For the 109th Congress, the CWDA federal legislative priorities include:

• Recognition in federal laws of cash assistance and other income support needed for parents to enable reunifying children in foster care with the parent.

• Increased financial support for programs that assist foster youth in the transition to self-sufficiency, including post-emancipation assistance such as secondary education, job training, and access to health care.

• Recognition in federal law of financial eligibility for kinship permanency alternatives to adoption by relatives, such as guardianship or California's Kin Gap program. Both the child's maintenance payment and the agency's administration and support services should be eligible for reimbursement when placement with non-family caretakers is the alternative to kinship care.

• Retention of the entitlement nature of the Title IV-E Foster Care and Adoption Assistance program, and elimination of out-dated rules that base the child's eligibility for funds on parental income and circumstances.

• Legislation to establish and appropriate funding for a national program of Adult Protective Services that will enable reporting, outreach, intervention, and services to vulnerable disabled and elderly persons in need of protection. Funding should also be available to coordinate with other resources needed, including case management, alternate living arrangements such as assisted living, in-home support services, and for professional staff training.

• Restoration of full funding for the Social Services Block Grant, which in California is used primarily to augment county and state funded in-home supportive services for elderly and disabled persons, and to coordinate services to disabled children.

• Restoration of benefits to legal immigrants that were ended by the 1996 welfare reform legislation.

• Further flexibility for states to align Food Stamps eligibility and processes with their TANF programs.

• Reauthorization of the TANF program that will retain at least the current level of funding and continue the flexibility of design that will help states move families toward long-term self sufficiency and provide programs that support working parents, including education and training leading to wage progression. State flexibility is needed also to focus more intensive services on families with serious or multiple barriers to achieving self support.