Cognitively impaired adults: caregiver resource centers.

Existing law requires the Director of Health Care Services to, among other things, maintain or enter into contracts directly with nonprofit caregiver resource centers (CRCs) to provide direct services to caregivers of cognitively impaired adults, as defined, throughout the state. These services include, but are not limited to, specialized information, family consultation, respite care, short-term counseling, and support groups. This bill would, each fiscal year, commencing with the 2017–18 fiscal year, appropriate $3,300,000 from the General Fund to the State Department of Health Care Services for allocation to CRCs for the purpose of providing those respite care services, and would require this funding to be used by the department to supplement, and not supplant, the level of funding that was allocated in the 2016–17 fiscal year for CRCs. The bill would also authorize those services to be provided in person and, except for respite care services, through the use of remote technologies.