Definition: Estimated percentage of adults with caregiving responsibilities for children ages 0-17 who had and had not accessed one or more social safety net resources before and after the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020, by timing of use and presence of children with special health care needs (CSHCN) in the household (e.g., in Wave 2, 6% of California caregivers living in households with one or more CSHCN had started using social safety net resources during the pandemic after not using them before the pandemic).
Data Source: Family Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic. (Apr. 2021). Questionnaire: American Academy of Pediatrics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Prevent Child Abuse America & Tufts Medical Center; California oversample: Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health & California Essentials for Childhood Initiative (California Dept. of Public Health, Injury and Violence Prevention Branch & California Dept. of Social Services, Office of Child Abuse Prevention).
Footnote: This indicator reports on eight social safety net resources: (1) food banks, (2) free or reduced price school meals, (3) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), (4) public health insurance (such as coverage through the Affordable Care Act, Medi-Cal, etc.), (5) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (CalFresh), (6) Supplemental Security Income (SSI), (7) Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (CalWORKs), (8) Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. Children with special health care needs (CSHCN) have or are at increased risk for a chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional condition and require health and related services of a type or amount beyond that required by children generally. The questionnaire was administered during the following periods: Nov. 9 – Dec. 11, 2020 (Wave 1); Mar. 22 – Apr. 12, 2021 (Wave 2). These data are subject to both sampling and nonsampling error. The annotation [!] indicates that the estimate’s margin of error is at least 5 percentage points but less than 10 percentage points.
