CalWORKs gives money and other help to families in need based on their family situation, resources, and income.

Family Requirements

Only families that meet these requirements can get CalWORKs:

• The parent or caretaker must:
  • Be a U.S. citizen or meet residency requirements
  • Live in California
  • Not be a fleeing felon or a convicted drug felon
  • Be taking care of at least one child who is under the age of 18 (or 19, if the child is expected to graduate from high school before their 19th birthday)
• Children must:
  • Be "deprived" by having at least one parent who is unemployed, disabled, absent (not around to care for the child), in jail, or has died
  • If under age 6, have all standard immunizations
  • If school-age and under age 16, be attending school regularly

Resource Limits

Your family can only get CalWORKs if it has $11,634 or less in resources ($17,452 if the family includes someone with a disability or someone 60 or over).

CalWORKs does not count some things as resources:

• Your home
• Household goods (like furniture or appliances)
• Some types of trusts
• Your car, if it’s worth $32,968 or less
• Assets in a tax-free ABLE account. Learn more about ABLE accounts.

Income Limits

Your family’s income must be under a certain limit based on your family size and where you live. Remember that CalWORKs may not include everybody in your family when it figures your family size and income.

If you want to figure out if you’ll qualify for CalWORKs, you can’t just check your family's income by adding up all your paychecks and benefits checks. That’s because CalWORKs doesn’t count some things as income, including:

• Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
• Loans and grants
• The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and
• Federal Relocation/Disaster benefits.

Here are the steps CalWORKs takes to calculate your income:

1. Ignore any types of income you have from the list above
2. Look at your earned income
3. Subtract $450 of earned income for each working family member
4. Add that to any unearned income not listed above, like Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), investment income, or other money you get that isn’t from work
5. The total is your countable income for eligibility

If your countable income for eligibility is less than the limit for your family, you can get CalWORKs benefits. The limit is called a “needs standard” or “Minimum Basic Standard of Adequate Care” (MBSAC), and it is based on your family size and where you live. See the MBSAC for different situations.

Note: Your countable income for eligibility is different than your countable income for figuring your benefit amount. So, the MBSAC is not the amount of money you will get if you qualify for CalWORKs. We’ll explain how to calculate your benefit amount on the next page.

Application

To apply for CalWORKs:

• Apply online at benefitscal.com, or
• Contact your county social services agency

There is a simple initial application form you’ll need to fill out. Then someone from the county will contact you to schedule an eligibility interview. During the interview the county eligibility worker will ask more detailed questions to see if your household qualifies for benefits. You will be given more forms to fill out, and you will need to submit other documents, like identification and birth certificates.

If you have a disability that makes it hard for you to do the usual application process, ask your county social services agency staff for help (called a reasonable accommodation), like helping you fill out the forms or reading the forms to you.

While you’re applying for CalWORKs, you can also apply for CalFresh (formerly Food Stamps) and Medi-Cal. If you are not eligible for CalWORKs you may apply for General Assistance/General Relief. You may also be able to get some money immediately if you are in an emergency situation.

If you are accepted for CalWORKs, you will get a letter that explains how much you will get each month and the program rules.

If you qualify for CalWORKs, you’ll get a monthly cash benefit for up to 60 months, as long as you continue to qualify and meet the Welfare-to-Work requirements explained on the next page (children continue to receive cash aid after the 60-month limit).

Note: The 60-month limit is a lifetime limit. That means that if you got benefits for 12 months, went off CalWORKs for a while and got back on later, you would only have 48 months of cash benefits remaining.

How Much You Get Each Month

To decide how much you should get, your county social services agency will take these steps:

1. Decide who counts as part of your family under CalWORKs rules
2. Decide if your family is “exempt” (if you are, you get more money each month)
3. Figure out the highest CalWORKs benefit your family can get based on your family’s size, living situation, and location (where you live)
4. Figure out how much of your family income is counted under CalWORKs rules
5. Subtract your family’s income (figured in step 4) from the maximum benefit possible for a family like yours (figured in step 3), which gives the amount your family can get each month.

Here we’ll explain these steps in greater detail.

Who is a part of your family?

Not everybody who lives with you is considered part of your family when the county is deciding how much money you’ll get each month from CalWORKs. These are the main groups of people who may not be considered part of the family, even if they live in your home:

• People who get SSI
• People who are not U.S. citizens or do not meet residency requirements
• Foster children getting foster care payments
• Immigrants whose needs are met by a sponsor or sponsor’s agency
• Drug felons or fleeing felons
• People who have been "sanctioned" for not following CalWORKs rules without good cause

Larger families qualify for larger benefits, so if CalWORKs doesn’t count some people in your family, your benefit could be lower.

Is your family exempt?

If all of the adults in the family are disabled and receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI), In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS), State Disability Insurance (SDI), or Worker’s Compensation, you will get a higher cash benefit. The higher benefit is called the “exempt” amount.

What is the maximum possible benefit a family like yours can get?

The maximum possible CalWORKs benefit depends on your family size, whether your family is exempt, and where you live. When they look at where you live, they’ll give your family slightly more if you live in an urban area (a city) than if you live in a rural area (the country). That’s because rent, food, and other basic living expenses cost more in cities than in the country.

