BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 1187
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Date of Hearing: April 30, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES
Mark Stone, Chair
AB 1187 (Mansoor) - As Introduced: February 22, 2013
SUBJECT : Subsidized child care for foster parents
SUMMARY : Would require the California Department of Social
Services (DSS) to amend the foster care state plan.
Specifically, this bill :
1)Requires DSS to amend the foster care state plan to allow
counties to use state subsidized child care and development
(CCD) funds and After School Education and Safety (ASES)
Program funds as part of the 50/50 match for federal Title
IV-E Foster Care child care funding.
2)Aligns current requirements for counties should they choose to
utilize state subsidized CCD funds and/or ASES program funds
as their local match for federal Title IV-E Foster Care, which
require counties to do all of the following:
a) Contract with a California Department of Education
(CDE)-contracted child development agency (CDA) or ASES
program for the provision of child care for eligible foster
youth;
b) Claim the full child care costs equivalent to regional
child care and development market rates;
c) Provide the full federal Title IV-E Foster Care match to
the contracted CDA or ASES program; and
d) Consult with the CDE to ensure that the CDA or ASES
program is in good standing and that funds are not
duplicated for the same child.
EXISTING LAW
1)Establishes the California Child Care and Development Services
Act (CCDSA) to provide a comprehensive, community-based,
coordinated, and cost-effective system of child care and
development services for children from birth to age 13 with
the purpose of enhancing the social, emotional, physical, and
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intellectual development of children.
2)States the intent of the Legislature that all families have
access to child care and development services, regardless of
their demographic background, in order to help them attain
financial stability through employment, while maximizing
growth and development of their children, and enhancing their
parenting skills through participation in child care and
development programs.
3)Defines CCD services as care and services designed to meet a
wide variety of needs of children and their families, while
their parents or guardians are working, in training, seeking
employment, incapacitated, or in need of respite.
4)Authorizes local government agencies or non-profit
organizations to contract with the CDE to operate Alternative
Payment Programs (APPs) and provide alternative payments and
support services to parents and child development providers.
5)Establishes eligibility criteria for subsidized child care
based upon lowest income first for families whose incomes are
70% or less of the state median income (SMI), and provides
first priority for children who are in child protective
custody (temporary custody) or are at risk of abuse or
neglect, as specified.
6)Establishes the ASES program to create incentives for
establishing locally-driven before and after school enrichment
programs both during schooldays and summer, intersession, or
vacation days that partner public schools and communities to
provide academic and literacy support and safe, constructive
alternatives for youth.
7)Establishes ASES program funding priorities where priority is
given to existing ASES programs in good status, as well as to
schools where at least half of the student population is
eligible for free or reduced cost meals.
8)Allows counties to utilize its general fund for purposes of
its nonfederal match for federal Title IV-E Foster Care
funding to provide child care for its foster youth.
9)Restricts state subsidized CCD and state ASES funds from being
used as nonfederal match for federal Title IV-E Foster Care
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funding.
10)Pursuant to the budget, provides that state subsidized CCD
funds be used for federal Child Care Development Block Grant
match and federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
(TANF) maintenance of effort (MOE) requirements.
11)Pursuant to the budget, allows school districts to utilize
ASES funds as federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA) funding match.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS :
Subsidized Child Care and Development
As provided in statute, the primary purpose of the state's
subsidized CCD system is to help families attain financial
stability through employment, while maximizing growth and
development of their children by providing them access to
quality early childhood education and development programs.
Income eligibility is set by the annual budget act and currently
sits at 70% of the SMI. However, not all children who qualify
under this income eligibility get access to child care as the
number of eligible children far outweighs the availability of
subsidized child care slots.
Prioritizing eligibility and triaging access to CCD programs
The state currently uses CCD subsidized program funding in a
number of ways, yet with one primary purpose. One of the
primary purposes it provides are subsidized child care slots to
low-income needy families that enable parents to seek out and
obtain work. Without that fundamental access, it further
restricts the limited opportunities low-income families, single
parent or otherwise, have to become employed. According to the
California Budget Project, 75% of the individuals who receive
cash assistance from the California Work Opportunity and
Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program, the state's
welfare-to-work program, are children.<1> Without this
fundamental social services program, families facing the current
---------------------------
<1> "Cuts and Consequences: Key Facts About the CalWORKS Program
in the Aftermath of the Great Recession" - Slide 16. The
California Budget Project. February 2012.
http://www.cbp.org/documents/120224_CalWORKs_KeyFacts.pdf
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reality of the restructured CalWORKs program, i.e., the two-year
truncated program, have little opportunity to develop and
demonstrate the necessary workforce skills that merit
employment. Without available subsidized CCD program slots for
children, many CalWORKs families face the reality of foregoing
work opportunities to remain at home to care for their children.
