Senate Budget Sub3 — 2026-04-23

Thank you. All right, good morning, y'all. Let's get started. Oh, thank you. Let's get started today. We're going to be covering three items today, child care, child welfare, and immigration services. We're going to do child care, then break for public comment, and then do the last two sections, and then do public comment as well again. So let's kick it off with having the Department of Social Services coming up and provide us an overview and start off with issue one on child care budget. I know the director won't be in the hot seat today, so it falls. Technically, it's a chief. Okay.

Yes, Brandon Castaneda, Department of Finance. So I do want to reiterate some points that our DSS colleague just made. The CCDF award reduction is the decrease that you're seeing is exclusively due to formula updates with that. So that's exclusively due to those formula updates that haven't been updated since the COVID-19 pandemic that are now being updated. Additionally, the Prop 264 adjustment that you're seeing is also just due to a revenue adjustment, the updated revenue adjustments that we're seeing compared to previous estimates. This isn't a decrease to the state's commitment to child care. As a matter of fact, the 2637 government's budget is continuing to maintain $1.8 billion towards the over $125,000 child care slots that have been added since fiscal year 21-22. I'm happy to answer any questions.

I think that's the actual. Yeah, so the option to backfill is a decision that's made point in time, given the conditions like the general fund condition, taking that into account. So as of right now, the theater in California doesn't have the resources to provide a backfill to lost federal funds.

Yeah. Thank you so much. Senator, if you have any questions. Thank you, Chair. just was wondering, do we have a reason why so many of the slots are being unutilized?

Thank you. But we've been in this situation for a couple of years now. I think at least since I've been in this subcommittee. So it's the same story over and over again, but we're not doing anything different. I just keep hearing the same thing every year. What are we doing differently to adjust? We've known that this has been this issue. Every single year it's the same. This is the issue with the contracting. It's the infrastructure. What have we adjusted?

Because 10,000 slots is a huge number, and I think what saves us as to why the 4,200 is not going to stop any services is because we're behind on meeting the moment. So I would disagree with you, sir, that we have continued progress because we have not moved forward. If we've said that we've added 130,000 slots, those are including the 10,000 that we have not contracted, now also subtracting almost 4,200 from that. We are actually going backwards. So I think, again, that's a false statement to say we have continued to move forward. Yes, we've invested so much in child care. We are leading. I get that. But I think it's also a false statement to say that we have progressed. We have invested a lot, but we're falling a little bit behind on this. What happens to the unspent dollars? LAO, you've said that it's almost half a billion dollars that has gone up spent at 23, 24, and about 170 for 25, 26. Where do those dollars go if they're not used?

So they go back to the general fund?

That's BS. Because we are falling behind on further investing in child care, and the money, because our inability to be more flexible or really meet the moment in changing the rules that need to be changed to put the dollars out And we don do that It goes back to the general fund So we using once again dollars for child care to go offset the general fund And we're not even backfilling what is being removed from the federal and the Prop 64. So it's a double cut, taking back the dollars that we're already given and not backfilling the dollars that the federal government is taking from us. And yet, in this subcommittee, we're taking a lot of money from counties and we're expecting the counties to meet the moment and fulfill their obligations for all the programs. The federal government is doing the same thing to us, but we're not obligating ourselves to continue to fund our programs. A little hypocritical of us if we want counties to do that, but we're not doing that. How can we be more flexible in the funds? If it's unused, can they just be directed to vouchers since that's really easy funding that goes out?

So I just want to make sure that I guess we do. Is there a way to not make that decision of reversion right up front? Like, we can do language where after X amount of months it's not used in contract. That's leftover for sure, leftover, to then revert after 12, 24 months to go back to vouchers. So it doesn't go to the general fund or LAO.

And that makes sense. I know in the Senate plan we put out for 44,000 slots, and I forget how much we did, 12,000 are for contract slots. Even us, we're reevaluating if that's too high of a number, given the fact that we already have 10,000 in the wait list. So we're even considering on the Senate side that that should also be decreased so it's not a one-time. I know we have to do an ongoing. As we're looking at the Senate plan and we're negotiating, I do think we need to decrease the number of percentage we allocate for contract, recognizing the problems that we have, re-evaluating that later once revenues are better, because we can continue to have this conversation that we have these many on wait lists. Additionally, I'm wondering if you can give me feedback, Chief Deputy, on flexibility on further contract, if dollars can be used for the first or second year for infrastructure, recognizing that the barriers are on permitting finding a location all the things that they have to go through So it an impediment for them to move forward Is there anything holding us back from providing flexibility in how the dollars are used the first to second years?

For expansion, potentially?

I definitely would love the department to look at two options. How we could do permanent removal from contracts to vouchers to get more kids in child care. And second, flexibility around how funding can be utilized the first year to second so that we can get more contracts. Recognizing that there's a barrier you can't do from the ground up, a full building, but if expansion, looking at that. And as we do the three-party negotiation with the Senate plan, again, moving forward with less contracts until we get it handled and more on the voucher side. Because, again, it's really unacceptable that we invest these dollars in child care and then the general fund reclose it back. It should stay in general fund. Okay. Is there anything Chief Deputy can share on the $11.5 million?

Full details may revise?

Okay. Going back to Prop 64, can you clarify? Maybe this is the LAO and Department of Finance question. Can you clarify, last year the legislature passed a bill to temporarily halt the increased tax that was going to come in to increase revenues through Prop 64, approved by the legislature, signed by the governor. So doesn that say that we did this to ourselves as to the less revenues in Prop 64 I think yes there are effects by actions that the legislature have taken that affects revenues

Like what's come in in recent months?

So of the Prop 64, that's around 964 general child care slots. So there's a potential that may revise for that to be a lower number, is what you're saying, out of the $22.5 million decrease?

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. On the CCDF grants fund, how we're getting, because it was recalculated by the federal government,

Okay. Thank you. Moving on to the prospective pay. So I know the funds have not been utilized for the past two allocations. So no one's been hired?

Okay. So we won't know until next year, next budget year negotiations to see if we need those dollars or not.

Okay, thank you for that. Sure. Question on the emergency childcare bridge. Can you talk to me a little bit more about how, I know there were a couple of counties that we were able to reallocate some funds and meet their needs. Can you talk to me in real life, like how is it that we step in? Is it that counties are reaching out mid-year, saying, hey, we're running out of funds,

Anything you would add?

Dr. Lupe, have you seen in those conversations the 57.2? I know we've reduced a lot to meet the more accurate need.

I do have anything to add on that program? Okay. Senator Grove, do you have any questions on the first item?

That's correct, Senator. We think those right now can be basically taken without disenrolling any children who are actively in care. And it still gives you a cushion of the 10,000 slots that are available minus the 4,200.

That's correct, yes.

to reduce the overall bridge spending to more align with actual expenditures, and that did take effect this year. That did cause some changes to individual counties' allocation. With regard to Santa Barbara, we did see that they had a particularly high potential over-enrollment in their bridge program and did work very closely with them to transfer children as needed to make sure that they could stay enrolled in child care and there were no disenrollments. And we also provided additional money to them specifically from other counties who did relinquish, to your point, exactly the idea that you just suggested, which is some counties are going to underspend, maybe just they don't have as many kids to provide the care for, and some counties will need more. And so we did do a redistribution, and Santa Barbara was one of the counties that received that redistribution.

We do, we do. And we do try to, though, be to the point, we do try to be thoughtful about that and make sure we're working with counties to make sure they're staying within their allocation generally, but then also to work hard not to disenroll any children.

Thank you for that.

Thank you. We're going to hold that item open. and move on to issue number two, which is our little panel on our commitment to expand child care. I know we have the department here already, but I'd like to invite Stanislaus County Office of Education up, Parent Voices, California, and the California Budget and Policy Center up. I think we might have to move this chair over. Yes. Yes. Thank you, Dylan. Wait, you're not Dylan. Are you Dylan?

Full house. We're going to have the department kick off this panel. Thank you, Chair and members.

Are you Tony? Tony, you're next.

