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State officials outline barriers and modest gains in automatic enrollment for safety-net benefits
Summary
State social services and health officials described progress toward automated cross‑enrollment across Medi‑Cal, CalFresh and CalWORKs, reported a small causal effect from a text outreach pilot, and identified legal, data quality and technology barriers that limit scale.
Assembly Budget Subcommittee 2 on Human Services heard officials from the California Department of Social Services, the Department of Health Care Services and state technology staff describe ongoing work to make enrollment and renewals for Medi‑Cal, CalFresh and CalWORKs easier and more person‑centered.
"Our vision at the California Department of Social Services is to make application and renewal processes more accessible, straightforward, and integrated across the safety net in a manner that centers client voice and choice," said Ryan Gillette, chief data officer and deputy director, Research, Automation and Data Division, California Department of Social Services. Gillette summarized the state's analysis of overlapping caseloads and early pilot results testing outreach to likely‑eligible families.
Why it matters: Officials said better cross‑enrollment could reduce poverty and administrative burden for households that are eligible for multiple programs but are not enrolled. Gillette cited a 2022 PPIC estimate that safety‑net programs administered by CDSS reduced deep poverty and near‑poverty rates and said cross‑program enrollment is one way to extend those benefits.
What the departments reported: CDSS and DHCS presented data and operational constraints. Gillette said about 900,000 Californians participate in Medi‑Cal, CalFresh and CalWORKs concurrently. He reported a CDSS analysis that roughly 2.1 million people on CalFresh appeared likely to be eligible for CalWORKs; of those, about 878,000 (about 42%) were already enrolled in CalWORKs, leaving roughly 1.2 million likely‑eligible but not enrolled. CDSS compared those numbers with a CalWORKs caseload of about 950,000.
CDSS ran a staggered text‑messaging pilot to people who were likely eligible for CalWORKs. Gillette said the messages increased application rates by 21% and successful enrollments by 13%, producing about 15,000 new applications and 340 new enrollments at an estimated cost of $1.33 per induced application. He cautioned that a text intervention alone induced under 1% of the potentially eligible population to apply.
Department of Health Care Services Deputy Director Ying Zheng Huang said California uses federal authority in some instances to facilitate automatic Medi‑Cal enrollment for people found eligible through other programs. "In the state of California, all our CalWORKs members or beneficiaries are actually enrolled in Medi‑Cal," Huang said, noting DHCS has elected a federal option that uses CalWORKs eligibility determinations to enroll people in Medi‑Cal automatically. DHCS also described MediCal Connect, a phased IT platform intended to launch a person‑facing portal in fall 2026 that will aggregate available data and give members a single place to view benefits and resources.
State technology officials described the single statewide automated welfare system and portal (CalSAWS and BenefitsCal) as foundational tools that can be leveraged to improve consistency and user experience. Brandon Hansard, deputy director of benefit enrollment technology at the Office of Technology and Solutions Integration, said BenefitsCal was built with user‑centered design and now supports millions of account users and thousands of community‑based organization users.
Barriers and tradeoffs: Officials emphasized three constraints that limit automatic cross‑enrollment: inconsistent data definitions and quality across programs, federal and state legal limits on data use (including specific restrictions tied to CalFresh), and technology or staffing capacity to build secure recommendation and consent management tools. Gillette and Huang both stressed client consent and privacy concerns when discussing automated approaches.
Next steps: Officials urged stakeholder engagement (including clients), additional legal and privacy work, and targeted technology investments. Committee members pressed for ways to institutionalize cross‑program outreach so efforts survive administrative transitions; officials said the agency strategic plans and the CalHHS culture of cross‑department collaboration are intended to support continuity but acknowledged many state and federal barriers remain.
Ending: The panel recommended continuing pilots, investing in consent and data‑sharing solutions, and advancing IT work across CalSAWS, BenefitsCal and MediCal Connect while noting legal and privacy constraints limit how far automation can go without additional authority or clarified federal guidance.
