not looking forward to that extra three to five years? You don't have to answer that. This is one of those issues where you're like, what is the right thing to do when you're trying to help someone? Might actually hurt someone? Possibly, maybe, probably. What do you think is the best option moving forward? Because obviously you know the direction we want to go in, but stability is also important and predictability is also important in terms of families. What are your thoughts? And as you evaluated the different options, what are your.

What would be the cost of doing a full disregard?

So doing the full disregard would actually be from general funds. $80 million.

I'm a political science major, so when you start doing numbers, I'm.

I'm getting a migraine right now.

Got it.

And if you did the disregard, does that also mean you have to do a tech thingy?

And then how much is that to do the tech part? Because I'm sure that's an additional cost.

Okay. So I'm going to ask everyone to kind of help us with some technical assistance on this LAO Department of Finance and Administration in terms of what it would take to implement the full disregard. The full pass through with disregard. Yeah. You know, which I mean, Just to see what our options are. I don't know. I mean, it's obviously, we got. It seems like we have to get over this hurdle of making a decision on what it would be the best decision that would cost the. The most amount of benefit with the least amount of harm. Right. For the legislature to at least consider. Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

name and affiliation please.

Thank you.

Hi, Janae Eustice. I am the CEO and president of the Child Abuse Prevention center, also representing the California Resource Association. This is in support of the social services tiered rate structure. If we want California to truly work and if we want prevention to truly work in California, our funding structures must match the reality of the work. A tiered rate structure is how we operate, operationalize the commitment ensuring community providers like Family Resource Centers have the resources to meet families where they're at and provide the right level of support before challenges escalate. Thank you so much.

Name and affiliation please.

What do you do with them?

How old are you?

I also have.

I'm 25.

Go with yourself. You did a good job.

All right.

Thank you.

Hi, Elizabeth Oseguera with the California alliance representing over 200 members serving high needs children and families across all counties. Thank you Dr. Jackson Ledge members and budget staff for putting this hearing together today. As mentioned, the implementation of tiered rate structure and the ongoing liability insurance crisis will have significant impacts on the child welfare system and the providers as a risking placement capacity and continuity of care for children and families. To stabilize the provider network and ensure FFAs can keep their doors open while long term solutions are developed for the insurance crisis, we respectfully request your support for a 30 million budget as to offset the escalating liability insurance costs regarding TRS implementation. We welcome continued engagement with the state and appreciate the committee's focus on ensuring rates are sufficient to meet the needs of children and youth. We look forward to working continuing to work with cdss sharing continue to work with cdss and are looking very much forward to seeing cdss share the cost assumptions and methodologies underlining their rate analyses to stakeholders and legislative members so that we can all better assess sustainability. Moving forward, we encourage conversations to evaluate TRS rates with the potential of raising these by 2029 if rates prove to be low to meet the needs of children and youth. Thank you.

Name and affiliation please.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair Aaron Evans. On behalf of Santa Clara County, I'd love to go all the way back to panel one and add our comments as families, counties and the state are all grappling with implementing HR1. Food and other supports for families have economic impacts and can help families avoid becoming systems involved. Conversely, loss of these supports undermine long term stability. The county seeks to partner with the state to ensure that families can maintain eligibility for services going forward.

Thank you.

Hello, Sam Wilkinson with In Child Poverty in California. Thank you Chair Jackson and the committee. But we would like to urge the Department of Social Services to release the 20 million already allocated in last year's budget for county and workers to respond to this crisis. HR1 as quickly as possible, referring to issue one. With inaction and no immediate county worker support, we run the risk of seeing nearly 1 million Californians losing access to CalFresh. Children will be impacted substantially as a result of cuts to Medical and CalFresh imposed by Federal HR1 and as shown in page 11 of the hearing agenda. Families experience experiencing poverty are more likely to come into the child welfare system. If we do not do enough, we will see an increased number of family separation and system involved youth in California due to increases in poverty. And also, as part of the Truth and Justice and Child Support Coalition, we'd like to line our comments with the Western center and also uplift work to improve the debt reduction program with Assemblymember Sharpe Collins happening this year. Lastly, we urge our elected representatives to raise progressive revenues now so no child has to go hungry in our state and so no child is separated from their family due to poverty in our state. Thank you so much.

