Domestic violence survivors often need mental health care. Like veterans of wars, these survivors have often been subjected to prolonged periods of extreme stress and fear for their safety.
Mental health care can be hard to access, but solutions exist.
Janna Espinoza shudders remembering the day she and her daughter Coraline, then 8, showed up for an appointment in Salinas with their trusted pediatrician and were turned away because the child no longer had the right health insurance.
Coraline, who has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and other serious conditions, relies on a safety-net health insurance program.
During the pandemic, California and other states didn’t require people to renew their membership Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California.
That changed on April 1, when California began sending out renewal packets once again. Renewals will be sent out in batches, based on the month in which beneficiaries originally applied for Medi-Cal.
Maury Danielle studied the flyer about a missing woman that a friend had shared on Facebook. Something about it was wrong, she thought.
The woman’s husband had created the flyer and was calling for help finding his wife. But he gave no context about why his wife had disappeared.
Danielle remembered the times she, too, had gone “missing” from her now-ex-husband. She’d been trying to escape.
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.