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Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
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Collection: Reagan, Ronald: Gubernatorial Papers,
1966-74: Press Unit
Folder Title: [Welfare] - Management Study -
Alameda County Welfare Department -
Summary of Findings
Box: P39
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196
100
CALIFORNIA TAXPAYERS' ASSOCIATION
ELEVENTH AND L BUILDING SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA 95814 916/443-8163
...
STATE-WIDE. NONPOLITICAL
November 11, 1971
Mr. James E. Jenkins
Assistant to Governor and
Director of Public Affairs
Governor's Office
State Capitol
Sacramento, California 95814
Dear Mr. Jenkins:
In a discussion today with Bob Martin, former Director of the
State Department of Social Welfare, in which we reviewed welfare
department management problems, Mr. Martin suggested that I
send you a copy of our recent study of the Alameda County
Welfare Department.
Very truly yours,
RICHARD P SIMPSON
Regional Director Local Affairs
RPS:js
Enclosure
cc: Mr. Robert Martin
MANAGEMENT STUDY
ALAMEDA COUNTY WELFARE DEPARTMENT
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
CALIFORNIA TAXPAYERS' ASSOCIATION
718 Eleventh and L Building
Sacramento, California 95814
SUMMARY
MANAGEMENT STUDY
ALAMEDA COUNTY WELFARE DEPARTMENT
INTRODUCTION
The one concept basic to an understanding of public welfare
administration today is that two distinctly separate management missions
are involved. The most critical of these missions in terms of management
challenge is the operation of an income maintenance system with effective
eligibility controls at the point of initial intake and throughout the
active term of a case. The other management mission, with its own special
set of challenges, is the provision of social services to aided cases and
individuals on the basis of client request or referral from eligibility
workers. With the exception of Blind Aid and General Assistance, these
two basic missions of the Alameda Welfare Department are the responsibility
of separate employee classifications.
Certifications of initial and continuing eligibility are performed
by eligibility technicians. Because eligibility determinations have been
regarded by public welfare administrators primarily as clerical processes,
the eligibility technician employee classification has developed out of the
clerical series. This employee classification does not require a college
degree and, while classified above the clerical series, it is positioned
below social workers in a position classification plan.
Social services are provided by workers in separate units on the
basis of voluntary requests of clients or referrals from eligibility workers.
Except for certain mandatory services, such as protective services for
children, money management by the agency on behalf of the client, etc.,
social services are totally voluntary and are not a condition of receiving
a cash grant. Examples of social services would be assisting clients in
securing temporary shelter, emergency food, referrals to a variety of other
agencies, informational services, assistance in arranging for medical care,
etc. The social worker classification requires a college degree. In
public welfare, the top rung of the professional ladder has traditionally
been accorded to those who possess the Master's Degree in Social Work, or
the "MSW."
Up to the mid-1960's, both income maintenance and social service
functions were provided by social workers. However, the investigative and
clerical procedures connected with eligibility determinations were considered
to be distracting and contradictory to the real mission of the social
worker; which was the attack upon the pathological causes and effects
of poverty. The concept of separating eligibility processes from social
services was viewed as a means of improving the impact of services on a
constantly increasing level of dependency in America. Thus, the 1967
Social Security Amendments mandated separation and welfare departments
across the nation commenced what has proven to be the most massive,
profound reorganization experienced at the departmental, delivery-end
of public welfare in its 35-year history. Caseload separation has, indeed,
been a most severe test of departmental management capabilities. The
specific findings and recommendations of this study of Alameda County
welfare must, therefore, be viewed in the context of the management
challenge posed by caseload separation.
In Alameda County, the most critical events in the separation
process have centered on the assimilation of approximately 600 new
employees to handle eligibility functions transferred from social service
workers. Of course, many of these employees were recruited from within the
Department, either by advancement from the clerical series or declassifi-
cation from social worker status. Nevertheless, the effective recruitment,
training, deployment, and direction of large blocks of new employees posed
very serious problems to the Department which were apparently unappreciated
by Congress, the responsible Federal and State departments, or Alameda
County.
