THE CALIFORNIA STATE LEGISLATURE has a new bicameral legislative caucus that will focus on issues affecting children and their wellbeing.
The bipartisan California Legislative Children’s Caucus was organized and will be chaired by Assemblymember Mia Bonta, D-Oakland. It launched Tuesday with a press conference at the Capitol in Sacramento attended by about a dozen of its over 40 inaugural members.
Lawmakers involved said they will champion ideas and policies put forth by the group in consultation with youth advisory councils and nonprofits that work with children.
The caucus’ main goals are to give young people a voice in the Legislature on issues that impact them, and to address major policies that affect children’s lives in California, particularly in areas such as economic security, foster care, education, child care and health care.
“Being in the California Legislature, one thing that you find very, very challenging, is trying to figure out how to ensure that we have the ability to center children and youth and children/youth voice in the work that we do,” Bonta said.
She and other legislators cited rising rates of childhood poverty and youth suicide as urgent matters of concern.
Other major priorities include housing security, justice, civic engagement, and overall child welfare.
Making more court appearances eligible for virtual hearings was also a point of concern, to protect children from being traumatized by having their parents taken from courthouses by federal immigration agents without their legal rights being respected.
Legislators in both chambers spoke about bills they were supporting to address targeted issues around birth certificate access for adopted children, career support for foster youth, keeping diaper banks open, and allowing working parents receiving welfare support to work more hours per month without losing eligibility.
Package of bills targets children’s needs
Foundational to the caucus’ policy plans are two bills Bonta has introduced: Assembly Bill 1969, the It Takes a Village Act; and Assembly Bill 1996, the Ending Child Poverty Act.
The percentage of children in California who are living below the federal poverty line has risen from 7.5% in 2021 to 18.6% in 2024. Recent cuts at the federal level to food benefits and other welfare programs are likely to increase that number, according to the California Budget and Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
The It Takes a Village Act would establish a three-year grant program to fund what Bonta called “cradle-to-career” programs for children in foster care that would give children financial literacy skills and connect them with employers when they are able to work.
The Ending Child Poverty Act would have a goal of reducing childhood poverty by half within a decade and ultimately eliminate it. It would establish an 18-member committee to hold the state accountable for its benchmarks.
Bonta also said she was asking for a budget request of $16 million to keep diaper banks open, which operate like food banks and give parents in need diapers for free.
Senate Bill 882, the Protect Courts From ICE Act, was introduced by state Sen. Susan Rubio, D-Imperial Valley, who said the legislation would prevent parents from being ripped away from children just for following the legal process and showing up to court. It would make eligible parties able to have their court hearing remotely.
She said the actions against immigrant families perpetrated by the federal government, including taking people without warrants and targeting courts, was causing universal trauma and was especially devastating to children involved.
“It is personal to me, as someone who was deported at the age of 5,” Rubio said. “(I) was not allowed to go back to my kinder classroom, say ‘bye’ to my teachers, my friends, my neighborhood, my families. It is trauma that will follow you a lifetime, and I’m feeling the devastation for those kids right now in this moment,” she said.
State Sen. Aisha Wahab, D-Fremont, introduced a bill to allow adopted children to access their birth certificate after they turn 18.
Wahab also said state legislators representing Alameda County created a task force and would continue to hold meetings every other Friday to review an alarming audit report last fall that said Alameda County’s child protective services was failing miserably to keep children in its care safe, particularly by neglecting to follow up on thousands of reports of harm within the legally required timeframe.
She said the state might have to step in and help address the problems if the county can’t correct the neglect.
“What I want to say is very simple,” said Wahab. “As much as in the nation we are talking about the Epstein files, it is happening locally. We need to ensure we are protecting the most vulnerable children so when a mandated reporter calls to say that a child is being harmed that those investigations happen within 24 hours, required by the law, that we are protecting kids in the system to make sure that they are not being exploited. We need to do better locally with our children.”
Other bills introduced included Assembly Bill 1755, which would eliminate the 100-hour limit that parents or guardians can work in a four-week span and still collect benefits from CalWorks, while another, Assembly Bill 1914, would require cities and counties to include childcare centers into their general growth plans.