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[Welfare] - Management Study - Alameda County Welfare Department, 11/11/1971 (3 of 4)
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Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
Digital Library Collections
This is a PDF of a folder from our textual collections.
Collection: Reagan, Ronald: Gubernatorial Papers,
1966-74: Press Unit
Folder Title: [Welfare] - Management Study -
Alameda County Welfare Department,
11/11/1971 (3 of 4)
Box: P39
To see more digitized collections visit:
https://reaganlibrary.gov/archives/digital-library
To see all Ronald Reagan Presidential Library inventories visit:
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Contact a reference archivist at: [email protected]
Citation Guidelines: https://reaganlibrary.gov/citing
National Archives Catalogue: https://catalog.archives.gov/
and Institutions Code and amendments to present
regulations;
2. FSD will control all absent parent accounts
through computerization of these controls, which
will eliminate the role of Central Collections;
3. If the absent parent fails to comply with directives,
a criminal complaint will be issued. A warrant
will be processed and the parent will be taken
to court;
4. The violating parent will be placed on court proba-
tion and will be supervised by a team from the
District Attorney's office;
5. All child support accounts currently handled by
Central Collections, both welfare and nonwelfare,
will be transferred to the jurisdiction of the Family
Support Division.
These changes have necessitated transfer of some staff from Central
Collections to FSD, and the addition of 13 new positions to FSD. It can
be appreciated, of course, that the move places a law enforcement problem
with a law enforcement agency, it eliminates procedural delays in contact-
ing absent parents at point of initial contact or when payments become
delinquent, and it clearly demarks departmental responsibility between
Welfare and the District Attorney for parts of this problem.
In addition to its major goals of increasing child support from
absent parents and encouraging parental responsibility, the new procedures
- 167 -
simplify the work of the eligibility technician. They eliminate the
worker's need for specialized interviewing skills and judgment in this
area; there is no need for direct contact between the absent parent and
the worker; the worker no longer has to set up a support agreement based
on limited information and no longer has to determine whether the absent
parent is "cooperating.' The reader interested in further details under
the new procedure should refer to Appendix D.
The new absent parent child support procedures have been com-
menced with high hopes. Their effectiveness depends upon whatever im-
provements can be gained through speeding up the initial contact with the
absent parent and in delivering a clear indication that the county regards
his responsibilities seriously. They also depend upon the effectiveness
of probation or the threat of probation as an enforcement device. In
this area, experience appears to be mixed. While Probation Department re-
ports that informal probation does not appear to have worked too well as
a collections device, the Family Support Division reports that out of 75
cases now on informal probation and responsible to FSD, 55 cases continue
to provide support. For these reasons, and generally because we feel it
advisable to constantly evaluate any such effort,
46. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT A FORMAL EVALUATION OF THE NEW CHILD
SUPPORT PROCEDURE BE JOINTLY ACCOMPLISHED BY APPROPRIATE STAFF FROM THE
WELFARE DEPARTMENT AND FAMILY SUPPORT DIVISION PRIOR TO THE DEADLINE FOR
DEPARTMENTAL SUBMISSION OF 1972-73 BUDGET REQUESTS, AND THAT THIS EVALUA-
TION BE SPECIFICALLY DIRECTED TOWARD
1) COST-BENEFIT RATIOS OF THE NEW PROCEDURE;
- 168 -
2) COMPARISON OF ALAMEDA COUNTY PERFORMANCE IN ABSENT
PARENT CONTRIBUTIONS WITH THAT OF OTHER COUNTIES IN
THIS AREA;
3) RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CHANGE OR IMPROVEMENT IN THESE
PROCEDURES.
Since the whereabouts of most absent parents is unknown, the
above procedure can, of course, apply only to those with whom the county
is in contact. Recommendations to improve a county's ability to locate
absent parents frequently take the form of relaxation of confidentiality
laws pertaining to certain government records, particularly those of the
Internal Revenue Service and state income tax agencies. Such a proposal
even became an issue in the late deliberations on the recent welfare
reform measure in the California Legislature, particularly with respect
to disclosure of reported income of children of applicants for aid.
Our review of the possible use of federal and state income
tax records to locate absent parents, and for other income data very
strongly suggests that further intrusion into these records for absent
parent purposes is not warranted at this point. Quite aside from the
question of confidentiality, income tax records are a poor locator de-
vice, and information derived from these records is generally quite dated.
It may be interesting to note that the 1967 Social Security
Amendments do make it possible to tap IRS records in connection with absent
parents, provided certain preconditions are met. First, obviously, the
inquiry must be in connection with a current AFDC application. Secondly,
the local Welfare Department must certify that all other avenues to develop-
669 I I
ment of information have been vigorously pursued. Thirdly, the inquiry
must involve a court order for child support which is not being complied
with, and, finally, the Social Security number of the absent father must
be known by the mother. After all these conditions are met, the inquiry
is forwarded to the Internal Revenue Service through the State Department
of Social Welfare. Once every four weeks, Internal Revenue will make an
EDP pass to retrieve data related to the inquiry which in any event is
restricted to address listed on the absent parent's return and date of
last filing. Even this information may not be for the most recent in-
come tax year, depending on time of year inquiry is made. The futility
of this effort is underscored by the fact that in a very recent 90-day
period in California, only 4 absent parent cases were found to even
qualify on all points as valid for IRS referral.
Almost the only information useful in absent parent cases that
is possessed by IRS would be the name and address of dependents in order
to determine conformity between absent parents' declaration of dependents
for income tax with those for which responsibility is conceded in an AFDC
case. While the threat of a federal prosecution in cases involving con-
flicting declarations would possibly be an effective child support enforce-
ment device, this tapping of previously filed tax returns should probably
not occur until other changes take place, such as revision of law and
regulation to require the declaration of dependents on a tax return (not
on withholding statements) to conform to the family budget unit in AFDC
cases. This, however, is peripheral to our central purpose in this sec-
tion of the report.
- 170 -
Our review of this question of finding the whereabouts and
other data on the absent parent indicates to us that an excellent device
already exists in the Central Registry of the State Department of Justice.
The small staff of this office, with access to the records of the Depart-
ment of Human Resources Development, Department of Motor Vehicles, and
Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, has been able to
provide an identification on 91% of all absent parent inquiries forwarded.
Quite frequently, this identification yields data from all three state
sources. While identification is a long way from apprehension and enforce-
ment, the data provided is in most cases quite useful. In our visit to
the Central Registry in Sacramento, one case selected at random disclosed,
for example:
1. Physical description, photograph, identifying marks
of absent father;
2. License numbers, make, and registration of automobiles
driven when stopped for motor vehicle violations;
3. Complete arrest record;
4. Other marriages, divorces, and children;
5. Last place of employment, position held, earnings for
last two quarters;
6. Most recent (and probably current) address;
7. The fact that the absent father was now receiving un-
employment insurance and has a regularly scheduled
appointment at an office of the Human Resources Depart-
ment at a specific date and time and at a specific window
of that office to receive an unemployment check.
- 171 -
Central Registry staff tells us that this case is not atypical.
In fact, in order to pose an identification problem, an inquiry would have
to be made on an absent father who had never worked, never bought a car,
or been fingerprinted. This sort of informational capability suggests
that before new data sources are sought which further relax confidentiality
it would be wise to use and improve what is already available. The im-
provement has already been made by Alameda - in terms of transferring
absent parent inquiry to the District Attorney's office. The Central
Registry reports serious problems in responding to inquiries forwarded
from Welfare Departments, and comments that District Attorney inquiries
are generally more complete. Reminiscent of other findings of this study,
standards once again appear necessary - in this case to achieve maximum
use of available data.
Our inquiry into the processes of the Central Registry yielded
yet another area for legislative attention - the adoption of a uniform
statistical report for use in the offices of district attorneys and the
Attorney General in administering child support activities. There is a
report format which has undergone study by district attorney and legislative
committees for at least 10 years. It is brief, contained on one page,
and is adaptable to any reporting frequency. We include a portion of it
here as an exhibit, and as can be seen it contains summary data on cases,
procedures, collections, and dispositions of collections. Because of the
significance of the form in analyzing a county's performance in child
support activities,
- 172 -
47. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT LEGISLATION BE SOUGHT REQUIRING SUB-
MISSION TO THE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL BY DISTRICT ATTORNEYS
OF A RECURRING UNIFORM STATISTICAL REPORT SUMMARIZING CASE AND COLLECTIONS
ACTIVITY IN THE AREA OF CHILD SUPPORT.
- 173 -
DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S MONTHLY STATISTICAL REPORT
FAMILY SUPPORT DIVISION
TO: CENTRAL REGISTRY
FROM:
OFFICE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL
COUNTY
ROOM 500, WELLS FARGO BLDG.
FOR:
5th STREET & CAPITOL MALL
19
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA 95814
MONTH
CASE SUMMARY
PROCEDURES
NEW CASES
WELFARE
NON-WELF.
