2022 California Caregiving Policies

Every year thousands of bills are proposed in California. In order to be successful, the bill must be approved by both the California Assembly and Senate (starting with the author’s house of origin) and then signed or allowed to be made into law by the governor.

Below is a list of approved bills from the 2022 legislative cycle that have an impact on family caregivers. A summary of each bill can be found here.

1. AB-1949 Employee Bereavement Leave (Low)
2. SB-951 Unemployment insurance: contribution rates: disability insurance: paid family leave: weekly benefit amount (Durazo)
3. AB-1041 Employment Leave for Chosen Family (Wicks)
4. AB-2338 Health Care Decisions: Decision Makers and Surrogates (Gipson)
5. AB-1663 Protective Proceedings (Maienschein)
6. SCR-71 Traumatic Brain Injury Awareness Month (Bates)
7. AB-895 Skilled nursing facilities, intermediate care facilities, and residential care facilities for the elderly: ombudsman program notice to prospective residents (Holden)
8. AB-1502 Freestanding skilled nursing facilities licensing (Muratsuchi and Wood)
9. SB-1342 Aging multidisciplinary personnel teams (Bates and Quirk-Silva)
10. SB-1054 Public social services: records: confidentiality: multidisciplinary personnel teams (Ochoa Bogh)
11. AB 2117 Mobile stroke units (Gipson)
12. AB 2604 Long-Term Care Insurance (Calderon)
13. SJR-11 The Social Security 2100 Act: A Sacred Trust (Skinner)

This year, Governor Newsom vetoed 169 bills including the following:

1. AB-2077 Medi-Cal: monthly maintenance amount: personal and incidental needs (Calderon)
2. SB-861 Dementia Care Navigator Pilot Program (Limón)
3. AB-1809 Nursing Facility Resident Informed Consent Protection Act of 2022 (Aguiar-Curry)
4. AB-2079 Skilled Nursing Facilities: Direct Care Spending Requirement (Wood)
5. AB-2069 California Home Health Aide Training Scholarship Act (Villapudua)
6. SB-842 Health care: Assistive Technology: Reuse and redistribution (Dodd)

An additional 16 bills that Family Caregiver Alliance was tracking on issues ranging from preventing workplace discrimination for family caregiving, rental subsidies for older adults, and dementia training for law enforcement, didn’t make it is the Governor’s desk (See list on p. 5-8). We will likely see versions of these bills again in the 2023 Legislative Cycle.