Within the current structure is also the important
acknowledgement and recognition that children in the foster care
system are deserving of much needed early child care and
development access. To accommodate for this access and provide,
as much as possible, the opportunity for age-eligible foster
care children to experience and benefit from CCD programs, is
the statutory priority for children who are 1) in child
protective services, 2) at-risk of neglect or abuse, or 3)
provided priority due to their families' income. Recognizing the
dynamic of the pressures of balancing the need to serve both
populations; low-income and CalWORKs children, and eligible
foster youth, the state has sought out an equilibrium that
serves to balance the needs of both.
The state's subsidized CCD system attempts to balance the
established priority needs of needy and eligible low-income
youth with the needs of eligible foster youth through the
prioritization of access to child care. Compounded within this
approach is that the needs of both populations far outweighs the
available supply of subsidized CCD program slots. Recognizing
that the priority of the subsidized CCD system is primarily to
serve families struggling to meet CalWORKs welfare-to-work
requirements, which have been substantially reduced through the
adoption of the state's effort to realign social welfare
programs to counties, the desire to provide funding to serve
these families with available CCD slots competes with the
priority to serve children in foster care.
In an attempt to serve both populations, the state has adopted
policies that place first priority of enrollment in CCD programs
for children being served by the child protective services
system and children at risk of abuse and neglect. Remaining
child care slots are then made available based upon the
lowest-income child first. In essence, it is not difficult to
use emergency room terminology, i.e. triaging, with how the
state addresses the substantial yet unmet need for child care.
Inherently, this is an unfair scenario; placing children of
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varying needs in unfair and undesirable situations waiting for
much needed child care where it can become almost unfathomable
and immoral to decide which child deserves the care the most.
For purposes of foster youth, the state has several mechanisms
it uses to prioritize their eligibility for child care. First,
any child who is placed into child protective services, i.e. a
child in temporary custody but not yet ruled a dependent of the
court (foster care) or is deemed to be at risk of abuse and
neglect is provided first priority for placement into an
available subsidized CCD program slot. If a foster youth does
not meet this criteria, the CDE, for purposes of income
eligibility, quantifies them as a "family of one," meaning that
they have no income and therefore are placed at the top of the
"lowest income first" list.
Understanding Supply and Demand
In 1997, the state developed a nine county pilot program to
consolidate waiting lists for subsidized child care programs to
better organize and prioritize enrollment of eligible and needy
children. This nine-county pilot was expanded statewide and
made permanent in 2005. Referred to as the Centralized
Eligibility List (CEL), it not only became a valuable tool to
help prioritize enrollment based upon eligibility and need, it
also helped to demonstrate the need for subsidized child care
and funding county-by-county and statewide.
The state annually appropriated $7.9 million to operate all 58
county CELs and the statewide CEL. Unfortunately, due to the
ongoing budget deficit at the time, funding for CEL was
eliminated in the Budget Act of 2011 (Senate Bill 87, Chapter
33). At the time of its elimination, there were approximately
240,000 eligible and needy children waiting for a subsidized
child care slot to open up. Since then, some counties have
pursued maintaining their own CEL with existing local funds, but
it remains difficult to accurately estimate the total number of
needy and eligible families and children waiting for subsidized
child care.
However, using the number of eligible and needy children who
were on the statewide CEL in 2011, and taking into account the
nearly $700 million, or 42% of subsidized child care funding
that has been cut from the budget over the past five years, it
is not unreasonable to estimate that the number of eligible and
needy children waiting for subsidized child care surpasses
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300,000 children in need of care statewide.
ASES Program
The ASES Program was established by Proposition 39 in 2002,
which provides school districts with grant based funding for
after school programs in three-year terms. This proposition
amended California Education Code (EC) sections 8482-8482.55 to
expand and rename the former Before and After School Learning
and Safe Neighborhood Partnerships Program as the ASES Program.
According to CDE, ASES programs are created through partnerships
between schools and communities to provide literacy support,
academic enrichment, and safe, constructive alternatives for
students in kindergarten through grade nine (K-9). Funding is
designed to provide elementary and middle schools that submit
applications to establish before and after school programs with
a three-year grant. According to the CDE, by definition, an
ASES program is one that receives ASES grant funding.
