SECTIONS 12745-12747 - California Statutes

GOVERNMENT CODE

SECTION 12745-12747

12745. (a) Eligible activities for which financial assistance may
be obtained pursuant to this chapter shall be designed to have a
measurable and potentially major impact on causes of poverty in the
community or those areas of the community where poverty is a
particularly acute problem. These activities shall be designed to
assist low-income participants to do all the following:
(1) Secure and retain meaningful employment.
(2) Attain an adequate education.
(3) Make better use of available income.
(4) Obtain and maintain adequate housing and suitable living
environment.
(5) Obtain emergency assistance through loans or grants to meet
immediate and urgent individual and family needs, including the need
for health services, nutritious food, housing and employment-related
assistance.
(6) Remove obstacles and solve problems that block the achievement
of self-sufficiency.
(7) Achieve greater participation in the affairs of the community.
(8) Address the needs of youth in low-income communities.
(9) Make more effective use of other programs related to the
purposes of this chapter.
(b) Additionally, activities shall be designed to do all of the
following:
(1) Provide on an emergency basis for the provision of the
supplies and services, nutritious foodstuffs, and related services,
as may be necessary to counteract conditions of starvation and
malnutrition among the poor.
(2) Coordinate and establish linkages between governmental and
other social services programs to assure the effective delivery of
those services to low-income individuals.
(3) Encourage the use of entities in the private sector of the
community in efforts to ameliorate poverty in the community.
(c) Each eligible entity shall, through the local planning
process, select and propose for funding the programs or projects
that, in its judgment, will produce the maximum impact on its
community.
(d) Entities eligible for funding under Article 9 (commencing with
Section 12775) are limited purpose agencies that need not respond to
the broad range of eligible activities but may provide specialized
training, technical assistance and support services to enhance the
effectiveness of community action programs, migrant and seasonal
farmworker programs, and American Indian programs.
(e) The department may prescribe statewide priorities among
eligible activities or strategies that shall be considered and
addressed in the local planning process and described in the
community action plan submitted to the state. Each eligible entity
shall be authorized to set its own program priorities in conformance
to its own determination of local needs.
(f) If no other entity in the community provides those services,
eligible entities under Article 6 (commencing with Section 12750),
Article 7 (commencing with Section 12765), or Article 8 (commencing
with Section 12770) shall provide a minimum level of services to help
the poor receive the benefits for which they are eligible under
health, food, income, and housing assistance programs designed to
meet the basic survival needs of the poor. These services shall
include, but shall not be limited to, all of the following:
(1) A service to help the poor complete the various required
application forms, and, when necessary and possible, to help them
gather verification of the contents of completed applications.
(2) A service to explain program requirements and client
responsibilities in programs serving the poor.
(3) A service to provide transportation, when necessary and
possible.
(4) A service that does all things necessary to make the programs
accessible to the poor, so that they may become self-sufficient.
(g) Standards of effectiveness to be addressed and attained in
setting goals and assessing accomplishments are:
(1) Strengthened community capabilities for planning and
coordinating so as to insure that available assistance related to the
elimination of poverty can be more responsive to local needs and
conditions.
(2) Better organization of services related to the needs of the
poor.
(3) Maximum feasible participation of the poor in the development
and implementation of all programs and projects designed to serve the
poor.
(4) Broadened resource base of programs directed to the
elimination of poverty so as to include all elements of the community
able to influence the quality and quantity of services to the poor.
(5) Greater use of new types of services and innovative approaches
in attacking causes of poverty, so as to develop increasingly
effective methods of employing available resources.
(6) Maximum employment opportunity, including opportunity for
further occupational training and career development for residents of
the area and members of the groups served.
(7) Those programmatic and fiscal standards set by the department
through regulation that are necessary to enable the department to
demonstrate the assurances and certifications it makes to the
secretary in the state plan.
(h) In administering the California Community Services Block Grant
Program, the department shall enforce all the programmatic and
fiscal requirements and standards of effectiveness provided by this
chapter, except that no eligible entity shall be determined to be out
of compliance with programmatic or fiscal requirements established
by the department until those requirements and standards are
published for review and comment by the eligible entities and until
eligible entities are afforded a reasonable opportunity to comply
therewith.

12747. (a) Community action plans shall be developed by eligible
entities as required by the secretary and the director using
processes that assess poverty-related needs, available resources, and
feasible goals and strategies, and that yield program priorities
consistent with standards of effectiveness established for this
program. Community action plans shall identify eligible activities to
be funded in the program service areas and the needs that each
activity is designed to meet. Community action plans shall provide
for the contingency of reduced federal funding.
(b) All eligible entities shall submit their grant applications,
including local plan and report of the public hearing, if required,
to the department no later than June 30 of each year.
(c) Each eligible entity not serving a statewide area shall
conduct a local public hearing for the purpose of reviewing the local
plans of all eligible entities located or operating within a
political subdivision served or proposed to be served pursuant to
this chapter.
(d) Eligible entities holding hearings pursuant to this article
shall identify all testimony presented by the poor, and shall
determine whether the concerns expressed by that testimony have been
addressed in the plan. If the agency determines that any of these
concerns have not been included in the plan, it shall specify in its
response to the plan information about those concerns and comment as
to their validity.