The eligibility and grant determination process is extremely
complicated, as Appendix A of this study demonstrates, and the serious
reader should commence by reviewing the specifics which eligibility workers
must command. A very generalized list would include residency requirements,
rules on verification of identity, pertinent factors of deprivation, absent
parent procedures, special eligibility factors and procedures relative to
specific aid programs, rules relating to physical incapacity, real and
personal property determinations, car and equipment allowances, responsible
relative provisions, grant computation customized to the situation of the
applicant, rules on income verification, client reporting requirements, and
pay authorization procedures and records. Any eligibility technician who
has the mental capacity to fully understand these nightmarishly complex
eligibility factors should probably seek a more rewarding career in the law
or higher mathematics.
In Alameda, the radical organizational upheaval resulting from
caseload separation came at a time when the Department was undergoing its
most dramatic growth in caseload, staff, and money payments. The effects
of this growth were multi-dimensional. It forced the Department out of
its downtown Oakland office facilities and into a branch office system
spread from Berkeley to Fremont. Growth and decentralization, in turn,
severely drained departmental resources in middle-management and executive
staff. Civil Service and County Charter provisions are heavily weighted
in favor of management staffing by promotion from within. Since the
Department has never had a system for identifying and developing
-2-
future management staff, it has lost good management potential to other
counties and agencies and, for their own management needs have, with some
notable exceptions, been left with difficult choices among survivors of
the social service delivery system.
The decentralization into branch offices, coming as it did with
pressures of growth, and requiring a geographic deployment of scarce
executive staff, naturally had serious consequences for the Department's
ability to respond rapidly and appropriately to problems, for standardization
of procedures, consistency of performance, and management controls. It can
be said with some justification that there are six Welfare Departments in
Alameda County.
If it was not apparent before the advent of the eligibility
technician, it seems now that separation has exposed income maintenance as
the essential, basic management problem for welfare. Our study of this
Department clearly demonstrates the vulnerability of this side of welfare.
Welfare fraud and legal abuses perpetrated by some clients as well as
"damn the system" attitudes and client favoritism by a few workers are
nothing more than symptoms of the sickness in the system which, again, is
its vulnerability to abuse. It is a system that can be successfully taken
advantage of with a modicum of knowledge and a modest talent for deception.
Just as we regard conscious abuse of the welfare system as symptomatic of
a larger problem, we sense that the incidence of abuse and fraud is not as
significant in dollar or human terms as innocent client or worker error
committed with the very best of intentions.
It is not the incidence of abuse or fraud, or the dramatic aspects
of a costly welfare scandal that constitutes the root problem. Actually
the cause lies with other factors that are not very dramatic and rather poorly
understood. In the Alameda County Welfare Department one of the causal
factors has been the failure to recognize income maintenance as the
Department's basic management problem, and the fact that it has had to
control a decentralized income maintenance system with managers from the
social service sector who continue to have the responsibility for both
income maintenance and social services. In short, then, the development
of a separate income maintenance system is incomplete; it is totally without
a separate administrative chain of command. Until income maintenance is
lodged with specialized departmental supervisors and administrators who
are totally responsible and accountable for the conduct of an effective
income maintenance and eligibility control system, the full advantages of
separation cannot be realized.
This study deals with various defaults in one local extension of
our national income redistribution system. If the study tends to emphasize
concerns of those who pay the cost it is because we perceive that taxpayer
confidence in the viability in the system has been severely shaken. We
would like to stress, however, that if we emphasize the defaults of the
system that seem to favor the client we are just as concerned about under-
-3-
payments as we are about overpayments. Furthermore, we are simply not
content to accept or excuse overpayments and abuses on the muddleheaded
theory that over-and underpayments will balance out somewhere in the
great beyond. An underpayment is just as wrong as an overpayment. The
legitimate concern of everyone connected with the welfare system -- whether
fortunate enough to be able to pay some of its costs or unfortunate enough
to be one of its beneficiaries - is that the system be conducted with a
scrupulous objectivity and neutrality.
SUMMARY BY SECTION
SECTION I. Administration of Eligibility and Income Maintenance.
