2025 California Legislative Session Wins

Advocates, representatives, and staff worked hard this session to pass some new policies to support older adults, people with disabilities, and family caregivers. Below are some of the wins and changes you can expect as a result.

AB 960 (Garcia) Patient Visitation-
This bill, sponsored by Alzheimer’s Los Angeles, Alzheimer’s Orange County, and Alzheimer’s San Diego requires hospitals to allow a patient with physical, intellectual, and/or developmental disabilities and patients with cognitive impairment to have a family or friend caregiver with them, including beyond standard visiting hours.
SB 590 (Durazo) Paid Family Leave: Eligibility: Care for Designated Persons
This bill will ensure that qualifying workers can use Paid Family Leave when caring for chosen and extended family members, effective July 1, 2028. Right now, caregivers can take job protected leave when providing care to a close friend, neighbor, aunt/uncle, or cousin, etc., but it is unpaid.
SB 412 (Limón) Home Care Aides
This bill requires home care aides to receive training on Alzheimer’s disease, improving care and increasing support for home care aides in their role, as well as confidence for family caregivers hiring these providers.
SB 470 (Laird) Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act: Teleconferencing
This bill pushes back the current sunset date of January 1, 2026, to January 1, 2030, so that advisory bodies can continue leveraging teleconferencing technology to promote inclusivity, enhance participant diversity, and improve efficiency while maintaining full transparency and public access. Remote participation allows individuals with mobility challenges, caregiving responsibilities, or limited transportation, options to contribute to important policy discussions.
AB 1069 (Bains) Older adults: Emergency Shelters
Requires, as part of disaster planning and response, an area agency on aging (AAA), independent living center (ILC), or an Aging and Disability Resource Connection (ADRC) program have access to an emergency shelter to ensure older adults and persons with disabilities receive continuous services and necessary support.
AB 1172 (Nguyen) Adult Day Programs: Administration of Inhalable Emergency Anti-seizure Medications This bill allows a licensed adult day program or adult residential facility (ARF), upon receipt of a request, to authorize an administrator or authorized employee volunteer to administer intranasal emergency anti-seizure medication to a client diagnosed with seizures or epilepsy during a seizure emergency. This bill requires the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) to adopt minimum training standards for recognizing and responding to seizures and require an administrator or authorized volunteer to receive training. It also requires a licensed facility to develop a seizure action plan for each client diagnosed with seizures or epilepsy.

Advocates for these policies included members of the California Coalition on Family Caregiving (CaCFC), co-convened by Family Caregiver Alliance. Every year, CaCFC members– more than half of whom are current family caregivers, vote on which California State policy proposals to prioritize based on what will have the greatest impact on the lives of family caregivers. If you would like to vote and participate in 2026, new members are also welcome!

At our first Advocacy Day in 2024, we heard from caregivers that the event:

Ignited a fire to get more politically involved.
How a handwritten thank you card that they sent, resulted in a phone call from their representative’s office.
Advocacy Day described as respite, as it was a joy to get out of the house, spend the night at a hotel and use her brain for something different than usual after 17 years of caregiving.

We are therefore delighted to announce our next Advocacy Day will be Tuesday April 14^th 2026 in Sacramento and we will be offering a limited number of travel stipends.