See the maximum benefit amounts for different situations.

How do they count your income when deciding how much you get?

Your countable income to decide how much you can get in benefits is completely different than your countable income to decide if you can get benefits. To figure out how much you can get, we have to ignore what we did before and start over with a new income calculation.

Here are the steps your county social services agency will take when it calculates your income:

1. Add up all of the money you get from disability benefits, including SDI, private disability insurance, workers' compensation, and SSDI. Remember, any family members who get SSI won’t be counted as part of your family by CalWORKs, so you don’t have to include their SSI benefit or any other income they may have when you add up your family’s disability benefits.
2. Subtract $600 from the combined total of your disability benefits to find your countable disability income. This $600 is called the disability-based income (DBI) disregard.
3. Add your countable disability income to any other unearned income you have, such as unemployment benefits or other sources of money that are not from work. The combined total is called your countable unearned income.
4. If your family has earned income:
   1. Add up the earned income your family members have from different sources.
   2. If your family got the disability-based income disregard (DBI) when figuring unearned income in step 2 and you get less than $600 in disability benefits (which means you didn’t use the entire $600 DBI on unearned income) you can subtract whatever is left over from that $600 from your earned income.
      • Example: You get $180 each month in SDI. That’s less than $600, so you can subtract $420 from your family’s earned income.
   3. If your family did not use the DBI when figuring unearned income in step 2, subtract $600 from your earned income. This $600 is called the earned income disregard.
   4. Divide your family’s remaining earned income by 2. This is your countable earned income.
5. Add your countable unearned income from step 3 to your countable earned income from step 4 to find your total countable income.

How much will I get?

To calculate your monthly cash benefit, subtract your total countable income from the maximum possible benefit a family like yours could get. Your benefit will be directly deposited into a bank account or you get it via an Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card, which is a debit card.

Other Benefits

Besides cash, CalWORKs also provides other benefits:

• Help with Welfare-to-Work activities (described on the next page)
• Emergency cash if you are about to lose your home, are experiencing homelessness, or some other emergency
• Family planning and Child Health & Disability Prevention (CHDP)

After your CalWORKs benefits end, you get another 12 months of transitional Medi-Cal health coverage and 24 months of child care.

One of the benefits CalWORKs provides is help getting a job, so in the future you can support your family. CalWORKs helps you do this, but you must take steps to find work. This part of CalWORKs is called Welfare-to-Work.

Welfare-to-Work can include different types of activities. How many hours of these activities you have to do each week to keep getting CalWORKs depends on the age of your children and whether you have a disability. We’ll describe how this works below, but first let’s look at the people who don’t have to meet these Welfare-to-Work requirements.

People who don’t have to do Welfare-to-Work

CalWORKs knows that some people can’t work, and gives them exemptions from Welfare-to-Work requirements. If you are exempt, you won’t have to do the Welfare-to-Work activities described on this page. You can get an exemption if you are:

• Disabled for at least 30 days
• Under 16
• Under 19 and in school full-time
• Over 60
• Caring for a relative’s child who is a ward of the state or is in danger of being placed in foster care, and who requires care that prevents you from working
• At home because you are caring for a sick or injured household member
• Taking care of a baby under a year old
• Pregnant and medically unable to do Welfare-to-Work activities

If you are exempt, you can still volunteer to get the help offered through the Welfare-to-Work program.

Note: If you don't qualify for an exemption, you might get approved for a "good cause" that makes you unable to do Welfare-to-Work, like homelessness, not being able to get child care, your car broke down (no transportation), or a child is sick and has to stay home from school.

The Standard Rules

If you are not exempt from the Welfare-to-Work rules, you have to do various things to keep getting CalWORKs benefits. If you don’t, you may stop getting the monthly cash benefit.

Welfare-to-Work Activities

You can be on CalWORKs for up to 60 months during your lifetime. Those months do not have to be consecutive (in a row); if you are on CalWORKs for the first time and only receive benefits for 3 months, you have 57 months remaining during which you can get benefits over the rest of your life. If you need CalWORKs again 5 years later and only get CalWORKs for 10 months, you would still have 47 months remaining.

The Hourly Requirement

During those 60 months, you must spend a minimum number of hours each week doing Welfare-to-Work activities, unless you are exempt. The exact number of hours depends on your situation.

• If you are single:
  • 30 hours per week if there are no children under age 6
  • 20 hours per week if there is at least one child under 6
• A couple must do 35 hours per week (adding their hours together), unless one parent is exempt. If a parent is exempt, the other parent needs to do 30 hours per week.

What Activities Qualify

Each county has its own list of acceptable activities, so the rules in your county may be a bit different from the activities listed here.

