Tagged With "Californians for Safety and Justice"

A proposed rule change to the Official Poverty Measure by the Trump Administration will negatively impact millions of children and families in our state, where, according to 2016 California Poverty Measure estimates, 21.3 percent of California's children live in poverty. If approved, the change would affect children and families' eligibility for federal programs that provide health care, nutrition and basic assistance, effectively reducing or eliminating their access to these needed...

The HEARTS team met folks from Californians for Safety and Justice (CSJ) in April last year when they contacted us about AB2701 , a bill that sought to create a state-wide grant program for providers of school-based trauma services using the HEARTS program approach as a model. Dr. Joyce Dorado and I worked with the team just before it was presented and I was excited to testify at a hearing about the bill. I went to Sacramento the day before to see another hearing taking place, and spent...

By Lulu Orozco, The New York Times, April 30, 2020 It was 5 p.m. on a recent Wednesday when Domitila Alvarez, 52, set down her cutting tools and walked from the broccoli fields to the crowded company bus taking the workers back to town. Ms. Alvarez did her best to protect herself before boarding. She wound a white bandanna tight over her face, leaving just a sliver for her eyes. She pulled on two pairs of gloves — a latex pair and then a cloth pair. “The truth is,” Ms. Alvarez said, “we all...

By Byrhonda Lyons, Cal Matters, April 30, 2020 The vast majority of people who were unhoused in California before coronavirus swept across the state are exactly where they were. Encampments still line the streets. Shelters feel more like a risk than a refuge. And affordable housing is as elusive as ever. Watch as they capture moments from their everyday lives — and talk about how they struggle to stay safe and healthy under circumstances that have often grown only more hazardous. For the...

By Sandra R. Hernandez, California Health Care Foundation, March 16, 2020 We have entered an important new chapter in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic: After a week filled with school closures and the cancellation of major public events of all kinds, Congress and President Donald Trump are hopefully close to a deal to address the spread of the dangerous coronavirus. This clear-headed collaboration by our political leaders is welcome for the immediate relief it will bring and because it...

From Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation, February 2020 California students have big dreams. Unfortunately. some students face a much tougher road to achieve them. It’s up to us to remove barriers in the education system that get in their way. Working with Alliance for Continuous Improvement partners, Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation developed this video as a way to help local educators, families, students and community groups engage with their schools, districts and...

By EdSource, November 4, 2019 From Sonoma County to Simi Valley, fires forced hundreds of thousands of Californians out of their homes in October. In this week’s podcast, reporter Sydney Johnson shares what she found at evacuation centers in Santa Rosa and Petaluma, where she spoke with college students worried about how they will make up lost time. Also, with a big decline in out-of-school suspensions for disruptive behavior, some districts are looking at ways to transform how they handle...

By Samantha Young, Kaiser Health News, April 28, 2020 During the first week of school closures in San Jose, state Sen. Jim Beall’s office received more than a dozen phone calls from distressed parents and caregivers. The problem: They couldn’t get free lunches because school district rules required children be present to receive a meal. A grandmother caring for at least seven children couldn’t fit them all in her car. One parent had a sick child who needed to stay at home, and another was...

By Rusty Simmons, San Francisco Chronicle, May 20, 2020 Nearly 124,000 people have signed up for medical insurance through Covered California since March 20 as the state grapples with the coronavirus pandemic and startling unemployment numbers. According to the state health care marketplace, 123,810 people have sought insurance during Covered California’s special open-enrollment period. The exchange is generally open from Oct. 15 to Jan. 31, but it extended the period amid the crisis. “When...

By Manuela Tobias, Cal Matters, December 4, 2019 The Trump administration finalized a rule Wednesday that will cut off food stamps to roughly 688,000 American adults by requiring states to enforce work requirements. The U.S. Agriculture Department said the move will save about $5.5 billion over five years. The rule takes effect in April 2020. “This is about restoring the original intent of food stamps,” said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on a call to reporters. “Moving more able-bodied...

By Marisol Cuellar Mejia and Paulette Cha, Public Policy Institute of California, May 12, 2020 Some Californians face substantial risk of illness within their own households under the state’s shelter-in-place order. Physical distancing and self-isolation can be virtually impossible in crowded homes, threatening the health of entire households. In crowded living conditions, individuals are at higher risk of transmitting infectious diseases , a factor that may challenge the state’s efforts to...

By Jackie Botts, Cal Matters, May 21, 2020 Early estimates indicate that the coronavirus pandemic has stolen jobs from non-citizen workers — including immigrants who have green cards, work visas or are undocumented — in California at higher rates than citizens. And women have suffered greater job loss than men. But it’s the Californians at that intersection, women who aren’t citizens, who have experienced the most devastating job losses, according to a study published Wednesday by UC Merced...

