your info is incorrect. calworks, which offer monetary assistance to low income families including illegals, allows benefits up to usd345 per child. for a family of 5 kids, cash benefits increase to usd941. there used to be a higher cap on number of children, and both poor and illegal families have dozens of children to maximize collection beyond usd2400 per household. naturally, with the new ruling, "impoverished" households poop out 5 kids to collect the max payout. :p
besides calworks, there is also calfresh. calfresh offers food assistance in the form of food stamps to low income families. as of march 2011, one person in that household can collect usd200 per month. a household of 5 can receive up to usd793.
there's also a program to assist immigrants with funds called cash assistance program for immigrants (capi). both legal and illegal immigrants exploit this program. eligibility is 65 years old, and many immigrants import their elderly parents into california to qualify for this program. the typical payout is usd600 per month per person.
there's also the general assistance and general relief (ga/gr) program where you can further cash aid. and there's also the supplementary security income and state supplementary payment (ssi/ssp) program which offers more payout.
a household can collect cash from all these programs by filling out forms, and chances no one from the cdss will check you out. they just disburse checks based on your info and respective applications. total amount collected per household can range typically from usd1500 to usd3000 or more.
I think it is a case where the other states not providing the necessary support for people ...
California is not the land of endless “Cadillac” benefits:
• The actual average cash grant for the typical family of three is $463.
• Welfare payments have been cut twice since 2009 while 18 states have provided nominal increases.
• The high cost of housing eats up more of the aid than in other states with smaller grants.
People in California will start moving off welfare more quickly due to changes made by the governor and lawmakers, even though their primary goal was to save money and help chip away at a huge budget deficit. They imposed a shorter benefit period, but avoided making cuts in grants in the state’s $6.7 billion welfare-to-work program, called CalWORKS. (Federal taxpayers do pick up $3.7 billion of the tab.)
California’s family of three in 2008-09 could draw as much as $723 a month in direct cash aid. Today, that same family gets a maximum of $638.
Liz Schott, a senior fellow for the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that focuses on issues affecting low- and moderate-income families, said California’s perceived generosity is overblown, particularly given the cuts of the past few years.
Schott argues California’s larger benefits cannot be directly compared to many other states that stop providing aid more quickly even though the recipients remain poor and unemployed. In other cases, families are simply ineligible because of higher thresholds to qualify for help. As a result, their spending appears frugal when compared to California.
Take Texas for example. For every 100 families below the poverty line there, only six receive assistance, she said. In California, 66 of those below the poverty line are helped.
“I don’t call that ‘Texas doing better than California.’ In Texas there are still 94 poor families who need assistance,” Schott said.
Policy experts say California’s large rolls are the byproduct of numerous factors: sheer size, tough job market and sheer numbers of single-parent households, among them. The state has nearly 30 percent of the nation’s one-parent welfare families.
One major — and cash consuming — difference is California refuses to push out children even if the parents fail to fulfill requirements.
California recipients can qualify for a partial grant even if they go to work, depending on how much the job pays. For example, an individual with two children who earns $600 monthly can still receive $394 from the state. That’s $244 less than the $638 maximum check for a typical family.
The state explains that policy this way: allowing families to have a small paycheck from a job offers an incentive to re-enter the workforce and move to self-sufficiency quicker.
California by far spends more than any other state on welfare. But broken down on a per-capita basis, the story is a little different.
That overall figure amounts to $179 annually for every man, woman and child in California. That trails New York ($256) and Hawaii ($233). Two large states among the lowest in per capita spending are Texas ($32) and Florida ($44). The national average is $99.
The figures for the states do not include other support, such as food stamps, known as CalFresh in California, or Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California.
The amount California spends and the level of its benefits have been central to the long-running debate over why so many people here are on welfare.