We take the position at the outset that regardless of sweeping welfare
reforms by the State or Federal government, there is much that can be done
at the departmental level to improve management. We have, therefore,
focused attention on problems that are immediate, fiscally important, and
that yield to some kind of administrative action now. We did not try to
develop a philosophy of welfare that might be acceptable to the diversity
of viewpoints presented by the Task Force.
Our first chapter establishes the theme of the report, which is
a call for an improved planning component, revised organization structure,
clearer definition of goals and the enforcement of explicit performance
standards in social services and income maintenance.
In our discussion of eligibility and income maintenance, we are
sharply critical of departmental performance in development of standard
case formats, documentation, and verification of essential case data. We
found a wide variation in case documentation practices, branch by branch.
We found case record formats and even management report formats that had
been developed around the special interests of division chiefs in charge
of branch offices. We were so concerned about the implications here for
for uniform casework management and for vital information to agency
executives that we recommended specific, standard elements to be included
in any case record, and proposed that no printed form be used in income
maintenance without specific approval at the Assistant Director level.
One reflection of this lack of uniformity in the basic mechanics of case-
work is the high rejection rate of cases transferred from one eligibility
unit to another. The receiving unit may return a case to the sending unit
if two or more errors are found which cannot be corrected by the new unit.
Rejection rates have run as high as 60-75% of cases transferred.
After initial eligibility for AFDC is established, a case is
moved from the intake worker to a worker who is assigned a "continuing"
caseload of 120 cases. Present law requires review of eligibility twice
a year in AFDC-FG and quarterly in AFDC-U. Eligibility renewals can be
made by an office visit, by phone, or by home call. The quality of the
renewal, however, depends on the nature of the contact between agency and
-4-
client, and there can really be no substitute for recertification of
continuing eligibility by home call. Our review of overpayments showed
that most overpayments occurred as a result of changes in the client's
situation which went unreported until some agency contact was made.
Since a fairly small percentage of overpayments involve suspected fraud,
it can be assumed that many of them occur out of simple ignorance or
misunderstanding of rules by clients or worker failure to get all the
facts. Clearly, a much better understanding of the total situation
related to a client's eligibility can be gained in a home visit, and it
is as important to the client as it is to the agency. Eligibility
technicians responding to a questionnaire in this study reported that
only about 30% of their renewals are made by home call. Furthermore,
there are no departmental standards on home calls. The Task Force
therefore recommends that all recertifications of eligibility be made
by home call and feels that it can be done within present recertification
schedules and caseload assignments, because it is now virtually being
done in Family Services Division. The Task Force feels it is a realistic
standard, and calls for agency-wide adoption of a production report
presently used in Family Services Division.
Firm eligibility determination standards are not new to this
Department. We found, in fact, that eligibility determinations prior to
1966 included such items as confirmation of client's statements by good
verification and documentation, all children were seen and identity
verified, clients were seen on unscheduled visits, there was an emphasis
on completing face sheets and recording eligibility data, almost all
recertifications were made by home call, and there was narrative dictation
in the cases describing essential points of deprivation.
It was in connection with eligibility determination that staff
ran across a little case study of the influence of the State Department
of Social Welfare in this area. A State audit of the ACWD done in 1965
commented, for example:
"Practices and attitudes inherited from the past
still dominate the Alameda County Welfare Department.
Their continuation makes this agency slow to change
from one that just dispenses a dole to one that
provides rehabilitative, protective, and preventive
social services. Neither has the Welfare Department
assumed an active role in fighting the lack of job
opportunity, educational gaps and housing deficiencies
which plague its clientele--the 20% of the county's
population who are poverty stricken.
Most staff work hard and conscientiously, doing
what they have been taught to do. In the public
assistance programs, this is mainly determination of
eligibility, characterized by over-investigation that
leaves little time for social services that will help
-5-
people overcome handicapping personal and family
problems. Many workers and supervisors want to
provide services but cannot do so effectively
because of lack of skills or because paperwork
takes so much time If
We also encountered the influence of the State in connection with
the position of screeners, employees which have served as initial inter-
viewers of applicants to determine essential eligibility. Screeners were
removed on the basis of speculation by the State that they would serve to
arbitrarily disqualify applicants. It is difficult to believe that a
screener would be more inclined to make snap judgments against clients
than would a regular eligibility worker. The Task Force calls for re- -
establishment of screeners to save eligibility staff time now wasted in
interviews of ineligible applicants, to enable offices to establish fixed
interview schedules and allow for better organization of time for office
and field work, and most importantly -- screeners are the key to
achieving control once again of application logs which are presently in
very bad shape because they are scattered among workers in every intake
unit. Application logs are the only source of statistics on applications
made, applications accepted, denials, and cases pending. These data are
basic to every decision made by management.