OTHER
S,I 1 0
TOTAL
CIVIL
NEW CASES
CONTEMPTS
ASSIGNM.
ATTACH.
CLOSED
OPEN
4702 A
WELFARE
REOPEN
4702 B
NON-WELFARE
REQUEST NO ACT.
4703
OTI's
URESA
RESPONDING
TOTAL
URESA
INITIATING
CASES CLOSED
231.5
PATERNITY
OTHER
TOTAL
VOLUNTARY AGREEMENTS
LOCATION ACTIVITY
COMPLAINTS FILED
270 P C
CENTRAL REGISTRY INQUIRY (CR-60)
BENCH WARRANTS
ABSENT PARENTS LOCATED
EXTRADITIONS
COLLECTIONS
I.
ACTUAL COLLECTIONS
1. Voluntary Support Agreements
$
2. Criminal Actions (Probation)
3. Civil Actions
4. URESA - Responding
5. URESA - Initiating
6. Other
TOTAL RECEIPTS
$
II.
DISPOSITION OF MONEY COLLECTED
A. WITHIN CALIFORNIA
1. Forward to welfare
$
2. Forward to C/W (welfare Direct)
3. Forward to C/W (Non-Welfare)
4. Forward to Other Calif. Agencies
5. Forward Out-of-State (URESA Responding)
6. Other
CALIFORNIA TOTAL
$
-17/+-
SECTION VIII
THE PLANNING PROCESS
THE PLANNING PROCESS
INTRODUCTION
After six months of study we believe it is fair to say that this
department has operated in a state of crisis for the last year and a half.
Furthermore, we believe that it will continue to do so unless it is staffed
by a much stronger internal research and advance planning capability which
can exert much greater influence on management decisions. We could have
discussed organizational planning in the context of different specific
problems because there is a definite pattern in the way nearly all problems
are presented and resolved by management in this department. We believe we
would have made many of the same observations had we been discussing
production standards for eligibility workers, workload of eligibility
technicians, or the development of a social services program.
The staff of the Task Force chose to make its case for better
planning around the planning and implementation of the department's separation
plan for AFDC started in January, 1970. We did so because we think it
represents probably the largest and most significant planning efforts of the
department in recent years and because the outcome of the decisions were
still very much in evidence throughout the entire study period. In one
sense it was an abnormal period for the study to take place and this review of
separation helps to give a perspective on the department that is important in
balancing judgments about the study's findings and recommendations. For all
these reasons we have tried to provide a fairly detailed account of what
happened.
Nearly all planning is done by committees of division chiefs and
- 175 -
their supporting staff holding line positions. The development of the
original plan for separation was prepared in that way. That, itself, is
an inherent weakness in the organization's ability to plan systematically
or well. Division chiefs are line personnel. Planning is a staff function
and it is very difficult to mix them successfully.
THE FIRST SEPARATION PLAN
The original separation plan contained three key administrative
features. Each is important. The first was that intake aspects of eligi-
bility (initial eligibility determination and budget computation) be
separated from continuing aspects of eligibility (the long-term and ongoing
process of recertifying eligibility and budget adjustment). Administratively
it would have involved establishing completely segregated intake and ongoing
units with separate supervision up to the Grade II Supervisor in each division.
Secondly, it proposed keeping the positions of trained budget
clerks that already existed in the organization. The budget clerks were to
be used in central pools.
Thirdly, the plan retained the existing positions of experienced
screeners who did initial interviewing of the applicants and maintained
certain controls over the application registers which have always been the
department's primary source of basic statistical data. This information on
applications, denials, and cases pending is the main source of information
needed for grant reimbursement. It is also used extensively by the State
for their own fiscal projects.
As simply as we can describe it the key concept of the plan was
based on the assumption that the handling of intake and ongoing cases were
two different administrative processes. Keeping them separate allowed for
- 176 -
some degree of specialization in supervision, narrowed training requirements
somewhat, and made it possible to develop a higher degree of competence
sooner among individual workers because they performed specialized tasks.
Retaining the budget clerks and the screeners was predicated on the know-
ledge that they were already trained and it was through their paperwork
that a good part of the eligibility process was being controlled. Again,
there was a degree of specialization possible and the logic was that the
whole conversion would be easier if certain, established parts of the existing
organization were left intact.
One cannot criticize the department for the effort expended in
preparing for separation. Literally, hundreds and hundreds of hours were
spent by division chiefs and various committees conducting generalized surveys
of other counties and in committee discussions. At least 32 planning meetings
were held between July, 1968 and December of 1969. But time alone does not
insure good planning. The whole planning effort, it seemed to us, was
basically a process of committee deliberation, loosely coordinated by top
management.
It was obvious from our review of the Committee minutes that there
had always been great differences among the staff and among the committees
on the way separation should be approached. It must be remembered, too,
that Alameda County was one of the first counties of its size to separate
intake and continuing cases in AFDC. The data collected from the other
counties showed little consistency in any of the pertinent factors. It is
very clear in hindsight that much of the data collected was terribly mis- -
leading. Major administrative questions cannot be resolved through
questionnaires.
- 177 -
THE FINAL SEPARATION PLAN
As the county moved closer to the target date of January, 1970
one faction of the staff still strongly favored a plan that provided for
keeping intake and ongoing aspects of eligibility separated. The Director,
himself, still supported this basic feature of the separation plan as late
as June and July of 1969. Between then and September, however, when the
final plan was submitted to the Board of Supervisors, something happened to
change the entire concept of the plan which had evolved to that point. All
three of the original planning concepts involving separate intake, screeners,
and budget clerks were dropped. The circumstances surrounding the decision
get somewhat obscure after July, 1969.
Keeping the screeners appears to have met resistance from the
State. It was the State's feeling that screeners could be used to disqualify
applicants in a pre-emptory manner before they could be interviewed by a
regular eligibility worker. How hard the department worked to keep them is
not certain but the State did threaten to disapprove of a separation plan
that included screeners. Without better evidence to show how screeners
would be used or the importance of them it was a difficult element of the
plan to defend anyway.
Retaining the budget clerks was abandoned in favor of trying to
get approval for smaller caseloads. That part of the decision involved
whether it was preferable to have the eligibility worker handle the budget
actions themselves over a smaller number of total cases or have a larger
caseload with the budgets prepared by the budget clerks. Again there was
no pilot data to indicate the advantage of one way or another. This element
of the plan was closely tied to the consideration of the third change.
- 178 -
The third change, and really vital one, to the plan was mainly a
client service consideration. Instead of regarding intake and ongoing as
separate specialized functions, it was decided to integrate intake and
ongoing by having the same worker handle both aspects of eligibility. At
issue here, we think, was the establishment of one plan intended tc emphasize
administrative efficiency, more control, and more specialization of function
and another that emphasized client service. Those who favored the integrated
approach or combining intake and ongoing functions felt that it was desirable
and advantageous to welfare clients because it would provide for the establish-
ment of a relationship between one worker and one client which would begin
with the intake process and which would continue as long as the client remained
in need of financial service. That, as we trace the history, was the central
administrative question the department tried to resolve in two years of
deliberations and one year of painful experience.
The State, of course, liked, very much, the idea of integration
and it was also strongly supported by a faction in the organization we
thought was composed mainly of social workers and those voicing the views of
the social workers and those of the M.S.W.'s in particular.
Management made its final decision influenced as much, we thought,
by a philosophic service notion as it was by a firm indication of what was
going to be administratively workable. That is not to say that client
considerations are not important but we think subsequent events only bear
out that clients' interest are also best protected by having a properly
planned and tightly controlled administrative process.
In any event, the alternative integrated plan was finally accepted
by management. A weighting standard was devised that allowed one intake
- 179 -
case to count as the equivalent of about 41/2 ongoing cases. The proportions
of intake and ongoing cases in a given caseload would vary, depending on the
number of intake cases a worker processed. Most of the activity in the
department since January, 1970 has been a matter of readjustment to the
problems created by the fateful decision made in September, 1969.
THE RESULT
The absolutely fatal flaw in the logic of the integrated caseload
plan soon showed up. It stemmed from the failure to recognize that in a
period of rapid growth in caseloads for each incoming or intake case a worker
handled 4.5 ongoing cases must go out the other end of his caseload. A
caseload was never static as long as a worker took any new cases. As these
incoming cases were discharged they were consolidated and given to a new
unit or new worker. The continuity that the department hoped to achieve
between the worker and her caseload was simply not possible. Transfers kept
every caseload in a constant state of movement.
The necessity of staffing for the formation of these new caseloads
made it urgent to cover them as soon as possible. The personnel and caseload
reporting system which controlled the staffing for new caseloads have never
worked in timely conjunction with each other. By the time a new monthly
caseload report showed a justification for a new position the caseload had
gone uncovered for a considerable period of time.
Ongoing caseloads were transferred into approved but vacant
positions with only the supervisor available to handle them. At times the
supervisors must have functioned more like eligibility technicians than they
did supervisors. They had little opportunity to review the work done by new
staff which were constantly coming into their units.
