Ending a six-month court case sparked by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s elimination of vital child care funding, the State of California agreed to ensure that working families will continue to have assistance, despite ongoing budget uncertainties in Sacramento. The ground-breaking settlement preserves child care services for parents who have successfully transitioned off welfare but whose wages are still too low to cover child care.  The settlement affects the families of more than 56,000 California children who had been told they would lose their child care last October.

The settlement is all the more significant in that the state legislature has still not passed a budget for Fiscal Year 2011-2012 and no one knows at what level funds for child care assistance, known as CalWORKs Stage 3 child care, will be restored. The budgets Governor Brown and the legislature put forth earlier this year included funding for the program. The settlement agreement, signed by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Wynne Carvill, provides an opportunity for parents who lost Stage 3 child care to come back onto the program now.

The Dept. of Education and child care agencies are now required to conduct meaningful outreach efforts to find and restore child care services to former Stage 3 families who fell out of the system. Families who have already moved to other child care programs will be able to choose whether or not to come back to Stage 3. If families are already receiving such alternate funding, then that assistance cannot be cut off.

The suit was brought by Western Center on Law & Poverty, the Public Interest Law Project, the Child Care Law Center,  Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County, Public Counsel Law Center, and Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.