On page two, you'll see a summary one-pager of our local planning child care needs assessment. And on the third page, you'll see the year-to-date quarterly resource and referral report, just to give you some background information and help you dive into the weeds a little bit more, if you so choose. And then the two booklets that are provided are the full annual republic and the full local child care needs assessment from Stanislas County. Anyhow, looking at our data, you'll see that our LPC has noted a need of still over 10,000 infant and toddler child care slots in our county. Just this year alone, we've already received over 3,500 requests through resource and referral for child care specific to infant and toddler needs. And so we know that that's a big need, especially with the advent of transitional kindergarten, not only center-based but also family child care home, providers having to move to serve the younger age group. What we found is that there is a disparity in our adjustment factors when you look at the center-based contracts from CDSS and state preschool center-based contracts. The page two on your left side, all you have to do is look at that sheet and see all the red, and you'll see where all those rate disparities exist. So if we're talking same child, same age group, same factor that that child might have, whether they're an English language learner, child of special needs, what have you. There is currently a disparity that needs to be addressed. And speaking, as I said earlier, that could directly go to some of the challenges you were describing that are being faced in issue one, as well as what we are here talking about with issue two. What could that mean? We did two case studies. Had we chosen to enroll families in state preschool who were two years old, children were two years old, our revenue would have been $100,000 higher in just one classroom alone. Had we enrolled state-based migrant children in state preschool, our revenue in one classroom alone would have been $154,000 higher. So this rate disparity and the challenge with programs fully able to earn their contracts in general child care, state-based migrant, could be addressed by aligning the adjustment factors where there's currently some disparity. What would that do for us at the local level? Well, we firmly believe that we'd be able to invest and really speak to and address staffing compensation challenges, ratios, and quality, as well as the family child care network programs that we operate. we could really relook at the reimbursement rates for those contracts as well. And we did have to make decisions. Do we transition those children into state preschool? Because we can serve two-year-olds in state preschool, which is a great thing. We don't want that to sunset. But what would that do to our general child care and state-based migrant programs? We would be essentially focusing on one program and the other. We do that for a couple years. we're going to be told that we're under enrolled and we're going to have our contract taken away. So this disparity is something that really needs to be addressed. That process can happen from either CDE or CDSS and we don want to be in that situation as a local contract Final thoughts sir Okay Final thoughts is just look at all the red on that second sheet of paper and you can see what the challenges that we facing in local programs such as ours that are trying to really do our best to operate this mixed child care delivery system as seamlessly as possible. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm going to turn over to Parent Voices. Terri Ann? Good morning, Chairman and community members. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to share my story. My name is Terri Dare. I live in Lancaster in Los Angeles County. I am the program manager at A New Vision for You, where we provide therapeutic outpatient and aftercare services, as well as the supervisor for the community culture broker program, where we support and advocate for African-American families navigating open cases with the Department of Child and Family Services. I'm also a mother of seven. My oldest is 26 and my youngest is 3. So when I speak about child care in California, I'm not speaking from theory. I'm speaking from lived experience. When I first moved to California, I wasn't just relocating. I was fleeing a domestic violence. I arrived with two children, two bags, two black eyes, and a sprained arm and a busted knee. I was looking for safety, stability, and a chance to rebuild. Instead, as I tried to access child care, I found myself going through a system that felt traumatizing. I turned to a system that is supposed to support women in situations like mine, but the process was so invasive, so demanding, that it felt like I was being victimized all over again. The amount of information I was required to provide and the way it was handled made me fear for my safety and ultimately led to my abuser finding me. I had to disclose personal details about every aspect of my life without knowing if any answer might disqualify me. It felt like my ability to provide for my children depended entirely on how I completed paperwork. That's not just stressful, it's dehumanizing. After all of that, I waited. It was constant urgency followed by silence. Hurry up and submit everything and then wait. Meanwhile, my children weren't in stable learning environments. I couldn't work or go to school. Bills didn't stop. Rent didn't pause. And I felt like I was failing my children even though I was doing everything I could. Eventually, I was approved for CalWORKs and child care, but the stress didn't end there. Every year meant recertification, more paperwork, and constant fear of losing support if I made even a small mistake like not turning in a QR7. There was never a sense of stability, just ongoing pressure. Later, with my younger children, I experienced a different kind of barrier. I had worked hard to graduate college and start a career providing behavioral health services for foster youth. I was proud to move off of CalWORKs and into a job I earned. But then I was told I was no longer qualified for child care because I was no longer a recipient for CalWORKs. Made too much to qualify, not enough to afford. I was told I would be placed on a waiting list. But the list wasn't even open due to lack of state funding, so I had to wait for a slot to open on that waiting list. And once that happened, I would then be placed at the bottom of that list. And even then, there was no guarantee I would ever receive care due to the limited funding and slots available. That reality simply didn't make sense. For a time, I was fortunate enough to have a mother-in-law that I got along with. She stepped in, and because of her, I was able to work. But then when she passed away, we lost more than family. We lost our support. Grief, job disruption, and financial strain collided all at once. I was making life decisions in the grocery store and eventually became homeless for a year If I worked my entire paycheck would go to child care All of this happened because the system was not built to ensure that families like mine have access to child care I would give our current system an F In addition to the lack of funding I was told we also have to acknowledge that this system perpetrates inequity and upholds anti-black racism. There are people in positions within child care agencies who do not look like me or share my lived experience and as a result decisions reflect priorities that favor one demographic over another. As a black woman, I often found myself having to explain and justify my reality to individuals who could not fully understand it, only to be told I didn't qualify. I had to fight through emails, calls, and constant persistence to access what should have been basic support. If I would have given up, I wouldn't have child care currently. And I know many families don't have the time, knowledge, or capacity to navigate that kind of fight. The result is overwhelming, overwhelming stress, anxiety, depression, and parents feeling like they are not enough for their children. Childcare should not be this complicated. It should be as straightforward as obtaining a birth certificate, simple, guaranteed, and accessible. Parents who are working, going to school, or participating in programs like HowWorks need childcare. Families should not have to choose between providing for their children and being present for them. Do you want me to do this part? Yes. I think that was a good final thought. I'm going to move it on to you. You can hold that part. All right. Chair members, thank you for the opportunity to testify. I think Terry's experience was wrong and cruel, and I applaud her vulnerability because it's the mothers and children that are coming after her that are going to benefit, and we thank you. We were asked to speak about our vision for care. It's simple and bold. A California where every family has access to publicly funded child care system for children birth to 13, one that centers children's safety, well-being, and development, and is provided through a mixed delivery system with a workforce paid what their work is truly worth. But to get there, we have to be honest about how we got here. Decades of underinvestment did not create a broken system. It created a system doing exactly what it was designed to do, serve the fewest children, push families out, and underpay early educators. Designed by a scarcity mindset and by policies that reflect and reinforce racist, sexist, and classist beliefs about who deserves care. But we've made some progress. We now guarantee up to 24 months of care. We have updated income rules so families don't have to turn down raises. And we've eliminated family fees for the majority of families. But we are far from where we need to be. We would like to offer a different path rooted in racial, gender, and economic justice. It starts with equity. It means building a system that reflects how families today actually live, with different schedules, juggling work and school, and different types of care all at the same time, rather than forcing everyone into a 9-to-5 model that doesn't fit. And we have to say it plainly. A system is not equitable if it exploits the people providing care. Second, access must be universal. Every family, regardless of income, immigration status, or circumstance, should be able to find care, like survivors like Terry, a parent working at the night shift at Target, or a farm worker needing care at 4 a.m. so they can find the care where and when they need it. That's when we know the system is truly accessible and working. It needs to be free, no copayments, no barriers, just like we treat K-12 education. We're not asking for pay stubs and where do you work. It's just guaranteed. We must invest in a thriving workforce Educators disproportionately women of color deserve living wages benefits and the right to organize funded at the true cost of care They must be treated as essential not expendable. The system must be culturally, linguistically responsive, and thanks to our partners at Black ECE, that includes Black English when we speak about language justice. And finally, families and providers must share power in shaping this system. It's those who are closest to the problem who are closest to the solutions. You have to have folks who are running programs who are on the floor with children who are having to deal with navigating paperwork. If the system was designed by them, it would actually work. We believe that universal child care is not just a vision. It is a choice. California has a choice. We must choose children, not corporate welfare. Choose the people who care for them, not the billionaires who profit off of them, and choose a serious long-term revenue plan. We're grateful for the 44,000 slots. That should be the minimum. We don't want to see that reduced. Thank you for the revenues as well. Thank you. Thank you so much. And our final panelist, Laura. Good morning. You can get it closer if you can move it. Oh, or maybe not. There we go. All right. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Menjivar and members of the committee. My name is Laura Pryor, and I am the Research Director at the California Budget and Policy Center. We are a nonpartisan research and analysis nonprofit that uses our budget expertise to advance public policies that improve the lives of Californians with low and middle incomes. We appreciate the opportunity to join this important conversation around California's commitment to expand child care, which the Senate has proposed to advance in your recent budget plan. My remarks outline California's recent public investments for expanding child care, as well as considerations for increasing these investments. I'll begin by discussing three key points. First, addressing the unmet need for child care. Next, expanding across our mixed delivery system. And thirdly, supporting the child care workforce. To my first point overall, the state has invested in expanding the number of subsidized spaces, but this expansion has been indefinitely paused well before fulfilling the demand. Specifically, the number of children enrolled in California Department of Social Services or CDSS child care programs grew from about 218,000 in 2019 to 356,000 in 2024, reflecting a 63% increase. And while this increase should be celebrated, it is still very far from the overall need for child care. The Budget Center estimates that in 2024, only 16% of children eligible for child care programs were actually enrolled. Now, this is an improvement from the 11% in 2022, but the reality is that 1.8 million children are eligible for child care programs, but not yet served. To my second point, expanding programs across our mixed delivery system, child care program enrollment during October 2024 shows that 40% of parents chose licensed family child care, 31% chose family, friend, and neighbor, and 29% chose a licensed center. This diversity of options is critical, particularly for families who work outside of traditional school hours and for families who prefer providers that reflect their culture and language. However, in recent years, the state has chosen to invest heavily in only one setting, school-based, through universal transitional kindergarten or TK. Universal TK costs the state an ongoing $3 billion proposition $98. Since TK does not operate in non-school-based settings, This funding structure prevents many families and children from benefiting from this significant investment. To my third point on the workforce, the state has made important investments in the child care workforce, but providers are still paid far below the cost of care, which in turn limits access for children and families across our state. Led by the hard work of Child Care Providers United, or CCPU, the union representing home-based child care providers, In recent years, the state has funded cost of care plus rates as well as a retirement and health care fund for home-based providers. Additionally, in 2023, the state launched their rate reform process so that provider pay will be based on the cost of care instead of basing rates on what parents can afford to pay. Despite these investments, currently, some providers are only being paid as low as 24% of the cost of care for infants. The state has not provided a clear timeline for finalizing the rate reform process to ensure that the gap between current rates and the cost of care meaningfully closes. These three points highlight that the state has made important investments in child care, but these gains have not gone far enough. The state should be charting intentional steps forward that build on recent investments. The Budget Center recommends the following actionable next steps. First, all investments should center parent and provider priorities. Everything that Terry and Mary just shared must be the foundation to all policy decisions. Without this, the state's child care policies may perpetuate the longstanding racial and economic injustices baked into the system. Therefore, in addition to funding the 77,000 promised spaces, an actionable next step is to ensure that we are learning from the shortcomings of TK expansion and direct future expansion across all programs in our mixed delivery system. Second, the state needs to advance rate reform based on an accurate cost of care as soon as possible. The state's version of the cost of care estimates are complete. However, these estimates assume that for some counties and some providers, the current rates already exceed the cost of care, which is not true and problematic. A rate structure built on this foundation may result in an equitable pay. As an immediate next step, the state should incorporate feedback from CCPU and others to create a more accurate cost of care estimate, as well as set a clear timeline for implementing a new single-rate structure and immediate funding to address the unacceptably low pay providers receive. Lastly, the state needs to raise new revenue. In 2024, an appropriation of $7.5 billion only got us to enroll 16% of eligible children. You can imagine how much more would be needed to get to 100%. Funding will also need to incorporate rates based on the cost of care and additional child care facilities. To give you a sense of scale on facilities, the low-income investment fund shared that it costs between $9 and $10 million for a brand-new center serving 130 children, as estimated by the National Children's Facilities Network Calculator. While these numbers may be daunting, California has the resources to invest more in families. Our state spends billions of dollars each year on tax breaks, benefiting profitable corporations and the wealthy. This diverts resources away from meeting families' needs. California can start to raise the revenues needed to expand childcare by creating reasonable limits on corporate tax credits and deductions and ending corporate tax breaks like Water's Edge, which allows corporations operating internationally to avoid billion in state taxes each year by stashing profits in offshore tax havens Overall the state can continue to work toward filling the unmet need for child care by charting a clear roadmap forward that prioritizes families and providers, pays providers the cost of care, and raises new revenue to care for our communities. Thank you. Thank you so much. Does LAO have any? Yes, thank you. Dylan, I'll start with the LAO. We were asked to provide an estimate of the cost of bringing CCTR adjustment factors for three-year-olds and children with disabilities in line with CSPP adjustment factors. We think this change would cost between $88 million and $131 million ongoing. Our range reflects that we don't have statewide comprehensive data on the percentage of children in the CCTR program that have disabilities. So it reflects our best estimates of what that percentage might be. Happy to take questions. Department of Finance, anything to add? Vernon Castaneda, Department of Finance, nothing further to add. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Let's start with the last point. I think one of the common things that comes up in the committee's background did a really good job in showing the disparity between state preschool versus those funded by social services. And we just heard the cause potentially from and bring that up to parity. But can there be a ramp up? Have we looked up of just increasing it little by little to get to parity? And can we hear a little bit more from the department of why that disparity exists now? Claire Ramsey, Department of Social Services. I'll start by saying we have not had conversations at this point about ramping up. but I think we're open to continued conversations with the legislature and the LAO to understand what a proposal would look like and what sort of the suggestion is toward ramping up on the adjustment factors. In terms of the adjustment factors, it's a little complicated for the Department of Social Services because those rate increases were all on the CDE side, so they weren't under our purview when they were increased. But basically during the last few years, there was a recognition of some of the effects of TK. Our understanding is there was a recognition of some of the effects of TK on CSPP enrollment, and as such there was a decision made to increase the adjustment factors on a few of these different line items to help level out the pay rate for providers in the CSPP space. It just ended up that those adjustment factors were raised only on that side of the house and not on the CDSS side. The impact was going to be felt not just with them, right? I think we are seeing from our contractors that that's correct because many do hold contracts on both sides. But, again, it was a proposal made on the CDE side, so we were not directly involved. The city is here if they wanted to add some technical, any additional comments to the creation of... Yes, Stephen Proffert, the Director of Early Education at the California Department of Education. I'm here on behalf of State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurman. I believe we're talking about the adjustment factor for three-year-olds in the state's preschool program. That was added shortly after the expansion of transitional kindergarten really to support state preschools in serving younger 3 children in a recognition that it is more expensive to operate a program that is primarily 3 versus say a blended 3 and four classroom Okay so you saw the need and you provided the increase to offset The administration did with the legislature's concurrence. Okay, thank you. Yes. But at that moment, Social Services did not think that was going to also be felt with the other providers, which is why at that moment we didn't provide an increase. I'll defer to my colleague in a second, but I would guess I would say, I don't know that we would say we didn't agree it would be felt. It was that we did not have a proposal at that time to make concurrent adjustments. But please, if you have anything, there's going to be another item we're going to look at that also increases that disparity. So we recognize there's a disparity and we're adding to it. We're looking to add to it. So it's just. Yeah. So I just want to clarify one thing. In addition to adjustment factors, there's also the base that is different. So a base for a CCTR would be 54.93 per day versus state preschool would be 55.27. And then you layer on the adjustment factors, which have exceptional needs, is 2.4 for a state preschool versus 1.54 during CCTR and migrant. And then dual language learners is a 1.2 for state preschool versus a 1.1 in regards to CCTR, CMIG. And then toddlers that are 18 to 36 months, 1.8 through state preschool. And then general child care and migrant is 1.54. Deputy Director, they're Title V, right? So pretty much the same requirements. Why is the base different? I'll start by just acknowledging that I think there has been an ongoing conversation throughout a number of years related to whether or not we should be seeing CCTR and CSPP as sort of identical to each other in terms of their requirements. The single rate structure right now, as teed up in the alternative methodology, does recommend and sort of put forward the idea that they are equivalent to each other and are based on the same requirements and that providers should be paid the same whether they're operating on either side. that is something that we are looking to and I think has just is a good example of the ways in which our very complex, stratified dual rate system now doesn't necessarily sort of make a lot of common sense when you're sort of looking at it because it's been built on so many different things. And for, you know, as Stephen Profiter just mentioned, right, like different pressures on different sides have sometimes resulted in different solutions. And so just acknowledging that it doesn't always all map now. And that is the goal of the single rate structure. Yeah, that's one of the JOMC report. That was one of the key points, right? All programs that are the same age of children and have the same program requirements receive the same reimbursement, regardless of how they're contracted. So is it the intent of the administration that once the single rate structure gets implemented, this disparity will go away? That is the goal that was put forth in that, as you just referenced in that joint recommendation. Anything you would add there? Yeah, and as noted, single rate structure, the title implies in regards to looking at that same three-year-old with the same qualifications to receive the same rate. Now is there a scenario where I forgot all these acronyms CCTR Yeah I forgot which one's which. CCTR is TNS. Okay. Is there a scenario only exists where CCTR will jump or where preschool reimbursement will drop down? Is that in regards to the single rate structure? Yes. So in the single rate structure, we have some decisions that are ahead of us regarding how we want to roll out the single rate structure. We are obviously looking at who is furthest from opportunity, meaning looking at the current rates regarding the maximum cost of care plus and seeing who is the furthest away from that. Within that structure, we may tier, meaning we may look at different ways of rolling this out with one priority over another in multiple years or moving forward with all moving into it. There's just a lot of different decisions ahead of us that we'd like to have further conversations on. Dr. Lupit, which one is the furthest away from the true cost of care? When looking at the data, we would call that the infant-toddler rate is the furthest from opportunity. Okay. Mr. Jordan, you talked about the great need for infant toddler slots. And I'm wondering if you can expand on any suggestions on how to meet that mark. I know there are ratios are very important. Other states have redefined what an infant and toddler is. Other states define it 12 months and above, 18 months and above, 20 months and above. We define it after 24 months. Just if you could share anecdotally what you're hearing, what else we can do in that bottleneck. Absolutely, Senator. Thank you for the question. So certainly infinite toddler care has not been a challenge that's been ever addressed, right? But I think with all things coming together, with this perfect storm, as you will, with the advent of TK, with some of the adjustment factor disparities, which go across all age groups, two-, three-, and four-year-olds, If you look at the analysis chart that our team at Stanislaus County Office of Ed put together and the spaces that are available, when you look at a family child or home, either small or large, they are limited on how many infants and toddlers they can serve. When you look at the ratios of either one to three or one to four in state-funded center-based programs, that is a dilemma. The space can only be used for so much when you have to then take into account napping time and sick child areas. our facilities aren't big enough to handle the need. So I think it's a multi-pronged approach that needs to be looked at with not only center-based programs, but Family Chalker Home. Currently, one of the biggest needs we see from families is them looking for family, friend, and neighbors. That's a very limited ratio, if you will, if you look at it from that perspective. We've been working a lot with our quality counts to try to help family, friends, and neighbors maybe become licensed family child care providers for a number of reasons that could be beneficial to them, a number of them which CCPU obviously worked on. So I think it's a multi-pronged approach. There's not a silver bullet. Our LPC report talks about the great need. If you look at page 57 on our report, it talks about the dollars that it would take to address that great need, specifically just in Stanislaus County. So we have to all work together on this issue with capacity, making sure that what's available for families meets their needs, and that there's dollars behind that to support the efforts. Thank you. Ms. Pryor? I want to make sure I understand. You're saying incorporating more true cost of care. So you're saying what the administration just came out with, 2025, is not truly the true cost of care. So I would refer to the JLMC recommendations that CCPU put forth that the state did not agree to. And I have some estimates. So we're talking about infant-toddler care, and that that is the group that's furthest away from the cost of care. But given the outputs we're seeing in the cost of care estimates, by my calculations, for a large family child care home education or a fetch in, in Alameda County, infant care is already above the cost of care. So the current rate is above the cost of care estimate, which seems untrue. Okay. Yeah. So that would be an example of a problem that I would point to in our current care estimates. So under that current structure, it could create, as I mentioned, some inequitable pay structures. Okay. So the current, what we just calculated, has Alameda County as above already in that they don't need any more? For infant care. For a large vet gen. So it would be up to the single rate structure to decide how that estimate translates to a rate. but the cost of care is by the state's current estimates is saying that cost of care estimate is below the current rate. Okay. Okay. Thank you for that. Back to the department. I know there's a lot that needs to be done before we get to funding the full single rate structure. and one of the things that needs to be done is the automating part that has been reported that it's going to take approximately two years to do. But the report came out last year. If we would have started work on that last year, we'd have been one year in of the two-year process, but we haven't started that work. We've allocated funding for that. Yes, we've allocated funding for that, or we have federal funding for that. Why haven't we started the automating process? It really is related to the fact that we are still working with everyone to determine policy decisions. So we need those policy decisions in order to automate. So a good example would be the age definitions. Until we've locked in what the age definitions will be in the rate structure, we can't automate the ages. So we are trying to sequence things such that decisions are made and we don't automate things that then have to be fixed or changed or, you know, basically done again. So we are trying to wait. There is nothing we can start on that has been agreed upon that at least moves the needle forward. Do you want to speak to Dr. Yeah, so the automation is packaged in a sense. And so as we are landing these policy decisions, then that is going to contribute to the overall package of the automation. So therefore, it is difficult to start it without these decisions being finalized. I'll use an example of transportation. That is an element that is new. We had not had a policy around reimbursing for providers to transport children, although we recognize that that does occur in child care. And so this policy decisions around how that is applied is very critical to that package that we are putting together for the automation Okay What the timeline on this So we are actively in focus groups today and within the last couple months to dive into transportation in these areas. The idea with that is that that's going to help us inform from both the contractor standpoint to make sure that it is not only how do you implement, but most importantly, is it implementable? Meaning if we came up with a policy that stated on there that we would pay for mileage, that may not necessarily be implementable versus a percentage versus a per child versus a flat. So those decisions are ones that we're having decisions now. In terms of timeline, then, once we finalize that, then we will be bringing back some proposals. But how much time are we giving ourselves? Like, I don't want to say we're in conversations or we're just going to be in conversations. What's our internal? When do we want this to be done? I don't know that we can articulate yet a clear timeline. I do want to sort of just build a little bit on what Lupe just said related to we do have significant conversations and the report out that came out from the JLMC, but that was related to family child care. So some of these additional conversations are a good example of the complexity, which now we're having some of the very similar conversations on the center side who are not represented by the union and have unique and different needs. And we're trying to pour all that input in to basically understand the full scope of the system and what a full single rate structure would look like that is fair across these different forms of care, even while there might be similarities across the ages or other adjustment factors or things like that. So we certainly don't want to be elusive. We just also do not want to get sort of the cart ahead of the horse in terms of actually having understood what is needed from the field, what the inputs are, and how we can combine all of that to create a workable single rate structure that truly works for California, works for the families, works for the providers, and achieves the goals we're all looking to achieve here. Understandable. Yeah, I'd love to understand it, and I'll kick it over to you. But we need deadlines. We work with deadlines. The public needs deadlines on this. And I think if we don't have that, if we just have an open-ended, we're having conversations, it's really hard to see an end to the conversations. Mary? Yeah. I just want to say, Terry and I were talking, if she misses a deadline, she loses her child care. Like, we've been having this conversation for multiple years, multiple studies. The urgency, the desire to get this fixed is there. I don't know why we aren't wrapping this up. Like, this should be done because these providers are closing. They have no incentive to stay open. So we need the urgency that we treat families and providers with. We need the department, the administration, the legislature, everyone who has to make the decisions to make it now. Like, we cannot wait any longer. Yeah, Mary, I've said that a couple times. And one of the things, I'm running my little notes here. I just, I keep saying this over and over again. I just don't want another master plan in sub three. Sub three is the known for master plans that go nowhere. And we have the motto of the true cost. And we've had it now about a year. We need a timeline of when we're going to implement this. Deadlines are needed for conversations. And what I don understand is why and I think we heard from the department that the final rate setting would take place through collective bargaining I don know why we holding ourselves to that Why can we come out ahead of that If I misunderstood until collective bargaining happens in 2028 I don't want 2028 to be the year when we implement single rate structure.

