Secretary Hilda Solis Keynotes Working Families Policy Summit

Click here for policy papers released at the Summit.

Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis was greeted at the California Working Families Policy Summit Luncheon with a standing ovation.  At the conclusion of her speech, which addressed jobs development and family-friendly work practices, the crowd of over 400 California leaders once again rose to their feet in appreciation for her vision and commitment.

A copy of the Secretary’s speech and additional photos from her visit are available on the Department of Labor website.  The luncheon concluded with a DVD message from First Lady Michelle Obama that called for commitment and action to increase policies that support work and family balance.

The theme for the 2010 Working Families Policy Summit was “Confronting Current Crises and Forging a New Vision for Working Families.”  More than 15 policy papers were released or reviewed, including a report released by Senator Carol Liu on options to draw down additional federal funds.

Click here for more information.

Summer Meal Program Coalition Launched to Combat Hunger & Obesity — Webinars to be held in Spring 2010

CCRWF is helping to lead the Summer Meal Program Coalition, a new statewide network of leaders and organizations united to combat hunger and obesity by increasing access to subsidized summer meal programs.  Nutrition education will be integrated into all aspects of our work.

Members of the Coalition include:

▪ California Department of Education

▪ California Association of Food Banks

▪ California School Boards Association

▪ California After-School Network

▪ Bay Area Partnership

▪ California Food Policy Advocates

▪ Food Research Action Center (in DC)

▪ Redwood Empire Food Bank

▪ San Diego Unified School District

▪ YMCA of Silicon Valley and more!

Sign up for Summer Meal Program Webinars!

The Summer Meal Program Coalition will host a series of webinars from April through June of 2010, working closely with our network partners representing food banks, school districts, and summer & after-school programs.

Click here to sign up to be notified of the Coalition’s webinars.

Case Studies and Tool Kits on Summer Meal Programs

The Coalition will also develop case studies and tool kits to help school districts, food banks, and summer programs easily access best practices for program administration, programming, and nutrition education.   Working closely with CDE and our network partners, we will encourage new sponsors and sites to sign on to provide summer meal programs - and join the statewide effort to combat hunger and obesity.

Click here if you would like to be notified when the case study/tool kit resources are available.

For specifics about our 2010 Summer Meal Campaign, click here.

To contact the Summer Meal Program Coalition, email ccrwf@ccrwf.org.

Register Now!

Click here to go directly to online registration.

Click here to view the Summit Program.

THE CALIFORNIA WORKING FAMILIES

POLICY SUMMIT 2010

featuring Keynote Speaker

Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis

and

a taped message from

First Lady Michelle Obama!

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Sacramento Convention Center

Hosted by:

California Center for Research on Women and Families

Co-Sponsors:

California Legislative Women’s Caucus

California Commission on the Status of Women

You can register for the Full Summit, the Luncheon Only, or Workshops Only.

Through Friday, February 19, the charge to attend the Full Summit or Luncheon Only is $39.

There is no charge to attend Workshops Only.

Late Registration fee of $49 will be charged from Saturday, February 20 - Monday, February 22.

Summit registration closes on Monday, February 22.

Questions?  E-mail Summit@ccrwf.org

Hearing of the Workforce Protection Subcommittee, Committee on Education and Labor

Attend Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey’s Congressional hearing on working families:

Friday, November 13th, at 10:30 am

Marin County Civic Center

Board of Supervisors Chambers

3501 Civic Center Drive

San Rafael, California 94903

Testimony will be heard from:

Ann O’Leary

Executive Director, Berkeley Center on Health, Economic & Family Security

University of California, Berkeley School of Law

Joan Williams

Director, Center for WorkLife Law

University of California, Hastings College of the Law

Joan Blades

Co-founder, Moveon.org and Momsrising.org

For more information, contact Congesswoman Woolsey’s District Office at

415-507-9554.

Now Available Online: Child Care and Early Learning Webinar

Over 200 California leaders joined us for the second Working Families Webinar: California’s Child Care and Early Learning System:  Where we are . . . and where we want to go, held Thursday, October 15, 2009.

Click here to hear and view the Child Care and Early Learning webinar.

The webinar featured Senator Carol Liu, Chair, Senate Human Services Committee; Catherine Atkin, President, Preschool California; Nancy Strohl, Executive Director, Child Care Law Center; and Jennifer Peck, Bay Area Partnership for Children and Youth.