One concept important to improvement of grant administration --
assistance planning -- is discussed in the first chapter. Essentially, it
is a better way of enforcing client reporting of changes which may affect
a grant, and it should be considered no more unreasonable than expecting
every citizen to file an income tax return whether he had income or not.
The Task Force recommends that the county go to some form of assistance
planning in spite of current reservations expressed by the State Department
of Social Welfare. In a recent letter to a member of the Task Force staff,
the Chief of the SDSW AFDC Bureau noted that the Department was presently
at work on a proposal similar to assistance planning, but commented:
"Since the change in budget methods is both
expensive and administratively complicated, we would
not encourage or approve county action to change case
budget methods until development of the proposal is
further along. As soon as they are ready for release,
details will be distributed to the counties. If
Attached to the letter is a 24-page, loosely-drawn, 1958 provision for
assistance planning extracted from a State training handbook, which means
that after 13 years of toying with the concept, the State is still not
prepared to give counties a definitive regulation on assistance planning.
Our review of the procedures for working up the budgets of
individual clients led us to recommend that the county drop its computer-
prepared budget program and revert back to manual preparation of client
budgets for all caseloads. Such a recommendation challenges a great deal
-6-
of mystique and blind faith surrounding any computer installation, but we
feel strongly supported by the facts in this instance. After 10 years of
massive effort to automate case budgeting, only 10 to 15,000 of 60,000
aid cases are computerized, and ground is lost daily. Almost all computer-
budgeted cases are in the OAS program, the most stable of all aid categories.
However, even the OAS program is so badly patched and modified since it was
written seven or eight years ago that it is not salvagable. Whereas 50 to
80% of AFDC budgets were computerized at one time, only 10% are on the
computer today.
The reasons for this situation are suggested by another finding:
70 to 80% of the Department's system staff as well as assigned staff from
central data processing, is consumed with EDP program modifications to
accommodate regulation changes. The deterioration of computer-budgeting
stems from the fact that the logic built into these applications 10 years
ago was based on regulations as they existed in 1960. Modification of
some original computer logic has been possible but much is irrevocable, and
programs are now asked to perform functions which were not planned when
they were originally written.
The hard truth is that machine-budgeting has probably caused as
many problems as it has solved. The complexities involved in teaching
eligibility staff two budget systems - manual and machine -- is a
monumental case in point discussed in this chapter. One of the most
monstrous ironies we found in this study is that millions are spent
developing hardware and clerical procedures around welfare regulations which
are not stable enough to be controlled regardless of the sophistication,
power, or speed of the machines. The Task Force recommends that prior to
future attempts at computer-budgeting, the county augment systems and
programming staff for work on planning and development, exclusive of
responsibility for daily maintenance of existing applications. Our reason
for this is that advance system planning is most critical to making timely,
coordinated transitions from existing applications.
SECTION II. Medical Eligibility. The short chapter on medical
eligibility deals with fiscal and administrative problems relating to the
small and declining number of people who enter the welfare system through
the county hospitals. In its broadest dimensions, the problem relates to
the fact that determination of Medi-Cal eligibility for people not yet in
a welfare caseload is a shared responsibility of eligibility workers
located in the hospitals and welfare branch offices. A referral of the
case application from the worker at the hospital to the worker in a welfare
branch office is necessary for complete determination of eligibility for
care under the Medi-Cal program. In the meantime, the person needing
medical care is admitted, administered medical services, and is frequently
discharged prior to establishment of liability for cost of care. The rest
of the problem is that Blue Cross, the State's fiscal intermediary, requires
that eligibility be established and billing be submitted within 60 days of
intake. The significance of delay in determining Medi-Cal eligibility is
that those billings to Blue Cross that are over 60 days old and those
-7-
determinations of ineligibility made after discharge (and, occasionally,
disappearance) of the patient run a high risk of being totally county
costs -- with no cost sharing by the State or the patient. Currently
at stake in this issue is $500,000 to $600,000 in hospital services
rendered recipients which cannot be billed by Central Collections until
acceptance or denial of eligibility for Medi-Cal by the Welfare Department.
