Thank you to everyone who participated in our Legislative lobby days! Your hard work helped all three of our bills advance to their next committee vote. Here is a summary of our lobby day bills and their outcome since our lobby day event.
- AB 1816 (Bryan) – Provides grants for innovative or evidence-based housing, housing-based services, and employment interventions to allow people with recent histories of incarceration to exit homelessness and remain stably housed. Status: Passed Assembly Housing and Community Services committee, 6-2. In Assembly Appropriations Committee.
- AB 1900 (Arambula) – Helps low-income older adults and people with disabilities by raising the amount people can retain for basic needs from $600 to 138% of the poverty level in Medi-Cal. Status: Passed Assembly Health Committee 12-0-2. In Assembly Appropriations Committee.
- AB 2222 ( Reyes) – Provides up to $20,000 annually to social work students who commit to working for at least two years at a California based nonprofit upon completion of their graduate school program. The program prioritizes students with lived experiences as former foster and homeless youth to pursue licensure as an LCSW. Status: Passed Assembly Higher Education Committee, 11-0. In Assembly Appropriations Committee.
In addition to our lobby day bills, NASW-CA takes a position of support or oppose on over 150 bills each year. Here is a summary of a portion of those bills with a direct impact on social work:
- AB 1758 (Aguiar-Curry) Board of Behavioral Sciences (BBS) sponsored legislation to allow remote supervision in all work settings. Status: In Assembly Appropriations Committee. This is an urgency measure which will go into effect immediately once it is signed by the Governor. The current remote supervision waiver has been extended until June 30, 2022.
- AB 1860 (Ward) – Would exempt social work graduate student interns who are completing their supervised practicum hours in a Substance Use Disorder (SUD) setting, from needing to register with a SUD counselor certifying organization. Status: In Assembly Appropriations Committee.
- AB 2581 (Salas) – Would require a health care service plan that provides coverage for mental health and substance use disorders and credentials health care providers of those services, to assess and verify the qualifications of a health care provider within 60 days after receiving a completed provider credentialing application. Status: Will be heard in the Assembly Health Committee on April 26, 2022.
- AB 2590 (Arambula) – Creates a social work mentoring program patterned after a NASW- CA initiative. Status: Status: Will be heard in Assembly Human Services on April 26, 2022.
- AB 2666 (Salas) – This bill, subject to an appropriation, would establish and administer a grant program to allocate funding in the form of stipends, to students in behavioral health fields of study and practice, who are participating in internships or completing licensure hours, through unpaid positions, at federally qualified health centers. Status: Will be heard in Assembly Health Committee on April 26, 2022.
- SB 964 (Wiener) – Creates a stipend program for MSW students with a focus on public behavioral health. The bill also looks to develop more accelerated social work programs to get more social workers into the field quickly. Status: Will be heard in Senate Education Committee on April 27, 2022. This will also be amended to include the entire mega behavioral health budget proposal.
- SB 1002 (Portantino) – Under Worker’s Compensation, this bill enables employees to seek mental health care services from a LCSW without physician referral and authorizes medical provider networks to add LCSWs as providers. Status: On the Senate Floor.
- SB 1229 (McGuire) – Establishes a program to provide 10,000 grants of up to $25,000 each for students pursuing MSWs, MFTs, MA in Psychology, MA in School Counseling, or MA in School Psychology with the goal to increase the number of behavioral health professionals serving children and youth at California public schools and in community-based organizations. Status: Will be heard in Senate Education Committee on April 27, 2022.