Please Cal WebEx directly at 1-866-229-3239 if you have any trouble connecting to the presentation.

Interested in directly viewing the PowerPoint presentations?

Click on the links below.

Preschool and Child Care
Catherine Atkin and Nancy Strohl

After-School Programs
Jennifer Peck

An announcement about our next webinar will be posted on this website and e-mailed to all previous webinar participants.

Will the Governor Support or Oppose Gender Discrimination in Health Insurance?

Two bills that address gender discrimination in health coverage - AB 119 (Jones) and AB 98 (De La Torre) - are on their way to the Governor’s desk. You can view the Senate Rules floor analyses for AB 98 and AB 119, which include lists of supporters and opponents.

Below is an opinion piece from Beth McGovern, Legislative Director for the California Commission on the Status of Women, which sponsored AB 98.

From Beth McGovern

Discrimination against women is alive and well in the health insurance industry. While discrimination is forbidden by law in most situations, the state openly permits gender discrimination in the sale of health insurance policies.

We’ve been hearing from President Obama about the inequities in our country’s current health care system and the need for reform. In California, one of the blatant inequities allowed by state law is discrimination against women. Fortunately, there are two bills this year that would eliminate gender discrimination in health care coverage. AB 119 (Jones) and AB 98 (De La Torre) are both needed to truly eliminate discrimination and achieve gender equity in health care insurance.

AB 119 (Jones)

AB 119 would prohibit insurers from charging different premiums to men and women for the same health care coverage. Currently, women are charged up to 39% more for the same coverage. AB 119 would close the gap in the law that allows this unfair gender discrimination in health insurance premiums.

AB 98 (De La Torre)

AB 98 would require all insurance policies to provide coverage for maternity care services, including prenatal care, labor and delivery services and postpartum care. Maternity care is basic and preventive health care for women. This bill would ensure that maternity costs are spread across the pool of all individuals who purchase insurance just like costs for other basic health care.

Gender discrimination in health insurance pricing has been banned for more than thirty years in the provision of group health benefits provided by employers but different rules apply to the individual market where gender discrimination is still permitted. Similarly, group health plans are required to provide coverage for maternity services but insurers are free to market individual policies without maternity coverage. This creates an enormous disadvantage for women who need to purchase their own insurance.

The disproportionate cost for women to obtain health insurance coverage creates significant barriers in obtaining needed health care. This economic burden on women is magnified by the fact that women on average make only 78 percent of men’s wages and therefore have greater difficulty paying expensive health care costs. The higher cost of health insurance often forces women to do without coverage and forego needed health care or turn to publicly funded programs for medical services.

When women are priced out of the health insurance market, women, their families and society are harmed. AB 98 and AB 119 would significantly improve women’s access to vital health care. Now is the time for California to end the sale of health insurance policies that discriminate against women.

Safety Net Webinar Now Available Online

Click here to hear and view the Safety Net webinar.

On August 20, CCRWF launched its first Working Families Webinar: How Safe is California’s Safety Net?

The webinar featured Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg; Scott Graves, California Budget Project; Farrah McDaid Ting, California State Association of Counties; and Ana Pagan, Merced County Human Services Agency.

Please Cal WebEX directly at 1-866-229-3239 if you have any trouble connecting to the presentation.

Interested in viewing the PowerPoints from the webinar?

Click on the links below.

An Overview of Recent Cuts to California’s Safety Net
Scott Graves, Senior Policy Analyst, California Budget Project

California Counties: How Healthy are County Health and Human Services Safety Nets?
Farrah McDaid Ting, Senior Legislative Analyst, California State Association of Counties

California Budget Cuts: Impacts on Merced County
Ana Pagan, Director , Merced County Human Services Agency

And . . . save the date!

Our next webinar will be held on Thursday, October 15, at 2:00 PM and will focus on child care, preschool, and after-school care.  Registration will be available in early October.

From the Executive Director: The Exhilaration and Distress of Releasing the CWS Primer

A year of research and writing has culminated in the release of our updated Child Welfare Services primer.

While it is typically thrilling (and exhausting) to complete a long project, this conclusion is punctuated not only by exclamation points and asteriks to acknowledge incredible partners, but also by an ellipses. . . . as we all wait for cuts to the programs and services that support our state’s most vulnerable children and families.