- 180 -
The priority of handling just incoming cases only meant that the
continuing cases were being neglected. This, naturally, was reflected by a
great jump in overdue renewals which we consider the most critical part of
the ongoing caseload function. By July the number of overdue renewals was
approaching 35% and was climbing steadily, as the graph illustrates.
- 181 -
ALAMEDA COUNTY WELFARE DEPARTMENT
Analysis of Overdue Renewals AFDC-FG
1970-1971
KEY
Total Renewals Overdue
Renewals Overdue one month Only
Renewals Overdue greater than one Month
.....
Percent
Percent
182 I I
40
40
30
30
20
20
10
10
0
O
7/70 8/70 9/70 10/70 11/70 12/70 1/71 2/71 3/71 4/71 5/71 6/71
The number of pending cases and unresolved applications was
increasing also. The law requires an AFDC application be accepted or denied
within 30 days. Pending applications increased about 300% during 1970. The
number of pending applications was almost 10% of the family groups in AFDC
by December, 1971.
This has tremendous consequence to the State. Fiscal projections
are based on the number of applications accepted. With such a high percent-
age of cases in an undertermined status it is obvious that fiscal planning at
both the State and local level is taking place with a large element of
uncertainty built into the projections. If this county is typical this one
table from the Welfare Commission report is illustrative of what has taken
place during the first year of separation. It gives some insight as well
into the condition of the department at the time this Task Force study was
commissioned.
Applications and Requests for Restoration
Pending at End of Month
Program
December 1970
December
1969
Old Age Security
645
684
Aid to Blind
84
79
Potentially, Self-Supporting Blind
2
2
Aid to Disabled
3,880
2,624
AFDC (Family Group)
2,446
987
AFDC (Unemployed)
855
149
AFDC (Boarding Homes)
129
63
General Assistance
529
297
Medi-Cal
1,987
956
Food Stamps - Non-Assistance
4,161
414
TOTAL
14,718
6,255
- 183 -
The problem of collecting the statistics on applications, denials,
and pending cases became practically impossible as a consequence of having
the information scattered over all the eligibility technicians. This, of
course, had been one of the main purposes in keeping screeners and separate
intake units. It would have limited the number of people in the organization
controlling the statistical process. Without this data the information
could not be fed to personnel which needed it to justify staffing for the
growth in caseload. A circle of circumstances had set in that could not
be checked. Management had effectively lost control of the information it
needed to run the department.
Another closely related problem in having all aspects of eligi- -
bility scattered over each worker was in getting enough copies of required
directives, interpretative memos and law changes distributed. There were
not enough copies to go around. Workers, then, were making decisions on
eligibility without the information necessary to do so.
At a time when the organization was hiring hundreds of eligibility
technicians the opportunity to evaluate them fully or even at all while still
on a probationary status was practically impossible, but it is certain that
a large percent of eligibility technicians found their way into permanent
status without ever having a performance evaluation. The unit production
reports show great discrepancy between the productivity of the eligibility
workers. Much of the problem can be traced to the first months of
separation when most of the eligibility technicians were qualified.
The combination of all these problems only meant that applications
were being handled too quickly with inexperienced, improperly supervised
workers and without thorough investigation. A high incidence of overpayments
- 184 -
and ineligible grants were the only possible outcome. By the time separation
was completed in July, 1970 it must have been obvious to management the
separation plan had not worked. The ratio of denials had reached an all time
low of 19% (see chart in Training Section). One review of errors in budget
computation and renewals in some sample caseloads a little later showed error
rates of 100% in the recorded renewals. It is no coincidence that the hardest
hitting part of the public reaction occurred about this time.
REACTION
Real cries of distress were coming to management from every level.
By July, 1970 some division chiefs were starting to seriously question the
basic concept of running intake and ongoing cases together. One of them
made an urgent appeal to management to reconsider the integrated idea and
set up a pilot project to assess the advantages of separating intake and
ongoing.
To be sure, it was written with the benefit of some experience, but
the simplicity of the proposal and the obvious necessity of it only made it
more apparent to us what the approach should have been in developing a
separation plan back in 1969. The Committee staff thought it was a fine
example of how internal research can be conducted at little cost and the
great value of it. The project was conducted over a two-month period but
had it been done earlier we feel it would have changed the whole course of
separation, and the department over the past 18 months.
Most importantly, it suggests to us there are ways of monitoring
how well these large, internal functions are working and there are very
objective types of measurement which management can apply to them. In fact,
this outline of the research design presents the main elements of a management
- 185 -
reporting system which must be installed to control the whole eligibility
and grant maintenance program.
It also makes us think that there is some research capability
existing in the organization. It must, however, at all costs be coordinated
better, be used early instead of later, and be given a much broader and far
reaching purpose in the decision-making process than it does now. We present
one excerpt from the internally-proposed pilot study as it was given to
management in about July or August, 1970:
PROPOSALS FOR ATTEMPTING TO REMEDY PROBLEMS AND DETERMINE
APPROPRIATE CASELOAD STANDARD.
In an attempt to resolve the problems outlined
above, two projects, one immediate and one long-range,
are being proposed for implementation:
I. A pilot project will be set up in the Fremont
office and in one section of the Central office. In
each office, one full Eligibility unit will handle
applications only in the month of September; and one
full unit will handle continuing cases only in the
month of September. In each office, there will be a
control unit which will continue to handle the case -
load in the present manner.
Further, during the month of September, the case-
load standards for the experimental units will be
flexible; i.e., the current caseload standard or a
higher or lower one can be tested by assessing the
actual number of applications or continuing cases that
can be adequately handled by the technicians in the
pilot units.
The objectives of this pilot project are:
1) to test the feasibility of the current
caseload standard of 120 cases (including
26 applications) and to provide data for
a recommendation to be submitted to the
Board of Supervisors on October 20, 1970;
2) to test the desirability of separated
intake and continuing caseload functions
in AFDC eligibility (although the intent
- 186 -
in separating these functions, the theory
was that the client should not have to
relate to more than one worker, it has
become apparent that this goal has been
unachievable in many instances, and that
the liabilities of an integrated caseload
have outweighed the assets).
The data which will be kept and assessed during the
September project period will be as follows:
1) Length of time in which applications are
processed. It appears that there has been
a tendency on the part of the over-burdened
technicians to approve most of their appli-
cations immediately for fear they will forget
about them. There has been a much higher rate
of emergency approvals since separation.
2) Accuracy of investigative work and other paper-
work. A check sheet will be devised to grade
these points.
3) Number of applications, approvals, and denials
weekly.
4) Accuracy of reports which are required.
5) Number of overpayment adjustments caused by
administrative errors and cause for errors.
6) Number of overdue renewals and current status
of renewals.
7) Number of budget changes out of period.
At the end of the pilot project month, the data will
be evaluated to determine whether the project should be
continued for a longer period.
This pilot proposal was accepted by management and started in late
August or September of 1970. It was the first piece of controlled study made
on the separation issue. Except for the two divisions involved it is not
really clear whether management advised the other division chiefs about the
project or not. We say this because by the time the research project was
underway the problems were so severe in some of the divisions that the chiefs
- 187 -
were starting to take matters into their own hands. At least one division
actually started to reorganize its personnel into separate intake and on-
going units as early as September. Management may have given a firm
direction on this, but we do not think SO. It was more like a tacet,
informal approval than it was a firm decision by management to break up
the integrated caseloads. It is not absolutely certain either what the
effect of the research was on the events that followed. It seemed to us
that most of the decisions were made independently of the pilot project's
results.
The staff thought this was a rather classic case study of where
good research simply came too late. After December the divisions just
gradually started to separate the caseloads and the second separation plan
was completed during the course of this study.
REFLECTION
There are, however, isolated places in the organization where
separation has not been completed and it is not a matter of not having
enough time. That would be understandable in view of all that has happened.
The staff feels that it is largely a consequence of the differences of
opinion which still exist among the division heads about the "service"
philosophy which should be present in the eligibility function. The fact
that management has not acted decisively towards one plan or the other
raises the most serious type of concern we have about the influence and
central direction management provides. It was our impression that the final
decision to separate intake and ongoing functions was made almost inde -
pendently of top management. Seeing the issue of integrated caseloads from
the point of view we did we are inclined to think that it is probably a
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credit to the division chiefs that they exercised initiative and took
independent action. Other division chiefs, however, feel strongly about
the client service feature in having integrated caseloads and this is
reflected in their divisional operations.
Neither situation can be condoned. The idea of separating
intake and ongoing functions in eligibility is either a good idea or it
is not. Above all, it is not the type of decision that should be made at
the division level. We can accept differences of opinion existing between
the staff on every administrative issue. But management's role is to
resolve those differences decisively and to be sure that their decisions are
the ones controlling line operations and administrative procedures. This
management, in our judgment, seems to have a great deal of difficulty in
doing that. We see this organization moving around and away from its
management and not in accordance with it.
