Western Center responds to the Brown Administration proposal to radically redesign CalWORKs by creating three separate programs and moving child care programs from CDE to the counties. Overall the CalWORKs budget is reduced from $5.4 billion in the current year to $3.9 billion in the budget year. Cuts to health and social service programs increase poverty and hunger and hamper economic growth in California.  They subject our state’s poorest children to unsafe living conditions that have a wide array of negative impacts throughout their lives. It leaves their parents and caregivers without the support they need to overcome the multiple barriers to work they face and to become economically self-sufficient. Below is a link to Western Center's summary of why the governor's CalWORKs "redesign" will be bad for families and bad for California. A longer analysis will be issued shortly.