By Mark Baldassare, Dean Bonner, Alyssa Dykman, and Rachel Lawler, Public Policy Institute of California, April 2020 Key findings from the current survey: Many California parents see school closures for COVID-19 as somewhat of a problem and are concerned with providing productive learning at home. An overwhelming majority of parents approve of school districts’ handling of closures and Governor Newsom’s handling of K–12 education. As optimism wanes about the economy, views on school bonds...

By Jill Cowan, The New York Times, March 18, 2020 As millions of Californians adjust to a surreal, new, locked-down existence — an existence in which Gov. Gavin Newsom said public schools are likely to be closed for the rest of the year — one place has continued to draw crowds : the local supermarket. In the Bay Area, where “shelter in place” orders are keeping residents homebound except for “essential” trips, grocery stores, farmers’ markets and pharmacies are some of the only places people...

By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, California Health Report, February 25, 2020 California’s top health priority should be making sure that people who need mental health treatment can get it, over 90 percent of respondents said in a recent poll. More than half of those surveyed by the California Health Care Foundation said their communities do not have enough mental health providers to meet the need. People of color often feel the lack of access more acutely, researchers found, with 75 percent of black...

By Ana B. Ibarra, Cal Matters, May 28, 2020 In the city of Oakland, when census workers call residents, they’re on a dual mission. Not only do they ask if the individual has filled out a census card, they also ask whether that person wants to get tested for the coronavirus. If so, do they know where to go? “It’s extremely creative,” said Dr. Tony Iton, a senior vice president of the California Endowment. “They’re doing census outreach in populations that are the hardest to reach, which are...

By Samantha Young, California Healthline, May 29, 2020 Shirley Madden, 83, relies on a caregiver and her two grown daughters to remain living at home — and not in a nursing home. Her daughters, 55-year-old Carrie and 60-year-old Kristy Madden, both use wheelchairs and need a second caregiver to help them navigate their own daily lives. But that critical caregiving support, along with other health care benefits for millions of Californians, could be scaled back to help plug a massive budget...

By Cathie Anderson, The Sacramento Bee, June 24, 2020 Covered California announced Tuesday that it would extend a special enrollment period to July 31 to give Californians additional time to sign up for health insurance. It had been set to end June 30. As cases of COVID-19 surged in California, the agency’s board voted to give all uninsured Californians the opportunity to sign up for coverage. Typically, after open enrollment ends in January, only people who have a qualifying life event such...

By Jill Cowan, The New York Times, July 1, 2020 For Californians, the economic devastation wrought by the pandemic has only deepened existing inequality. When we asked what you wanted to know about how the pandemic is reshaping life in the Golden State, Erin Durham, a former San Franciscan now living in Europe, asked about the kinds of social programs she’s seen there, or whether California might implement one that has recently gained traction: a universal basic income . “I believe that the...

By Elaiza Torralba, UCLA Center for Policy Research, July 28, 2020 A new policy brief from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research shows that low-income California adults are less likely to receive timely dental care like regular checkups and are more likely to visit the dentist for specific problems than those with higher incomes — a fact that holds true even for low-income residents who have dental insurance. The study authors found that among those adults with the lowest incomes, 59%...

By Alyssa Dykman, Public Policy Institute of California, August 5, 2020 Three crises facing the nation—COVID-19, systemic racism, and the economic recession—have placed environmental justice in the spotlight. Disparities across the environment, the economy, and COVID-19 are inextricably linked to race/ethnicity and disproportionally affect communities of color. At the same time, people of color are more likely than whites to be concerned about these inequities. PPIC’s latest survey on...

By Daniel Tan, Public Policy Institute of California, September 11, 2020 As the pandemic continues to threaten the physical health and well-being of many Californians, mental health professionals across the state have also acknowledged its widespread psychological impact. Although the mental health consequences of epidemics are not well documented—in part due to the rarity of these events— existing research shows an association between large-scale disasters and mental and behavioral...

ACE Overcomers and The Family Resource Center of Merced County are collaborating to inform the community and medical providers about resources to identify and treat adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). A total of $14.3 million was awarded to 100 organizations throughout the state to extend the reach and impact of the ACEs Aware initiative, with nearly $200,000 awarded to the two Merced County agencies. ACEs Aware seeks to change and save lives by helping Medi-Cal providers understand the...

While most of our attention here is focused on assisting maltreated children and their families or adults suffering from the residual of their childhood trauma, I have been working at the other (tragic) end of the spectrum of child deaths due to abuse and neglect (in bureaucratic language "critical incidents.") For three years I have been a volunteer member of the CAPTA mandated Citizens Review Panel under the Department of Social Services' (DSS) Office of Child Abuse Prevention. It has...

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