It is important to settle the separation issue on an agencywide
basis for other reasons. A uniform management reporting system cannot be
developed, for instance, as long as there are basic differences in the way
the primary functions of eligibility are handled. The differences in
reporting systems and in the way similar functions are organized between the
divisions is so great now that it is practically impossible to make meaningful
intra-agency comparisons of any kind. This was one of the biggest sources of
frustration the staff encountered in the study. It is not an exaggeration
to say that the department operates more like six or seven separate organiz-
ations than as one unified agency.
We believe the division chiefs feel this way also. The staff's
confirmed impression was that they feel alone, isolated with their individual
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problems and act without firm direction from above. They are trying to
resolve their individual problems without a clear conception of what agency-
wide goals are. In this kind of situation one cannot possibly expect to
find controls and work procedures which are uniform enough to be effective
or information from an agencywide standpoint.
If these observations are valid those readers with management
experience know that we are saying something that has serious implications.
Our comments are deep thrusts at top management's ability to simply manage
and control which is the acid test of administration in welfare or any other
enterprise.
It is important, therefore, to balance these assertions and see
them in the light of other staffing deficiencies and structural weaknesses
in the organization that bear directly on how well management is equipped to
function. It was from this perspective that the Task Force formulated
several recommendations that follow in the next section. To those who do
not know the organization intimately they may seem small and hard to relate
but they are not.
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SECTION IX
THE ORGANIZATION PLAN
THE ORGANIZATION PLAN
The subject matter of this study has been so bewildering in its
array of specialized terms and subtle technicalities that we must stop at
this point and attempt a summary of our analysis in the simplest words
possible. We do this here because our focus will shortly be directed toward major
recommendations of this study, which deal with the departmental organization
plan.
Aside from the large, important questions of major social and
economic policy, all issues in the field of welfare eventually reduce to a
question of management. Regardless of major changes in program policies,
benefit levels, aid categories, or the controlling governmental jurisdiction,
the management problem still remains.
Within that, there are two central concerns for welfare manage- -
ment today -- and for tomorrow: the conduct of an income maintenance system
having eligibility controls that are generally accepted as reasonable and
reliable, and the provision of social services that are realistic and
effective in terms of client needs and the public interest. This simplistic
statement of welfare management objectives has a function: it provides a
direction for the application of management processes.
The critical concerns for welfare management are not such things
as the constant changes in regulations, nor the complicated problems of the
federal/state/county relationship, nor the lack of public consensus on
welfare goals. These are simply the environment of welfare. It is a tough
environment, but it should not be offered as a reason for failure of manage -
ment. It is an environment, after all, that has in part been created by
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management failure throughout the system in the first place. Management is
a specialized function, no less than social work. The welfare executive
must rely upon training, tested judgment, and specialized sensitivities that
are just as unique as those qualities in the child welfare worker with the
master's degree in social work. It is hardly any more appropriate to operate
large income maintenance systems with veterans of the social service system
than it would be to staff welfare adoptions units with graduates of the
Harvard School of Business, or M.I.T.
It is useful at this point to back off from our discussion of
welfare to see if we cannot look at management as a concept - to see if it
cannot be isolated and defined and then reintroduced and applied to the
welfare organizational setting.
Some of the simplest, most incisive observations ever made on the
nature of management processes can be found in a small book written 35 years
ago by Chester I. Barnard. In the Functions of the Executive, he defined
an organization as "a system of consciously coordinated personal activities
or forces." The basic functions of the executive in this system are only
three: 1) to provide a system of communication; 2) to promote the securing
of essential efforts, and 3) to formulate and define purpose.
Barnard talks about these three executive functions as providing
the basis for much functional specialization in organization. They are used
to establish the specialized responsibilities of executives or leaders. He
cautions, however, that these functions "have no separate concrete existence."
They are "parts or aspects" of the organizational process as a whole:
The means utilized are to a considerable extent
concrete acts logically determined; but the essential
aspect of the process is the sensing of the organization
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as a whole and the total situation relevant to it. It
transcends the capacity of merely intellectual methods,
and the techniques of discriminating the factors of the
situation. The terms pertinent to it are "feeling,"
"judgment," "sense," "proportion," "balance," "appropri-
ateness. It is a matter of art rather than science, and
is aesthetic rather than logical.1
To acknowledge that the executive process is illusive and illogical, and to
recognize that executive leadership is more art than science is not to deny
the usefullness of administrative analysis or to reject as fruitless the
attempt to introduce logical processes into the management of welfare.
Rather, these conclusions, applied to the chaotic environment of welfare
administration only underscore the need for a more "consciously coordinated"
management approach.
Let us now discuss these understandings in the context of welfare.
Most income maintenance revisions are made at either the federal or state
level. For example, let us say that the welfare department receives a
notice from SDSW on May 20 that all AFDC cases must be renewed by June 1 to
include a new standard of maximum payments required by a recent court
decision. However, another court action later in the same month nullifies
this action after the work has been mostly accomplished. The determination
of grant levels in particular is constantly subject to modification by
court action or new regulation.
The departmental reaction to these problems has been to withdraw
personnel from line operations to accomplish studies for implementation of
changes. This diverts attention of key line personnel from the operational
sector for the purpose of doing implementation studies which in many instances
1 Barnard, Chester I., The Functions of the Executive, Harvard University
Press, 1954, p. 235.
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are incomplete or late in accomplishment. Operations are thus slighted in
the interests of doing incomplete, vulnerable staff work.
It is obvious that goal-setting in a public welfare department
must be done with the realization that partial or complete alteration might
be required in a short period of time. The department must always be in a
position of readiness to alter its basic course on written notice. The
argument that it is senseless to plan or set time schedules because of the
probability of change is senseless in itself. The fact that a plan to
complete renewals by a certain date may be modified by two court decisions
and two sets of emergency regulations in two weeks does not necessarily
mean that the basic goal is fundamentally altered or that responsibility
for accomplishment shifted. The task for the administrator is to reset
schedules based on knowledge of workload commitments and departmental
priorities at the time. It also requires an understanding and implementation
of Barnard's three basic executive functions -- the maintenance of an open,
two-way system of communication, the constant formulation and definition of
purpose (which is the exercise of decision-making responsibilities), and
the executive capacity to secure the essential staff efforts. Organizational
and management readiness to accept and implement change without impairment
of basic departmental objectives or performance is thus one of the important
goals of our proposed departmental organizational plan.
Before getting into that, we should note that in March, 1970, the
State Department of Social Welfare, through its Administrative Surveys Bureau,
issued a report of an administrative review of the Alameda County Welfare
Department. Comment on this last major reorganization proposal, shown in
chart form below, will help illustrate the need for alternative reorganization
recommendations made in this report.
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DIRECTOR
Staff
Administrative
Welfare
Family & Child
Staff Advisory
Development
Officer
Assistant
Commission
Adv. Committee
Committee
DEPUTY DIRECTOR
Complaints &
Personnel
Organization
Appeals
Officer
& Management
Program Liaison
Special Programs
Fraud
Special
Blind
Prevention
Projects
Task Force (s)
Eligibility
Community
Medical
Control
Resources
Consultants
Assistant Director
Program
195 I I
Assistant Director
Program
Assistant Director
Consultants
Services
Administrative
Consultants
Income Maintenance
Child Welfare #
Food Stamps
Systems &
General
#
Fiscal
Emp. & Social
Procedures
Services
Berkeley
Rehab.
Clerical
Berkeley
Support
Bond Street
Consultant
Bond Street
Central
Central
East Oakland
East Oakland
Fremont
Fremont
Hayward
Hayward
$
To be integrated gradually
The State had been invited by the department to conduct an
administrative review mainly to reflect organizationally the new require-
ments for caseload separation. The State team consisted of four staff
members who spent two weeks in the field analyzing the department and
district offices. In a 15-page report and 7-page supplement SDSW identified
in a general sense some of the problems found by our own study. It refers
to the "lack of built-in machinery for planning" and the extra-curricular
use of high-level staff for this function. It talks about the need to
maintain coordination between services and income maintenance functions,
and to have training "closely identified either with social services or
income maintenance." It reported that one of the problems of the department
was the heavy involvement of the Director in detailed administrative
activities and that his real priorities should be in articulating departmental
policy rather than occupation with the means for implementing policy.
The State proposed an "Executive Office of the Director" in which
the Director would assume a role as the major departmental spokesman in the
community and in relations with control agencies and other departments. In
order to give the Director time for these activities, it was recommended
he be provided with an administrative assistant and that the primary
responsibility for internal management be delegated to the Deputy Director
(who is the Chief Assistant Director).
The "lack of staff assistance to top management both in programs
and administration" was the basis of the State's recommendation for an
Organization and Management Analyst position, attached to the office of
Deputy Director. The management function of Departmental Personnel Officer
was also attached to the Deputy Director.
