EARLY LEARNING

First 5 LA, in partnership with the Early Care and Education (ECE) Coalition — a group of 35 diverse organizations including First 5 LA — is advocating that the finalized 2024-2025 state budget include the following priorities for early learning supports:

Funding for all 200,000 ECE spaces that was promised in the 2021-22 budget.

•  The Legislature should also adopt Trailer Bill Language with a timeline for the planned release of the remaining 81,000 spaces. At the current level of 119,000 spaces, the Governor is only meeting his promise by 59%.

Adoption of a timeline for implementing the Alternative Rate Methodology.

• The State is not on track to adopt an Alternative Rate Methodology by June 2025, which pays providers for the actual cost of care.

Adoption of an ECE Reversion Account.

• This ensures that when the legislature allocates dollars for ECE spaces, the money stays in the ECE system even if the administration faces delays getting the dollars out the door.

• Release the 27,000 CCTR spaces that were awarded to providers in December.  Providers have already spent money to secure facilities and update classrooms because they received the award letters. 

HEALTH

Preserve Medi-Cal Continuous Eligibility for Children under 5 years old

• The 2022-2023 enacted state budget committed to prioritizing $20 million in on-going funding to provide continuous Medi-Cal eligibility to children under the age of 5 years old. This means children under 5 can keep their Medi-Cal coverage without any annual redeterminations, which can cause loss of coverage often due to administrative hurdles.
• Prior to the pandemic, children ages 5 and younger could temporarily lose access to Medi-Cal due to small changes in family income, or even simple administrative errors like missed paperwork. Over the past recent years, when children did receive continuous eligibility for Medi-Cal, this almost never happened. With roughly half of California’s children enrolled in Medi-Cal, 70 percent of whom are children of color, continuous Medi-Cal coverage can promote more equitable health outcomes for children by contributing to addressing disparities in access to preventive care.
• During the pandemic, the uninsured rate for California children dropped 11%. When Medi-Cal renewals restarted, over 306,000 children were dropped from Medi-Cal in the first nine months. Additionally, those with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) are disproportionately losing their coverage.

  Restore essential funding intended for the development of the Community Health Worker/Promotoras/Representatives (CHWPR) workforce.

• Since 2022, Medi-Cal beneficiaries, including pregnant persons and children, are eligible to receive assistance from trusted community partners with navigating the health care system and managing complex health conditions such as diabetes, asthma and mental health.
• California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI) workforce funds are critical to recruiting and training CHW/P/Rs that reflect the populations served by the Medi-Cal program. The majority of the CHW/P/R workforce in California, are women and Latino and/or come from culturally diverse populations underrepresented in the state’s health workforce. CHW/P/Rs can thus help to fill the gaps in racial, ethnic and linguistic concordance between patients and providers, thus making them a key component of the state’s strategy to eliminate health disparities.
• Health Care Access and Information (HCAI) workforce funds are critical to recruiting and training CHW/P/Rs that reflect the populations served by the Medi-Cal program. The majority of the CHW/P/R workforce in California, are women and Latino and/or come from culturally diverse populations underrepresented in the state’s health workforce. CHW/P/Rs can thus help to fill the gaps in racial, ethnic and linguistic concordance between patients and providers, thus making them a key component of the state’s strategy to eliminate health disparities.

 FAMILIES

Prioritize and maintain funding for CalWORKs programs to strengthen and support families in permanently exiting poverty.

• CalWORKs is California’s implementation of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which serves as the bedrock in our anti-poverty safety net. 
• CalWORKs grants provide direct financial support to families, including many with young children.  
• CalWORKs Family Stabilization and employment services programs ensure families get comprehensive supports when they are in crisis improving the financial security and health of the individual, family, and children within the family.

Preserve CalWORKs Home Visiting funding. 

• Home visitors provide parenting support and other assistance that can enhance child and maternal health and improve child development. Research shows that Home Visiting participation has immense benefits to the child(ren) and their families, such as better maternal and infant health, reduced emergency room visits, and increased safety practices. In addition, home visiting programs have significant returns on investment later, due to reduced costs of child protection, K-12 special education and grade retention, and criminal justice expenses. 
• Voluntary, evidence-based home visiting programs are one of the best investments California can make to ensure children and families living in poverty have the opportunity to succeed.

AB 2268 (Muratsuchi)- English learners: initial identification: English language proficiency assessment. Exempts students in transitional kindergarten from the English Language Proficiency Assessment (ELPAC) until the state can identify a developmentally appropriate, long-term solution.

• Currently, the federal government mandates all children in kindergarten be assessed for English language proficiency.
• With the implementation of universal transitional, TK students are subject to the ELPAC, even though not developmentally appropriate.