The Task Force's recommended solution is to centralize all Medi-Cal
eligibility units in one division and give these units complete responsi-
bility for certifying both cash grants and the medical portion of
eligibility.
SECTION III. Overpayments and Caseload Validations. Staff
spent considerable time, early in the study, in collecting and analyzing
data on collectible and non-collectible overpayments. For those
interested in such numbers, we include a table on page 73 on recent over-
payment trends, but we must emphasize that overpayments cannot be considered
apart from the administrative process which controls eligibility and income
maintenance generally. We suggest this in response to the Department's
repeated budget request for staff to "validate," on a random sample basis,
AFDC caseloads. The Department's argument has been that if management knew
more about where its errors were occurring it would be in a better position
to control mistakes in eligibility. We, on the contrary, recommended
against implementation of a conventional validation program in AFDC because
enough is known now about the condition of the AFDC caseloads to safely
make a managerial judgment that the entire caseload is in bad condition.
We recommend in place of a regular AFDC validations unit a two-or three-
man team of internal auditors working out of our proposed Management
Division. We suggest this small staff be free to move throughout the
organization, looking for weaknesses that go far beyond that which is
examined in routine validation reviews. Our opposition to conventional
validation procedure such as exists in the adult aid programs is based on
several points. In the first place, 20 to 30 factors of eligibility are
checked, with very little selective review of the more important factors.
It seems silly to check the accuracy of something like a laundry allowance
or bus fare for medical transportation when there are ineffective controls
over earned income. Secondly, as reported by the State Department of
Finance in a recent study, the adult sample sizes are about twice what they
need to be for reliable sampling conclusions to be drawn. Finally, neither
the State nor local departments are using presently available validation
findings to any advantage after they get them! It seemed to us that adult
program validation efforts are more of a formality than a useful tool of
management and that the Department is not in a position to utilize more
validation information than it presently has.
Our review of validation procedures brought our attention to the
managerial end result of the Board of Supervisor's order holding the
Welfare Director personally responsible for the eligibility control of an
ongoing caseload of 500 county employees who are also welfare recipients.
It appeared to us that the language of the Board order gave the Director no
choice but to bring this task into the Validations Unit where it could be
-8-
supervised by the Assistant Director in Charge of Programs. While it is
possible to understand how the Supervisors and the Department feel
particularly sensitive about these cases, what has happened is that an
Assistant Director has been placed in direct charge of a caseload, which
has in turn forced one of the most wasteful and illogical uses of top
management we encountered in the study. It would also seem to be a very
critical reflection on the competency of the total eligibility staff and
the Task Force recommended transfer of the employee/recipient caseload
back to the Division level and the competent supervision of a Grade I
Supervisor.
SECTION IV. Social Services. It was disappointing not to be
able to suggest more definitive directions for public welfare social
services now, some months after caseload separation. We sub-contracted a
portion of our services study component and it yielded the finding that
there is a wide difference in the perception of services rendered and
received, between worker and client a result that did not surprise us
at all. We do feel that one major benefit of our services study was that
it took us into each branch office for in-depth interviews with a random
sample of three-dozen social workers. The perspectives on the Department
we gained in this experience could have been achieved in no other way and
the recommendations we did make on services came primarily out of the
worker interviews and pilot projects within the Department.
We called for elimination of duplication and the improved
coordination of social services by public and private agencies in the
county and suggested a specific step whereby the county could direct its
own agencies to commence this activity. A Department-wide system of
accounting for client requests and social work responses should be
developed, and we discuss (pp. 100-113) a project currently underway in
the Family Services Division which may be the best such effort in the State
today. There should be greater flexibility in deployment of service staff
where needed and the absurd 60-to-1 caseload standard should be abandoned
because it is neither an adequate measure of performance nor is it an
effective method for allocating caseload; it is, in fact, virtually mean-
ingless. We have called for the classification of service skills by unit
and the development of specialized units for faster, more effective
utilization of staff. We recommend the Department adhere to a standard of
an initial services assessment within five days of application for aid.
