Today's Law As Amended


Bill PDF |Add To My Favorites | print page

SB-23 CalWORKs: eligibility.(2015-2016)



As Amends the Law Today


SECTION 1.
 The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) Scientific research has demonstrated that young children living in deep poverty experience lifelong cognitive impairments limiting their ability to be prepared for, and succeed in, school.
(b) Academic research has documented an increase in missed days of school and an increase in visits to hospital emergency rooms by children who live in deep poverty.
(c) The Maximum Family Grant rule was adopted to limit the length of time a family could receive basic needs assistance, and to limit the amount of assistance a family could receive, through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program before the implementation of welfare reform. At the time the rule was adopted, there was no limit on the length of time a family could receive aid, no work requirements, and the benefits provided were approximately 80 percent of the federal poverty level.
(d) Since the implementation of the Maximum Family Grant rule, AFDC has been replaced with the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids Act (CalWORKs), which imposes lifetime limits on aid and requires adult CalWORKs participants to meet work requirements in order to receive a maximum benefit of approximately 40 percent of the federal poverty level.
(e) The Maximum Family Grant rule makes poor children poorer, reducing the income of families with infants to below 30 percent of the federal poverty level.
(f) This act is necessary to protect infants born to families receiving CalWORKs from experiencing lifelong cognitive impairments due to the toxic stress of deep poverty and to ready those children for participation in California’s public school system.
(g) This act is also necessary to protect the reproductive and privacy rights of all applicants for, and recipients of, aid under CalWORKs.

SEC. 2.

 Section 11270.5 is added to the Welfare and Institutions Code, immediately following Section 11270, to read:

11270.5.
 (a) An applicant for, or recipient of, aid under this chapter shall not be required, as a condition of eligibility, to do any of the following:
(1) Divulge that any member of the assistance unit is a victim of rape or incest.
(2) Share confidential medical records related to any member of the assistance unit’s rape or incest.
(3) Use contraception, choose a particular method of contraception, or divulge the method of contraception that any member of the assistance unit uses.
(b) An applicant for, or recipient of, aid under this chapter shall not be denied aid, nor denied an increase in the maximum aid payment, for a child born into the applicant’s or recipient’s family during a period in which the applicant’s or recipient’s family was receiving aid under this chapter.
(c) An applicant for, or recipient of, aid under this chapter shall not be entitled to an increased benefit payment for any month prior to January 1, 2016, as a result of the repeal of former Section 11450.04 (as added by Section 1 of Chapter 196 of the Statutes of 1994) or the enactment of this section.

SEC. 3.

 Section 11450.04 of the Welfare and Institutions Code is repealed.

SEC. 4.
 No appropriation pursuant to Section 15200 of the Welfare and Institutions Code shall be made for the purposes of this act.
SEC. 5.
  If the Commission on State Mandates determines that this act contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement to local agencies and school districts for those costs shall be made pursuant to Part 7 (commencing with Section 17500) of Division 4 of Title 2 of the Government Code.