Okay.

Great. Did you know? Did we know that? Okay, great. The chair of this subcommittee is really going to be pushing for additional. We did trailer bill language before, right, to put an actual timeline on the report. I'm really interested in doing deadlines for conversations and a ramp-up. I recognize it's a huge price tag to do that. I get that. I'm not asking for that, even though I know we need to do that. But a ramp-up would be helpful, a timeline as we get closer to the true cause. I would love further conversations on some discrepancies. I've been hearing from stakeholders on the actual true cause. If we're having these conversations, might as well throw those topics in there. But, again, the deadlines, a ramp-up timeline, because upon appropriation, it's really hard to digest. And I think that would be easier to have a goalpost that we can work towards. At least start with the goalpost. I recognize that I'll probably be moved, but at least start with the goalpost and work with that. Okay, that was any final thoughts from anyone before we conclude this panel? Okay, thank you so much, y'all. We're going to hold the item open and move on to issue number three. I think we're at good afternoon, Chair.

Dylan?

Krishan?

Chief Deputy, that was one of my questions, maybe LAO. So, because I thought since we had to add $45 million more for those two programs that were inadvertently not included, that the COLA was going to decrease, but in fact it's going to increase?

And can you – the recommendation that LAO is providing is something I would – I humbly would add my name to as well. But I'm wondering why the initial proposal was to do uneven distributions of COLA increases, knowing that our intent is to move towards a more uniform. Why was the initial proposal that way? Happy to answer and then also to see if my colleagues at the Department of Finance have anything to add.

Thank you. Yeah, the methodology is the same as the chief deputy has said. It's just there are different base program funding levels across departments for different program types. So the decision was made for the calculation that we would just base the 2.41% off of the base program funding for those program types, and that's where we kind of landed with the way that the funding was broken out. If the legislature recommends for us to unify it across all program types, something we're happy to work with you. There's no barrier to that as long as it's part of the negotiation, nothing impedes us.

Hi, Jackie Barossi with the Department of Social Services. Issue four is regarding the Child Care Alternative Methodology Survey Trailer Bill. So current law requires that a market rate survey be conducted every two years, which no longer matches the federal allowance and also the California shift to an alternative methodology survey. So the proposed trailer bill would make statutory changes so that the department can use the federally approved alternative methodology rather than the market rate survey to inform the child care reimbursement rate setting. And it also aligns the timing of the survey with the federal tri-annual child care and development fund state plan frequency. So if this statute isn't updated, then from a technical perspective, CDSS would also have to conduct a market rate survey while we are pursuing an alternative methodology, which we no longer intend to do the market rate survey with that shift. We don't have any common circumstance.

I think in terms of doing the survey the federal government requires us to do a survey in order to assess the adequacy of rates every three years We would like to move to the alternative methodology because that gives us a better sense of a cost of care to actually then evaluate the rates and determine the distance relative to a market rate. So there's that federal meeting, the federal requirement of doing the survey to assess every three years as a part of your state plan. Then there's the state process of the actual rate setting and using the alternative methodology for then that single rate structure process, that is definitely still ongoing. So we're going to be switching over from the three to the two years

No. In the federal reassessment, they ask us to look at what your current rates are and then measure that based off of the benchmark, be it the alternative methodology or the regional market rate. So we would like to continue to use the alternative methodology as that benchmark when we're assessing our current rates and what we report to the feds in terms of now they're assessing how far your rates from the cost of care as opposed to the regional market rate.

Good afternoon, Claire Ramsey for the Department of Social Services. I'm here to provide a quick overview of the licensed family daycare homes temporary absences proposal. This proposal seeks statutory changes to the Health and Safety Code to limit family child care licensees temporary absences. to no more than 20% of the hours the facility is providing care in any given calendar month. It expressly authorizes the department to waive regulations applicable to child care. Excuse me.

It expressly authorizes the department to waive regulations applicable to child care facilities and to clarify requirements for adults to provide care and supervision in family child care homes when the licensee is occasionally and temporarily away from the home. Take a minute. Sorry.

It also requires a licensee to notify the authorized representative of each child in their care in case of a temporary absence. We're proposing this because we have heard from child care providers that the existing temporary absence regulation, which limits temporary absences to no more than 20% per day is too restrictive and does not allow for reasonable absences like those related to medical appointments and treatment, jury duty, professional development activities, and union activities. I'm happy to answer additional questions.

No concerns. I appreciate us responding to the needs of our providers. This was something I heard like three years ago so I really glad that the administration has moved forward with transgender bill language on this We going to hold the item open and move on to issue number six Thank you and thank you for the concern

No comments on this time. We're going to hold the item open and move on to issue number seven. I had a quick question I forgot. Maybe Department of Finance or Deputy Director. The $21 million for the automation, that's still there whenever we need it?

That correct?

Okay. Thanks. All right. Issue number seven. Issue number seven is child care family fees deduction.

Thank you. No comments at this time. Deputy Director, I just want to know if you've heard some of the concerns specifically from Riverside County.

A contractor that we would fund or just connect them?

We actually would like to continue to hear conversations about the start date

I'm going to hold the item open and move on to issue number eight. Oh, no, come on up. I didn't know you were saying it.

Thank you so much for that. Okay, move on to issue number eight.

No comments or concerns? Deputy Judge, sorry, because the costs are higher, it wasn't spent?

I guess, I'm sorry. So the money wasn't utilized.

Go ahead.

I don't know why I'm struggling to understand that. So last year we did. Okay. And why wasn't it utilized?

Okay.

Deputy Attorney, I don't think you did the second one. Did you go over AB?

Sorry if I'm a little harsh with this, but it doesn't seem like it's a lot of duties for one person, but we're also going to use funding to pay a contract to help with travel assistance and meeting assistance. Can't that same person that we're paying for also do that as well and not pay for a contract?

You don't have a staff right now?

Yeah, so anything. You got it. So pay for a contractor, but this is requesting to get a staffer to sign.

Okay, sorry. I guess I'm reading will provide, so I just wanted to make sure. Because the funding was spent, is there a possibility for it to be unspent in the next few years?

So the 185 needed for next year can't be absorbed, but the 617 that's already allocated?

Okay, I just want to make sure. Is it more expensive to contract than to hire a person to do the work?

Yeah. Okay. We're going to hold the item open and move on to issue number nine.

We don't have any comments at this time. Anything else? I need a little bit more explanation on this one because we just went over that there's less revenues under the CCDF funds, so we can't fund the slots of 967, but at the same time we're asking for money to fund for staff. How?

