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November 2002 - Vol. 1, No 6
Register Now for December 6th Child Support Training
Legal Services of Northern California will host a day of free informational sessions on California's child support system (including such topics as recent changes, distribution, intersection with CalWORKS, medical support, and grievance hearings) in Sacramento on December 6th, 2002. Featured speakers include Curtis Child (Director of California Department of Child Support Services) and Sarah Kurtz (attorney at the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland). Please visit www.lsnc.net or call (916) 551-2157 to register.
Improved Support Services and Access to Waivers Recommended for CalWORKS Participants
An article to be published in The Journal of Poverty in February 2003 investigates access to time limits and work requirement waivers, and referral to supportive services for CalWORKS participants. The article is based on focus groups conducted with mothers confronting issues of domestic violence, mental health problems, and/or alcohol and drug dependency (AODA) in the Los Angeles area. According to study participants:
- The majority learned of supportive services and eligibility for waivers from community professionals (including doctors, church workers, and private support services such as domestic violence programs) or their GAIN (California's Welfare to Work program) workers, rather than from their local CalWORKS office.
- Some women disclosed domestic violence by form when applying for welfare services but this form was most often returned to participants and excluded from the application process.
- Many participants experienced denial, skepticism, and/or hassling (including encouragement to stay with their male partner) when requesting services for domestic violence, AODA, or mental health. Many women asserted that their needs were not met until they requested the attention of their caseworker's supervisor. Women mentioned that their experiences with their caseworkers often caused feelings of fear and submission that they experienced while being abused to resurface, and put into question some women's decision to seek assistance for problems with domestic violence, AODA, and/or mental health.
- Women mentioned an overriding fear of disclosing domestic violence, AODA, or mental health problems for fear of making their problems official with the system and thus being disclosed to Child Protective Services and putting custody of their children at risk.
The participating women and the authors recommend that:
- Caseworkers be provided training to recognize and sensitively serve the needs of women who may need services for domestic violence, AODA, and/or mental health; increased knowledge of available services for referral; and better understanding of the process for waiving CalWORKS work requirements and time limits. Participants expressed a need for clear information and options presented to them in a supportive manner. The authors expressed a possible conflict between serving the complex needs of low-income women while meeting the agency's goal of reducing welfare rolls.
- The domestic violence waiver intake form include a series of questions that would guide women to identify the services they might need, as many women may not self-identify as "domestic violence" victim if asked in a single close-ended question.
The availability of requirement waivers and supportive services is especially pertinent in the state as the California Institute for Mental Health has estimated unidentified need for domestic violence, AODA, and/or mental health services among a quarter of CalWORKS recipients. Many of these women will comprise a part of the 100,000 families facing their lifetime limit on welfare limits in January 2003.
Please look for the full article by Elizabeth Bartle and Gabriela Segura in the Journal of Poverty, Volume 7, Numbers 1/2 2003
Legal Aid Services Not Meeting Need of Low-Income Californians
A commissioned report from the California Commission on Access to Justice finds that only 28% of need among low-income Californians for legal services is being served by legal aid in the state. The report finds that in order to meet total need, the current total funding level of $149 million would have to be increased to $533 million. The state has allocated money for legal aid for the poor only since 1999 with annual funding remaining at $10 million. California spends less per eligible person than most other states and currently has one lawyer available for every 10,000 low-income residents. Legal aid offices report that the most urgent need for services is for attorney representation in family law cases (including divorce, child custody, and domestic violence cases), but that assistance is also needed in protecting the rights of recipients of state benefits (including welfare and medical assistance) among many other needs.
For the full report, please visit http://www.calbar.ca.gov/calbar/pdfs/accessjustice/2002-Access-Justice-Report.pdf.
California's Criminal Justice Policies Questioned
- An August 2002 report from the Urban Institute finds that California leads the nation in paroling ex-offenders and returning parolees to prison. According to the study, 126,117 ex-offenders were released to parole in 2000. Ninety thousand parolees returned to prison in 2000 (a thirty-fold increase since 1980). During this period, California's total prison population increased 580%, double the rate of increase in the U.S. population. In 2000, only 31% of incoming prisoners were for new commitments, while over two-thirds were for parole violations. Fifty-seven percent of the entire California prison population were inmates incarcerated for technical violations of parole (including missed appointments with officers or failed drug tests). The state currently spends $900 million per year to imprison parolees. The authors speculate that the higher rates of prison return in California are due to policies such as standard paroling of prisoners upon exit and tougher policing of parolees compared to other states.
The full report can be found at www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/CA_parole_exp.pdf.
- The U.S. Supreme Court is currently hearing two cases under California's "Three Strikes" law. Lawyers are contesting the sentences of fifty years to life for theft of five children's videotapes and twenty-five years to life for the theft of three golf clubs. The "Three Strikes" law passed the legislature and was backed by voters in 1994. According to the law, repeat offenders of felony crimes must be sentenced to twenty-five years to life for their third conviction. Critics question the applicability of such law to nonviolent crimes such as felony burglary. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule within a year on the case but has been encouraged by the Bush Administration to favor state rights and uphold the punishment. Though other states have instituted progressive sentencing, California leads the nation in the number of convictions under the law at 40,511 as of mid-1998 (the second highest state was Georgia with 942 convictions). Please see the January 2002 California Policy Briefing from CFFPP for reports on the constitutionality of the "Three Strikes" law.
