One does not have to look far to find families of children that are uninsured. We find uninsured children just by talking to people wherever we go. We find them at health centers, schools, grocery stores, churches. They are referred to us by their friends, family members and co-workers.

Some of these children have never had the benefit of health insurance but many have had health coverage in the past. Some jobs offer no health benefits; others offer benefits for the employee but not for the employee’s dependents. Some families have lost insurance because they lost their job or the insurance benefit became so expensive that the family had to give up the coverage to be able to afford the ever increasing cost of housing and food. When a family looses a parent who was the primary insurance provider, the parent who is left behind no longer has a way to keep their children insured.

Without insurance, families have to agonize over the decision about when to take a sick child to the doctor, balancing the hope that the child will recover on her own with the knowledge that a doctor’s visit might cost more then they can afford. We meet these families every day. We know that putting off early medical care can occasionally have disastrous results. In order to keep small health problems from becoming bigger ones Healthy Kids can connect a child to a volunteer doctor to see an ill child right away while the family is waiting for their subsidized health coverage to begin.

These days there are many different subsidized Health Insurance programs, each with different eligibility criteria. Government sponsored programs like Medi-Cal and Healthy Families have complicated rules and regulations. Other privately funded programs like Kaiser Child Health Plan and Healthy Kids Partnership exist, but how do families find out about them? How does a family know which plan they qualify for or which would be best for their children? How can a family know where to get an application or know how to fill it out correctly?

Healthy Kids Sonoma County relies on a collaboration of Health Centers and community agencies that employ a total 14 Certified Application Assistants (CAAs). These CAAs are highly skilled and knowledgeable about all of the subsidized Children’s Health Insurance programs that are affordable to lower income families in our community. Healthy Kids CAAs are located in health centers throughout our community. They are in Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Petaluma, Sonoma, Occidental, Guerneville. In Santa Rosa, CAAs are located at health centers, community agencies, the WIC program and the Medi-cal office.

We search everywhere for families that have uninsured children and yet we know there are many more uninsured children in our community. If you know of someone who is struggling to pay medical bills for their children or who has recently lost their children’s health coverage, you can help by encouraging them to call us. Our county’s Maternal Child toll free line at 800-427-8982 can link families with a CAA in their neighborhood. Or, if you would like brochures to give to families, please call Healthy Kids at 565-4612.

Sandra Sakwa
County of Sonoma DHS
County of Sonoma Public Health