• Subsidized or unsubsidized employment
• Work experience
• On-the-job training (OJT)
• Work-study
• Self-employment
• Community service
• Grant-based OJT
• Vocational education and training (12-month lifetime total)
• Job search and job readiness assistance
• Mental health, substance abuse, or domestic violence services (possibly with assigned time limits)
• Providing child care for someone in the CalWORKs community service program.
• Adult basic education
• Job skills training aimed at getting a job
• Education aimed at getting a job
• Satisfactory attendance in a secondary school or GED (high school equivalency) program.
• Mental health, substance abuse, or domestic violence services (beyond assigned time limits)
• Vocational education and training beyond the 12-month lifetime total
• Other activities needed to find work

How the CalWORKs Program Helps You

CalWORKs helps you meet the Welfare-to-Work requirements and find employment in a number of ways:

1. You go to a group orientation that explains the cash benefit and Welfare-to-Work rules.
2. You meet with a county worker who looks at your work history, skills, and discusses any additional services you feel you might need, such as:
   1. Child care. You can get help paying for child care if you are working or doing approved Welfare-to-Work activities.
   2. Transportation costs related to your employment.
   3. Other services, like job training and counseling.
3. Most people then participate in a 2-to-4-week job club or job search program. You might get extra help if you are in difficult circumstances, like experiencing homelessness or if you are not safe because of domestic abuse, mental health issues, or substance abuse.
4. If you haven’t found a job at the end of those 4 weeks, you meet with an employment counselor, who helps you make a Welfare-to-Work plan listing your activities. This plan should help you find a job that lets you support your family after your 60 months of CalWORKs benefits end.
5. If you don’t follow your plan, your CalWORKs benefit may go down.

Nancy and Dave's Story

Nancy and Dave are married with a 7-year-old daughter. Dave was recently in an accident and now gets $200 a month in State Disability Insurance (SDI). Nancy makes $800 a month working at a local bakery for 20 hours a week. She also volunteers 16 hours a week at a local animal shelter, where she hopes to eventually get an entry-level job. The money she earns isn’t enough to pay for the food and clothing their daughter needs, so they decided to visit the county social services agency.

There, Nancy and Dave speak with Ms. López, an eligibility worker. They tell her about their situation, and she tells them, “CalWORKs is a program for families that can’t financially support their children. We accept a number of reasons for not being able to provide this support, and one of them is having at least one of the child’s caretakers have a disability, like you Dave.”

Nancy asks, “So we’ll be able to get help from CalWORKs?”

“First we have to see if you meet all the requirements. Fill out this form to see if you might be eligible.” When they are done, Ms. López looks it over. “You seem to meet the resource requirement with no problem,” Ms. López says.

Nancy asks, “What’s that?”

Ms. López replies, “Resources are things you own. You have to have less than $11,634 worth of them. Resources can include things like bank accounts, investments, or other property, but your house and the first $32,968 in value of your car don’t count. Your 1996 Volvo is obviously worth less than $32,968 and you don’t have anything else, so it seems like you’re okay. I have to do a quick calculation to see if you meet the income limits. Nancy, you said you make $800 a month, and Dave, you get $200 a month in SDI. Combined, that is $1,000 a month. $450 is subtracted for each working family member, which means you have $550 in countable income. Now we just compare that to the limit. Where do you live?”

“San Francisco,” Dave says. “Why does that matter?”

“Well, there are different limits depending on whether you live in a rural county or urban county. San Francisco is an urban county, so it’s in Region I.” Ms. López pulls out a chart and tells them, “The program's income limit for a family of 3 in Region 1 is $1,829.”

“So we’re under the income limit!” Nancy exclaims. “Does that mean we get $1,829 a month? That would be great.”

“Sorry, but that’s not what you get. I know this is confusing, but after we find that you’re eligible, we use an entirely different calculation to figure out your benefit amount. First we have to decide out how much of your income to count,” Ms. López says.

“But didn’t we just do that?” Dave asks.

“Yes, we did. As I just said, we have to start over and do a completely different calculation now,” Ms. López explains. “We take your monthly disability-based income and subtract $600. Dave, you get $200 a month in SDI, so we don’t count any of that. We take the $400 that are left from that calculation, and subtract them from Nancy’s earned income.”

“So that’s my $800 minus $400, which is $400. Is that our countable income?” Nancy asks.

“Almost,” Ms. López replies. “We then take that $400 and divide it by two, which gives $200.00. That’s the amount of your income that we think you can use to pay for your family’s basic living expenses. We’ll subtract that from the maximum grant amount, which for a family of 3 in Region I with one disabled parent is $1,175. $1,175 minus $200.00 is $975.00. That’s how much CalWORKs will give you in cash aid.”

“So, they’ll do that calculation and then we just wait for a check to come in the mail?” Dave asks.

“The application usually takes a month or so to process. If you are approved, you’ll get money every month through direct deposit to a bank account or through an ATM-like card called Electronic Benefits Card. If you have any emergency needs, we could get you money sooner. Are you about to be evicted, or do you have any urgent financial problems?”

“No,” Nancy says.

“Okay, good. Usually, adults in the family have to fulfill a work requirement, but since Dave is disabled, he will be exempt. Nancy, you’ll already be fulfilling your work requirement, because you’re working 20 hours a week and doing another 16 hours of volunteering. You might be able to get other services, like child care and counseling, and you qualify for free health coverage through Medi-Cal. Let me get this paperwork started and give me a call if you have any questions.”