Dear California Reader,
Good morning, Inequality Insights readers. I’m CalMatters reporter Wendy Fry.
Last week, Ed Center, a foster parent from San Francisco County, told a budget subcommittee a painful story about reaching his breaking point during his son’s COVID-era mental health crisis, which included violent tantrums and the boy blacking out his face from family portraits with a marker.
“When we were in crisis, we needed Wonder Woman with a social work degree,” Center explained.
That’s what his family found in the Family Urgent Response System, a free, trauma-informed support system for foster youth and their caregivers. The $31 million state program sends counselors out to foster families in crisis at all hours.
Now, as the state faces a budget shortfall that the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office predicted could be as much as $73 billion, the Family Urgent Response System and several other programs to support children and foster youth in new ways are on the chopping block.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s current budget proposal would eliminate the urgent response program and cut or eliminate several other programs that provide a safety net for families.
Center recalled one desperate night, when he got in his car and drove three hours away from home before calling for help.
“I asked the counselor a simple question. Why should I go back?” Center said.
The social worker reminded Center of how much he mattered to his son, even if the then 10-year-old couldn’t show it at the time.
“I bought some crappy gas station coffee and I turned around for home,” he said.
That story brought tears to the eyes of state Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat from Van Nuys who chairs the subcommittee.
“Your kid could have been a statistic. He could have been homeless, died by suicide, or you would have had a broken family, and it wouldn’t have been your fault. It would have been because the system failed you,” Menjivar told the foster dad.
The governor has proposed at least $68 million in general fund cuts in services for children, families, and foster youth, as well as eliminating a program that helps former foster kids find housing, a housing supplement for foster youth, and a program that provides public health nurses for children, youth, and their families in LA County.
Menjivar asked why Newsom picked these child and family programs to lose all funding, while other programs aren’t being totally cut.
State officials said the family urgent response program isn’t being fully used in every county, but the governor is willing to work with lawmakers to find other places to cut.
“Things do have to get cut somewhere,” Menjivar later told CalMatters, pointing to media campaigns as an example. “But never, ever, ever from kids and our most vulnerable.”
DON’T MISS
- An apology. A bill that would provide an apology from California for its role in slavery passed the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee Wednesday with an 11-0 vote. The proposed legislation, part of a package of bills inspired by the first-in-the-nation reparations task force, will head to the Assembly Floor for a full vote. Authored by Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat from Los Angeles, the law would “provide acknowledgment of, and an apology for, human rights violations related to enslavement, and the state’s role in the lasting badges and incidents of slavery within its territories.”
- Digital divide. CalMatters’ Khari Johnson wrote that many Californians may have to choose between groceries and internet access, because a federal internet subsidy has ended. Congress allocated $14.2 billion to the Affordable Connectivity Program in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its loss could affect 3 million Californians.
- Anti-trafficking bills. State lawmakers are considering two bills aimed at human trafficking: SB 998 would require county child welfare agencies and probation departments to expand policies preventing sex trafficking to also apply to children at risk of becoming victims of labor trafficking, and SB 1157 would beef up state contracting requirements to prevent sweatshops, labor exploitation and employee retaliation by contractors or subcontractors who supply the state with garments, equipment and materials or who launder items for the state.
- App inequality. Human Rights Watch published a 73-page report documenting issues with CBP One, the U.S. government mobile application through which asylum-seekers are required to request appointments to enter the United States. The international rights organization says the app “is more difficult to use for certain categories of people — among them, disabled individuals, Black and Indigenous people, people who do not have the language skills, ability to read or write, or digital literacy skills required to use the app, older people.”
- Dying on the job. Black and Latino workers are more likely than others to die on the job, a new AFL-CIO report says. In 2022 Black workers’ job fatality rate was 4.2 deaths per 100,000 workers — highest in nearly 15 years — and the 734 deaths were the highest total in at least 20 years. Latino workers’ face the greatest risk of dying at work; their job fatality rate increased to 4.6 per 100,000.
- Hungry at college. More than two-thirds of California’s college and university students were food insecure in the 2022-23 school year and more than half were housing insecure, a California Student Aid Commission survey shows. The cost of basic needs has risen since the last survey in 2018-19, but wages, financial aid and CalFresh benefits haven’t kept pace. Rising costs pushed 8% of students to withdraw from school and 13% to reduce their course load.
- Your favorite state, in photos: CalMatters teamed up with CatchLight to launch California in Pictures, a new monthly newsletter that highlights compelling photojournalism from across the state. See the first edition. Sign up to receive it.
Thanks for following our work on the California Divide team. While you’re here, please tell us what kinds of stories you’d love to read. Email us at inequalityinsights@calmatters.org.
Thanks for reading,
The California Divide Team