BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 982
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Date of Hearing: April 14, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES
Kansen Chu, Chair
AB 982
(Eggman) - As Introduced February 26, 2015
SUBJECT: Child care and development: eligibility: priority:
homeless children
SUMMARY: Prioritizes homeless youth for subsidized child care
services.
Specifically, this bill:
1)Includes the prioritization of homeless families within
current legislative intent to prioritize certain low-income
and disadvantaged families for subsidized child development
programs.
2)Adds local educational agency liaisons for homeless children
and youths, as specified, Head Start programs, and emergency
and transitional shelters to the list of entities that may
identify a child, and thereby confer eligibility, for
subsidized child development services.
3)Adds "being homeless" as a criterion for which a child may be
identified as eligible for subsidized child care services by
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specified entities.
4)Includes homeless children in the "first priority" category
for subsidized child development services alongside children
who have been, or are at risk of being, neglected or abused,
as specified.
EXISTING LAW:
1)Establishes the Child Care and Developmental Services Act to
provide child care and development services as part of a
coordinated, comprehensive, and cost-effective system serving
children from birth to 13 years old and their parents and
including a full range of supervision, health, and support
services through full- and part-time programs. (EDC 8200 et
seq.)
2)Defines "child care and development services" to mean services
designed to meet a wide variety of children's and families'
needs while parents and guardians are working, in training,
seeking employment, incapacitated, or in need of respite.
(EDC 8208)
3)States the intent of the Legislature that all families have
access to child care and development services, through
resource and referral where appropriate, and regardless of
demographic background or special needs, and that families are
provided the opportunity to 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. (EDC
8202)
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4)Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to
administer general child care and development programs to
include, among other things as specified, age- and
developmentally-appropriate activities, supervision, parenting
education and involvement, and nutrition. Further allows such
programs to be designed to meet child-related needs identified
by parents or guardians, as specified. (EDC 8240 and 8241)
5)Stipulates requirements families must meet in order to be
eligible for federal and state subsidized child development
services, and grants priority enrollment to children who have
been or are at risk of being abused or neglected, as
specified. (EDC 8263)
6)Defines a local educational liaison for homeless children and
youth to be a staff person designated by a local educational
agency to carry out specified duties, including ensuring that
homeless children and youth are identified by school personnel
and, in coordination with other entities, seeing to it that
homeless children and youth have full and equal opportunity to
succeed in school. (42 U.S.C. Section 11432(g)(1)(J)(ii))
FISCAL EFFECT: Unknown
COMMENTS:
Subsidized child care eligibility and prioritization: Certain
eligibility and prioritization rules apply to subsidized child
care in California. Families are eligible for non-CalWORKs
subsidized child care if they meet at least one requirement in
each of two areas: eligibility and need. First, they must meet
one of the eligibility criteria, which are: currently receiving
aid, being income-eligible, being homeless, or having children
who are recipients of protective services or who have been
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identified as being, or are at risk of being, abused, neglected,
or exploited. Secondly, the family must meet one of the "need"
requirements: either the child has to have been identified by a
legal, medical, or social services agency or emergency shelter
as being a recipient of protective services or being (or at risk
of being) abused, neglected or exploited, or the parents need to
be employed or seeking employment, engaged in vocational
training, as specified, seeking permanent housing for family
stability, or incapacitated.
First priority for non-CalWORKs subsidized child care is given
to abused or neglected children who are receiving protective
services, or children who are at risk of abuse or neglect who
are referred from a legal, medical or social services agency.
Second priority is given to families with the lowest gross
monthly income relative to family size.
Homeless children and youth: One commonly used definition of
"homeless children and youths" comes from the federal
McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 2001. It defines
homeless children and youths as individuals who "lack a fixed,
regular, and adequate nighttime residence," and it includes
children and youths who: have to share housing with others due
to loss of housing or economic hardship; are living in motels,
hotels, trailer parks, or camp grounds because they lack other
accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional
shelters; are awaiting foster placement; or have a primary
nighttime residence that is not designed as a regular sleeping
accommodation for human beings.
Over 520,000 children in the state were estimated to be homeless
in 2012-13, prompting the National Center on Family Homelessness
at American Institutes for Research to rank California the 48th
worst in the nation with regards to the extent of child
homelessness (adjusted for state population). Nationally, it is
estimated that approximately 51% of all homeless children in the
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United States are under the age of 6, 34% are between the ages
of 6 and 12, and 15% are between 13 and 17.