We urge the improved development of community resources development and
the relocation of this activity within the social service function of the
Department. Finally, we recommend revision of the departmental training
program to meet these objectives.
We state some interim conclusions on services, based on our
experience in this study. First, we feel that services do have an
important role to perform within the welfare system. Secondly, we feel
that the services most effectively provided are short-term, crisis-oriented,
specific services that assist clients in overcoming an immediate, concrete
problem. We acknowledge a limited need for some services of a longer-term,
-9-
comprehensive nature but suggest these are "holding operations" until
cases can be effectively referred out to other agencies. Thirdly, we
feel it is not only possible but essential to move toward classification
of service problems not only in terms of types of problems, but the kinds
of staff required to meet them. Finally, we feel that separation of
services and income maintenance will still require close coordination.
SECTION V. Training. Our perspective on the training function
in the Department is that the reliability of the total income maintenance
function relates more directly to the ability and proficiency of the
eligibility worker than any other single factor. The general conclusion
of the Task Force is that the Department's training component must be
strengthened significantly with primary emphasis on the eligibility side
of the organization. We encountered three basic problems in the Training
Division:
1. The priorities set by the Training Division
are still heavily slanted toward the social
services when the most critical and immediate
needs are in eligibility and income maintenance.
2. The Training Division is not attached to the
organizational structure in a manner that
allows it to receive proper direction for
either its social services or its eligibility
training programs.
3. The training plans have been inadequate in terms
of their content, concept, duration and delivery.
Regarding training priorities, we found that the Training Division consists
of two six-member units with clerical backup, each supervised by a Grade II
Supervisor. One unit is in charge of the ongoing training of about 300
social workers. The other unit is concerned with the induction, initial
training, and in-service training of 350 eligibility technicians in AFDC
inducted in 1970 and for upgrading training of approximately 300 others
in the adult categories. Furthermore, it is responsible for training of
about 100 eligibility supervisors. The Task Force urgently recommends a
shift in training priorities which recognizes the mere numbers of people to
be trained, if nothing else, and proposes that fully three-fourths of the
training budget be devoted to eligibility training. If added eligibility
training staff cannot be provided, we propose shifting positions from the
social services training unit, and beyond that, to suspend training in
social services entirely except for needs justified agency-wide, as
approved by the Director, and to meet minimum State requirements. The
Task Force recommends that this be the allocation of training priorities
until there is a definite indication that eligibility worker proficiency
has improved, as measured by clearance of pending applications, number of
overdue renewals, and significant drops in overpayments and administrative
errors.
-10-
We feel that the assignment of Training Division to the Chief
Assistant Director who is not directly responsible for any aspect of
either social services or income maintenance is a mistake, in that
training problems must be seen as they manifest themselves in the day-to-
day activities of the operating division. We feel that in order to accomplish
the objectives of greater responsiveness and relevance to training needs
it will be necessary to split Training Division into two units, each of
which would be headed by a Grade II Supervisor responsible to proposed
Assistant Directors in charge of Income Maintenance and Social Services.
With regard to the training plan itself, the Task Force proposes
a shift from classroom to on-the-job training, and a shortening of the
initial classroom orientation in order to improve the relevance of training
and expose trainees to closely supervised work situations as early as
possible. Classroom training in this format would serve mainly as a
screening device, to identify slow learners as well as those with special
aptitudes, to determine whether an employee should be used in an intake or
a continuing caseload, and in which aid program.
SECTION VI. Fraud Control. Our chapter on fraud control processes
is one of the shorter entries in the study, not because we do not believe
more effort could have profitably been devoted to review of this area.
Rather, it is because of our conviction that it is futile to try to control
fraud by anything done after it occurs. The most effective control of fraud
incidence is not through larger investigative staffs, midnight raids, loading
up court calendars with prosecutions, etc. The most effective attack on
fraud is through strong initial eligibility investigations, increasing the
frequency of client contact to the greatest extent possible, and doing better
initial and continuing verification and documentation of client information.