From CCDF grant funds, the federal government's giving us less funding, which is the rationale as to why we're going to have less child care slots. If that's a rationale for why we can't have more slots, how is there a rationale that we do have money to pay for staff? I know the workload is there. I get that. That's not what I'm disagreeing. But they're saying there's just no money for slots. How is there then money for staff? Chris Ramahodra, Department of Finance. We just want to note that the state is allowed to use up to 5% of its federal allocation for administrative expenses. It's a lot of work to run these programs at the department level, and so some of these positions that are requested are ensuring that we're able to have appeals, make sure our Child Care and Development Division has adequate human resources staff. So we're still under that 5% limit that we have from the federal government, and so that is why the proposal was made. Okay, yeah, I know. We did 74 positions in the past couple years. So this isn't part of the 12% quality improvement? Is this going to fall under the 5% staff? Separate bucket, yeah. This is the 5% that is allowable to be used for administrative expenses. The 12% is for quality. So even though we're not going to increase in child care slots, the workload still has increased since last year. Yes. Of the 74 positions that we've allocated in the past few years. Yes, the work continues to maintain at a level we're catching up. Are any of these positions going to be helpful with removing barriers for the contracting issues that we're seeing? Yes, it is. Many of these positions are related to the contracting issue from accounting, legal, to review the information, HR, as well as the analyst that handles the appeals. What are the appeals for? appeals are in case we have allocation of dollars and someone is not granted the dollars then there is an appeal office that handles those. Okay. We're going to hold the item open and move on to issue number 10. No, just kidding. We're going to do public comment. We are now going to take public comment on all child care matters only, please. Child care matters. Thank you Tony Jordan Stanislaus County Office of Education Thank you again. And just two comments specific to issues two and four. Base rate and adjustment factor disparities need to be addressed now as we await single rate reform, as hold harmless sunsets and as child development permit matrix changes are being looked at. The second comment is specific to issue three, COLA on base rate for each program type, not on rate plus amounts or on child days of enrollment, the latter of which results in an expansion of services that was not requested by local programs, the former of which is not guaranteed ongoing funding, especially as local programs manage the difficult fiscal compliance nuances between federal and state early education regulations. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, Leticia Garcia on behalf of the Riverside County Superintendent of Schools. On issue item number seven, RCOE has the largest child care state contractor with serving over 20,000 children with 4,300 providers and 350 families who are currently paying fees. So we appreciate the discussions we've had with subcommittee staff. Next week we meet with the Department of Social Services and, again, with the Department of Finance to talk about our concern with the timeline to come into compliance as a contractor collecting these fees. It goes beyond setting up the system. It's about really shifting, hiring, training staff to be able to do this work and making sure that we work with our providers, we work with our families to establish a system that works well for everyone. So, again, appreciate the conversations. Just want to make sure that I echo that it could be that we still want to request that one-year extension for July 1st and also want to uplift my colleague who's been my partner with this effort, the California County Superintendents. this is an issue for other counties as well, perhaps not as big as Riverside County, but they will also have issues with the timeline. Thank you. Good morning, Chair and Committee. My name is Andrew. I'm here with Child Care Providers United. I just wanted to, as a quick process note, we're going to have a couple of providers here who are going to be giving the remarks in Spanish, and then immediately after we'll have a translator who will go in English. Okay, perfect. Awesome. I figured maybe for the benefit of the room, but that's wonderful. Thank you. It's okay. I usually don't do translation. Perfect. I appreciate you very much. Good morning, Chair and Committee members. My name is Anna Fonseca. I'm a child care provider of San Leandro, and I have worked in this field for four years. I came to Sacramento today to speak in support of funding family child care in the Senate budget blueprint. Family child care providers applaud the Senate budget proposal, which calls for the meaningful steps in expanding access to child care and providing 44,000 new child care slots. Building the government proposal to cost of living increases, we believe that this budget proposal represents meaningful progress. Expanding slots without increases pay risks in balancing the systems further. With most providers earning $7 to $10 an hour, the state risk losing experienced caregivers discouraging new educators from entering the field in the time when demand is as high as ever At the same time we often have absorbed costs to help our families who need it the most My costs are higher than subsidy rates, but now families cannot pay this additional cost. I could encourage them to absorb nearly $800 a month. It reflects that I have buy less materials that could have helped me provide a richer education experience for all of the children in my care. The bottom line is that children are missing out. Maintaining a strong, reliable child care system is essential. It's our state growth. Our state budget must include additional slots. Thank you. Thank you. Hola, miembros. Lo puedan bajar si quiere. Okay. Hello members of the committee. My name is Miriam Solval and I am a provider of children in the city of Hayward. I have 24 years with my daycare. Today I am going to Sacramento to talk about the rule 80-20 about the absence of temporality. Quiero comenzar reconociendo algo que todos sabemos que es cierto. No siquiera los mejores planes pueden prever la imprevisibilidad de la vida. Por eso, las regulaciones estatales deben reflejar esa realidad. Actualmente, la forma en que se aplica esta ley genera estrés innecesario y obstáculos poco prácticos para los cuidadores y muchos se sienten presionados a retrasar la atención médica, faltar al servicio de jurado o faltar a responsabilidades urgentes. por temor a que una visita de inspección pueda acarrear sanciones. Esto no es sostenible y coloca a los cuidadores en situaciones imposibles. Yo misma lo he vivido. He tenido emergencias médicas graves. Gracias. Muy buenas tardes, presidente, miembro del comité. Mi nombre es Ana Valentino, soy proveedora de cuidado infantil en la ciudad de Arleta, en el Valle de San Fernando. Es mi vecina. Mi vecina, sí, claro. Proveedora de cuidado infantil por 26 años. El año pasado, durante los incendios en Los Ángeles, recibí llamadas de compañeras angustiadas. Me decían que había proveedoras que se habían quedado sin nada. Los incendios se habían llevado sus carros, su equipo de trabajo, sus casas. No solo perdieron su casa, perdieron su ingreso. Me sentí muy mal porque incluso antes de los incendios sabemos que era difícil para proveedoras mantenerse al día con los costos de administración de sus hogares del cuidado infantil. a year later, many people have lost, no could build and re-open their homes. They don't have money to start and open their hogares no pueden regresar al trabajo que aman, no pueden abrir sus negocios que tenían, proveer trabajo a muchas personas en la comunidad, y no pueden regresar los niños y familias a sus guarderías. Volver a abrir nuestros hogares es importante para los niños, su salud mental y emocional. También fue afectada por los incendios. Un día se despidieron de su proveedor y dejaron la casa muy bien. Y el siguiente día todo quedó en cenizas. Hoy vengo a Sacramento para exigir que ayuden a las proveedoras afectadas por los incendios. Agradecemos la consideración que este comité le ha dado al presupuesto del gobernador to support the providers who lost their homes. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Maria Esther Fernandez Silva, and I'm a child care provider in the city of Norwalk. I've been working with kids for more than 25 years, and I'm here to speak on behalf of the families and the child care providers. Many of the families we serve have been waiting years for child care subsidized, sometimes for more than one child. While they wait, parents are piecing together part-time care just to stay employed. Some are working two or three jobs just to put food on the table. Or while struggling to find safe, reliable care for their children. These long wait times are making the affordable crisis in our state even worse and placing a heavy burden on working families too often. Parents are not choosing the care they want. they're choosing what they can afford. All at the same time, family child care providers are struggling to stay open. Many of us are operating month to month, doing everything we can to continue serving our community. We don't need expand child care slots, but expansion alone is not enough. We must also support and stabilize providers by including our costs leaving increase, as proposed by the governor. Families deserve real choice through options like vouchers and providers deserve full pay so we can continue offering flexible, high-quality early childhood education. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Hello. Good afternoon, everyone, committee chair and committee members. My name is Tanika Benahini. I live here right here in Sacramento, California. I have been a child care provider for seven years and proud of it. I'm here today in support of the sun setting, the change of the definition of toddler codified in the 2024-2025 Budget Act. While the expansion of the state program for children aged two to three-year-old were intended to help families, It was rolled out without fully considering the need of children who are not development ready for the classroom setting. Many of these children need individual attention, especially those with speech delays, social emotion challenges, or other developmental needs. In my own program, I have seen this firsthand, how this helped impact the families. I have had a family who were enrolled in my program their two in a state program and they were told it would be better for the opportunity Hmm it didn work out so well Within just a few weeks the child began to struggle He was overwhelmed in the classroom had difficulties communicating and was not getting the one-on-one care that he needed. The parent was receiving calls frequently at the school to pick him up. Eventually, the family made the difficult decision to pull him from the school and return to family child care. You'll have to wrap up. But in the end, when the family pulled the child from the family child care, their slot was lost. Thank you. So when they're not getting adequate care at the schools and not the same care, it impacts families. Thank you. If we keep disrespecting my time, I'm going to cut it down to 30 seconds. I'd ask if everyone stay within a minute and a half, please. And when I say stop, you have to stop, please. Okay. Hello. My name is Yvonne. Anna Chalker, provided from here, City, Sacramento. I have been a family child care for 24 years. In our last contract, child care providers won the creation of a joint labor management committee. Last December 1st, we released a report with recommendation. These recommendations should be implemented right now. This will bring us closer to the true cost of care right away. It will stabilize providers like me and improve care for families. Cost of care should not just be a mischievous stick for occurring rates. It should be how we actually pay providers so we can keep our doors open. We need payment rates that reflect the full cost of providing care. We need rates that ensure extra pay once a family accepts 40 hours of care for with based and certificate need. We need rates that account for higher costs in our hours outside on standard hours. We need transportation, meals, reimbursement, and pay for time and spend transportation children. Putting more money into rates through the budget will use CPCPU to bargain immediately to bring our closer to the cost of care. There are options available to us right now. We ask the committee to continue standing with child care providers. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Chair Committees. My name is Charlotte Neal, and I'm a child care provider from Sacramento. I have been a child care provider for 28-plus years, doing 24-hour child care. I am here to support to moving a prospective pay, the challenges child care providers face. Child care providers begin to incur costs the moment a child is enrolled, hiring additional staff, purchasing supplies, and preparing meals. Yet we do not receive reimbursement until at least 21 days and after timesheets are submitted, and often waste seven to eight minutes, eight weeks, after investing our own money to serve children in our program. At the same time, a 2022 UC Berkeley report found that 14.1% of family child care providers can afford $400 emergency expense. In the fourth largest economy in the world, we should not be asking the workforce, earning as little as $7 an hour to shoulder the financial risk while hoping for accurate and timely payments from the state. Providers are effectively extending credit to the state of California just to keep their doors open. What's at stake is clear. If family child care providers are truly essential workers, then we must be paid the true cost of care and recognized as the professionals we are. Over 90 of family child care providers are black brown indigenous and women immigrant whose labor has been historically undervalued Adopting a prospective play model will pay providers before care is delivered just as private paid families do so we can plan responsibly Thank you Thank you. Good afternoon. Julia Forte-Fruitt in the Child Care Law Center. We're also a member of the ECE Coalition. And first, we really want to thank you, Chairman Javar, for all the heart and hard work you put into the Senate budget plan. We strongly support the Senate's proposal to fill 44,000 new child care spaces, especially at a time when families need affordable child care the most due to the impacts of HR1 and the new HUD proposed rules. Any work requirements, wherever they come from, really need to be paired with increased funding for child care. And we also urge the committee to ensure providers are supported and respected by doing exactly what you did today, prioritizing the transition of paying providers the true cost of care. And that means deadlines, clear goals, clear plan. We also urge you to support the governor's proposal to increase child care providers' payments and for financial assistance to providers who are impacted by the LA wildfires, and that means all providers, those that are licensed exempt as well. And then just as it relates to the trailer bill on the COLA, on the unexplained absences, and on the 80-20 rule, we really urge you to work with and listen to child care providers and families to ensure those are responsive to their needs and the policies are equitable. And lastly, we just want to note that we commend and applaud the Senate Dems for raising revenues and really working to make sure corporations, wealthy corporations, are engaging in community responsibility. So thank you for your bold leadership. Good afternoon. Alicia Hatfield, Every Child, California. First, I want to reiterate that center-based slots are being utilized. We want to make sure that everyone is thoughtful about how any shift toward vouchers could have implication for funding equity across communities. The nine-month delay in CCTR contract finalization and ongoing licensing barriers are attributed to state timelines, not provider actions, so providers should not be penalized through reductions in CCTR spaces due to structural licensing and contracting failures. We're asking that the 4,200 slots be protected. These slots are already in construction, cutting them waste public investment and breaks faith with families. We believe no children need be disenrolled to justify this cut. Fund the 44,000 slots. We support the Senate's proposal to fund all 44,000 slots. Thank you for that. We'd also like to move CSPP under Prop 98. We support the Senate's proposal with the caveat that providers' existing right to temporary transfer contracts between CSPP and CCT are be preserved. That flexibility is a lifeline for mixed delivery systems. Finally, we ask that families with two-year-olds still have the option of enrolling their children in CSPP programs. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, Lily with the California Resource and Referral Network. I'm the Policy and Advocacy Associate there. First, I want to thank you for the proposal to include the 44,000 spaces in the Senate budget proposal. The network is a statewide member organization representing child care resource and referral agencies, which are community-based programs that exist in every county. RNRs make up a well-developed, publicly-funded child care infrastructure that supports families with navigating and understanding child care options that best meet their needs. RNRs also expand and strengthen our child care supply and workforce by working directly with child care providers to grow their businesses, identify professional development opportunities, and navigate child care licensing. Their services are free and available to everybody, regardless of income. Today, we urge you to maintain funding for all child care development programs, particularly the quality improvement dollars that fund RNRs the Child Care Initiative Project or SIP and other critical supports for healthy child care system We specifically asked for the general fund backfill for the million quality improvement federal fund reduction as well as the million reduction in child and adult food programs Any cuts to R&Rs, we've heard from members, will reduce staff hours, capacity to assist families, as well as their ability to respond to emergencies like fires, which is particularly important for our rural communities. So thank you so much again for today, and please let us know if you have any questions. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair. I'm Alvarado with the California EDGE Coalition here to support and uplift the importance of child care access. Child care is essential to workforce participation and economic mobility. We respectfully urge our state leaders to fund the planned expansion of subsidized child care slots and avoid cuts to access. We also support provider stability and rate reform so providers can continue serving families and supporting California's workforce. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Javar. I'm going to knock out two organizations in my one minute. So first here on behalf of Jonathan Munoz on behalf of the Early Care and Education Coalition. We continue to urge the Department of Social Services to adopt a rate structure that accurately reflects the real cost of care that is updated regularly, is regionally responsive, and protective of current rates. We'd like again to thank the Senate for funding of the 44,000 slots in 26-27. Finally, we are seeking clarity on several administrative issues, the funding reduction to the child care development funds, Proposition 64, and the need for mid-year transfers and funding for CCTR spaces. And then second, on behalf of First 5 Los Angeles, we'd like to line the comments with the EC Coalition and would again thank the Senate for the commitment to fund 44,000 slots. Finally, First of LA would like to express its support of the governor's proposal for $11.5 million one-time Prop 64 funding for child care infrastructure targeted toward communities that were affected by the LA fires. Thank you again. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Mendivar. Julia Terry with Child Care Resource Center. We provide child care and family support services to over 65,000 families, children, and providers across Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. We'd first like to thank you and the Senate for the proposed 44,000 child care spaces. This will help increase access to these critically needed slots and will help CCRC enroll some of its 30,000 children that are currently waiting for access to care. On the note of the bridge program funding levels, I just want to highlight that the idea that current funding levels are meeting actual need might not be accurate. The program has been in a state of continual rollout, implementation, and scaling since the start of the pandemic. and the increased funding that the program was allocated in previous years was intended to meet real need across counties. So as the program continues to evolve and increase in service connection, the restoration of these funds will be needed to meet the real needs of families across the state of California. Finally, as the legislature continues to craft the final budget for this year, we ask for a laser focus on protecting and preserving the current funding levels for safety net programs. Treat it as a holistic system that serves the whole needs of families. The same families that access child care are the same families that rely on Medi-Cal, CalFresh, and other safety net programs that are being heavily impacted by H.R. 1. These programs are foundational to family stability. Pulling one support out from under families such as child care often leads to cascading effects, families slipping back into deep poverty that's extremely difficult to escape. So thank you, Chair Mendravar, for your commitment and leadership on this work and these issues. We look forward to being a continual partner for our vision for Just California for Families. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Menjavar. Jasmine Valle on behalf of the Low Income Investment Fund. First, we want to express our appreciation for the inclusion of child care investments in the proposed Senate budget and the continued recognition of early care and education as essential infrastructure for California's families and workforce. We look forward to working in partnership in supporting this work together with the ECE coalition. LIF has had the privilege of administering the $350 million child care and development infrastructure grant program and has seen firsthand the significant demand for facility funding across the state. Funding reached about 3,800 providers, but with nearly 7,000 applicants requesting approximately $1 billion, demand clearly continues to outpace available resources, especially for those impacted by recent wildfires. The governor's proposal to allocate $11.5 million in Prop 64 funding for child care providers affected by wildfires is an important step toward recovery. These providers play a key role in allowing parents to work and local economies to function, making the restoration of their facilities essential to helping families return to work and rebuild. Through our work on LA Rise, we know providers need grants to assist them with rebuilding funding gaps that insurance will not cover. We look forward to working with this committee, CDSS, and the administration on the details of this program to ensure providers have access to funds needed to rebuild and serve children in these impacted areas. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Rosanna Carvacho-Elliott here on behalf of the Early Care and Education Consortium. Our members here in California operate 463 centers with the capacity to serve over 67,000 children. Really appreciate the Senate's plan to include the additional slots that have been promised to the field for a long time. Also want to align ourselves with the ECE coalition comments that you heard earlier. Support the governor's cost of, I'm sorry, the cost of living adjustment. That is obviously, as you know, very important to have any increase as we wait for the alternative rate methodology to be put into place. Would also encourage the legislature to actually put in statute that alternative rate methodology. Appreciated your comments today, Madam Chair, pushing the department on deadlines, but you all have the ability to put it in statute, and we would encourage you to do so, not just the deadlines, but put the methodology in statute so you can hear from all of us in the field about what's wrong with the current rate structure, as you heard from the budget center. You know, I think that is something that we know that you can do and you will hear from us. And then lastly, I just wanted to thank you, Madam Chair, for uplifting the concerns about how different providers are being treated differently with the rollout of transitional kindergarten, how CSPP has received, you know, an adjustment factor, but the rest of the field did not. That is, as you know, transitional kindergarten has been a huge impact to providers and really appreciate that and look forward to working with you. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Menjivar. Andrew Avila with Early Edge California. We are a member of the ECE Coalition. First, I want to thank you for your leadership in helping protect the prominent spaces to us. And second, we really appreciate the comments revolving the 80-20 rule, aligning COLA and rates between all early learning and care programs, and moving forward the alternative methodology. We really look forward to a final budget that will also include an increase to provider pay, including for our licenses exempt providers like family, friends, and neighbors. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Javar. Jess Guerra with the Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles. We represent 10 agencies across the county, and we are also a member of the EC coalition, so we align our comments with the EC coalition. I'll just add that as we consider the $11.5 million, As for impacted providers through recent wildfires that we please consider family friend and neighbor As part of the impacted group previous comments made in a previous hearing was only focused on licensed facilities but FFNs are so crucial to our communities our children, our families, and they were also impacted. About 400 providers in total were impacted by the fires, and so please consider them as negotiations move forward. So thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair. Alexa Chavez, ledge advocate with United Domestic Workers, Asping Local 3930, just here to echo all of the comments that you heard today by our child care providers, and thank you for the thoughtful discussion, and we're looking forward to following up on the items discussed today. Are there a new person? I don't think I've seen you with you, DW. Are you there? We have. I was on maternity leave. Great to see you again, but thank you. Thank you. Sorry. Good afternoon, Chair. Kim Lewis representing Children Now, proud member of the ECU Coalition, in line with their requests. We sincerely appreciate your dedication and sense of urgency to keep the promise to California's families. You also recognize the need is urgent as of January of this year. 90% of families with young children report experiencing anxiety about meeting their basic needs, the highest any state ever recorded. Lack of child care is a key driver, pushing parents out of the workforce and too often into poverty. Yet our neighbors in New Mexico prove that expanding access Child care does the opposite. They lift 120,000 single parents out of poverty, and Quebec saw 75% fewer single parents on public assistance by expanding child care access. At a time of tough choices, child care stands apart and delivers immediate relief and long-term results across multiple priorities and, importantly, ensures equity for our youngest kids. Please keep California's promise and invest in our children and families. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and staff. DeBray Sanders of Black, California, United for Early Care and Education. First, we want to thank you for your leadership, as well as the rest of the Senate, for having a budget proposal that actually meets the needs and reflects the values of California, that puts child care as a priority, as well as the efforts to generate revenue, because the reality is we're going to need money to be able to pay for things. We're going to need money to be able to pay for the alternative methodology, as well as we are aligned with our comments with the EC Coalition and fully support our movement towards an alternative rate methodology that covers the true cost of care. We do also want to add to consideration that in that work that that's not fully getting us there. There also needs to be some consideration of the racial ways and justice that affects black child care providers and early educators, where currently they're seeing both currently and historically losing about 30 cents on the dollar. We would really request that there's some consideration of how to help address that in the rollout of any efforts on the alternative rate methodology. Of course, we're fully in support of the 11.5 million that's helping those in recovery of the Altadena fires. We also do want to make sure that especially Altadena, which is a historically black neighborhood, and the child care providers in that area do receive the special attention that they need and aren't left behind like black people in California have been left behind for decades, if not centuries. Again, really want to appreciate your work on this issue and continue to work forward to get a better California for everybody, but especially for black people. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Staffer. Thanks so much for this discussion today. Really appreciate the call-out of Prop 64 and the legislation that happened last session with AB 564 and just the impact of the field on that. My name is Jeanette Carpenter. I'm here on behalf of Child Action. I'm also here on behalf of Thriving Families California. Overall, we align our comments with the ECE Coalition, but just wanted to call out that Child Action serves 10 families 4 providers and 20 children here in Sacramento County We wanted to flag that we have over 5 families waiting on our child care eligibility list So just wanted to highlight that number for you. But really just looking forward to working with you and the administration and appreciate your time today. Thanks so much. Thank you. Good afternoon. Rebecca Gonzalez with the Western Center on Law and Poverty, also here on behalf of In Child Poverty California. We want to align our comments with parent voices and support for funding the child care slots. We appreciate the Senate's leadership in that respect and also really appreciate the Senate's leadership in talking about revenues, which is what we need to do. As we know, we need it for many different priorities, and child care keeps families working and keeps kids out of poverty. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We are now going to move into our next topic, child welfare, continuing on with issue number 10. Thank you. Before we go into our panel, we'll have the department do the issue 10 budget overview. Sure, happy to do that. And just Angie Schwartz, Deputy Director with the Children and Family Services Division at the Department of Social Services. Good afternoon. Is it the afternoon yet? Yes. Chair, happy to be here today. I'll just start with our vision for child welfare in California is that children and family remain safely together whenever possible. When necessary, child welfare systems are responsible for removing a child from their parents or guardians, which is undoubtedly one of the most sensitive roles of government and society. And once we undertake this role, we bear the responsibility for their safety, permanency, and well-being. Our goal is that all children remain with relatives and extended family members whenever possible, as we know they do best when connected to culture, community, tribes, and people they know and love. and our budget allows us to accomplish those goals. Overall, the governor's budget includes $10.3 billion, $1 billion general fund for fiscal year 26-27 for Children and Family Services, which is, as you know, overseen by CDSS and administered locally by our counties. It reflects an increase of $413.6 million in total funds, which is a $48.2 million general fund decrease from the Budget Act of 25. That increase reflects growth in the projected foster care expenditures associated with the home-based family care rate, as well as revisions to OTSI spending plan for the California Automated Response and Engagement System, also known as CWS CARES, partially offset by the sunset of the fiscal year 22-23 continuum of care reform reconciliation funding and the one-time foster family agency patch funding from fiscal year 25-26. With regard to the question about whether or not the reduction of the family urgent response system funding included in the 2025 budget act is having an impact on local FERS operations We are not seeing any impact on local FERS operations at this time The service delivery appears stable. Despite those funding adjustments, there's been no observable, observable statewide or county level decline in utilization from the data that we have available to us. In terms of the implementation of the bridge funding for the foster family agencies, excuse me, that was included in the 2025 Budget Act, approximately $7.5 million of the $31.5 million that was allocated last year to support the foster family agencies remains available, and agencies are allowed to continue to apply to utilize that remaining $7.5 million through June 30th of 2027. You'd be the second person. I started choking today. Like choking. That's not, it's like lovely. Or until fully utilized. There were approximately 119 funding requests in that first round of funding, all of which received 100% of the amount requested, and those funds were dispersed. As of March 3rd of 2026, 28 FFAs have closed. Importantly, all the active homes were successfully ported either to another foster family agency or to the county, preventing placement disruptions. In terms of future closures, we cannot predict whether additional FFAs might close. We're working closely with both the California Alliance, the foster family agencies, and the counties to continue to evaluate impacts. I'm now going to turn this over to Mr. Hansard to provide an update on the CWS CARES project. Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. I'm Brandon Hanser, Chief Deputy Director at the Office of Technology and Solutions Integration. And in regards to CWS CARES, the CWS CARES project continues to progress towards an October 2026 statewide go live with recent strategic adjustments to training and the introduction of a production simulation model. These changes are designed to strengthen user readiness, improve system quality, and reduce overall implementation risk. We do have an exciting update to the summary that's in the agenda today. Just as of yesterday, April 22, 2026, ACF has provided approval for the CWS CARES annual planning document update and the two submitted as-needed annual planning document updates supporting the continued federal funding for development and implementation activities. To support a more comprehensive readiness approach, the project reprocured the implementation services contract to provide greater flexibility in training modalities, including both in-person and virtual options tailored to the county's needs. This approach will include 30 days of over-the-shoulder support prior to go live and an additional 60 days post-go live support. It also incorporates increased use of in-application guidance and hands-on learning aligned with real business workflows. These enhancements are expected to improve retention and readiness across the approximately 25,000 end users while enabling early identification and remediation of gaps in business process understanding. Additionally, the project's enhancing readiness by implementing a production simulation environment for all users. This environment will allow users to simulate job duties using production-like data, validate integrations with external systems and operate within role-based access aligned to business processes. The production simulation is planned to run from early May through early October, 2026, providing flexibility and extended hands-on experience. While Alding's effort I highlighted will significantly improve our user experience and adoption of CWS CARES. The overall project timeline remains very tight, with limited schedule flexibility along the critical path. The project continues to actively manage the risks, though, and remains focused on achieving the October 2026 go-live. Any comments? Thank you, Madam Chair. Ginny Bellow with the Analyst's Office. On this overview item, we would just note that there are no major discretionary funding expansions or reductions in the child welfare budget proposed for 26-27. The year-over-year decline in general fund, as described by the administration, really is primarily the result of the expiration of one-time funding that was provided in prior years. Thank you. Anything else from the Department of Finance? Slova and Zor, Department of Finance, nothing further to add. Great. Department of Finance, can you share how much has been spent on CARES? I know there's going to be an updated BCP for this. Is there anything you can share on that? Yes, we are anticipating an updated spring BCP. I have the 2024-25 expenditures in front of me for the project, if you'd like that. We don't have anything. I know from what we allocated last year, I know we have reappropriated some of it because it was unspent. I just want to know if you anticipate more unspent dollars. Brandon Hansard again from OTSI. We are in the process of working with finance, and we'll be able to deliver those updated expenditures along with May revise. Okay. Okay, perfect. Deputy Director, on the third question you answered on the FFAs, you don't anticipate, but have you heard anything from the Alliance that they're hearing that another FFA could close? Have you received any feedback? I think we've heard from them that the FFAs are continuing to feel the increase, like the impacts of the increase of the FFAs. And I think they have a request in for additional dollars for another year of bridge funding. So we allocated this funding last year for two years worth, and we've dispersed it in the first year, almost all of them? It was for one year, and so we have used most of those dollars for that year. So there's $7.5 million remaining, and we are allowing foster family agencies to continue to apply for those dollars. At this point, we have continued to receive requests for additional dollars. I think we've got 50 requests and totaling $10 million right now. So we are not granting 100% of the amount requested in the second round because we're anticipating that there will be more requests and we want to be able to give something to everyone. I mean, is it safe to say there was a big correlation between us providing some dollars and no other ones closing? Because they were on a track. It was like 26 that closed in the past couple years. And this past year we didn't see any closures. Well, as of March 3rd, 2026, there were 28 FFAs. that closed. So we did see some closures. Two then since we allocated funding? I don know how many since we allocated the funding That a good question Yeah I like to see if there was actually a correlation between us providing this bridge funding and then temporarily halting any future FFA closing Okay, we can get back to you on that. And then for the first program, are we on track for all of it to be used? I don't know the answer to that either in terms of the expenditures so far. I know that in terms of the number of calls and the responses from the hotline, we aren't seeing any decrease. And we're seeing that we're able to meet the need just like we were. We reverted some of it to match the usage. I'm wondering if that's the adequate usage. We went under, we went over. Or will we have a better understanding of that in the May revise? Or will we have to wait until next year? We may have to wait because the expenditures don't come in all at once. But we can provide whatever we have as of the May revise. But I don't think we're going to have a full year's worth of expenditure data as of May revise. So we may not be able to fully answer that question. That makes sense. But we can tell you what we know as of May revise. Thank you. For the FFAs, I know the insurance piece is out of our jurisdiction. What collaboration are we having with CDI just to have a permanent solution in that space? Those conversations have been ongoing. There's been a work group that's been meeting with CDI, with us, with the California Alliance, inclusive of the counties as well. So I think those solutions are continuing to be discussed at that level. Okay, didn't know about the work group. I'm glad to hear it. And then I just want to clarify and make sure I don't know how to read this, that it would take at least, the department estimates that it would take at least $13 million to make FFAs whole for 2026 insurance renewals. Fiscal year or for the next, what was that number? It covers up to this year? So what we know is that we only have $7.5 million remaining. And if we were to base it on how many requests came this last year and how much would be needed if the same number of requests comes in, I think that's what that $13 million came from. For the rest of the calendar year or just the fiscal year? For the coming fiscal year. Coming fiscal year. Okay, so only an extra $13 million to cover 26, 27. If it were to be the same number of requests. So I think that that number just came from the number of requests that we already got and saying if you were going to match it for the next year. Okay. And then can you share a little bit more? The counties are asking, if I'm not mistaken, not for more money on the child welfare funding from previous years, the $100 million, just to continue utilizing what's left over? Can you repeat that? Sure. So there's going to be an expiration of one-time funding for child welfare from prior years. So we've provided counties to augment their emergency response programs. We provided $100 million in one-time funding. And it's supposed to sunset June 30th of this year. And I think, if I'm understanding, the counties are asking for an extension, not for more dollars, but an extension. Is there unused dollars there? You're here. It'd be great. I am here. So there's two separate requests. There the request for the emergency response funding which does expire and is fully expended at the end of June There a separate request that we have for a two extension for the flexible family supports and we believe that's necessary as a bridge to the tiered rate structure. There we go, and that's the no cost? Correct. Those dollars are not yet fully expended? Those are the ones that are not fully expended? Correct. Okay, how much is that? How much is remaining? Yes. That hasn't been spent yet? It's around, we've spent around, what's remaining is around 47.5% unspent. That's a lot. So was it the intent, maybe department finance or department, it was the intent since that's unspent, it would be called back July 1st? As of now, go ahead. So under sort of current law, sort of dollars would revert on the natural as part of a final budget, if there were language to extend the authority for that use, then it would sort of extend to the period decided. So that could be a decision as part of the governor's final budget development. Do we know, and I apologize, I don't know, is this being utilized as a savings for next year? There's no proposal in the governor's budget related to this. It's just a sunset under current law given the one-time dollars. Okay, thank you so much for that. We're going to hold that item open, now move into our panel on issue 11. with foster care tiered rate structure implementation. And we'll have the department kick us off if there's anything. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. David Swanson-Hollens, our chief deputy director with the Department of Social Services. And thank you for the opportunity to talk about the tiered rate structure. And I will talk to the first question on the agenda. As Deputy Director Schwartz has shared in the first item, we know children do best when they remain with relatives or extended family, when they're connected with their culture, their community, and people they know and love. A family-centered kin-first system is critical for all children, including those who have experienced significant trauma. The tiered rate structure, or TRS, is central to advancing this vision. It's the first reform of its kind in the nation, and it finally aligns funding with what we know. Children should receive the support they need in family-based settings whenever possible. For too long, our rate structures have tied the highest level of support only to institutional placements. Today, our interim rate structure is place-based. Resource families receive a level of care rate based on caregiver activities rather than on a child's assessed needs. Youth with more serious needs can access intensive services foster care, while STRTPs, our short-term residential therapeutic programs, our institutional settings, receive the highest level of funding. TRS changes this fundamentally. It provides full funding and services for children based on their needs, regardless of their placement setting. This means that children with the highest needs will be provided full funding in family homes, including the homes of relatives This shift honors what our statutes and our policies have long recognized Kinship care leads to better outcomes greater stability stronger sibling connections higher reunification rates and lower reentry TRS also ensures families have the level of support required to care for children with the highest acuity of need. For some youth, caregiving must be a full-time effort, and TRS provides the resources families need to be available, coordinated, and supported. Beyond caregiving, children need opportunities to build and maintain their strengths, experience normalcy, and stay connected to their communities. The new Strengths Building program invests directly in those needs, something young people in foster care have advocated for for decades. And for children with the most significant needs, TRS establishes the Immediate Needs program, ensuring timely wraparound services and supports so families aren't left navigating crises alone. Ultimately, TRS is a child-centered, holistic reform, ensuring that children can remain safely with their families and communities with the right services wrapped around them. We are committed to continuing to work closely with counties, with tribes, providers, advocates, youth and parents with lived expertise and other key partners to ensure successful implementation of the tiered rate structure in July of 2027, contingent on the needed appropriation. And I'll now turn it over to Deputy Director Schwartz, and she'll talk about where we are in the implementation and the work ahead. Good afternoon, Angie Schwartz, Deputy Director of the Children and Family Services Division. I want to start by echoing what Chief Deputy Swanson Hollinger shared. TRS represents a seismic shift in how we partner with families. It strengthens our system's ability to support children where they belong, at home, connected to the people who matter the most. we are on track to issue all foundational TRS policy guidance by the end of this calendar year. That positions us to use the first half of 2027 for training, capacity building, and preparing the workforce for a July 2027 launch. In terms of the resources that were allocated in the 2025 Budget Act, those allowed us to establish a new unit to support CANS and CFT fidelity, which are foundational to TRS implementation. We now have two units dedicated to CFT and CAN's policy and practice development, technical assistance, training, and fidelity improvement. We also issued All-County Letter 2554, which requires counties to use a suite of fidelity tools, including timeliness data measures, CFT participant surveys, action plans and summaries, which will be attached to the court reports, county proactive and improvement plans, and new observation tools, all of which together are designed to improve the fidelity with the CANS and the CFT process. Alongside this, we have partnered with the Cal Academies to create a formal statewide technical assistance and training structure to support counties as they implement their improvement plans. Out of 116 placing agencies, 99 have submitted their county proactive improvement plans, and 71 are already receiving technical assistance. With these resources in place, we expect timely CANS and CFT completion by the end of this calendar year. And then we'll continue to work towards the fidelity as well. In terms of the progress that we are making in implementing each component of the tiered rate structure, I want to start by noting the significant amount of engagement that goes into the development of each aspect of these policies. We have had extensive engagement sessions with youth, families, counselors, tribes, providers, advocates, and expect those to be continuing and ongoing. Specific to the care and supervision component, we expect that policy to be available in the fall of 2026, and we also release the nine notices of action that will be programmed into CALSAWS to ensure due process for foster children and non-minor dependents and their caregivers whenever a payment change occurs. With regard to the strength building program, we're finalizing the scope of work with Public Partnership LLC, which will be our financial management coordinator for those strength building dollars. We've also issued key guidance for stakeholder input, which includes the standard of care framework, the examples of allowable activities, and age stratified spending plan templates. For the immediate needs component, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the youth in tiers 2, 3, and 3 plus to identify the effective services and true cost drivers. You got a summary of that analysis in January of this year. It was a report that was released to the legislature. That analysis confirmed that high-fidelity wraparound, paired with the immediate needs program, is the strongest and most sustainable approach when Medi-Cal and flexible funding are aligned. We're working closely with our partners at the Department of Healthcare Services, as well as stakeholders to build that integrated model. Over the coming year, as I said, we'll release all the foundational guidance. We'll finalize the contracts for the third-party administrator of the Immediate Needs Program and the financial management coordinator for the strength-building program, as well as complete a statewide capacity analysis. We're partnering with UCLA and Yostfish to develop training infrastructure needed to support both the technical and cultural shifts that the tiered rate structure requires. And finally, in partnership with DHCS, CWDA, CVHDA, CPOC, California Alliance, and led by the Public Works Alliance, we're completing a statewide wraparound capacity assessment. I know it's a lot of acronyms, but I'm assuming you know who all those organizations are. It was like alphabet soup if ever there was. We're completing a statewide wraparound capacity assessment, which will help us determine the number of high-fidelity WRAP teams needed across tiers in counties. We're also assessing the Medi-Cal capacity within our counties and surveying counties and providers on the technical assistance that they need. We are working with philanthropy to support those capacity-building efforts. Happy to answer questions. We'll move on to the next panelists, and then I'll direct some questions. I think the Director of California Policy, the Casey Family Programs. Yes, thank you. Hi, Vanessa. Thank you, Chair and Committee, for inviting Casey Family Programs to provide technical assistance on child welfare in the California foster care tiered rate structure. Casey Family Programs was founded in 1966 and has been providing, analyzing, developing, and informing best practices in child welfare for 60 years. We work with child welfare agencies in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and 19 sovereign tribal nations to develop and support better child welfare policies and practice. Our mission is to provide and improve and ultimately prevent the need for foster care. As mentioned, we are partnering on the tiered rate structure, so today I'd like to highlight some of the research and data that we know affirms this model and will yield to better outcomes for children and youth. TRS is deeply interconnected to the work that has gone on in California for the past 15 years As we track as KC Family Programs tracks and identifies effective child welfare policies across the country it easy to notice that California has been on the forefront of tackling major issues and really has been an innovative force as it relates to child welfare policy across the country Through these forward-thinking policies, California has made meaningful strides to center and consider the best outcomes for children and youth. And coupled with other major investments such as CalAIM, CYBHI, California is moving away from siloed bureaucracies and towards systems that are hopefully integrated, more modern, and responsive to communities. I know this committee is well aware of some of those pillars, including the continuum of care, which started in 2012. CCR investigated how congregate care was being used across the state and made the necessary shifts to recognize that children deserve safe, loving homes. Ultimately signed in 2015 by Governor Brown and enacted in 2017, the ripple effects of CCR have impacted other states. and even the federal landscape. In 2018, Congress passed the Family First Prevention Services Act, which provided prevention dollars to states. Related to congregate care, FFPSA's primary goal was to ensure that these settings were used short-term for clinical treatment rather than as placement settings. FFPSA also added requirements on these facilities like national accreditation, judicial review, and many other components that California had already integrated within CCR. Through these massive changes, California has been a pioneer and moved the needle. And again, we are at that moment. And I would like to underscore that a lot of these shifts are deeply rooted in data. and deeply rooted in the research as highlighted by the department. Focused on CCR, for example, the research shows that group and institutional placements are the most expensive and resource intensive. They generally produce poorer outcomes for youth than family-based settings. They pose roadblocks to the timely achievement of permanency and have poorer outcomes. In many cases, they can cost up to 10 times more than a placement with family or kin. Recognizing these poor outcomes and wanting more for our children and youth, California's CCR effort was effective in achieving change. Since 2018, youth placed in congregate care has decreased dramatically from 3,500 to less than 1,500. And we know that despite these poor outcomes, youth in California's foster care system are resilient, they have dreams, and they all have futures. what would it look like if we invested in their strengths, in that resilience, and those natural strengths? As highlighted before, the placement with kin, for those placed with relatives or kin, the outcomes are even better. As it relates to the California foster care rate structure, which seeks to align the funding, services, and strength-building resources on child-specific needs instead of placement type, We know it's rooted in strategies that will yield better outcomes. The data and research show that if children do need to be separated from family for safety reasons, they do best in family-like settings. And when funding and services are child-specific, children and youth experience better outcomes in almost every domain such as safety well If you can wrap up please Absolutely The foster care tiered rate structure is designed to disentangle placement from services and ensure that the resources, both the dollars and the support, are specific to the individual child and the youth's needs. Thank you for your time, and we're happy to answer any questions on the resources we provided. Thank you so much. Move on over to CWDA.

