California Set Aside Money For Children Orphaned By COVID. Now The State Just Has To Find Them

Next year, California will set up trust accounts for children in low-income families who lost a parent or guardian to COVID. But before any money can be claimed, the state now has the herculean task of trying to find kids who are eligible.

“There’s no central list,” said Kasey O’Connor, executive director of the HOPE for Children Trust Account Program. “So it's really us building this from the ground up, so it's strictly based on outreach right now.”

In 2022, the legislature created the HOPE program, becoming the first state in the nation to fund baby bonds for kids orphaned by COVID. Eligible children will have at least $4,500 in a trust fund by the time they’re 18 years old. The program also sets up accounts for children in the foster care system who, unlike kids orphaned by COVID, will be automatically enrolled.

The idea behind the accounts is to give children financial resources — support to buy a car or to go college — that typically comes with the help of parents, said Kristin Urquiza, co-founder of Marked By COVID and a member of the HOPE advisory workgroup. Urquiza, who lost her father to COVID in 2020, said her life trajectory would have been drastically different had she lost her father as a child.

“I wouldn’t have gone to college. I would have done everything in my power to be able to try and provide for us as we lost a breadwinner,” she said. “We're already seeing kids stepping up and serving as substitute parents.”

Where are the children?

At least 32,500 California children lost a parent or primary caregiver to COVID, according to an estimate in a report prepared for the legislature. “We were really looking at the social and financial ramifications of the pandemic,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor added that they’re targeting an estimated 10,000 low-income children, working with nonprofits, local school districts, churches, and unions to reach out.

Urquiza said it’ll be up to community-based organizations like hers to help find eligible children and get them enrolled. “We haven't systematically kept track of who has passed from COVID, and in particular, who has passed and has descendants,” Urquiza said.

Still, community groups only have so many resources, she said, adding, “There’s a big funding gap.”

“Our community based organizations, our nonprofit community, they're already doing so much with very little resources,” said Patrice Berry, chief impact officer at End Poverty in CA and a HOPE Advisory Work Group member. She and Urquiza said they’ve been looking into philanthropic funds to help support outreach efforts.

Who qualifies?

How kids are being identified

In addition to community outreach, O’Connor said the state is working with different state agencies to help with identification, including cross-referencing death certificates with the tax records to help find children in low-income families affected by COVID.

“It's just more piecemeal than our other programs that get to use birth data or anything else,” O’Connor said.

A separate savings account the state has for newborns and public school students, CalKids, currently has about 7% utilization rate, about two years after its launch. (Here's how you sign up for that one.)

Advocates are pushing for changes to the state’s death certificate so there’s a checkbox to indicate if a decedent had a dependent, so there will be a better tracking system for future kids who lose their parents.

Yesenia Jimenez, senior policy associate with GRACE/End Child Poverty, a group also working with the state, said outreach is particularly important given who was most affected by the pandemic — communities of color and non-English speaking households.

“When we think about who passed from the pandemic and you think about our essential workers… we already know that there are barriers,” she said. “It will be a significant task.”