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Around The Glen
Supervisors approve health care for kids
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted on Dec. 5, to use $3 million of its tobacco settlement money to help provide health coverage to the county's uninsured children.
Healthy Kids is the first program in the nation to use tobacco money on health insurance for children in low-income house-holds, said Matt Schenone, spokesman for the Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital System, the overall health agency for the county. The program is one of three programs in the county that can provide coverage to its estimated 70,000 children who need it, he said.
MediCal and Healthy Families already insure children whose parents are unemployed and whose annual income is below 250 percent of the federal poverty level, Schenone said. Children whose families are below 300 percent of the poverty level are eligible for insurance through Healthy Kids.
"It absorbs a lot more children into the program," Schenone said, or between a third and a half of the 70,000 uninsured kids.
He also said the county will begin a large effort to sign the children currently eligible for MediCal and Healthy Families, but not yet in the programs.
"It's like any other product; you have to market it to make people aware of it," Schenone said. "All 70,000 should qualify, for the most part, for one of these programs."
The actual transfer of the $3 million won't happen until a quorum of the board approves it; only three of the five supervisors were at the meeting last week. Schenone said approval was likely at the board's next meeting on Dec. 12.
With the board's contribution, the $14 million per year program has secured $6 million so far. Schenone said San Jose's city council is expected to vote on giving $2 million of its tobacco money to the program on Dec. 12, as well. Program officials are looking to foundations and private and corporate donors to make up the difference, he said.
--Kate Carter
Group seeks donations to buy sleeping bags
As the weather gets colder, everyone wants a warm bed.
The Santa Clara County branch of the St. Vincent de Paul Society is hoping to meet the needs of those who can't buy their own warm beds, by providing 1,000 sleeping bags to homeless or transitional people and families.
Michael Fallon, director of services for the local nonprofit, said a donation of $14.35 would enable the organization to buy a sleeping bag for an individual who really needs it.
"This is a real high-need area that people have been responsive to," Fallon said. "People know exactly what they're paying for: one sleeping bag for one homeless person."
The society will distribute the sleeping bags through their three thrift stores and 30 emergency service locations throughout the county, Fallon said. He said they will also give bags to families at the Ochoa Migrant Camp in San Martin and for distribution by 10 to 12 other local nonprofit agencies.
Fallon said although the goal is 1,000 bags, "we could even give away 1,500, possibly even 2,000," in order to meet the need. Once they've met the need for bags, additional money will go toward providing bus passes to homeless people, he said.
To donate a sleeping bag, send a check for $14.35 payable to SVdP to 2040 S. Seventh St., San Jose, CA 95112, and include 'sleeping bag(s) for the homeless' in the memo.
--Kate Carter
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
