"The reduction in child care slots is around 70,000. The CalWORKS side of the equation -- 35,000 cases would become ineligible out of a total of 600,000. 600,000 is the total caseload. The reduction in the humber of cases is about 35,000." -- Ana Matosantos, state director of finance, responding to a question from the press at the hastily called conference regarding Governor Brown's prematurely released '12-'13 budget proposal.
In response to the question, "Can you talk a little about the CalWORKS reduction and the savings of $1.4 billion or the reduction of $946 million in the budget? What is that about?", Matosantos replied:
"So, the $946 billion is a combined reduction in the CalWORKS program and the new child maintenance program. So, the CalWORKS program today provides cash assistance to adults and to families including adults for up to four years. What the proposal would do is, it focuses on providing additional work support and focusing on work. So, families and parents who are meeting work requirements, they will continue to receive 48 months of assistance. And, in fact, the amount of work support will increae somewhat from today by another $44 a month.
"For families that are not meeting work requirements, the time limits will now be two years, not four years. For children, in order to continue to provide that support, there will be a new child maintenance program, and that child maintenance program will continue to to provide assistance to kids under the same eligibility rules [as] today, except they will have annual eligibility requirements instead of twice a year. And that grant level will decline for the average family, I think, about $71 per month. So, that's roughly what the Cal WORKS proposal looks like.
"The child care would also be focused on work so families will continue to receive child care if they're meeting federal welfare-to-work requirements. There would be a bonus of $50 per month that would be provided to those families to support work. The eligibility would be at 200% [of federal poverty level, around $40K for a family of four], and there would be some reductions in rates for child care providers."
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