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The need for coordinating social service and income maintenance
programs was recognized by a proposed "Chief of Program Liaison." While we
also recognize the need for this coordination, we question the wisdom of
casting the position responsible for it in a staff role, outside of a command
channel, where the formal exercise of this important responsibility should
be located.
Although recognizing the need for a close working tie between
training and "social services or income maintenance," the State lodged the
Staff Development (or training) Officer with the "Executive Office of the
Director." The reasons offered by the State for this are, in our judgment,
hardly relevant to the real departmental training needs we found and reported
in the Training Section of this study:
There is great need in all welfare departments
for improving the quality of social services. The
separation of income maintenance provides an oppor-
tunity beyond what was possible before when social
workers were bogged down with eligibility deter-
minations. In Alameda County, the Director himself
has the qualifications and background to provide the
impetus needed in identifying goals. The training
program should have the full benefit of his profes-
sional competence and leadership while the day-to-
day supervision should be carried out by the Deputy
Director in close consultation with the three Assistant
Directors.
The State report also called for a Chief of Special Program Operations
who would report to the Deputy Director and be responsible "for a section
made up of a variety of miscellaneous functions." One of these functions,
properly performed, is SO intimately related to services that we cannot
understand why the Community Services Coordinator was not placed under the
supervision of the Assistant Director for Services; the State report does not
discuss it in its narrative sections.
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The Chief of Special Programs would also direct another social
service activity -- Blind Aid. Interestingly enough, this position would
also be responsible for two functions which we propose for inclusion in
Management Division: Fraud Prevention and Eligibility Control. Social
service program direction should not, of course, be mixed with management
controls of a fiscal accountability nature.
The SDSW study also proposed a position of Assistant Director of
Administrative Services, who would be responsible for a group of activities
centered around direction of fiscal, accounting, and clerical services and
controls, in addition to the present Systems and Procedures Unit. The latter
functions mainly as a codifier of local policies and procedures and is heavily
involved in liaison with electronic data processing and fiscal considerations.
We have gone into this review of the 1970 SDSW organization
proposals for Alameda Welfare partly because they typify much that has
historically been wrong with the State Department's ideas about local welfare
management. We do not know whether the SDSW proposal for Alameda stems from
a failure to understand basic management concepts, inability to appreciate
the severity of the welfare management crisis, or little compromises worked
out to accommodate existing staff. We can say that it is fortunate the county
has not seen fit to follow most of the State's recommendations.
One of the major flaws in the plan is its pattern of diffused,
decentralized, and uncoordinated management staff. Here is a schematic
description:
This Position:
Reports to:
Administrative Assistant
Director
Staff Development (Training)
Officer
Director
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Personnel Officer
Deputy Director
Organization and Management
Analyst
Deputy Director
Chief of Program Liaison
Deputy Director
Chief of Special Program
Operations
Deputy Director
Head of Fraud Unit
Chief of Special Program
Operations
Head of Eligibility Control
Chief of Special Program
Unit
Operations
Systems and Procedures
Assistant Director,
Administrative Services
Head, Fiscal Office
Assistant Director,
Administrative Services
General Services Supervisor
Assistant Director,
Administrative Services
The Director, Deputy Director, and proposed Chief of Special Programs
would all carry direct supervision workloads under this plan, and access by
middle management to departmental administrators and the director would be
impeded. With regard to the positions of Director and Deputy (or Chief
Assistant) Director, an essential aspect of their organizational role is -- to
paraphrase Barnard -- "the sensing of the organization as a whole and the total
situation relevant to it." It is a common failing in administrative practice
to assume that a greater control is effected by having direct supervision of
and responsibility for several subordinate units. Although it is
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sometimes not consciously recognized, this compulsive involvement in detail
conflicts with the responsibility for making the critical departmental
decisions that, while not required daily, are so important to the depart-
ment and its goals.
The SDSW 1970 proposal, by decentralizing management staff through-
out the organization's executive structure, would fail to achieve the
coordination of management processes and the quality of management results
that would be possible by concentrating this staff in a single unit. Another
major failing of the State's proposal is its conception of administration,
which is viewed essentially as a constellation of accounting, clerical, and
paperwork procedure services, rather than the functions that are connoted by
the term "management" with all that implies for decision-making, communica-
tion, securing effort from people, etc.
48. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT THE EXISTING MANAGEMENT STAFF WITHIN
THE DEPARTMENT BE CONSOLIDATED WITHIN A UNIT DESIGNATED AS MANAGEMENT
DIVISION AND THAT THESE DEPARTMENTAL STAFF BE CONCENTRATED BEHIND A NEW
POSITION TO BE DESIGNATED ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR MANAGEMENT. By "existing
management staff" we mean the Personnel Officer. We are also referring to
staff from Validations, Appeals and Complaints, Special Eligibility Review,
and Fraud. All of these specialized units are essentially agencywide staff
services. All of them serve the divisions in approximately the same way or
handle problems that are common to all divisions. No two of them are super-
vised in the same place now. Through their operations they all furnish
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evaluative data that is important for the Assistant Director for Management
to have. Validations and fraud control are basically quality control
functions. The real purpose and value of their work and information cannot
be applied without much better analytical interpretation, internal coordination
to the organization and follow-up. This was the major finding in the extensive
review of eligibility which the State Department of Finance made in January.
Special comment on locating validations and appeals in Management
Division is necessary at this point. Validations are nothing more than a way
of monitoring the reliability and effectiveness of the income maintenance
program. It is not logical to have it supervised as it is now by the manage -
ment of the same program as it is supposed to monitor. The Validations Unit
has prepared reports and analyses which are either not used or which have
fallen generally into disuse. In a broad sense we view validations as just
one of many sources of management information. One of the main purposes of
creating the new Division of Management is to fix responsibility in one place
for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the many kinds of quality control
data which come out of the organization. The significance of any one type of
data can be interpreted better if it is related to a broad background of
information. 49. FOR THE SAME REASON WE ARE ALSO RECOMMENDING THAT THE
SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT (SIU) BE PLACED IN THE MANAGEMENT DIVISION.
We have one other reason for doing that. Special eligibility
reviews and fraud studies are primarily thought of as investigative functions,
yet a knowledge of eligibility law, regulations, and procedures is a most
important factor in successful investigative work. It is not our impression
that the investigators either like or understand this technical part of their
job very well. SIU is physically separated from the Validations Unit and has
- 201 -
different management supervision. It is not a situation that allows much
cooperation to take place or an easy flow of information back and forth. We
believe that having them tied together organizationally would facilitate the
answering of technical questions which we consider to be an important part
of fraud review.
At present, the technical judgments on cases referred to SIU are
supplied largely by the worker whose case is in trouble. Naturally, this can
introduce an element of defensiveness and rationalization about errors and
case problems by some workers. Lifting fraud investigation to a level where
it is supervised by a departmentwide administrator and where it is in
proximity to validations staff should, we feel, improve line worker response
to the problem and improve the objectivity and quality of fraud investigation.
To meet this problem we had considered at one time adding some
staff in SIU with qualifications very similar to those of the Validation
staff instead of the pure investigative types which had been requested.
Putting Validations and SIU sections together organizationally gives the
investigators easy access to the best source of technical advice available
without new additions of staff. We believe this approach should be tried
before new positions are added.
Special eligibility reviews and fraud investigations should be
able to show patterns in fraud which management should find helpful in the
same way validations data is used. In some cases, both are just small but
important sources of management intelligence which are not serving the full
purpose they might if they were coordinated and administered differently.
50. THE TASK FORCE ALSO RECOMMENDS THAT THE APPEALS AND
COMPLAINTS UNIT BE TRANSFERRED TO THE MANAGEMENT DIVISION. The staff's
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decision to locate the Appeals Unit within the Management Division was not
made easily. It is a peculiar type of activity, admittedly unrelated to
both validations and investigative services. We did so finally because it
is as logical to put it in the Management Division as any place else and
because we do not like organization plans with little boxes out to the side
of main authority centers. We can also cite an instance or two where the
outcome of appeals decisions have been handled in quite different ways
within the organization. One responsibility of the Director of Management
would be to follow up the outcome of such orders to insure that they are
implemented uniformly.
51. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT THE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR ADMINISTRATIVE
SERVICES BE REDESIGNATED AS ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR FISCAL AND OFFICE SERVICES,
THAT HIS DIVISION RETAIN ITS EXISTING SYSTEMS AND PROCEDURES AND FISCAL
SECTIONS, AND THAT CONSIDERATION BE GIVEN TO CREATING A GENERAL SERVICES
SECTION FOR SUPERVISION OF OFFICE CLERICAL PROCEDURES. We considered the
inclusion of fiscal and systems and procedures services in Management Division
because these are also department-wide services that focus on concerns so
closely related to those of the proposed Management Division that it might
be difficult to maintain a clear line of demarcation. Balancing this
consideration, however, was the size of staff and variety of problems this
would bring to one division head. The present Assistant Department Head for
Administrative Services is already heavily loaded, and we suggest consideration
for allocation of still another function to him: the overall supervision and
standardization of office clerical practices.