For our last two, I know you're splitting the time, So you have three and a half minutes each, okay? All right.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. My name is Chantel Johnson, and I am the directing advocate of the Youth Law Center, a former foster youth, and also a kinship caregiver to a now teenager. I've experienced the foster care system from every side, And what I can tell you is this. Families and resource parents are stepping up every day to care for children they love, but too often they are doing it without the support they need to succeed. I know how I have. When services aren't available early, small challenges don't say small, they build, they compound, and what could have been addressed with basic, timely support becomes a crisis. And when that happens, the system does respond, but it often responds in the most disruptive and costly ways. Placement changes, move to more restrictive settings, disconnection from family, school, and community. We are still operating in a system that steps in too late after stability has already been lost. Christina spoke about what young people need to feel grounded, the relationships, the opportunities, the sense of belonging that make up a real childhood. What I'm here to share is what happens when those supports aren't there. Without them, families struggle to hold things together, youth lose connections, and we end up spending more, financially and emotionally trying to fix situations that didn't have to escalate in the first place. This reform is not just about what's better for families. It's about what's a better investment for our state. This is why this reform matters. The tiered rate structure represents a fundamental shift from reacting to crisis to preventing it. It is about making sure families have access to support early before things fall apart. It means youth can stay in homes and communities with people who know and love them instead of being moved just to access services. But it's important to be clear. This only works if the structure moves forward as a whole and moves forward now. Families don't experience needs and pieces. Young people don't experience their lives and phases. They need a system that actually works for them consistently and from the start. We have spent years hearing directly from young people and caregivers what needs to change. They have helped shape this vision. They have been patient, and they have also been waiting for relief. Delaying or fragmenting this reform doesn't just slow progress. It risks continuing a system we know that already doesn't work. At its core, this is about whether we follow through on our commitments we've made to support families early, to keep youth stable, and to ensure children in foster care have the same opportunities as every other child. We urge the committee to follow through on this commitment and move this forward without delay so the next generation of our youth can grow up with the stability support and opportunities they deserve they deserve Thank you so much Thank you Turn it over to All right Ginny

