Guaranteed income programs across California are working with pregnant women and families in an effort to break the cycle of poverty-driven health disparities.
Pregnant women and their babies are especially vulnerable to the effects of stress, which is often tied to poverty and exposure to violence.
As of October, the most recent month for which data is available, more than 300,000 older immigrant adults who lack legal residency had enrolled in full Medi-Cal benefits, 30 percent more than the state’s original projection.
State health officials, who had based their estimate on the number of people enrolled in a limited form of Medi-Cal that covers only emergency medical services, don’t know how many additional older Californians are eligible.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, finding nurses to care for medically fragile children at home has become extremely difficult, according to parents of children with disabilities and home health agencies.
The shortage has prompted calls for California’s governor and legislature to increase Medi-Cal reimbursement rates for home nurses by 40 percent.
A new law will compel creditors to recognize coerced debt if a survivor can provide proof such as a police report, a court order specifying financial abuse, identity theft report or letter from a professional such as a domestic violence advocate. Creditors can also seek repayment of the debt from the person responsible for it.
Research suggests financial abuse occurs in 99 percent of domestic violence cases. More than half of domestic violence survivors experience coerced or fraudulent debt of over $10,000 a year.
Almost all children who experience housing insecurity also experience trauma because of the stress of their situation. California and the federal government recognize this, and require schools to provide these children with additional support.
But experts believe tens of thousands of California children experiencing homelessness fall through the cracks and receive little to no help from their schools.
Most older adults want to stay in their homes and communities as they age. To do that, many eventually need assistance with routine and personal care.
But 40 percent of older adults and adults with disabilities in California who need help to stay in their homes report receiving either no help at all or not enough.
As wildfires and other natural disasters increase due to our warming climate, so too do risks to domestic violence survivors and others vulnerable to abuse during times of disruption.
Because about 1 in 4 women and nearly 1 in 10 men will experience physical or sexual violence or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime, disaster planning that doesn’t listen to the needs of domestic violence survivors can leave a vulnerable population to cope on their own.
As climate change increases the intensity of wildfires in California, more people are losing their homes and facing long-term displacement and instability.
Researchers and those who work with disaster victims said there is insufficient government assistance to help the most vulnerable wildfire survivors find housing. There also isn’t enough housing to accommodate California’s swelling population of wildfire refugees.
A program run by Monarch Services, a domestic violence intervention and prevention agency in Santa Cruz County, aims to help people responsible for domestic violence change their behavior patterns.
Called Positive Solutions, it encourages participants to tune into their emotions, practice nonviolent communication skills and identify negative childhood experiences that may have led them to express emotions in a violent way.
Many families that foster and ultimately adopt children with disabilities encounter challenges such as receiving insufficient medical supplies to care for the children and incomplete information from child welfare agencies about the children’s health histories.
Foster families and their advocates are working to mend the gaps in the system that can cause undue stress on these children who, in most cases, have already been through trying times before coming into foster care.