This is one area that was reviewed by the state in its 1970 study
that we have not looked at in any depth. We would suggest that this be an
area of early inquiry for new departmental research staff, proposed below,
and that it take as its starting point the SDSW proposal for a Supervisor of
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General Services. If a department-level position for supervision of office
clerical procedures is created, great care should be taken to assure that it
does not become enshrouded in that soft, limbo-like atmosphere that usually
characterizes positions that "coordinate" or provide "liaison." Another
approach would involve the review of branch office clerical operations by
management analysts proposed below, which would lead to the development of
standard departmental clerical procedures, their installation, and subse-
quent monitoring by periodic field review by management analyst staff.
It seems extremely important to stress the distinction between
the operations of the present Assistant Director for Administrative and
Fiscal Services and those for the proposed position of Assistant Director
for Management. We conceive that the present position will continue to
operate virtually as it does now, supervising fiscal, accounting, and
procedural matters and directing the fiscal office and the Systems and
Procedures Section. The position should continue to play its strong role
in these areas. However, as in the case of policy and procedure research
by the division heads, this Assistant Director has also been forced to take
time from ongoing responsibilities for these brief studies. It is in the
interests of freeing him from this and broadening the focus of these efforts
beyond fiscal considerations that we propose having them done by management
analyst types. Thus, one of the distinctions between Fiscal and Management
Division is that Fiscal would be responsible for ongoing, daily, line
activities with regard to fiscal operations and systems and procedures. He
would also be responsible for compilation of the annual departmental budget
and for budget controls, as at present. Management Division would be
involved in line activities only to the extent of directing special eligibility
and 204 -
reviews, fraud activities, validations, and appeals. The operational keynote
of Management Division must be freedom from daily line activities particularly
with respect to its analyst staff, who would be deployed to any points in the
organization where priorities for research would exist at a given time.
One difference between Fiscal and Management Divisions, then, is
that Fiscal is more "line" than "staff" and Management is more "staff" than
"line." To state it another way, Management Division staff would deal in
research of departmental management problems in their broadest dimensions,
and make recommendations to top departmental management who would decide
matters, and refer them to Fiscal Division for design of specific systems
and procedures and implementation. To those who are familiar with the over-
all structure of county government, the distinction between Management
Division and the Fiscal Division would be somewhat like the distinction
between the County Administrator and the County Auditor with respect to
some of their duties.
52. THE MANAGEMENT DIVISION SHOULD INCLUDE A MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS
SECTION WHICH SHOULD INCLUDE AS ITS INITIAL STAFF A MINIMUM OF THREE WELL-
QUALIFIED, EXPERIENCED, MANAGEMENT ANALYSTS. The actual number of staff
for this important unit could be determined only after a complete program
of research is worked out by the Assistant Director appointed. The staff
should be phased in one at a time as program is developed for them. We
offer examples of work that could be accomplished by the management analysts
below and elsewhere in this report.
The quality of staff selected for the Management Analysis Section
is of critical importance to the future operation of the entire Alameda
County Welfare Department. Unless well-qualified, tested, proven people can
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be secured for this unit, thereby creating a management research capability
that would truly replace that now done by the Division Chiefs and other line
personnel, it would be better not to create the unit at all.
We visualize the staff as broadly experienced, general analysts
exceptionally strong in organizational theory, analysis, methods, and research
procedures. They should not have any line responsibilities and be free to
move anywhere in the organization on specific assignments.
This staff should approach every problem it studies with a critical,
fresh outlook. It should challenge almost every existing procedure in the
organization and above all it should be unencumbered by the traditional
thinking about service and client relationships which has dominated welfare
for the past 35 years. Emphasis should be on piloting new projects and
proving management procedures which can be demonstrated to work before other
sweeping changes like separation are undertaken. There are several immediate
problems for them to deal with.
53. AS ONE EXAMPLE OF EARLY RESEARCH FOR THE MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS
UNIT, WE RECOMMEND THE COUNTY CONSIDER THE SEPARATION OF ELIGIBILITY AND
SOCIAL SERVICE FUNCTIONS IN GENERAL ASSISTANCE. This category of aid is
growing and there are as many reasons for separating eligibility and service
functions in General Assistance as there were in any other aid program. It
is the only program left where social workers are still controlling grants.
To highlight this point we present the graph below.
- 206 -
026T
696T
896T
09
04
08$
207 1 I
GENERAL ASSISTANCE SINGLE PERSON AVERAGE GRANTS
The large increase that occurred in the amount of the grant for
General Assistant recipients in late 1969 was because of a special higher
allowance for housing. It was thought that if a larger allowance was made
for housing that the food costs of the recipient could be reduced. Instead
of receiving expensive meal tickets for resturants the client would be able
to reduce his food costs by having housing with cooking facilities.
As the graph shows it was some months before management realized
what was happening and corrected itself. The only effect was to increase
the amount of the recipient's overall grant. We are not implying that
General Assistance grants are adequate, they are not and, certainly, recipient
housing is inadequate also. We are suggesting, however, that it is improper
to make a grant adjustment on the basis of a certain administrative assumption
without monitoring it to see if it is working. Catching the mistake in this
instance took three months. It is another example of where both a good
social service concept and an administrative decision went wrong for lack of
internal review.
There is also an urgent need for the implementation of a uniform
production standard for eligibility workers which would lead to a more timely
personnel reporting system. It would be a mistake to think that good
solutions to these kinds of administrative problems can be devised without a
different kind of staff input.
54. AS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF SUBJECT MATTER FOR EARLY REVIEW BY THE
MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS UNIT, WE RECOMMEND THAT THE ISSUE OF A WORKLOAD STANDARD
FOR ELIGIBILITY WORKERS BE STUDIED AND RESOLVED. This has been one of the
major policy items before the Board of Supervisors in the welfare budget
this year. Knowing of the Board's desire to have a firm specific recommendation
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from the Task Force on this question the staff spent at least three weeks
in trying to make a justifiable, definite recommendation. We frankly admit
we were unable to do SO. We are confident, however, in saying that no one
else can either without a considerable amount of further research effort.
The time we spent with this problem was not wasted, however. The Task Force
staff is secure now with the recommendations we make as to the approach which
should be taken in setting a permanent caseload standard for AFDC. A
standard cannot and should not be set until consideration is given to a
number of other factors which are more important to the proper administration
of eligibility than the size of the workload itself.
Of first importance is the fact that all thought to date on the
caseload standard has taken place in an abnormal set of circumstances. The
eligibility workers have not fully recovered from having to go through two
separation plans and it is not entirely certain whether the second phase of
separation is over.
For some of the reasons we have already cited the number of overdue
renewals got completely out of control during 1970. The department even
started separation with a high number of overdue renewals. The social workers,
for some months before separation, had slacked off on keeping renewals
current, knowing that the responsibility was going to be transferred to the
eligibility workers.
Since March the department has made a big push to get renewals
current. The graph in the section on the Planning Process shows that progress
is being made. The production on renewals may be increasing slightly among
the regular eligibility staff, but we believe that the improvement registered
is more likely the result of two other things. One is a significant drop in
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AFDC applications and secondly, the use of 80 or 90 surplus eligibility
workers and floaters who have been concentrating on doing renewals for the
last three months. These are eligibility workers who normally would have
been dismissed as caseloads declined or new staff hired in anticipation of
a caseload growth which did not materialize.
With this additional staff the department is likely to get most
of its overdue renewals cleared in the next three or four months. It should
be kept in mind, however, that these renewals are being completed by some of
the most inexperienced staff, working in what we consider an adverse set of
circumstances. They are trying to clean up badly delinquent cases and are
working without adequate supervision. Even when the official reports
indicate that the cases are current there will be some good reasons to doubt
what kind of qualitative condition the cases are in.
Working as long as they have with an impossibly high backlog of
overdue renewals and cases in terrible condition generally has brought about
a distortion of attitude among the workers as to how they view their jobs.
It is responsible to a great extent, we think, for the very low morale among
the eligibility staff. Until the regular corps of eligibility workers has
had the opportunity to work with cases that are not only current but are in
fairly good condition from other qualitative standpoints it is really
impossible to know what they are capable of doing on a regular routine basis.
Our second reason for suggesting that the present caseload standard
not be changed is that we are convinced that the whole problem has been
approached completely backwards. Before the department can set a realistic
caseload standard for continuing cases it must first set a production
standard indicating how many renewals they expect a worker to do each month.
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Renewals and ongoing maintenance are the most important parts of the
continuing worker's caseload responsibility. Renewals are just one component
of a production standard. Administratively speaking, a production standard
is something distinctly different from a caseload standard in the sense we
are referring to it here.
