Bilingual-Oriented Social Equity Services Grant Program.

The Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act requires a state agency that serves a substantial number of non-English-speaking people, as defined, and that finds other specific factors to exist, to distribute specified written materials in the appropriate non-English language through its statewide and local offices or facilities to those non-English-speaking persons. As an alternative, the act requires the state agency to furnish translation aids or guides, or to provide assistance, through use of a qualified bilingual person, in completing English forms or questionnaires and in understanding English forms, letters, or notices. This bill would require the State Department of Social Services, commencing with the 2023–24 fiscal year, to establish and administer the Bilingual-Oriented Social Equity Services Grant Program to distribute funding to nonprofit, community-based organizations that provide social services that ensure equity in access to specified public social services. Grants awarded pursuant to the bill would be used to provide a pay differential to direct service professionals who can communicate in a language or medium other than English, as defined, as a primary part of their regular job duties. The bill would require 40% of funds appropriated for its purposes to be awarded as Multilingual Success Grants, to community-based organizations serving those non-English-speaking populations in the community that meet the threshold of "substantial number of non-English-speaking people pursuant to the Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act. The bill would require 60% of the appropriated funds to be awarded as Multilingual Access Grants, to community-based organizations serving those non-English-speaking populations in the community that do not meet that threshold. The bill would establish the Bilingual-Oriented Social Equity Services Grant Program Fund, which would consist of moneys appropriated by the Legislature for purposes of providing the grants described in the bill.