Need for the Bill
In support as the sponsor of the bill, Orange County writes:
AB 1187 would authorize the use of designated state child
care and development funds administered by the State
Department of Education and After School and Education and
Safety Program Funds, in addition to county funds, as the
non-federal match for specified child care for children
receiving protective services, foster children, and
children at risk of abuse and neglect, pursuant to criteria
specified in the bill.
AB 1187 entails no displacement of currently funded
children. Instead, with additional federal funding
utilized for foster children, current State CDE funding to
serve additional non-foster children may also become
available. Non-MOE state funds used for child care and
development programs and the after school education and
safety program could be doubled if leveraged with federal
Title IV-E child care funding. This change could be
brought about at no additional cost to the state, the
public, and the private agencies contracting with CDE to
provide child care related services. No other State
General Fund monies, besides CDE CDD program funds and
after school education and safety funds, would need to be
utilized for drawing down Title IV-E child care funds.
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Leveraging state CCD and ASES funds to draw down federal dollars
Under current state budget authority, CCD and ASES funds are
identified for specific purposes. Regarding CCD funds, they are
used in two primary ways to draw down available and permissible
federal funds. First, they are used as a match for the federal
Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Fund. The
required match is a one-to-one, or otherwise 50/50 match, where
for each dollar the state spends on child care, the state can
draw down a dollar in federal CCDBG money. Second, because the
state spends more money than it draws down in CCDBG funding,
there are remaining funds available to be identified for TANF
MOE.
States are required to meet federal TANF MOE requirements, which
replaced state match requirements with the adoption of welfare
reform, are generally 75 to 80% of the pre-welfare reform
spending amount that existed prior to the conversion from the
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program to TANF
in 1996.
Under federal law, states are not allowed to use one dollar of
its funds for two different federal match or MOE purposes,
rather it must be a one-to-one match typically used to meet the
same goals. For example, typically, a federal dollar allocated
for child care cannot be matched with a state dollar allocated
for non-child care purposes. As a result, the state is required
to be specific on what funding it uses to meet specific federal
grant requirements, such as CCDBG and TANF. Under current
permissions, the state currently uses CCD and ASES funding for
specific federal match and MOE purposes, which includes several
purposes; CCDBG, TANF and ESEA.
Unclear on remaining CCD and ASES funds for federal Title IV-E
Foster Care match
Although well intended, it is unclear whether AB 1187 will
accomplish its stated goal of drawing down additional federal
Title IV-E Foster Care funds to provide additional child care
funding for foster youth. Given that the state provides several
mechanisms to prioritize child care for foster youth and that
the funding the state uses for foster youth child care services
is already identified for other federal match and MOE purposes,
should this measure seek to further encroach upon limited
funding already used to draw down other needed federal funds?
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Ability to adequately identify foster youth served in CCD and
ASES programs
Currently, according to CDE, it does not have the ability to
identify whether it's CCD and ASES programs are serving foster
youth. Due to the contractual system the CDE uses to provide
subsidized child care, CDE lacks the ability to identify the
children it serves as foster youth. Although a child is
assessed as to whether he or she is in child protective services
or is at-risk of abuse or neglect for purposes of prioritization
for enrollment in a CCD program, the CCD program oftentimes does
not know that the child is a foster youth.
Additionally, due to current implementation of the California
Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS), the
state's student-level longitudinal data system, and federal and
state child welfare and pupil privacy laws it is difficult for
school districts to know whether it does or does not have a
foster youth enrolled, including in an ASES program. Although
school districts may know on a case-by-case basis as identified
by its Foster Youth Liaison, not all districts have a foster
youth liaison, nor do they have the authority to compel a youth
to identify that they are in foster care.
As a result, it is unclear whether the state has the mechanisms
necessary to 1) identify its foster youth served by CCD or ASES
programs, 2) quantify the amount of funds it uses to provide CCD
or ASES services for that foster youth, and 3) whether those
funds could be used for federal Title IV-E Foster Care match.
Title IV-E Child Welfare Waiver Capped Allocation Demonstration
Project
In 2007 the Counties of Los Angeles and Alameda implemented the
Title IV-E Child Welfare Waiver Demonstration Capped Allocation
Project (CAP). The purpose of the CAP is to support counties
with the flexible use of federal and state foster care funds
under a capped funding allocation to assist child welfare and
probation to develop and implement alternative services as a
means to improve outcomes for children and their families.
