California’s Child Welfare System: Addressing Disproportionalities and Disparities

Apr 24, 2024 - How best to ensure child safety in a way that minimizes and mitigates trauma and ideally keeps the child with their parent(s)/caregiver(s) is a core challenge inherent to the child welfare system. California ’s Child Welfare System ‑Involved Families Are Disproportionately Black, Native American, and Low Income.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4897

The 2024-25 Budget: Department of Social Services Immigration and Equity Programs

Mar 15, 2024 - TPS immigration services provides services beyond those for TPS individuals, this includes funding to increase the capacity to support Black immigrants, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) immigrants, and those facing deportati on proceedings.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4885

Trends in CalWORKs: Participant Characteristics

Jun 16, 2025 - Race/Ethnicity Most CalWORKs Heads of Household Were Hispanic, White, or Black. As shown in Figure   12 , about half of CalWORKs heads of household were Hispanic in 2022. About 22  percent were white and 20  percent were Black.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5057

The 2025-26 California Spending Plan: Human Services

Nov 21, 2025 - In addition to rejecting this cap on overtime, as part of the final budget package, the Legislature adopted budget-related legislation that states t hat any hours worked that exceed 40 hours in a workweek will continue to be paid overtime rates even in the event that the federal government makes a future decision to no longer require overtime, or pay a share of the cost of overtime.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5086/4

Comparing CalWORKs Take-Up Rates Across Demographic Groups

Feb 14, 2023 - For example, a family containing both Black and white members cannot accurately be assigned by the survey to a single racial characteristic. Such characteristics, thus, can only accurately describe individuals, rather than families as a whole.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4678

The 2023-24 Budget: Analysis of Child Welfare Proposals and Implementation Updates

Feb 22, 2023 - In California, Black and Native American youth in particular are overrepresented in the foster care system relative to their respective shares of the state ’s youth population. As illustrated in Figure  2 , the proportion of Black and Native American youth in foster care is around four times larger than their proportion of the population in California overall.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4698

Implementing California’s Child Welfare Prevention Services Program

Jan 28, 2026 - California ’s state plan requires counties to assess individuals to determine candidacy using an “unbiased process and/or tools to assess risk. ” (To aid counties in this assessment, DSS is working to develop a candidacy determination guide including concrete examples on how to assess for candidacy in an unbiased manner.)
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5106

The 2022-23 Budget: Analysis of Child Welfare Proposals and Program Implementation Updates

Feb 22, 2022 - In California, Black and Native American youth in particular are overrepresented in the foster care system relative to their respective shares of the state ’s youth population. As illustrated in Figure  2 , the proportions of Black and Native American youth in foster care are around four times larger than the proportions of Black and Native American youth in California overall.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4558

The 2021-22 May Revision—Child Welfare Budget Proposals

Jun 11, 2021 - Stakeholders have raised concerns that the relatively limited list of allowable activities may not be effective for all communities, particularly Black, Native American, and Hispanic communities that are disproportionately represented in the foster care system.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4444

Recent Trends in Young Adult Mortality

Dec 10, 2024 - This trend has been especially pronounced for men, Native American and Black Californians, and residents of rural northern counties and the state ’s lowest ‑income zip codes. This report presents information about some potential explanations for these trends, but developing a full understanding of its origins will require substantial additional research.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4945