For details on the current case, please see the November 5, 2002 article of The Christian Science Monitor at www.christiansciencemonitor.com.
Report Released on Services to Immigrants in the U.S.
The Applied Research Center in Oakland has provided an overview of the national service network available to immigrants in its Spring 2002 report, "Mapping the Immigrant Infrastructure". The report discusses the main types of services available (including service providers, community organizing groups, and immigrant rights organizations), and encourages immigrant leadership and multiracial coalitions among groups serving immigrants to address common issues. Focus groups, interviews, and surveys with organizations revealed that the largest challenges to immigrants in the U.S. was immigration status itself, followed by low wages, language barriers, and limited access to housing. California's 8.8 million immigrants comprise 30% of the national immigrant population. The report highlighted the work of such California organizations as Horn of Africa (serving the Somali population of San Diego), the Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), and the California-based National Immigrant Law Center (NILC) and its California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative (CIWC) (working on policy to expand state and federal benefits to immigrants). In addition, information was collected from advocates (including grant makers, welfare advocates, health care workers, and organizations serving Chicanos, Asians, and Arab Americans) in Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Long Beach, Salinas, Grenfield, Concord, San Jose, Sebastopol, and Santa Rosa.
The report can be ordered at www.arc.org or by phoning (510) 653-3415.
Housing Update
Two new reports on California's housing shortage are available, coinciding with the November election in which voters approved a measure which will reduce monthly cash aid benefits for San Francisco's homeless from $395 to $59, and also approved a state bond for $2.1 billion (Proposition 46) to address the state's housing shortage (please see the September California Policy Briefing from CFFPP for more details on these pieces of legislation). The California Budget Project released, "Locked Out 2002: California's Affordable Housing Crisis Continues" and Housing California released "Why We Need Affordable Housing: Unmet Needs in the California Housing Market." Among the reports' observations and recommendations:
- The shortage of affordable housing units state-wide is 651,000, representing half the state's need for low-income housing.
- Total CalWORKS grant amounts (for a three-person family) are exceeded by Fair Market Rent in 31 counties (by $186 in Los Angeles County, $695 in Alameda County, and $1,261 in San Francisco County).
- Due to the expiration of federal contracts for Section 8 housing, 24,000 affordable housing units state-wide have been converted to market rent since 1995 (including 7,000 units lost in Los Angeles and 6,000 units lost in the Bay Area).
- Two hundred thousand new housing units are needed per year through 2020 to keep pace with population growth at an affordable level, a need which seems particularly unlikely to be met with a reduction in state-level commitment by over half since 1990.
Please see www.cbp.org and www.housingca.org/whitepaper.pdf for the full reports, and the November 15, 2002 article at www.sfgate.com and www.nonprofithousing.org for more details on the voter approved propositions.
New State Law Will Provide Paid Family Leave
California became the first state to pass paid family leave legislation after S.B. 1661, introduced by Senator Kuehl, was passed by the Senate and Assembly in August 2002 and signed by Governor Davis in September. When the new law is instituted in July 2004, employees will be entitled to up to six weeks of paid leave per year to attend to newborn babies or sick family members. The new benefits will be funded by an employee payroll tax of $50 per year to begin in January 2004.
To view the legislation, please visit www.leginfo.ca.gov and search for S.B. 1661.
AIDS Figures Available for California
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has released the latest data for AIDS cases around the country. Specific to California:
- The state had the second highest reported number of cases (119,021) after New York, and the second highest (Los Angeles) and third highest (San Francisco) number of AIDS cases per city in the country.
- The state ranked 18th in the nation for number of AIDS cases per 100,000 population.
- New AIDS cases in the state (for the year 2000) were identified by race/ethnicity with 2010 new cases among whites, 1462 among Hispanics, 1065 among blacks, 114 among Asians, and 26 among Native Americans. California ranked highest in the country for total number of AIDS cases among Asians and Native Americans.
Data is available at www.cdc.gov/hiv/stats.
Resources Available to Advocates
- The Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness has made available an extensive guide to state benefits (including welfare, assistance to immigrants, social security, and the October 2002 updated food stamps program) for low-income persons and advocates in California. The People's Guide serves to educate clients and workers on the benefits to which they are entitled and the processes of application and contesting upon denial, termination, or other problems with state agencies or benefits. A state-wide manual is available in English and a Los Angeles County-specific guide is available in English, Spanish, and eight other languages. The handbook is available at the coalition's website at http://www.lacehh.org/guide/index.html (also a particularly comprehensive and up-to-date site for updates on local, state, and national legislative and advocacy activity).
- The Data Source Handbook from the California Department of Finance provides contact information and websites for state and nonprofit agencies organized by subject, including data sources that cover such topics as welfare caseload numbers and labor and unemployment figures. The entire handbook can be accessed at www.dof.ca.gov/HTML/DEMOGRAP/scdc_handbook.pdf.
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