Soha?

Thank you. I do want to say from like the first time we had this conversation here, the tone is completely different. I mean, there is a lot more, it feels like collaboration, success, moving forward. So to Jeannie's point, I think, yes, that's very, very true. But it is also true that we don't know if this will start in 2027. And my first question, Carlos, you spoke a little bit about what is needed. If this were to go in fact in July 1, 2027, from now until then, do you have that time to be ready?

And Department of Finance, what's the full cost of the full implementation?

Oh, yeah, I was trying to read that. I was like, do I add up all the numbers?

So budget year plus two shows 75% and then budget year. The 100% would be that. Have we done any calculations or thought about the potential of decoupling or some kind of ramp? Have any preliminary calculations been done, like how much would that cost if we did one, or what can be? And we have the cost associated with each component of the rate,

Those portions are in the multi-year. How do I read that?

And strength building and immediate needs.

So it's sort of broken out by those different. So if I look at, so for care and supervision, $98 million. That is, yes, in budget year plus one, that $98 million would be the total cost. So, but I don't need to add, because there's county administration. Do I need to add in the county and the state operations as well to also do care and supervision?

I don't know if they had to go hand in hand. Can you just do care supervision without doing county administration and state operations?

Maybe pulling the conversation back a little, I think to the point this is subject to an appropriation,

I apologize to the stakeholders. I don't see this starting July 1st, 2027, 100% of it. I mean, I would love to be proven wrong. I would love to work in a world where that's a big priority, a big outcome. Like, that's a huge chance that that's going to happen. And I would love if there's conversations on what else we can do instead of working in a world where we think it's going to start and it doesn't really start and we're working with that timeline. it'd be great if we can use these next six months to a year to really see what is their possibility of anything moving forward and not come starting February of next year of like, hey, we need to delay it, and we wasted all this time of seeing what else could be done. So the structure deficit, I did not know, did not account for the $705 million, so that's even adding it. I don't know what our revenue stream is going to look like, but if we already have ahead of the game of we might not move forward with this starting July and we have plan B already versus coming next year, I think that is in good faith measure to say we're already going to start working on plan B. and can you someone I forgot who mentioned the decoupling option who mentioned that was it you I think a couple of us I turn to you then Chantal can you share a little bit more about that option Yeah I mean I think actually Christine is probably better to talk about it

Yeah, you're not doing the wraparound, right?

I know we sit here in this table and we talk about it as a budget item.

But Christina might have just one more thing to add to that. Yeah, I mean, I just think, you know, when you're thinking about a young person that's truly living this, right, and especially when we're thinking about really going into that kinship, like if you can't find kinship, right, you're going to go into a foster home. If you're going into a foster home where your need is going to be met there, currently you're in the system, that's not the case. they have to go into an STRTP to get their higher level of care met, right? There's the level of care system, right? If our goal and our object is to get young people to be in family-based settings to get their needs met, we would have to do that with care and supervision, with the tiered rate structure, with the immediate needs. And really, I mean, if we're really talking about the only option to, you know, that would be to actually, like, take this all apart would be to the strength building. But, again, that's something that young people have been coming to the table to the legislature trying to pass bills for the last five years and have been working on this for the last decades, talking about why we need extracurricular activities and why we need to feel like we belong in something and we really need to, you know, really invest in those strengths. So if that's the option, right?

I would.

Yeah.

Well, and I think that's one of our greatest fears is that we would sort of divide and conquer, to be clear, which is why we said that at the top, right, to decouple immediately. I mean, and you described it best, right, especially given all the barriers that exist for kids to access mental health supports. And so I want to make sure that's on the record.

I don't want to speak on behalf of my colleagues at the Alliance, But what I will say is the North Star for TRS, the thing that we're most excited about is that ultimately we finally would be delivering on the promise of funding home-based placements more, not even just at the same level, but even more so than STRTP placements because they are supposed to be short-term and intensive. Um, and so we would be fundamentally changing the, the incentives structure to meet the mission of our policy. But the reality still remains that there has to be a transition period. Um, We may have reduced the number of kids who are in congregate care from 3,000 to 1,500, but there may be a period of time in which there are no other options but, you know, a county office, which we've seen the pitfalls of that strategy. And we don't want to go back to those days when there are no congregate care infrastructure placement options for kids when literally you have 24 hours to figure out how to get that kid immediate and intensive supports. And I think the concern we have from the analysis that we've seen from the department so far around how the administration of those placements would be funded on TRS is that it's based on sort of the basic sort of licensing standards of STRPs and nothing higher. I'll just add that I think the TRS, the holistic reform, that North Star of saying the dollars aren't tied to a placement, they're tied to the child, also means that the dollars that we have traditionally only invested in institutional settings are now needing to mean something different within those institutional settings. And so it's not a simple matter of like just doing the math, right? Like how much money now are the STRTPs guaranteed, which I think is a lot of what the conversation that's been had. But what more is necessary in order to further shift the model of those STRTPs to actually be delivering the services within those short-term and truly therapeutic models that we think is needed and so that young people are not languishing in the STRTPs because while we've had a really significant decrease and the number of kids in STRTPs, we have seen that there are a significant number of youth that are still spending far too much time in those settings. And part of that is because the dollars and the services don't really travel with kids when they go into the home-based settings, right? They're only available within those institutional settings.

But then also, like, we need to have those institutional settings, like truly delivering the mental health services that they're supposed to be delivering, And then, like, what does the wraparound program look like for a child when they're in those institutional settings? So we're continuing to have the conversations with the associations about, like, how does the model itself have to shift? And how can we use the dollars that are part of the TRS budget in order to help achieve that model shift and allow the STRTPs to continue to function? but not necessarily like just as they are right now, right, but to actually move towards the delivery of services in that short-term therapeutic modality that we all have been driving towards for quite frankly a really long time. But I think the integration now of the immediate needs program with mental health and then all of the conversations we're having with our healthcare partners is helping us to imagine that STRTP model even more. So all of that is a long way of saying, like, more to come. Like, we're continuing to engage in these conversations to try to figure out, like, how can we best leverage these dollars when kids are in these settings, but not just towards the end of, like, you know, like having the math work out, but towards the end of having the outcomes that we want. And I think that's what we're going for.

Just to add on that, and we are beginning and going to be engaging some really focused conversations with a small handful of providers really in the way that Deputy Director support is talking about about not just the placement part of an STRTP but thinking about the holistic goals and working partnering with leadership of the alliance to set that up to really dig into some of these things in a detail, well, hearing their concerns and also wanting this to work in alignment with the goals of rate reform. So looking forward to that going forward as well. And I'll just reiterate and elevate, I'll continue in those conversations, make sure it's not just busy work that we won't implement anytime soon, that we can do work that we can implement soon. Did you want to add something? I know you were... I just want to add one more

has to be a place for children to go who need mental health needs. I think what the counter to that is that what we see, and including ourselves, is that we were in group care. Obviously, we have the availability to have lived in a family, right? So we're often using group care because there are no other options. I had a youth in my home who had 34 appointments a month when you tallied the educational needs, the mental health needs, the IEP meetings. Like, if you don't provide those resources to a family, the only option is something group care, STRTPs. I mean, because that's the real life of the needs that these kids come with. So they wanted those appointments.

I mean, they couldn't be without them, right? You add up psychiatry, group therapy, individual therapy, tutoring, because, you know, several, you know, social worker meetings, that's what that equals to. I mean, and it's almost impossible to care for somebody like that without a lot of resources.

So the Wraparound Immediate Needs Program is being built as an integrated model so that every child that's within Tier 2, 3, and 3-plus would be able to get that wraparound benefit, which is being developed by the Department of Health Care Services as a case rate, and then the immediate needs dollars are helping to provide some of the non-federal support support for that high fidelity wraparound benefit and the court that combination of those dollars together is enabling us to ensure actually to just what chantelle was just talking about like the coordination and the access and then also making sure that kids are really getting those integrated services that they're pulling in all of the right people so often right now the caregivers that can do it they're having to do it on their own and navigate those systems that high fidelity wraparound team is so important to being able to provide that level of consistency to ensure that every single child gets it because to Chantel's point we also know so often especially for kids that are with relatives and in family settings where we know that they do best they are not getting access to that kind of support in getting all of the things that they need so it's a defined set of roles, so peer support and care coordination and therapeutic support, right? So, like, it's all part of that integrated model. There's also flexible funds that will be set aside that are not sort of linked to that Medicaid benefit in order to be able to, like, wrap around depends on flexible funding that's not linked to the Medicaid for, like, whatever it takes. It's not really billable under Medicare or DSHS. It can't help with that. Exactly. So the flex funds allow you to sort of pull those in in order to make sure that at the end of the day you can meet the full range of needs of the child And also the way that the Medicaid benefit is created as that care rate also allows the dollars to flow in a way that they don right now So when you think of like traditional Medicaid billing, you're thinking about like just that one service in those 12-minute increments, right? But then when you sort of design it the way that we're designing it, it allows you to sort of pull in all of the things that you have to do in order to meet those needs. So like the transportation and the supervision and some of those other things. And so there's a lot to the way that the dollars are being designed that allows for a much higher level of transparency and coordination and integration of our systems that have just historically been siloed and not delivering upon the services that we want. So, I mean, we are in hundreds of conversations trying to work out all of the details of it, but that's the vision that's coming together.

