January 2003 - Vol. 2, No 1

• First Californians Confronted with Lifetime Limits on Receipt of Welfare
• Counties Struggle to Apply Child Support Exemptions Before Families are Cut From Aid
• Assessment of California's Substantial Accrual of Child Support Debt Available
• Department of Child Support Services Releases Reports on Child Support Performance
• Report Outlines Challenges Specific to Californian Low-Income Fathers
• Proposed State Budget Includes a Number of Social Services Cuts to Bridge $34 Billion Gap
• Two CalWORKS Programs Targeting Fraud Are Questioned
• Prevalence of Domestic Violence Reported for California

First Californians Confronted with Lifetime Limits on Receipt of Welfare

On January 1st, 2003, approximately 46,000 adults will reach their five-year liftetime limit for receipt of TANF (Temporary Aid for Needy Families). The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 ended entitlement for federal cash aid and set a five year deadline for families to achieve self-sufficiency. California represents a significant proportion of the federal caseload of welfare families and may prove in the coming months to be demonstrative of the results of the federal government's new approach to welfare. California, which began its TANF program, CalWORKS, on January 1st, 1998, began moving families from the rolls this month and will continue to pull families from the rolls in the months ahead. Though the total numbers of families affected by timelimits in 2003 is unknown, county data predict that 18,518 additional families in six counties alone will reach their limits between February and June 2003.

While the federal government forbids the use of federal money to assist families after five years, states have the option of using their own monies to continue aid. Four states have chosen to provide full family assistance beyond five years. Five more states (including California) and the District of Columbia have elected to use state funds to provide grants for children for as long as the family is financially eligible. Thus a Californian family of three with one adult will lose $131 monthly in adult aid benefits, or almost one-fifth of the family's monthly aid budget, but will continue to receive a monthly grant of $548 for the children in the household. Families cut off from cash assistance should modify their reported budgets so as to receive additional food stamp aid, and in addition, are entitled to two years of post-TANF childcare aid. Though presently adults should continue to be eligible for Medi-Cal for two years and child care for as long as they are in financial need, Governor Davis has proposed cutting portions of these services in his most recent budget proposal (see page four of this briefing). Counties may continue to provide welfare-to-work services to "leavers" but are mandated by the state to require families to participate in community service in exchange for services.

According to the California Budget Project (CBP), a disproportionate number of Asian immigrant families, comprised of two working parents, immediately face limits. Advocates explain that Asian families receiving welfare, while maintaining two laborers in the family and complying with welfare requirements, have utilized welfare to supplement extremely low-wage work and face language and other barriers to long-term economic mobility. Two-parent families will lose proportionately more family income: a family of four with two full-time minimum-wage workers will have their monthly cash aid reduced from $337 to $76.

For more details and continuing coverage of time limits in California, please read CBP's "Timing Out: CalWORKs Recipients Face the State's Five-Year Time Limit" and visit the CBP website at www.cbp.org.

Counties Struggle to Apply Child Support Exemptions Before Families are Cut From Aid

It is predicted that some of the families facing their lifetime limit on TANF this month may be due additional months of aid due to exemptions that have not yet been credited by counties. State law dictates that families are exempt from the five-year limit during months in which the adult recipient had child support paid to the county on behalf of their children. (Families are also eligible for exemptions for months spent caring for a child or adult with special needs in the home, being the victim of domestic violence, or during months of sanction).

Though suspected to affect a large number of aid recipients facing aid cut-off, relatively few counties had negotiated the interface between child support receipt and credited months of aid by the January deadline. (Under PRWORA families are required to assign their right to child support to the state in repayment for assistance received. California has chosen to pass through up to $50 a month to families and retain the rest of collected child support for state reimbursement).

Though the responsibility of child support exemptions lies in the county offices of child support and welfare, families must often apply for other exemptions and advocates worry that not all families have had sufficient opportunity to do so. Indeed, though counties provided notification to families of impending time limits in July, the state did not provide full notice of all possible exemptions nor information on how to apply until December 2002. Counties that sent out state-provided notice to families were thus out of compliance with the two-month requirement of notification of exemptions. Advocates are currently holding legal trainings to ensure that families understand that they may be soon cut from aid and how to apply for any exemptions to which they may be entitled.

Please see "Timing Out: CalWORKs Recipients Face the State's Five-Year Time Limit" at www.cbp.org for more details and articles in the 12/03/02 and 12/29/02 editions of the Oakland Tribune at www.oaklandtribune.com, and the 1/2/03 edition of the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com.