I am among the many pragmatists struggling with the state’s deficit, knowing that cuts are inevitable.  But what causes my own personal stay-up-at-night distress is our lack of shared values:  How can we not draw a protective circle around services dedicated to abused and neglected children?

Until the budget passes, we won’t know how deep the cuts will be to the state’s child welfare system.

To those local and state leaders who will then be forced to pick up the pieces, who will once again have to bypass a focus on prevention to deal with immediate crises, we send our support and thanks for shouldering the responsibilities we wish all Californians would share.

We also have considerable appreciation for an extaordinary team that produced this most recent primer.

Diane F. Reed, primary author of the Primer, was a fabulous partner during the past year of research and writing.

Thanks also to Stuart Oppenheim and Danna Fabella at the Child and Family Policy Institute of California (CFPIC), our primary partners in the updating of the primer.  We could not have asked for more knowledgeable and responsive colleagues (who we could absolutely count on to open up emails after 10 PM!).

An invaluable cadre of experts responded to frequent queries and helped research current law, practice and statistics.  Our thanks go out to Greg Rose, Deputy Director for Children and Family Services at the California Department of Social Services; Lee Ann Kelly at the Office of Child Abuse Prevention (OCAP) ; Diana Boyer, Senior Policy Analyst, County Welfare Directors Association of California; Kathy Watkins, Legislative Program Manager, San Bernardino County Human Services System; and Barbara Needell, Research Specialist at the U.C. Berkeley Center for Social Services Research, and the entire Linkages Advisory Committee.

Support to update the CWS Primer and a forthcoming CalWORKs primer was provided by the Zellerbach Family Foundation (ZFF).  ZFF also funded the original publications, and we would like to especially acknowledge ZFF’s extraordinary Program Executive, Ellen Walker.

Thanks also to Deborah Yip-Lowery and the Resource Center for Family Focused Practice (RCFFP), The Center for Human Services, U.C. Davis Extension, for printing the primer through a grant from the California Department of Social Services’ Office of Child Abuse Prevention.

And we can’t say enough about the talented team at Uptown Studios—their design expertise, attention to detail, and extraordinary collegiality.

For printed copies, contact Monica Caprio at mcaprio@unexmail.ucdavis.edu or (530) 757-8643.

Please share comments and any corrections about this primer in the comment section under Publications.

Understanding the Child Welfare System in California: A Primer for Service Providers and Policymakers

Understanding the Child Welfare System in California: A Primer for Service Providers and Policymakers (2^nd edition) is one in a series of primers offered to assist practitioners and policy leaders in advancing their basic knowledge of complex social service systems. Originally published in 2002, this 2^nd edition of the CWS primer was made possible due to support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation.

In addition to providing a resource for local and state policy leaders and providers, this primer and a companion publication on CalWORKs support Linkages, a statewide effort to coordinate welfare and child welfare programs in California.  Linkages is now directed by the Child and Family Policy Institute of California (CFPIC).  CCRWF designed and directed the first phase of Linkages.

Primer Addendum: Summary of Federal & State Child Welfare Laws

Recommended Citation:

Reed, D. F., & Karpilow, K. A. (2009). Understanding the child welfare system in California: A primer for
service providers and policymakers (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: California Center for Research on Women and Families. Available on the CCRWF website: www.ccrwf.org.

Printed Copies:

While supplies last, printed copies are available at no charge through the Resource Center for Family Focused Practice (RCFFP), The Center for Human Services, U.C. Davis Extension, through a grant from the California Department of Social Services’ Office of Child Abuse Prevention.

Contact Monica Caprio at mcaprio@unexmail.ucdavis.edu or (530) 757-8643.

Please do not contact CCRWF about printed copies.

Supporting SFSP Outreach

CCRWF is working with the  California Legislative Women’s Caucus and the Nutrition Services Division of the California Department of Education to increase outreach to families and children eligible for the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP).   Together we developed materials to help legislators reach out to low-income families to encourage their participation in the Summer Food Service Program.

Everyone agrees this partnership is a “win-win” scenario:  Children ages 18 years and younger living in eligible low-income neighborhoods have increased access to nutritious meals, while the state can draw down federal dollars to help California’s troubled economy.  For more information, including materials developed for the Caucus, click here.