I just wanted to share, I think it's important to note that it's hard to have these conversations in silos, to your point, but we will be back here in two weeks talking about IHSS. And so to the extent that we can help stabilize counties when we're thinking about implementing HR1 so that families can maintain the concrete supports necessary so that they don't get involved in the child welfare system in the first place, we're going to be better positioned to implement TRS to the extent that we can ensure that we're not absorbing IHSS cost shifts, we can be better prepared to implement TRS. Thanks, Carlos. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

Hi, Angie Schwartz, Deputy Director, Children and Family Services Division. In terms of the overview of the program for the Child Welfare Training Program support, the Administration for Children and Families has identified initial and continuing training for child welfare workers as an area needing improvement due to findings that workers were not receiving training within the mandated timelines or receiving training on skills and knowledge required for their positions. This was a finding both in our previous and the current cycles of the California Child and Family Services Review, also known as the CFSR. To effectively address those identified gaps, the Department of Social Services must execute and monitor at least two new contracts, develop four new training courses, and complete revisions of foundational training series for child welfare workers and supervisors. So the request is for a shift of 947,000 total funds, which is 568,000 in general funds in 2627, and then a little less, 925,000 total, 555,000 general fund ongoing from the local assistance to state operations in order to fund that third training unit in order to develop and implement the additional training for county social workers and supervisors to meet those requirements. The requested positions will allow us to liaise with the other CDSS programs that are developing the training initiatives and improve efforts to meet our emerging statewide standards through CANS and the CARES implementation and the FFPS program ICWA and also CFTs We have no concerns with the proposal Okay Good Perfect We going to hold the item open Move on to issue number 13 Still me. I don't know if I'm supposed to say my name before every panel. Okay, I'll just keep going. I feel like you know who I am at this point. So this is with regard to the trailer bill around the adoption assistance program specific to clarifying its use for wraparound services as well as when it's available for in-state residential services. I'll note that we've been working closely with stakeholders over the last year to develop the standards related to the use of the AAP benefits for wraparound and for use for, oh my gosh, and for care of children within congregate care settings. We hosted four listening sessions throughout the fall of 2025 to gather feedback. The overarching goals of the trailer bill are 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 through those short-term therapeutic residential programs. We also provided standardized guidance. We also want to provide standardized guidance for the requirements that must be met in order to allow AAP to fund either an out-of-home placement and an STRTP and also clarify the availability of those wraparound services, ensure that the AAP payments are being used to meet the child's needs, clearly define that eligibility for wraparound and make sure that it's meeting the California high-fidelity wraparound standards and also clarify that when a child or family reside in another state, a wraparound service provider in the child's state of residence may be utilized if eligibility requirements are met. You also asked a question about the children who are transitioning home as a result of the 2025 restriction on AAP payments for out-of-state residential facilities. The department is providing technical assistance and training support to families that reach out to us or reach out to their county who then reach out to us. So to date, we've provided technical assistance and support to more than 50 families, inclusive of families that have returned from out of state. We're working to connect those families to other important resources, the family urgent response services, high fidelity wrap services, county mobile crisis, enhanced care management, county mental and behavioral health services. Make sure that they've got access through their local managed care plan and also educational resources. The TA calls that we've been fielding for the children that are returning out of state have identified a critical need with assistance in reactivating their Medi-Cal to make sure that they can quickly access the supports and services they need through those physical and mental health systems. Happy to answer questions.

We have been exploring through our adoptions branch what the provision of post permanency services needs to look like more generally. and working with a contractor to do a survey. We've also surveyed families to try to figure out, like, what is the scope and, like, sort of the range of those post-permanency services that could be offered. And so we are in the process of trying to figure out how to provide for additional kinds of post-permanency support.

I think a lot of it is the access through the feeling like they needed that out-of-home care and they weren't able to locate it in the state is what we've heard the most frequently.

Like, having difficulty getting that support through our STRTPs and feeling like they needed to go out of state in order to have that sort of out-of-home therapeutic placement. So I think that that's some of what they were looking for.

We do. I mean, it's available, but you have to actually get accepted into those programs. So that is a barrier that we've heard from our adoptive families.

I think it's the combination. What this trailer bill is really trying to do is, one, clarify, and we've heard from CWDA the need for clarity and maybe some additional language about how to streamline access to those wraparound services. And so coming online with high-fidelity wraparound services in California right now I think is really essential to meeting the needs both in children and foster care, which we were just talking about, in the prior panel, but also making sure that that is a support that's available to children, even when they're not in our system anymore, because that is the service that's really intended to help link that child up to all of those supports and make sure that they're delivering that clinical support in the home in order to prevent placement into residential settings. And so I think it's really important, the work that's underway to develop that high-fidelity WRAP benefit that DHCS is about to roll out this year. I think that's really important. The high fidelity wraparound standards that we've developed to ensure that there's the same quality in terms of those wraparound programs is also really important. And then this trailer bill is really important to clarify the availability of those WRAP services to families and that they can use or adoption assistance benefits towards that and sort of the amount and how you can renew those services within, you know, every 12 months if the need remains. And so those are some of the key things is, like, making sure that there's that linkage to those wraparound benefits for families and then also clarifying sort of the limits of the STRTP utilization. Because as we were talking about in the prior panel as well, like, the goal is not for children to be in out-of-home care. The goal is for children to be fully supported within their families. And so figuring out how to actually deliver the services that they need within families, I think, is really important. So part of that is heavily wrapped. Part of it is the enhanced care management. Part of it is all of the work going on with BH Connect reform right now. As I said, some of it is how we also are looking at post-permanency services and helping families navigate to those services and doing that analysis within the division as well.

We have no concerns with either of the proposals.

Nothing further to add.

I think it's to analyze how much the workload has increased and whether or not it's needed ongoing. So it allows us to just make sure we have the resources in those early years of implementation and then figure out what we'll need ongoing.

I'm done.

My name is Eliana Kamowitz, and I'm the director of the Office of Equity at the California Department of Social Services. As you know, our department oversees a wide range of immigration services, including community education outreach, direct legal assistance, and legal representation in immigration administrative and court proceedings. In addition our department oversees federal funding for refugees asylees special immigrant visa and other federally eligible individuals from the Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement Administering these programs gives us direct connection to service providers and to clients and a window into understanding what is happening in immigrant communities. Despite the reach of our programs, immigrant Californians continue to face the daily fears and uncertainty of federal immigration enforcement, as well as the changes to their eligibility for public benefits with lasting social and emotional impacts on individuals, families, and their communities. We look forward to working with the legislature to improve our program efforts and support the areas of greatest need and the work being done to ensure services reach diverse and underserved immigrant communities across California. With regards to the questions on the agenda, I will provide an update that with feedback from our immigration service providers and immigrant advocates, the department is using the additional 2025 state budget investments to provide support to individuals currently in or facing removal proceedings through various programs. The $10 million provided in the FY 2024 special session funds were used to fund removal defense services specifically for youth and individuals in immigration detention. This allocation funds the new Detained Representation Project that was launched in July 2025 to provide removal defense services for individuals in immigration detention and the youth legal services program, which serves unaccompanied undocumented minors and immigrant youth in removal proceedings. The department allocated the supplemental $15 million in one California funds to the removal defense program. The goal of this program is to provide free legal representation to individuals in removal proceedings and also to expand the capacity and expertise of organizations providing these services. The $10 million for the Children's Holistic Immigration Representation Project, also known as CHIRP, was awarded to 16 grantees, including three new service providers. There was a question in the agenda about immediate and emerging needs, and as we all know, federal policies and actions to increase deportation, supported by hundreds of billions of dollars, federal dollars, in enforcement are increasing the number of people who need immigration legal services. The most immediate and emerging need is still for more removal defense services for both immigrants in immigration detention and in community. Through the Removable Defense Program, we've continued to support grantees' efforts to increase their expertise and provide quality services. While we've established a reliable network of high-quality removal defense providers over the last eight years and helped to train many new removal defense attorneys, there is an urgent need to bring in additional immigration attorneys or train more attorneys with other legal expertise to provide these services. The Department is also hearing that many immigrants are fearful to pursue affirmative immigration benefits such as asylum applications and naturalization because of concerns that they will be targeted by immigration enforcement. These reports are especially concerning since permanent lawful status is the best way of protecting individuals from deportation. The ability to hire attorneys with specific expertise in areas such as removal defense continues to limit the reach of our immigration legal services programs. In addition, there are areas of the state where there are no non-profit organizations providing immigration legal services to their residents. The department has implemented and administered several capacity building initiatives to strengthen the overall legal services network, like the $10 million Immigrant Legal Fellowship, which has operated for the last six years. We are working closely with our service providers to develop innovative approaches to expand the statewide pool of qualified immigration attorneys and to support the immediate and growing demand for services Thank you for your time Happy to answer questions Thank you Deputy Director I am the Office of Equity Director Okay Director Okay sorry Now I going to go to the Policy Manager Bruno

From California Immigrant Policy Center. Hello. Hi, Chairman Javar, Honorable Members and Staff. My name is Bruno with the California Immigrant Policy Center. The One California and CDSS's immigration programs provide community outreach to over 300,000 Californians and legal services to tens of thousands of Californians at risk of deportation every single year. These programs serve as a critical safety net for California's immigrant children and families currently under attack by our own federal government. In 2025, CIPC, Senator Durazo, Assemblyman Robonza, and 140 of our coalition partners secured a $25 million additional one-time funding for deportation defense, expanding free legal services for thousands more children, families, and neighbors at risk of ICE detention and permanent family separation. These one-time augmentations helped establish the Detained Representation Program last year and nearly doubled the impact of the Youth Legal Services Program and the Removal Defense Program. Additional funding of $50 million is needed in fiscal year 26-27 to sustain these services and expand these services for Californians facing escalated, violent, and often unlawful federal immigration enforcement actions. In 2025 alone, ICE, Border Patrol, and federal agents arrested more than 14,000 Californians in the Los Angeles metro area alone. Typically on our public streets, at our work sites, and even in sensitive locations like our schools, our courts, and hospitals. Typically without identification, without valid judicial warrants, and without regard for our constitutional rights. As of April, ICE is detaining over 5,800 Californians in for-profit private detention facilities, facilities that the California Department of Justice has inspected and reported as, quote, dangerous and unsafe, end quote. So dangerous that six Californians have died in these facilities detained by ICE since September 2025. This should never happen. But this is what's going on in these facilities as reported by the California Department of Justice. More than 30% of Californians who are detained right now do not have access to a lawyer to defend their freedom and their most basic rights while detained in these dangerous conditions. In February, hundreds of judges across the country have ruled more than 4,400 times that the Trump administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully. This endangers and erodes the constitutional rights for all of us. Currently, right now, the Trump administration is not allowing bond hearings for people. So the only way to get out is for folks who file habeas petitions in federal court. How are folks detained in ICE facilities supposed to go into federal court and file these habeas petitions, especially when they don't have access to a lawyer? We know that Trump signed H.R. 1 a trillion dollars slash for health care and food assistance while giving ICE and Border Patrol $170 billion of our federal tax dollars, making ICE the largest law enforcement agency in our nation's history. These actions have threatened the right to due process and threaten our public safety while destabilizing our families, our economies, and our schools. Additional state funding is needed to increase state legal services to defend the basic safety and civil rights of Californians against a rogue, lawless administration. Legal services are needed to be a safe place to defend the basic safety and civil rights of Californians against a rogue, lawless administration. are a lifeline for California families. Individuals with legal counsel are more than five times more likely to obtain relief they are eligible for under the law when they have access to a lawyer. For folks in detention, it doubles 10 times more likely to obtain the relief they're eligible for under law when they have access to a lawyer than those without. As the federal government escalates mass raids and deportations, legal representation, having a lawyer by your side is the most important safeguard against unlawful detention, unjust deportation, and permanent family separation. CIPC, Senator Durazo, Senator Bonsa, and over 130 of our coalition partners are again requesting a state funding increase for these vital programs that provide life-saving legal defense and services for Californians. As the Trump administration continues to escalate and intensify these raids and deportations, California should be expanding our historic investments for deportation defense services to keep California safe and to keep California families together. Thank you for the opportunity.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Frances Zavila, and I'm an immigration attorney with the Acacia Center for Justice. I'm here to urge the state to fund immigration legal services and specifically to invest in the Children's Holistic Immigration Representation Project, or CHIRP, the Immigration Council Access Pilot Program, and the Immigration Legal Fellowship Project. The question before this committee and our state is how best to navigate the uncertainty and harm caused by federal immigration policies. We're facing unprecedented challenges at a time of fiscal uncertainty. There are no easy answers, but I'm here to discuss how this committee can invest in strategic programs that meet the needs we see on the ground. CHIRP was created to protect unaccompanied immigrant children through integrated legal and social services, and it has succeeded. Since 2022, CHIRP has provided legal representation to almost 1,300 children, along with case management support for education, mental health, medical care, food access, and housing. Children serving the program migrated from all over the world, including Latin America, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Eritrea, Ghana, Guinea, Iraq, and Mauritania. Advocates are seeking funding to maintain the program for another year and expand capacity to protect more than 4,000 unaccompanied children in California, who are at risk of losing representation due to the termination of federal contracts. As rates tear apart our families, the number of unaccompanied children is increasing. Today, the federal government's tactics against its population are surgically surreptitious. It is expediting their deportation, threatening them with $1,000 fines, bribing them to self-deport, and using them as bait to detain and deport their caretakers. CHIRP should be held as a model of success, as a standard for how governments should protect unaccompanied children. We cannot let a state-built pilot with this level of success sunset because of short-sighted budgeting. There is no clear alternative if CHIRP is cut. Leaving children to navigate the system alone would be harmful, immoral, and contrary to who we are as a state. California's existing immigration legal service network is overextended, and there is no unified system ensuring that unrepresented individuals receive basic legal information when they appear before an immigration judge. Individuals that under previous administrations would have been released on their own recognizance, or even a minimal bond of are now languishing in seemingly indefinite detention A habeas corpus petition filed in federal court has become the only viable pathway for release from detention yet few attorneys have the capacity, training, or mentorship needed to file these complex petitions. The Immigration Counsel Access Pilot Program addresses these gaps by deploying attorneys to high-need courts where they can provide strategic intervention and legal consultations to a high volume of individuals and connect immigrants at risk of immediate detention with habeas support. It will rapidly expand access to habeas relief by building a coordinated mentor network of legal advocates able to file strong, timely habeas petitions. The need to expand removal defense capacity cannot be overstated, particularly in rural and underserved communities across California. In 2021, the Immigration Legal Fellowship Project became the first state-sponsored program to increase removal defense representation for our residents. At its core was a simple premise. Access to due process and quality legal defense should not depend on income or zip code. The fellowship has supported regional collaboration across the state. 19 fellows hosted across 13 organizations in the Central Valley, Central Coast, and the Inland Empire have provided over 2,400 legal services in 39 counties. All the organizations that participate in the first round of the fellowship are now eligible for removal of defense funding from the state. and 70% of fellows have successfully transitioned into full-time immigration or public interest attorney roles. This is the kind of impact that's possible when California invests in people and institutions. Cutting CHIRP or the fellowship would be fiscally short-sighted, saving dollars today but creating greater costs tomorrow in family destabilization and strain on schools and services. And failing to invest in the Immigration Council Access Pilot Program will overlook an opportunity to provide emergency legal support to a high volume of immigrants. So I ask you to support these programs. This is what responsible budgeting looks like. Strategic investments that build foundations that endure beyond a single cycle and help California meet this moment. Thank you for your time and leadership. Appreciate it.

Lourdes Morales, Department of Finance. Nothing further.

Yes, there's no additional cohorts.

I can share that we have seen that they have brought removal. So specifically, these cohorts were built to create removal defense attorneys, to bring removal defense attorneys, hire attorneys in areas that were underserved, so the Central Valley, the Central Coast, and the Inland Empire. And we have seen that these individuals have stayed with the organizations that hosted them and stayed in those regions to provide services. Of course, the cohorts are small. So it has brought removal defense attorneys to areas that did not have them before, but it's not. So not at the level. It's not at the level that's needed.

That's correct.

One of the things that I've heard from my colleagues is that we're getting, or some of my colleagues are getting feedback that the African diaspora is feeling like their needs are being unmet, immigrants of African descent are being unmet. So I'm wondering if any of the fellowship or other programs have been hearing that, what services exist, or how we try to meet all types of immigrant backgrounds and how we serve them. Yeah, I can speak specifically for the two, well, the three programs that I discussed, at least for the fellowship, the fact that you're able to expand services by really building capacity amongst the attorneys. you're reaching rural areas where more communities and diverse communities that have not been reached before can get those services. As a former practicing immigration attorney, it is extremely hard, right, to balance demanding caseload and to not do so with the adequate language support services that are necessary to meet the needs of all the populations, right? And so, like, all these programs really need that type of support. And by investing in fellows from diverse backgrounds, you're able to do that, to do so. The Immigration Council Access Pilot Program, that proposal, it's going to be staffing attorneys at a courthouse where regardless of, you know, language, race, like the fact that you are there to see an immigration. Is that like the attorney of the day?