Assessment of California's Substantial Accrual of Child Support Debt Available

The Center on Law and Social Policy (CLASP) has released a report based on data collected by the Urban Institute that had been previously commissioned by the state to investigate a large amount of arrearage debt owed by noncustodial parents in California. The report, "Pursuing Justice: A Strategic Approach to Child Support Arrears in California," makes the following findings and recommendations:

• $14.4 billion is currently owed in arrears. While eighty-five percent of all obligors owe arrears, $8.1 billion of this debt is owed by very low- or no income obligors (making less than $5000 a year).
• Seventy percent of orders are set by default in California (substantially higher than many other states). In the absence of knowledge of obligor income, orders in the past were automatically calculated as the total of the family's monthly welfare grant. Very low-income parents (less than $5000 monthly income) thus now owe median support orders of $280 (or twice net monthly income at $5000 a year pay) and parents with no recent income have a median monthly debt of $277. Though the state now has guidelines for low-income obligors (defined as making less than $12,000 a year), the report recommends that these guidelines be used more often by courts in making award decisions. Beyond modifying current orders to reflect current ability to pay, the authors recommend that the state forgive or modify arrears accrued based on the assumption of higher income.
• Seventy percent of current debt is owed to the state (PRWORA requires parents to assign to the state any child support paid on their behalf to repay for assistance received, with state option to pass through a portion or all of the amount collected to families). The state therefore has the option to partially or fully forgive this debt.
• While half of states do not charge interest on arrears debt, California charges a rate of ten percent. In addition, payments are applied to interest before the base amount owed. The authors recommend that the state eliminate or reduce interest and apply payments to the principal owed first.
• In California, arrears may be charged retroactively for up to one year preceding the date on which the order is set. The authors suggest limiting this amount for low-income parents or allowing caseworker discretion.
• Modifications were generally found to be inflexible and difficult to obtain, as they can be made only every three years and then only in the case of a monthly order change exceeding $50 or 30% of the order amount.
• Finally, five percent of obligors were currently incarcerated. The report recommends that the Departments of Corrections and Child Support work together to immediately modify order amounts upon entrance into prison.

The full report can be accessed at www.clasp.org.

Department of Child Support Services Releases Reports on Child Support Performance

• The 2001 Annual Report of the California Department of Child Support Services is now available. The state is required by the federal government to provide an annual report on state performance with designated federal objectives. Though the state performed higher than the national averages in paternity and child support order establishments, the state ranked quite low in current support and arrears collection and cost-effectiveness. Approximately only one-half of current or arrears cases received payment in the previous year. The report argued for a rethinking of state child support efforts that encourage aggressive establishment of orders through default and courts over voluntary establishment of paternity and orders (please see information from previously mentioned CLASP report above).
• A telephone survey of custodial (CP's) and noncustodial parents (NCP's) by the Department of Child Support Services found that fifty-three percent of interviewees reported income of less than $1500 a month; one-third were unemployed; and 10% of noncustodial parents relied upon welfare benefits as their main source of income. Forty percent of all interviewed (NCP's more than CP's) reported dissatisfaction with the child support system. There was a high demand for legal counseling and employment services among those surveyed.

Both reports are available at www.childsup.cahwnet.gov.

Report Outlines Challenges Specific to Californian Low-Income Fathers

The Social Policy Action Network (SPAN) has released a report documenting barriers to increased low-income father involvement. The report's child support recommendations seconded those of other recent findings (see above), with particular attention to the state's high rate of default orders and the process for support order modification. The report suggests that while paternity establishment increased from 20.9% of cases in 1987 to 45.1% of cases in 1994, the adjudication of many of these cases through the courts in the absence of parents has resulted in high default orders often unreflective of parents' ability to pay. Documenting individual arrears as high as $100,000, the authors recommend improved efforts to locate and verify the income of potential obligors, in addition to implementing a system by which informal support can be credited. The report also recommends simplification and increased flexibility in modifying child support orders, particularly through the provision of legal services and reduced barriers to court accessibility. Finally, the program identified the need for a state program to modify support orders of fathers entering the prison system.

The full report, "Promoting Responsible Fatherhood in California: Ideas and Options" can be found at the SPAN website at www.span-online.org/CAfatherhood.pdf.

