Farmworker assistance: resource centers.

Existing law establishes the Department of Community Services and Development within the California Health and Human Services Agency to supplement and coordinate public and private sector efforts to assist low-income participants, including homeless individuals and families, migrants, and the elderly poor, to secure and retain meaningful employment, attain an adequate education, make better use of available income, and obtain and maintain adequate housing and a suitable living environment. Existing law, the California Community Services Block Grant Program, requires the department to administer the federal Community Services Block Grant funds to provide financial assistance for activities designed to have a measurable and potentially major impact on causes of poverty in a community or areas of a community where poverty is a particularly acute problem. Existing law authorizes this funding to assist programs that, among other things, meet the needs of migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their families, such as daycare for children and elderly persons, education, health services, improved housing and sanitation, legal advice and representation, and consumer training and counseling, and assistance in processing applications for legalization and citizenship. This bill, upon appropriation by the Legislature, would require the department to establish a grant program for counties to establish farmworker resource centers that provide farmworkers and their families information and access to services related to, among other things, labor and employment rights, education, housing, immigration, and health and human services. The bill would make a county's eligibility for funding under the grant program contingent upon the county working with local or statewide community-based organizations to develop the center, providing 25% of the center's funding under the program, and requiring the center to provide services in at least English and Spanish, to provide an assessment of the population the center would serve, and to maintain a cost-effective database to track the number and type of calls received, referrals made, and claims filed, and to monitor local trends. The bill would require the department to convene and facilitate a workgroup to help inform the establishment and administration of the grant program, as specified.