AB 2319 (Wilson) – California Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Act. Updates and improves the California Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Act of 2019 (SB 464), which mandates that hospitals, birth centers, and primary care clinics that provide perinatal care implement implicit bias trainings.

• Implicit bias is a prejudice that is present but not consciously recognized and can be profoundly harmful in health care settings, resulting in providers spending less time treating patients due to their racial, ethnic, or gender identity, providing inappropriate treatments, and dismissing self-reported health concerns, which perpetuates health disparities, especially in terms of maternal and infant health outcomes.
• In California, a significant race and ethnic based disparity in maternal mortality exists, due in part to implicit biases in the health care system. Black individuals make up 5% of those pregnant but account for 21% of the total pregnancy-related deaths.
• AB 2319 recognizes the need for ongoing monitoring, firm deadlines, and strong enforcement mechanisms and incorporates nonbinary and transgender birthing populations within implicit bias trainings, reflecting Los Angeles County’s diverse families and helping medical professionals offer more compassionate, competent, and patient-centered care.

SB 1396 (Alvarado-Gil) – CalWORKs: Home Visiting Program. Makes statutory changes to the California Department of Social Services’ (CDSS) CalWORKs Home Visiting Program (HVP), including extending the length of HVP participation to allow families to participate through the model’s recommended duration and extend the enrollment window from up until a child is 24 months of age to 36 months.

• CalWORKs HVP provides evidence-based, voluntary home visits along with training and referrals to resources that support prenatal, infant and toddler care; infant and child nutrition; child development screening and assessments; parental education and job readiness.
• Current stringent eligibility cutoffs mean that the CalWORKs HVP cannot maximally support families with young children. Research shows children who participate up to age 5 have improved language and cognitive development, improved math and reading scores, reduced absenteeism, and decreased school suspensions.

EARLY LEARNING 

Child Care and Early Identification and Intervention (EII) 

Protect and strengthen critical programs supporting young children, specifically by increasing funding for 1) Head Start and Early Head Start, 2) the Child Care Development Block Grant, 3) and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Part B and C. 

• Current level funding of these programs amounts to a cut due to increasing costs and inflation and must be increased. 

Support the President Joe Biden’s FY 2025 Budget in: 

• Expanding child care and education training, Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit. 

Any supplemental federal child care considered should include $16 billion for child care and early learning. This priority is also supported by President Joe Biden’s domestic emergency aid priorities. 

• This is the amount the child care sector would need to stay afloat from expired aid during the pandemic.  
• As many as 1 in 3 child-care centers could soon close, leaving some 3.2 million children without care, according to estimates from the Century Foundation. 
• In California, more than 87,000 children are expected to lose child care and more than 13,000 child care programs are expected to close. 

HEALTH 

Fully fund Momnibus Provisions in President Joe Biden’s 2025 Budegt 

• The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of any high-income country and significant disparities in outcomes. The Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act is a package of 12 bills that will address this crisis through historic investments that comprehensively address every driver of maternal mortality, morbidity, and disparities in the United States. 

EARLY LEARNING 

S.2777 – The Child Care Stabilization Act: To increase child care options for working families and support child care providers. 

• This legislation will promote the stability of the child care sector by providing a source of stable funding to eligible child care providers to help offset their operating expenses; and support sustained and increased wages for early childhood educators or other staff of eligible child care providers, in order to stabilize and grow the child care workforce without increasing costs for families. 
• It will also expand the supply and capacity of eligible child care providers to ensure working families have a range of high-quality, affordable child care options, in a variety of settings, that meet their unique needs. 

FAMILIES 

H.R. 7024 – Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act: To expand the Child Tax Credit and make it permanent. 

• According to the report, poverty has risen by 143% for children 0-3, and 166% for children 0-5, reverting historic drops in childhood poverty. 
• A new analysis from the California Budget & Policy Center reports that poverty is rapidly increasing for California’s youngest children due to the end of key pandemic-era supports. 

H.R. 2 – Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (Farm Bill) Reauthorization.

• Increases and expands the Supplemental Assistance Program (SNAP) provisions.

FAMILIES 

Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program and Medicaid Continuous Eligibility  

• We look forward to working with the Health Resources and Services Administration to clarify promising practices within MIECHV and work with partners to implement the expansion of the newly reauthorized program. 
• We support the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS): Expanding Continuous Eligibility for Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) coverage so that states have the option to provide children beyond the 12 months of continuous coverage through Medicaid (Medi-Cal) and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
• Continuous eligibility is a valuable tool that helps states ensure that children stay enrolled in the health coverage for which they are eligible and have consistent access to needed health care services.