For one thing, we would have to agree that fraud control processes
are extremely expensive in terms of results. Out of 579 investigations
completed by the Special Investigation Unit in 1970, 31 convictions were
obtained. Of course, only half of the completed investigations yielded
sufficient evidence or suspicion of fraud to warrant referral to the District
Attorney, but 275 cases were nevertheless referred. Our review of over-
payments suggests that losses in 80% of the cases are less than $200. We
estimate that the investigation costs in the determination of loss phase
of the investigation to average almost $300 per case. Recoveries, in turn,
are probably less than 10% of discovered losses. Since these accounting
aspects of overpayment investigation are primarily related to State and
Federal subventions we recommend an averaging of losses in order to reduce
the time spent on accounting-type investigations.
With regard to the low conviction rate on cases referred to the
District Attorney, we urge an earlier review with District Attorney trial
staff to screen out cases in which there are factors likely to interfere
with formal prosecution in order that more effort can be devoted to those
cases that are stronger from a prosecution standpoint.
-11-
With regard to State regulations which impose virtually impossible
constraints on the conduct of all fraud investigation (see pp. 155-56), our
general recommendation in regard to investigative policy is that there be a
distinction between the kind of investigation allowed after probability of
fraud has been established and the kind of investigation that can be
conducted before probability of fraud is established. Clearly, there are
practical and legitimate reasons for loosening investigative restrictions
after probability of fraud is evident.
Finally, with respect to the organizational location of the
Special Investigation Unit, we sensed at least a theoretical conflict in
locating it under the supervision of the Chief of Family Services Division,
a unit which SIU is called upon to investigate.
SECTION VII. Absent Parent Procedures. We credit the county
with making some much needed major revisions in absent parent procedures
which redefined departmental responsibilities between Welfare and District
Attorney, developed a uniform payment schedule for child support, allowed
for faster, more effective enforcement of child support regulations, and
allowed for computerization and centralization of controls on absent parent
accounts. We do recommend a progress report on effectiveness of the new
procedures prior to submission of the 1972-73 budget requests.
SECTION VIII. The Planning Process. This chapter is a brief
administrative case study around which the Task Force supports its position
for an improved planning component in the Department. It deals with the
Department's 1970 experience in attempting to integrate intake and
continuing eligibility caseloads. We feel it demonstrates many things,
including the hazards of using line executives with vested interests as
planning staff, the undue influence of vague, generalized social service
considerations in what was basically an income maintenance management
problem, the influence of State Department of Social Welfare staff
exercised by their veto power over local planning effort, management's
loss of control over basic information needed to run the Department, and
the Department's inability to respond rapidly to its own internally
produced evidence on the best course of action. It is the only chapter of
the report which did not directly result in specific recommendations, but
its location preceding the chapter on The Organization Plan is intentional.
SECTION IX. The Organization Plan. Our proposal for departmental
reorganization includes three major elements (see chart, pp. 233-34):
1. The consolidation of existing management and
quality control staff within the Department
behind a new position. designated Assistant
Director for Management. This would include
the departmental personnel officer, and involve
the transfer of Validations, and Appeals and
Complaints from the Assistant Director for
Programs as well as the transfer of the Special
Investigations Unit from Family Services Division
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2. The staffing of a Management Analysis Section
within Management Division with no less than
three well-qualified analysts to perform the
internal planning activities now conducted by
Division Chiefs and other ad hoc committees.
3. The completion of the caseload separation plan
throughout the management structure of the
Department, through the development of Division
Chiefs whose exclusive, or primary concerns
are either income maintenance or social services,
and the recruitment of Assistant Directors for
Social Services and for Income Maintenance. This
proposal is actually facilitated by the Department's
move to 300-man offices in the North Oakland and
Hayward areas. We propose these larger depart-
mental facilities, in addition to the Main Branch,
be converted to exclusive or primary use as area
income maintenance centers with the smaller 150-
man offices that the county will maintain in
Berkeley, East Oakland, and Bond Street converted
exclusively to social service functions. The
Fremont office, because of special geographic and
transportation considerations, should be staffed
as a dual income maintenance and social service
office, as at present. The net effect of separation
at the Division Chief level, their redeployment to
new office facilities, and the separation and
reassignment of the training function to the
Grade II Supervisor level is a reduction in the
number of Division Chiefs from nine to six. The
net effect of the proposed reorganization at the
Assistant Director level is an increase of one
position; this would include Assistant Directors
for Management, Fiscal and Office Services, Income
Maintenance, and Social Services.