By simple arithmetic it is obvious that with a caseload standard
of 120, 20 renewals must be done each month to keep up with the requirement
that eligibility be recertified every six months if the worker is to remain
current. If it is the department's goal in administering eligibility to stay
current it must insist on 20 recertifications each month per worker. If the
department's suggested caseload standard were 104 instead of the present 120
it would be approximately 1½ cases less per month. The Board of Supervisors
must understand that this is really all that is actually accomplished in
reducing the standard from the present 120 to 104. To do so, we estimate it
would require about 30 to 35 additional workers plus their supervision at a
cost of probably in excess of $250,000.
Even if the department's recommended caseload standard had been in
effect for the last year the present situation on delinquent renewals would
not be much different. There are probably not more than 5% of the eligibility
units throughout the whole department that are consistently doing anything
like 20 renewals per month or the number required if the standard were 104.
Yet, there are enough to make the Task Force believe that a standard of 20
renewals per month is not unrealistic. The overall average in the agency is
probably closer to 10 and not more than 13 renewals per worker per month.
With production on renewals this low it would mean that the caseload standard
would have to be dropped to 60 in order for the workers to stay current.
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Knowing that the department recognizes renewals as the most important
factor in the management of continuing caseloads it was very distressing to
the Task Force to find the department operating without a definite production
standard on renewals. Even if one were set too high we felt one should have
been expressed as a specific goal. Until management states its expectations
in definite terms there can be no accountability for performance from anyone.
It is one thing to say that 20 renewals per month is excessive and caseloads
are too high after asking a worker to make 20 renewals per month and another
thing to say they are excessive without ever asking the worker to make 20
renewals per month. That is the situation here. If management feels it is
justified in recommending an overall caseload standard with the information
available it should certainly be as capable of specifying a production
standard on renewals in as explicit terms as it expresses the overall case-
load standard it desires.
The department's present attitude on renewals is very vague.
There is a tacet understanding that they should be kept "current." To do
that means, in terms of numbers, doing 20 renewals per month. Yet, that
interpretation of what is current is not evident. The division chiefs
interpret current as meaning the number they actually do.
In only one division did we find a specific and absolute standard
on renewals expressed and it was 20 renewals per month. In that division
there is also a good indication that 20 renewals per month can be done. In
the short time that we followed the progress of the effect of simply working
towards a stated standard there was a rapid and marked improvement in the
number of renewals completed in that division. Two other divisions, Fremont
and Hayward, report being current on renewals, which suggests that whatever
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standard is required to maintain currency in these offices can be met.
The Task Force suggests again that the critical, missing ingredient
is management and the way it conceptualizes its problems and presents its
objectives to the larger organization. Unless management presents its
expectations of performance in unequivocal, simple, understandable terms it
is foolish to expect good performance. Unless the department makes an effort
to impose and enforce a standard on renewals, dropping the caseloads to 104
is not going to improve the overall situation one bit. Is it really an
improvement to have overdue renewals at 25% of total caseload rather than
35%? It is the Committee's estimate that this would be just about the
condition of the caseload today had the department's recommendation been
adopted 18 months ago without imposing a standard on renewals at the same
time.
55. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT A PERMANENT STANDARD FOR AFDC CONTINUING
ELIGIBILITY CASES NOT BE SET UNTIL AFTER THE DEPARTMENT HAS INSTALLED AND
ACQUIRED SOME EXPERIENCE WITH UNIFORM, DEPARTMENT-WIDE PRODUCTION STANDARDS
FOR THE ELIGIBILITY WORKER. We have only discussed renewals but a production
standard also includes other factors affecting eligibility such as the number
of home calls, number of days in field, and the number of budget transactions.
The department must build its overall caseload standards around knowledge
about the specific components that make up the continuing casework function.
Unless it has success in imposing standards on these smaller, sub-functions
of eligibility there is little point in trying to administer a much more
general standard regardless of how low it is. More of these aspects of case-
load management are discussed in the section of the report dealing with
classification of caseloads.
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Our third reason for recommending against a lower caseload
standard at this time is the quality of training provided the eligibility
workers up to this point. We treat the subject extensively in the training
section but until it is demonstrated that the eligibility workers know how
to work the budget system, make warrant holds, fill out forms, and compute
special needs and generally perform the whole range of complex tasks that
makes up the list in our Training section a lower caseload will not improve
the eligibility process.
There is no comparison between the costs of improving the quality
of training and permanently lowering caseloads by 13%. Dropping the case-
load size by itself will not reduce administrative errors, overpayments, or
insure better eligibility certifications among untrained workers. It will
only distribute the errors over a greater number of people and increase
training costs. No one can say how many more cases a worker could properly
handle if she were thoroughly trained.
The awful dilemma facing this department is that better caseload
classification, setting renewal standards, and better training must occur
simultaneously and work in conjunction with each other. The real test of
management in this department is how quickly they can get these crucial
sub-functions of the eligibility process working together. The Task Force,
more than anything else, wants to impress upon the Supervisors, County
Administrator, and the public that focusing attention on such things as a
gross caseload standard is terribly misleading and only diverts attention
from the real issues involved such as training, caseload classification,
production controls, etc.
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When these sub-functions are in order then and only then can a
caseload standard be set with some degree of assurance that it is correct.
This really involves a whole new concept about managing the eligibility and
grant control process. The overall problem must be approached in terms of
the daily manageable component parts of the process and not in terms of some
arbitrary, amorphous number like 120 or 104. The Committee's feelings on
this point are so strong that: 56. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT THE SUPERVISORS
STOP DELIBERATING WITH THE DEPARTMENT AND THE UNION REGARDING THE OVERALL
SIZE OF THE CASELOAD IN ANY OF THE CATEGORICAL AIDS UNTIL IT IS SATISFIED
THAT THE COMPONENT SUB-FUNCTIONS OF THE ELIGIBILITY PROCESS ARE WORKING
BETTER. THE BUDGET INCREASES REQUESTED FOR DROPPING CASELOADS SHOULD BE,
INSTEAD, ALLOCATED TO SIMPLIFYING THE BUDGET SYSTEM, CREATING UNIFORM WORK
PROCEDURES, UPGRADING TRAINING, AND CLASSIFYING CASELOADS DIFFERENTLY.
The department's latest research, building to a justification of
a lower caseload standard, was extensively reviewed by the staff of the
Task Force. We prepared and intended to include a detailed critique in the
study. Our decision to leave it out was based on the conclusion that the
problem of the caseload size is completely over-shadowed by all these other
management considerations. We mention the study here only as another
specific illustration of the problem the organization encounters in trying
to conduct vital research in the manner it does.
The study of caseloads was, as always, assigned to one of the
division chiefs. We believe the department would readily admit that it
lost control of the project after it was started. It was plagued fatally,
we think, by personnel transfers, unit number changes, inadequate instruction
- 215 -
of the control study units, and generally from the same problems the Task
Force staff encountered in trying to develop a recommendation on caseload
size. The design of the study did not include certain elements that might
lead to alternatives other than a simple reduction of caseload size from
120 to 104. The Board of Supervisors must make their own decision on
whether the study supports a justification for increasing continuing
eligibility costs by $250,000 but we must say it is not adequate for a
decision of that magnitude.
In spite of that, the study was important in the sense of the
approach taken to a management problem. Much more of this type of thing
must be done, as we have emphasized throughout this section. It is
absolutely essential, however, to give this work more direction and more
day-to-day attention than any division chief can possibly provide. The
Board of Supervisors directed this caseload study to be done 10 months
ago, but in the judgment of the Task Force the county is still without data
adequate to make the major policy decision in this year's Welfare Budget.
That will continue to be the case unless the research function in the
department is strengthened in the manner we recommend.
We have offered here and in other sections of this study examples
of the kind of research that we envision a competent management analysis
staff undertaking. We would also look toward this staff as a means of
introducing a new kind of management capability to the department, one that
has been specifically trained in management and is capable of conceptualizing
the complex management problems posed by the welfare system.
We have repeatedly suggested in this study that management functions
require specialized training and experience, just as social services do. We
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have suggested that public welfare management has been historically dominated
by the social service component and we cannot see how a Master's Degree in
Social Work, possessed by four of nine ACWD Division Chiefs can necessarily
improve management's capability in addressing the complex problems of an
income maintenance system. We do not say an MSW cannot be an effective
administrator, but the division chiefs do reflect a strong services back-
ground. Seven of the nine chiefs started as social workers in the depart-
ment and average about three years experience at the worker level, four
years as Grade I Supervisors, and six years as Grade II Supervisors. As
the department has rapidly expanded in the past five years, management has
had to frequently tap its reservoir of Grade II Supervisors who have qualified
for division chief under civil service procedures. Under circumstances of
rapid program expansion and increasing complexity, the welfare department's
ability to develop staff for middle management has been severely taxed.
Thus, one of the reasons for proposing a Management Division and a Management
Analysis Unit is to introduce into the department a new management resource
that does not rely exclusively on the departmental promotional ladder.
