The 2026-27 Budget: County Administration and H.R. 1 Implementation

Mar 5, 2026 - How might recent and upcoming policy changes, including the recent discontinuation of eligibility flexibilities in Medi ‑Cal in July  2025, upcoming implementation of work requirements in CalFresh and Medi ‑Cal, and more frequent redeterminations in Medi ‑Cal affect error rates in each program?
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5149

The 2026-27 Budget: Child Welfare

Mar 3, 2026 - If the Legislature does not make an appropriation to implement the Tiered Rate Structure beginning in 2027-28, how would the department reallocate resources? Our understanding is that a number of DSS staff are working exclusively or primarily on Tiered Rate Structure Implementation preparation.
https://lao.ca.gov/publications/report/5147

The 2024-25 Budget: Overview of the Federal Fiscal Responsibility Act's Impacts on CalWORKs

Mar 5, 2024 - In California, the caseload reduction credit for 2008 was larger than the 2007 credit and was therefore used. b Some CalWORKs cases without a work ‑eligible adult were moved out from the CalWORKs WPR calculation and WINS cases were added to the calculation in FFY 2014 ‑15. c WINS two ‑parent cases were removed from the two ‑parent WPR calculation starting with FFY 2017 ‑18.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4877

The 2026-27 Budget: County Administration and H.R. 1 Implementation [Publication Details]

Mar 5, 2026 - In this brief, we assess the Governor's proposed funding for county administration of Medi-Cal and CalFresh in response to H.R. 1 and provide related recommendations.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Detail/5149

Trends in CalWORKs: Participant Characteristics

Jun 16, 2025 - Federal rules also dictate how many of those hours must be spent on work or work‑like activities, which are called “core” WTW activities. To fulfill federal requirements (and to be counted as meeting the WTW requirements in a state’s WPR), most individuals must spend the majority of their WTW hours on core activities.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5057

Implementing California’s Child Welfare Prevention Services Program

Jan 28, 2026 - For counties that plan to implement a community pathway option (as described in the State Prevention Plan) for families to access services outside of the usual child welfare system pipeline, many questions remain around how the community pathway will work.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5106

The 2026-27 Budget: In-Home Supportive Services

Mar 18, 2026 - This is particularly important for the IHSS hours shift proposal, as the mechanics of how this will work remains unclear to us at this time. In  particular, we note that the proposal to shift IHSS hours growth costs to counties does not assume savings until 2027 ‑28.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5166

Measuring CalWORKs Performance

Sep 6, 2017 - Below we describe at a high level how performance in MFIP is measured. State ‑Defined “Self ‑Support Index ” Is Primary Performance Measure. The performance of local MFIP administrators is measured and reported on several measures, including the federal work participation rate (WPR).
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3702

The 2025-26 Budget: Overview of the Federal CalWORKs Pilot

Feb 21, 2025 - Federal rules also dictate how many of those hours must be spent on work or work-like activities, which are called core WTW activities. To fulfill federal requirements (and to be counted as meeting the WTW requirements in a state ’s WPR), most individuals must spend the majority of their WTW hours on core activities.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4978

The 2025-26 Budget: CalWORKs

Feb 19, 2025 - Figure  4 shows how CalWORKs caseload has changed since 2019-20. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, CalWORKs caseload began what was a historically anomalous decrease given high unemployment.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4969