Yeah. So regardless of your background, you're going to get a consultation before that immigration court hearing. and you're going to get the referral services that are needed for you to proceed in your case. We've seen that implemented at two courthouses in Sacramento and Concord. And due to the closure of the San Francisco court, where it has the largest pending caseload of any immigration court in California, 120,000 cases, those cases are going to Concord. And that population is extremely diverse. Like we're talking about people who are coming from across the Central Valley, coming all the way to Concord to receive those services. Habeas support as well as like my colleague indicated, you know, that involves a lot of complex training. And with that, it involves attorneys that need that type of training to be able to file these complex petitions. Again, ICE is not discriminated against, you know, who gets caught up in their rates. They are catching anyone that meets a certain background. And also color shade. Color shade. I guess I should say they are discriminating. and those habeas petitions are being filed across the board, across any population. And the people who are really setting the standards for these habeas petitions are being funded by California. Like, they're the ones who are setting up these protections that are being applied across the country. So without really funding these organizations here in California that depend on this funding, we're really losing an opportunity to, like, be the frontline defenders, not just for immigrants here across California, but really setting the standard across the board. And at least for the CHIRP program, as I mentioned before, we are serving children, again, regardless of background. If you're unaccompanied and you need those type of services, we've been able to provide those services that include also social services. So as we're seeing more families become separated, right? Children who were once –

They could. We have staffing programs and different funding. They could decide to set up an attorney of the day with the funding that we use, depending on the program. So removal defense is a staffing model where we fund them to fund an attorney to take case matters. In other instances, like affirmative remedies, let's say applying for asylum or other things, it's a fee for service. So they could combine that funding, send someone to do referrals, to do education and outreach. They could use our funding for an attorney of the day program. But I know that there's a specific request for those type of additional fundings.

Nicole Wardleman on behalf of the Children's Partnership. Very appreciative of the additional $50 million in immigrant legal services. Very supportive. Legal protections are one of the most effective ways of keeping children and their families together.

Good afternoon, Chair. My name is Monica Madrid, state policy advocate with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. We want to thank you and the committee for your budget recommendations that were provided last week CHIRLA is both a grantee and a subcontractor of One California program in Los Angeles County and we host legal fellows who expand the capacity to serve immigrant communities I'm here urging you to protect the $75 billion annual allocation for California's immigration legal services programs and to support a $50 million increase so more families can have access to these critical services. Every day we see how life-changing funding is and from helping families understand their rights to representing individuals facing detention and deportation. The need is only growing as more California families are put at risk. Investing in legal services means families stay together and people can defend their rights. Without this support, too many families will face a complex legal system alone. I respectfully ask for your support. Thank you.

Good afternoon. I'm Luis Guerra with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. We're based in San Diego, LA, Riverside, and Santa Ana. We're here in support of the continuation of the $75 million and all other increased budget requests, in particular CHIRP and the deportation defense funds, which are funds that we rely on heavily to respond to the community needs. And in this moment, we're stepping up to the urgency in our community by doing two things. We're prioritizing those that are at the front line of the deportation by only taking those that are in detention centers and taking those cases. And we're also investing more resources to help some of our smaller nonprofit organizational partners throughout the state build up their capacity by providing our expertise so that they can provide more services to their local areas. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. My name is Kimberly Zeta, speaking on behalf of Asian Inc. in San Francisco. This is going to be reissue 16, number 8, for the reauthorization of the Stop the Hate program. Through Asian Inc. Stop the Hate project, we have served hundreds of thousands of community members across the SF Bay Area and across the state of California, providing culturally and linguistically responsive support to individuals impacted by hate and discrimination. And we're seeing real outcomes. Participants constantly report feeling safer, more supported, and more connected to resources after receiving our services. I wanted to talk about a quick testimonial that we have an elderly monolithic Chinese senior in the face of the rise in anti-Asian hate a few years ago during the pandemic. She did not feel safe going out at all, even just to go out to get groceries. And through our Stop the Hate resources, through self-defense classes that were taught in Chinese, through learning through other educational resources that our teams have provided, she now feels safe to actually go out. She can kick butt now? Exactly. And that's not just her story. That's actually a lot of our senior stories in San Francisco. And I mean, as you can see, like the impact is so real, right? It restores safety, dignity and belonging for our community members. And right now, more than ever, we need the continued funding, because if not, you know, staff roles will be cut, these resources will be cut to the community, and these communities are already very vulnerable, and they'll be even more vulnerable. And we respectfully urge for the continued investment in CDS programs, like Stop the Hate. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Mandy Isaacsley here on behalf of the AAPI Equity Alliance, echoing the support on item 16 under investments, proposals for investments, in particular the reauthorization of the hate funding at $100 million for the next three years. The last speaker said it very well. Not only do I represent AAPI Equity Alliance, but I'm also the granddaughter of of a grandmother who didn't leave her apartment for several months when hate was at its all-time high during the pandemic. And so this work is deeply personal to me, and we look forward to conversations with the legislature on this renewal. The one thing that we do risk if we do not renew this funding under CDSS is the last five years, we've built an infrastructure that includes 180 organizations, CBOs across the state, that have been doing prevention and intervention work. And, you know, what we've been doing is helping build a civil society where youth feel safe going to school and people feel safe going to work, et cetera, et cetera. So thank you very much.

Buenas tardes, Senadora Mejia. My name is Emilio Mayam with the San Bernardino Community Service Center. We came from the Inland Empire. We provide immigration legal services and deportation defense in San Bernardino, Riverside Counties. And the only way that we were able to do this is through the CDS funding. We're a CDS grantee. So access to this funding is important in our community, mainly because this is the only funding that we can count on. Our local governments, our counties are not really willing to invest in our communities. In the Inland Empire, from January 2025 to March 2026, we have documented over 1,200 incidents of immigration enforcement, over 400 people detained. Our headline has received more than 9,000 calls and more than 29,000 messages. So access to immigration legal services is key to preventing unjust deportations in our communities. So we're here to speak on behalf of keeping the 75 million annual allocation for CDS and to increase the funding for deportation defense, the 50 millions that are being proposed. We have a community member that has benefited from these services and he's going to be providing his testimony. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Erico Barrubias. I am a resident of San Bernardino County. I recently obtained my permanent residency through the San Bernardino Community Service Center. My father is a legal resident, and I wait more than 20 years for a visa to become available. My wife does not yet have a residence and has a medical condition that prevents her from working, so I take care of her. I have two citizen children and one permanent resident. Because I spent a lot of time taking care of my wife, it was difficult to me to raise the money for the immigration fees. And my son was going to age out and will be left out of the process. I was also very worried about possible deportation and separation from my family. Thanks to the resources available through the One California program and with the support of San Bernardino Community Service Center, I was finally able to complete the process, and now I'm happy to become a U.S. citizen. I'm here to thank you for your support, to help my family. I'm here to ask you to increase the funding for legal services so that more families like mine can stay together and achieve the American dream. Without that support, I will not be legal resident. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Dawn Koepke on behalf of the Child Abuse Prevention Center and the California Family Resource Association, both wanting to express strong support for a couple of quick things. First, for continuing investment in the tiered rate structure at its core, TRS is about aligning funding with the actual needs and moves us away from kind of a one approach which we think is really important But in order for the tiered rates to actually fully deliver on their promise really important to ensure that we pairing that with strong community-based supports through entities like Family Resource Centers that are helping to support children and families and keeping them out of child welfare to begin with. And as part of that, also just want to put in a plug along with that that goes hand in hand is Assembly Bill 2441 by Assemblymember Celeste Rodriguez that would establish a pilot for community supporting, really focused on avoiding referrals to child welfare for those families that have, you know, may be on the verge of crisis, but truly just need community-based supports that Family Resource Centers are already delivering today with tremendous results in keeping children and families out of child welfare. And finally, also just want to express support for CWDA's emergency response stabilization stakeholder proposal as well. So certainly happy to be a resource on any of those items as you continue your deliberations. Thank you.

I'm Mario Gonzalez, Executive Director of the Education Leadership Foundation. We're here in support of the 75,000 for immigration services throughout the state, as well as that $50 million additional funding that has been requested and appropriated by the Senate. We are proof that the fellowship program actually works. We were part of Cohort 1. With the funding that was allocated for Cohort 1 for that fellowship, we were able to actually apply for funding under removal defense programs that made us available and made us eligible for that funding. And one of the members of Cohort 1 is actually running our removal defense program now. And so the fellowship works. It allows for legal deserts like the Central Valley to train up attorneys, train up individuals that can then practice in our region, stay in our region, and be part of that region because they're committed to that work. So thank you for having supported that before, and we're hoping that you continue to support it so that we can continue to do this work. And the second issue, Stop the Hate. We are a subgrantee under Stop the Hate. Additional funding would allow us to continue to do the work to ensure that victims in our community continue to receive that service in the language that they speak, and continue to receive the service from a culturally appropriate organization. Thank you.

I would say good morning, but by the time I read this, it would be afternoon. So good afternoon. My name is Noreen Jagen, and I'm a second-year undergrad at UC Davis, and I work with Sacramento Street Medicine. I want to talk to you a little bit about one of the experiences I had with one of my patients. They were suffering from chronic sepsis after an infection spread in their body, resulting in multiple surgeries that have left my patient with more problems than solutions. Even though they qualified and applied for disability in earlier years, the long and accessible requirements left them stranded with no support. Without disability, they remain on unstable coverage or lose it altogether, especially under H.R. 1, where Medicaid work requirements will increase. We are asking for a targeted $15 million of HDAP funding over three years to fund SOAR training and implementation through street medicine teams so we can build the internal capacity needed to systemically support patients through SSI, SSDI, Medicare, and stable income. Currently, clinicians and outreach workers often spend significant time trying to help patients navigate disability benefits, but without staff specifically trained in SSI disability advocacy, these efforts are frequently fragmented or unsuccessful. We're asking for $15 million over three years to train and fund teams to do this work directly in the field, because the difference between staying on the street and finding stability is often just one completed application Thank you Thank you Good afternoon Chair I Anageli Martin with the California Immigrant Policy Center We urge the legislature to support the governor's proposal to maintain the $75 million annual allocation for California's immigration legal services programs and urge you all to invest in an additional $50 million for deportation defense services in this year's state budget. We must continue to expand and increase funding for these programs as legal services are a lifeline for Californians at risk of detention and deportation and family separation. Across California, minors, teenagers, elders, and families are forced to represent themselves alone in immigration court against a highly trained government prosecutor and hostile immigration judges in immigration court. Legal services are essential to ensuring that we keep families together. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Menjivar, Cameron Sasai with the California Immigrant Policy Center. Here supporting the $50 million budget ask for deportation defense services on behalf of the immigrant legal defense and reading their testimony. Due to funding from the state of California, immigrant legal defense represented an Inland Empire couple who were taken by ICE while driving their three United States citizen children to school. Our clients have lived in California for over 20 years and are very active members in their Inland Empire community. Through the detention representation project, ILD was able to represent our clients on bond, so they were released back to their children after three months of detention. During this time, their 18-year-old cared for her 14- and 11-year-old siblings. ILD will continue to represent this family in non-detained immigration court and seeking permanent relief through the Removal Defense Project. Thank you for leadership and consideration.

Hi, I'm Michael Williams with the Child Abuse Prevention Center and the California Family Resource Association, along with Don Kupke. I'm the staff senior policy analyst. So echoing Don's support of the TRS as well as AB 2441, I want to also tangential to item 15, we're proud. We proudly partner with CDSS to do outreach for immigrant legal services through family resource centers. But I just wanted to add a couple things. One is our thanks to the state for moving the TRS reforms forward and a personal perspective as when we were raising our sons as FOSTA adopt parents that the TRS would have made a big difference. So thank you.

Good afternoon. Excuse me. My name is Odessa Powers, and I'm an immigration attorney with the Children's Law Center. The Children's Law Center of California is the largest children's legal services organization in the nation. We serve as a voice in the foster care system for dependent youth and children. Our committed attorneys and staff represent over 16,000 abused and neglected children in L.A., Sacramento, and Placer counties. CLC's attorneys provide support to their clients in multiple areas, including education, mental health, and immigration. Through our in-house immigration unit, our immigration attorneys provide legal support to over 1,000 children in the California foster care system without lawful immigration status. CLC is a recipient of immigration legal services grants, and the funding that we have received not only has enabled us to directly represent over 200 undocumented foster youth, but it has also allowed us to identify over 1,000 additional undocumented foster youth who need immigration assistance and link them with pro bono immigration counsel so that they can pursue a pathway to citizenship and avoid deportation. Additionally, CLC is a recipient of the CHIRP grant. Through this grant we have been able to hire a social worker who focuses on the unique needs of undocumented foster youth Our CHIRP social worker is a critical resource to our UAC foster youth many of whom otherwise lack an adult to guide them The help she provides ranges from navigating everyday challenges like obtaining IDs or opening a bank account to life-changing support such as securing housing for a former foster youth facing homelessness and assisting a client as she obtained

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair and staff.

My name is Evan Steiger, and I have a classmate who's Russian and an immigrant, and I do not want her to go. I like this bill.

My name is Calvin Steiger, and I support the church program. And I support the church program to help immigrant kids. Thank you.

Tiffany White with SEIU California just expressing our strong support for the CWDA proposal for emergency response stabilization. Thank you so much.

George Cruz on behalf of the California Behavioral Health Association. On issues 10 to 14, these issues are not isolated. They drive behavioral health demand access and outcomes across the system. When child welfare systems lack capacity or clarity, you cycle through higher levels of care. That increased costs and worsens outcomes. community-based providers step in, and often without aligned funding or staffing. The tiered rate structure relies on time assessment and coordinated teams. When those break down, the providers are left managing complex use without funding and workforce to match equity. We are selected to protect investments that stabilize community-based care, strengthen workforce capacity, and prevent escalation into higher-cost systems. We also want to voice our strong support for the funding of immigration legal services and highlight that the outcomes of these attacks are leading to trauma for the entire family structure. Thank you so much.

Christopher Sanchez is here on behalf of the Central American Resource Center, Caresin, echoing on the comments of my colleagues related to immigration legal services, specifically the programs of the $50 million additional dollars, the fellowship and CHIRP. And for Caresin, we probably serve the most of TPS recipients in California. There is a Supreme Court case that is looming in oral arguments this month and a decision that would probably come afterwards. And we're anticipating that Tepesianos will probably seek additional legal services in a of legal services from affirmative to deportation defense. So thank you for your leadership, and we look forward to this investment.

Neal DeValmore, senior program officer at Sierra Health Foundation. Thought I'd speak as the last, since it's the last item that I'm speaking to. I want to thank the committee for its including the reauthorization of Stop the Hate funding. This is critical funding that will build on the work and the infrastructure that has been built over the last four years among 180 organizations across California working within our communities to provide prevention and intervention services for those experiencing hate crimes and hate incidences. Our grantees have dealt with everything from racial issues, religious issues, LGBTQ issues, disability, gender, and so forth. We thank the committee and look forward to the renewal of this critical funding for Stop the Hate in our state and our communities, and so that all the trauma and problems that follow can be dealt with, too. Thank you.