Name and affiliation, please.

Thank you.

Name and affiliation, please.

Thank you.

Hi, Chair George Cruz on behalf of the California Behavioral Health Association. First we want to. We want to say we support the continued investment in the prevention and stabilization programs which have helped thousands of families avoid homelessness and support reunification. We also want to raise concerns about the provider sustainability within the child welfare system due to the rising insurance cost, workforce shortages and uncertainty around the future rate structure. We urge the legislature to prioritize provider stability and community based prevention to ensure children receive appropriate behavioral health care and placement stability. Thank you so much.

Name and affiliation, please.

Thank you very much.

Sure.

Thank you.

We want. I want to see the money restored back to the local counties, to the program as a whole, but also should be ongoing.

Correct. It's in the July 1st.

Absolutely.

No, you didn't.

Thank you.

You're good.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Chair Jackson.

My name is Kim Brit and I'm the executive director for Central Sierra Child Support Agency. And Central Sierra assists families in Alpine, Amador, Calaveras and Tuolumne counties. And today I'm here to support the restoration of funding for the child support program. Child support is one of the most effective ways we can help help children stay financially stable and is a cost effective program. With the federal government's match of $2 for every $1 provided by the state, the child support program ensures that parents and not taxpayers are supporting their children. When funding for children, excuse me, when funding for child support programs is reduced, cases can move slower, enforcement may be delayed and families can wait longer for the support they depend on. Essential needs. Investing in child support is not just about program funding. It's about protecting children and promoting family stability. So today I respectfully ask that you restore funding for the child support services so California's children receive the support they deserve. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Chair Jackson, Nice to meet you. My name is Jeannie Cho. I'm with also the California Child Support association and Chief Deputy Director for LA County Child Support Services. And I'm also here to go on the record to support the restoration of the budget in the governor's budget. That $6 million cut is just not worth the bang for the buck. We leave $12 million of federal funds on the table yet you know, have a minimal impact on helping the state budget and a deleterious 18 million triple the impact on our constituents. I would also like to lift up something that direct the director said. Director Donady, in the days of your, you know, when this program was created we were very much criminal enforcement, you know, the horrible tagline of deadbeat dads. We were seen as an anti father program. We are not here to take sides with either parent. We are here as a pro child program and one of the greatest tools that we've had in our toolkit, the bread and butter really of helping us to engage parents is really driver's license suspension. Parents have 180 days notice before licenses are suspended and so in many cases they are not ultimately suspended. And we are here and just like the Western center on Law Poverty, we are here to make sure that kids get as much support as they can in a reasonable and with right sized orders from both parents. Thank you very much.

Name and affiliation please.

Thank you.

Dallin Frederickson with the Sacramento County Department of Child Support Services. So we do want to thank you for your support and interest in the child support program. And we want you to know we take the trust that you place in us very seriously. We are working very hard to improve the program. We are working very hard to make sure that we are serving families. For example, nationwide, half, approximately half of the child support orders nationwide enter by default without participation of one parent. We are working so hard to make sure that there's procedural justice and people have an opportunity to be heard and that we're getting sustainable right size orders. We've worked very hard and in the last few years in Sacramento, we've gotten to where 25% of our cases now are entered by default. So that's the type of hard work that we're doing and that's the type of work that the funding for the child support program. So one more quick thing that the other directors have not mentioned, the funding methodology that was talked about by the lao, some counties were seriously underfunded compared to other counties. The budget methodology serves to work that out. The restoration of the 6 million, 17 million helps to balance that. And I say that as Sacramento county, who is not actually receiving any of that money. But I think it's important so we can continue the good work of the program and keep the program going. Thank you very much.

Name and affiliation, please.

Did I get that memo?

Thank you. Name and affiliation please.

Thank you.

Hello, Maida Castillo Garcia here on behalf of Parents Anonymous, it's important to maintain funding for California's parent and youth help lines, specifically those that focus on population based prevention such as Parents Anonymous. We hope that this committee could look into the funding of this vital program. The California Parent and Youth Helpline has provided vital emotional support to parents, children and Youth in all 58 counties with 80% of 85% of callers expressing that they feel supported after their call. Thank you.