Proposed State Budget Includes a Number of Social Services Cuts to Bridge $34 Billion Gap

On January 10th, 2003, Governor Davis released his proposal for the 2003-2004 budget. Following last year's budget crisis of a $24 billion deficit and two-month delayed resolution (see CFFPP's September 2002 California Policy Briefing for details), the state again must resolve a deficit of $34 billion over the next two years. Though the final budget will reflect numerous adjustments by the Legislature by the June 2003 deadline, the proposal suggests that significant savings will be made through cuts in cash aid, safety net services, and medical assistance, including:

• Cuts in CalWORKs and SSI monthly grant amounts of 6% (around $40 a month for a family of four under CalWORKS or $50 a month for single adults receiving SSI). Cost of living adjustments for inflation would be delayed another year for CalWORKs.
• Safety-net services for welfare "leavers" would be reduced in a year corresponding with the state's expiration of life benefits for many recipients. The governor has proposed eliminating the second year of transitional Medi-Cal for welfare "leavers", and eliminating child care two years after "leaving" aid (counties currently have the option to continue child care for as long as the family is financially eligible).
• Additional proposed cuts to medical assistance revisit debates of last year and include the reduction of adult eligibility to 61% of the federal poverty level (with the prediction that 350,000 would lose benefits); reinstatement of quarterly reporting (reducing the number of eligible recipients by an estimated 220,000 over the next two years); delayed expansion of Healthy Families to parents until July 2006; reduced outreach to Medi-Cal and Healthy Families eligible clients; elimination of coverage for certain services (including dental); and reduction in provider reimbursement.

Updates and analysis of the proposed budget may be found at the websites of the California Budget Project and the Legislative Analyst's Office at www.cbp.org and www.lao.ca.gov.

Two CalWORKS Programs Targeting Fraud Are Questioned

• Welfare applicants in Los Angeles County challenged a county program in place since 1999 which authorizes home visits of welfare applicants. Designed to catch fraudulent practices, including the presence of unreported adults in the home, caseworkers can make a home walk-through within ten days of application for aid. The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, the Western Center on Law and Poverty, and the ACLU of Southern California challenged the program in the District Court of Appeals on grounds of unconstitutionality and unauthorized condition of receipt of benefits. The District Court of Appeals upheld the program, with Justice Norman Epstein defending the court's reasoning by asserting, "We conclude that whatever intrusion involved is minimal, and is outweighed by the government's interest in preventing welfare fraud."
  
  For more details, please read the article in the 12/27/02 Metropolitan News-Enterprise at www.metnews.com/articles/smit122702.htm.
  
  
• A recent state audit report sent to Governor Davis and legislative leaders recommended the repeal of the Statewide Fingerprinting Imaging System, deeming the program costly, unjustified, and a possible deterrent to application for benefits. The program, costing $31 million in start-up money and $11.4 million a year to administer, is administered by the California Department of Social Services to all welfare and food stamp recipients in the effort to uncover those who might try to reap double benefits from the system by applying in two counties or applying under different names. Since the program's inception three years ago, very little double-aid fraud has been detected. Though it is possible that the program would deter such attempts at fraud, the auditors say it is impossible to determine if the program is effective, as the program was not based on any data documenting the prior occurrence of double-aid fraud.
  
  To read more please visit the 1/3/03 article of the Sac Bee at www.sacbee.com/content/politics/v-print/story/5781179p-6750807c.html.

Prevalence of Domestic Violence Reported for California

A report is now available from the California Research Bureau on the prevalence of domestic violence in California as evidenced from state data and surveys of domestic violence shelters and other points of contact with systems including law enforcement and healthcare. The report finds that:

• Between 31 and 34 percent of Californian women report having experienced domestic violence at some point in their lives. During the year 2000, six percent of women in California (or 700,000 women) experienced domestic violence in their home, a proportion three times the national average.
• Over twenty-three thousand women were turned away from shelters in 2000 due to lack of available space. A 1993-1994 analysis of data from San Francisco indicates that four out of five women were turned away from full shelters. Those women who utilized shelters were more likely to be Latino or African American women and lacking education, insurance, and/or employment.
• The survey additionally found that two-thirds of battered women do not involve law enforcement in an incident of domestic violence. This may be due to the fact that between 1988 and 2000, there was a three-fold increase (from 6% to 18%) in the proportion of women arrested. Though law enforcement officers are supposed to identify a primary perpetrator, the survey predicts that much of the rise in arrests of women can be found in practice which arrests both parties.
• The report recommends increasing battered women's access to the courts through waiving the fee for low-income women and ensuring the provision of court interpreters for non-English speakers.

The full report may be found at www.library.ca.gov/crb/02/16/02-016.pdf.