These three major components of the proposed reorganization -
consolidation of management personnel behind a new Assistant Director for
Management, the staffing of a unit for internal management analysis and
planning, and the completion of caseload separation throughout the manage-
ment structure should finally achieve not only the benefits anticipated
for social services from caseload separation, but for income maintenance
as well.
We make three other recommendations in this chapter that are
related to personnel administration. In our review of division head staff,
it developed that none of the nine incumbents had ever been formally
evaluated for performance as division heads, and one had not been evaluated
since 1956! While a certain cynicism regarding usefulness of employee
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performance evaluation appears warranted, we felt that this was stretching
things a bit too far and we therefore proposed a formal system of annual
evaluations involving supervisor/employee discussion and written reports
be installed and applied to each ACWD employee below the position of
Director.
We also proposed revision of the Division Chief class specifi-
cation be broadened to require education and experience in supervision and
management, and that the present emphasis on promotion up through the
social service series be eliminated, or that two kinds of Division Chief
be created -- one for social services and one for income maintenance.
We also recommended distinctions between the social services and
eligibility series at the Grade II Supervisory level be eliminated, that a
common Grade II class be created which emphasizes education and experience
in supervision and management and that future recruitment be not only
promotional but open to applicants outside the Department.
We also propose two important items for study by the proposed
Management Analysis Section: study of separation of eligibility and
services in General Assistance and study and resolution of the issue of
workload standards for eligibility workers.
We also take serious exception in this chapter to 1970 reorgani-
zation proposals made by the State Department of Social Welfare which
recommended what appeared to us as a pattern of diffused and decentralized
and uncoordinated management staff. The State's recommendations implied
a conception of administration as essentially a constellation of accounting,
clerical, and paperwork procedure services rather than functions that are
connoted by the term management. There was, in addition, a totally absurd
proposal for an "Office of the Director" in which the Director would
"articulate policy" and involve himself in community relations while
delegating internal administration to a deputy.
SECTION X. The Work Incentive Program. This chapter represents
perhaps the only major philosophical excursion in the report in that it
concludes that efforts to resolve unemployment through current manpower
programs have failed and that they have failed because they rely primarily
on a theory that says most people are unemployed because of emotional or
educational barriers. We contend, in this chapter, that the greatest
barrier to employment is lack of jobs and that the WIN program is a very
expensive failure because it has created an elaborate structure and
methodology for training people for jobs that don't exist.
We are even more appalled to find that in addition to the WIN
program we have managed to retain in many of our urban counties staffs
that were once responsible for conduct of the manpower program which
preceded WIN which was the Community Work and Training Program administered
by welfare departments. The rationale for retention of these units is
that they are necessary to provide "coordination" between county welfare
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departments and the WIN program which is located within the Department of
Human Resources Development. In Alameda County this unit, designated
Employment Rehabilitation Service, consists of 24 positions with 1970-71
staff salary costs of $215,000. Of course, the ERS unit has been assigned
responsibility for Educational Training Services and General Assistance
employment review but neither of these latter functions loom as major
responsibilities in the total operations of the Alameda County Welfare
Department.
We have, therefore, recommended the decentralization of WIN
coordination, ETS, and General Assistance employment review to social
service staff at branch office locations and transfer of any clerical,
accounting or statistical controls that should be retained for WIN, ETS
and GA functions to the Department's Fiscal Section. In a recommendation
to the State and Federal governments we propose complete transfer of the
WIN program and WIN enrollees to the Department of Labor and Human Resources
Development and that all such enrollees in an active training program be
removed from welfare rolls entirely and that related grant and training
allowances be administered through the Department of Human Resources
Development. Finally, we have proposed that the mission of the WIN program
be sharply directed from emphasis on treatment of personal barriers and
institutional training to job development and on-the-job training.
8-30-71
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