According to DSS, in its proposal to extend the CAP by another
five years, it states:
The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) has
requested a five-year extension of the current Title IV-E
Child Welfare Waiver Demonstration Capped Allocation
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Project (CAP). The current prohibition on the use of Title
IV-E Foster Care funding for service provision continues to
hinder the state's ability to address the individualized
services and specialized needs of children, youth and
families served by the Child Welfare Services (CWS) and
Probation systems. In response to systemic and practice
changes within child welfare and probation, CDSS has placed
more emphasis on child and family well-being; therefore,
additional programmatic changes in these areas are proposed
to be targeted in the waiver extension implementation.
The two counties (Los Angeles and Alameda) have identified
that participating in the current project allowed them to
provide direct, individualized services to children and
families in their communities in meeting the goals of their
projects. Evaluation findings suggest that the use of
flexible funding under the CAP facilitated the
participating counties' pursuit of expanded programs and
improved outcomes for children and families. In addition,
both child welfare and probation in each county operated
within their capped allocations and were successful in
reducing the number of children and youth entering foster
care.
In August 2012, CDSS requested a Letter of Intent (LOI) from
counties electing to participate in the waiver extension. The
CDSS received 23 LOI's including Alameda and Los Angeles
Counties. Currently, there are 21 counties that continue to
express interest in participating in the project. Within their
LOI, each county identified preliminary strategies to be
implemented under the project. These counties include: Alameda,
Contra Costa, Fresno, Inyo, Lake, Los Angeles, Mariposa,
Mendocino, Nevada, Orange, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San
Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Solano, Sonoma, Tulare
and Yolo.
It is unclear how the CAP would interact with AB 1187 should it
be adopted. Under the measure's intended proposal, the state
would draw down additional federal Title IV-E funds to provide
child care for foster youth. However, the purpose of the CAP is
to operate within a capped funding allocation; meaning no
additional dollars are allocated beyond the amount the county
already receives.
RECOMMENDED AMENDMENTS
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There are a number of uncertainties as to how and whether this
measure can accomplish its goal. Its intended goal is
meritorious, but the manner in which it seeks to achieve its
goal does not seem feasible. Recognizing that the author has
touched upon the possibility that there could be state funding
available for match with federal Title IV-E Foster Care funding,
and that the state continues to need adequate resources to serve
foster youth, this measure should be amended to explore whether
there is sufficiently available CCD and ASES program funding
that could be used for this purpose rather without negatively
impacting current fiscal and programmatic requirements, i.e.,
other federal match or MOE purposes.
Specifically, staff recommends the following amendments:
Delete pages two and three of the bill and replace with the
following language to read:
Section 11411 of the Welfare and Institutions Code is added to
read:
11411(a) No later than December 1, 2014, the State
Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Director of the
Department of Social Services, shall, in collaboration, report
to the Senate and Assembly Budget, Education and Human Services
Committees on whether there are sufficiently available state
child care and development and After School Education and Safety
Program funds on a year-over-year basis to use as nonfederal
match for federal Title IV-E Foster Care child care funds. The
Superintendent and the Director shall consider all of the
following in their report:
1) The amount of state child care and development funds,
including preschool funds, used as nonfederal match for the
federal Child Care and Development Block Grant.
2) The amount of state child care and development funds,
including preschool funds, used as maintenance of effort
for the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
Block Grant.
3) The amount of state After School Education and Safety
Program funds used as nonfederal match for the federal
Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
4) The amount of state child care and development funds,
including preschool funds, and state After School Education
and Safety Program funds that are used for any other
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nonfederal match grant purposes or for maintenance of
effort purposes.
5) Whether the Department of Education and the Department
of Social Services are able to accurately calculate and
quantify the number of foster youth being served in state
subsidized child care and development and After School
Education and Safety Programs for purposes of sufficiently
meeting federal Title IV-E Foster Care child care match
requirements.
6) Whether using state child care and development funds,
including preschool funds, and state After School Education
and Safety Program funds to draw down additional federal
Title IV-E Foster Care funding would negatively, or
otherwise impact the state's ability to successfully
participate in the Title IV-E Child Welfare Waiver
Demonstration Capped Allocation Project.
7) Whether using child care and development funds,
including preschool funds, and state After School Education
and Safety Program funds to draw down additional federal
Title IV-E Foster Care funding would negatively, or
otherwise impact the delivery of subsidized child care or
after school services.
8) Whether using child care and development funds or After
School Education and Safety Program funds for federal Title
IV-E Foster Care child care purposes would negatively
impact the state's ability to meet any other federal grant
requirements for which these funds are currently being used
for nonfederal match or maintenance of effort purposes.
(b) This section shall become inoperative and be repealed on
January 1, 2015.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
County of Orange Board of Supervisors
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Chris Reefe / HUM. S. / (916) 319-2089
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