Need for this bill: According to the author's office, research
indicates that parents who are homeless face greater barriers to
accessing child care subsidies compared to other low-income
families, and mothers who have experienced homelessness receive
child care subsidies much less frequently than those who are at
risk of homelessness or who have stable housing. The author
states that, "Despite their extreme need and documented lack of
access, homeless families do not currently receive priority for
child care and development services in California. This bill
would help increase homeless families' access to federal and
state subsidized child care and development services by
affording them priority for services upon a written referral
from a specified agency."
This can create a catch-22 for families experiencing
homelessness: limited access to child care support can make it
difficult to look for, obtain, and maintain employment. This
resultant lack of employment, in turn, can contribute to
continued experiences of homelessness.
Additionally, supporters of this bill point to the negative
impacts the lack of stable child care can have for children.
For example, the National Center for Youth Law states that, "The
age at which a person is most likely to be found in a homeless
shelter in the United States is infancy. Homelessness during
infancy and toddlerhood has been linked to poor social emotional
development, later child welfare involvement, and early school
failure. Child care and development services are extremely
valuable to mitigate the impacts of homelessness on these
vulnerable children. Research overwhelmingly shows high quality
educational experiences in the preschool years can have a
positive effect and long-term benefit throughout a child's
education."
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Staff comments: The size of California's homeless population,
and an awareness of the many barriers that this population faces
when it comes to securing stable and affordable housing,
employment, and other services and supports, is cause for great
concern. One significant barrier often faced by homeless
families is lack of access to affordable child care, and this
lack of access can have deleterious impacts both for homeless
parents and their children.
In 2014-15, there are an estimated 78,000 subsidized child care
slots (General Child Care and Alternative Payment) plus 148,588
State Preschool slots in California. As of January 1, 2015,
there were almost 34,000 children between the ages of 0 and 10
in the state's child welfare system for reasons of abuse or
neglect. Applying the national estimate that approximately 85%
of homeless youth are between the ages of 0 and 12 to the
state's overall homeless child population of 520,000, it can be
estimated that there are approximately 442,000 homeless children
in California under the age of 13.
This bill's goal of increasing access to subsidized child care
is an important one. However, without providing an increase in
the number of funded child care slots, the current mechanism
proposed for increasing that access - to give homeless children
first priority alongside abused, neglected, and at-risk youth -
runs the risk of crowding out this level of prioritization and
unintentionally placing two very vulnerable populations of
children in competition for a limited number of child care
slots. Efforts to better supply homeless families with access
to adequate child care should most certainly be made; however,
this must be done with care so as to not consequently diminish
access for other vulnerable populations.
This bill's inclusion of local educational agency liaisons for
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homeless children and youths, Head Start programs, and emergency
and transitional shelters as entities that may identify a child,
and thereby confer eligibility, for subsidized child development
services is an important step toward increasing child care
access for homeless families. These entities, in many cases,
are regularly exposed and particularly attuned to the needs of
this population and could help make significant headway in
facilitating access to child care. Moreover, this bill's
addition of "being homeless" as a criterion that meets the
subsidized child care "eligibility" requirement (in addition to
the already-existent inclusion of homelessness as a factor
meeting the "need" requirement) stands to grant increased access
to child care for homeless families.
Recommended amendments: For the reasons described above,
committee staff recommends this bill be amended to delete
provisions that add homeless children to first level
prioritization for subsidized child care per the following,
beginning on line 10 of page 3:
10 (1) (A) (i) First priority shall be given to both of
the following :
11 neglected
12 (I) Neglected or abused children who are recipients of
child
13 protective services, or children who are at risk of being
neglected
14 or abused, upon written referral from a legal, medical, or
social
15 services agency. If
16 (II) Homeless children, upon written referral from a
local
17 educational agency liaison for homeless children and youths
18 designated pursuant to Section 11432(g)(1)(J)(ii) of Title
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42 of
19 the United States Code, a Head Start program, or an
emergency
20 or transitional shelter.
21 (ii) If an agency is unable to enroll a child in the
first priority
22 category, the agency shall refer the family to local
resource and
23 referral services to locate services for the child.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
Bakersfield Homeless Center
County Welfare Directors Association of CA (CWDA)
Hamilton Family Center
Home Start
National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and
Youth (NAEHCY)
National Association of Social Workers, CA Chapter (NASW-CA)
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National Center for Youth Law (NYCL)
Public Counsel's Children's Rights Project
Western Center on Law and Poverty
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by:Daphne Hunt / HUM. S. / (916) 319-2089
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