Facing a 69 percent increase in CalFresh caseloads from 2016 to 2023 while staffing increased just 28 percent, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved 86 new CalFresh positions for the county’s Social Services Department.
“For years our funding in the CalFresh program has been constrained by policies in the early 2000s, which only allow for funding increases based on caseload growth and not for the increases occurring every year for staff salary and benefits and other costs of doing business,” Social Services Deputy Director of Economic Assistance and Employment Services Maria Gardner told the supervisors during the Feb. 12 meeting.
CalFresh assists more than 60,000 Santa Barbara County residents, reaching about 1 in 7 individuals, but the California Department of Social Services estimates that Santa Barbara County has only reached about 70 percent of those eligible for the food assistance program, according to the staff report.
Gardner and her team requested that the county approve an additional 50 positions for CalFresh eligibility workers, leads and supervisors, nine support staff, and six staff for child welfare and adult protective services, she said.
With new funding methodology that updated the CalFresh funding process for the first time in 20 years, the Social Services Department projected an additional $4.61 million in federal and state funding for the 2024-25 fiscal year, which required a $1.29 million county match.
The $1.29 million will come from unanticipated growth in the 2011 realignment—which was a state budget shift that put more responsibilities on local governments, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office—and from the department’s general fund allocation, Social Services Chief Financial Officer A.J. Quinoveva told the supervisors.
“We receive approximately $11 million annually, which we use to provide local matches for all our programs,” Quinoveva said.
While 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino and 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann had concerns regarding the state budget deficit’s impact on the program, and 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson had concerns with how this allocation impacts other local budget allocations, supervisors unanimously approved the new positions.
“As the state budget gets fleshed out more, I want to remind my colleagues and department heads that it’s imperative that we aren’t put in a position where we are attempting to backfill state and federal shortfalls with local dollars,” Lavagnino said during the meeting. “I want to make sure as the budget changes as the state budget impacts become more clear, that your rollout can come back to us when there’s shortages.”
Gardner told the supervisors that Newsom’s January budget showed that CalFresh received no cuts this year, but the department will get another look at it in May and when the final budget is enacted. She added that the supervisors could pull this item for discussion at any time to reevaluate.
“By increasing the number of staff in CalFresh … that picks up more of the overhead in the department,”
Gardner said. “It’s a win across the department for being able to find change in the couch cushions for us. We have a specific need in the CalFresh program and then we looked globally for what else we could make happen with this.”
This article appears in Feb 15-25, 2024.
I’m a retired Eligibility Worker and after 30 years with the CalFresh program I can tell you that without adequate staffing, the people we all want to serve will wait longer and longer, and we will lose staff due to stress. Staff that are trained and dedicated, but you can only handle so much. When you have no food to feed your family, you just can’t wait for bureaucracy to slowly move you along. We are talking about people being able to feed their children. I feel the budget. But what higher priority do we have when we are talking about our children?