Having said all this, we must caution that it would be a great
mistake to assume that the departmental problems we have discussed in this
study could be easily resolved by the simple expedient of recruiting more
staff with obvious, surface qualifications of management expertise. As
suggested, unless good staff is secured, installed, and properly utilized, it
would be better not to recruit at all. We say this because of the special
review we gave departmental level staff -- which consists of eight key
administrative positions, some of whom work under supervision, but all of
whom carry department-wide management responsibilities. It cannot be said
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that this group is dominated by evidence of old line social service concepts.
Only two have ever been social workers. Half of them entered the department in
the mid-1960's or later. In educational background, the group includes two
Political Science degrees, and one degree each in Business and Public Administration.
While department level administration reflects individual instances of real
management ability, it is by no means nor in all cases proportional to academic
achievement, nor is previous experience in social work necessarily a handicap.
Because of some harsh judgments in this study, candor compels acknowledgement that
management ability depends on more than mere possession of a professional credential.
We, nevertheless, contend that the influence of management as a specialized body
of knowledge, techniques and concepts, needs stronger representation in this
organization.
We have tried to support management recommendations in this study with
specific examples of problems as well as solutions. It should be obvious that we
feel quite strongly about management's obligation to evaluate not only program
but staff performance in meeting program goals. In our review of division head
and departmental staff profiles, we also requested information on the last perfor-
mance evaluation of each staff person. With respect to formal performance
evaluations of the division heads, here is what we found:
Division Head Performance Evaluation Data
Most recent evaluation
(1)
6/30/69
Next most recent evaluation
(3)
1966
Next most recent evaluation
(1)
2/26/64
Nest most recent evaluation
(1)
12/11/62
Next most recent evaluation
(1)
6/ 4/56
Never been evaluated by Department
(2)
--
(9)
*Two division heads have less than four months experience
in these duties.
No division head appears to have been evaluated for performance as a division
head. Most civil service or public employee merit systems, even
though noted for strong tenure guarantees, either specifically provide
- 218 -
for performance evaluations or make provision for removal, suspension, or
reduction in rank on the basis of written specification. We acknowledge
that personnel adjustments under civil service rules are difficult. We also
have documented at some length the lack of objective criteria in this
department against which performance can be measured. If there is little in
the way of performance criteria for operation of an income maintenance system,
how is it possible to hold management staff accountable for their own
performance? But we also would think that management's own awareness of
specific staff shortcomings would motivate them toward a performance
evaluation system for key departmental staff. If divisional management fails
to perform, departmental management need look no farther than to its own
procedures for the answers.
57. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT A FORMAL SYSTEM OF ANNUAL EMPLOYEE
PERFORMANCE EVALUATION INVOLVING SUPERVISOR-EMPLOYEE DISCUSSION AND WRITTEN
REPORTS BE DEVELOPED, INSTALLED, AND APPLIED TO EACH ACWD EMPLOYEE UP TO
AND INCLUDING THE CLASSIFICATION OF CHIEF ASSISTANT DIRECTOR.
One seemingly minor but very important aspect of the utilization
of staff in the proposed Management Division would be their physical location
together, and we would propose that the necessary space adjustments be made
to bring the staff together at the main office at 401 Broadway. The task of
bringing some existing units together that have been somewhat uncoordinated
up to now, adding new staff, and developing new approaches to improving
departmental management requires a good Management Division communication
system, which means daily eyeball-to-eyeball contact.
We should also caution, however, that Management Division should
not confine itself to a pattern of activity that is heavily main office-centered.
- 219 -
During our staff interviews with workers at the branch offices, we received
the clear impression that "downtown doesn't know what is going on in the
department," and that management was unrelated to real administrative needs.
Thus, it is vital that the new Division's work on management problems take
them into the field, to the branch offices, and to the basic worker levels
in the organization. In light of past expressions of worker activism, it
may seem strange to note that Task Force staff concludes that top management
presence in the department is not only needed but desired by workers at every
level. Such comments from workers were expressed not only in terms of seeing
departmental management staff, but in terms of desiring more decisiveness in
basic management functions.
To present the department's own view of solutions to some of these
central management problems, a memorandum to all departmental employees from
the Director on April 1, 1971, entitled "Departmental Administrative Modi-
fication" is instructive. The memo refers to the survey conducted by SDSW
in the Spring of 1970. It noted, however, that 11 a myriad of developments
affecting Alameda County both generally and specifically have caused the
department to delay implementation of the survey recommendations which it
found acceptable 11 The memo commented that at this point in time the
"Department can begin to rearrange its administrative and organizational
structure," which would enable the department to:
1. More effectively achieve desirable program goals;
2. Fully implement the Services-Income Maintenance
Separation Concept;
3. Increase the responsiveness of the Department to
program, organizational, and community problems; and,
- 220 -
4. Enlarge the department's decision-making base
while at the same time increasing the account-
ability factor of department operating units
and the department as a single organizational
unit.
The next paragraph in the memo indicated:
Effective immediately there is established an
Office of the Director which will include the Welfare
Director and the Chief Assistant Welfare Director.
Specifically, it is expected that the Welfare Director
will give more weight and concern to the development
and articulation of policy. The Chief Assistant
Director will be involved in the implementation of
policy toward the objective of departmental goal
achievement. Thus, all elements of the department
will report through the appropriate line to the Chief
Assistant Welfare Director.
In the judgment of the Task Force staff this paragraph only compounds the
already ambiguous administrative environment of welfare; the personal
leadership of the Director would appear to have been replaced by an admini- -
strative fiction (Office of the Director), which is in turn occupied by two
positions, but in which the Assistant Director is delegated the primary role for
decisions affecting the department.
This paragraph of the memo sent us back to the State's 1970 survey
for background on the "Office of the Director" recommendation. We found that
the State had said:
A director's responsibility for community understanding,
acceptance and involvement in welfare programs always has
top priority. The wide differences among the various
segments of Alameda County make this responsibility parti-
cularly sensitive and critical. This, together with the
need for real channels of communication with local and
state governing bodies, commissions, and professional
associations so that he is always aware of the milieu in
which he operates, makes the director's job one where
"outside" activities demand the greatest part of his time.
The separation of programs will make the need for community
understanding even more acute. Internally, the director
- 221 -
needs a structure which will free him to give more
weight and concern to articulating policy rather than
involving himself in the steps necessary to achieve
objectives or to implement them. The latter phase of
administration should be delegated to a deputy. 2
The "latter phase of administration" just happens to be the total control of
departmental management, and we are appalled with what we see in this
presentation by SDSW of its "Office of the Director" recommendation which
has now been officially implemented within the department. An analogy which
occurs to us would be to have the President of the United States decide that
his most important priorities rest with improving the national image in the
world and that he should spend the rest of his term abroad on public relations
junkets, meanwhile delegating matters of "lesser" importance, such as the
economy, all domestic affairs, the national budget, and when, where, and
under what circumstances we go to war to the Vice President.
Whatever is meant by "community understanding, acceptance, and
involvement in welfare programs," it cannot be as important as the awesome
executive tasks involved in directing a $150 million welfare program with
a current annual local cost of $36 million. Whatever the 'wide differences
among the various segments of Alameda County" are, they are likely to become
wider and more alienated from each other if constantly subjected to the
polarization of opinion stemming from repeated exposes of a malfunctioning
welfare system. The separation of programs has very little to do with
"increasing the need for community understanding." Most of the community
has never heard of caseload separation, and the clients directly affected
2
Administrative Review of ACWD, State of California, Department of Social
Welfare, Administrative Surveys Bureau, March, 1970, page 6.
- 222 -
either do not understand it or cannot allow it to become a major concern
in their life struggle.
Because we write these words from the perspective of eight month's
study of the department, we can only say that the State's recommendation for
an "office of the director" is nothing short of sheer nonsense.
The public relations of a welfare department do not depend upon
luncheon speeches to service clubs, they are more a result of effective
internal management which is a responsibility assigned by a Board of Super-
visors to a Welfare Director, not to an administrative fiction such as an
"Office of the Director.' Executive leadership is not just public relations
and tedious mechanical details that can be delegated.
Another aspect of the Director's April 1 memorandum gives us
some concern, and that is the concept it reflects with respect to use of
internal analyst staff. In the interests of allowing the Assistant Director
for Administrative and Fiscal Services added time to work on departmental
budget and fiscal activities, the plan was to remove such functions as
central index, input documents, purchasing, inventory, transcribing, mail,
and supply from his responsibility and assign them to the direction of the
department's single existing position of organization and management analyst.
This assignment of duties that are essentially of a housekeeping nature and
those that could be well handled by a lesser technical classification raises
doubts about management's intention to properly utilize internal analytical
staff. It is the organization and management analyst position, after all,
that should have formed the beginnings of an internal planning capability
that addresses the problems that division chief committees have had to
handle, and that have been the focus of much of this study. Therefore, if
- 223 -
the revision should be a matter of assigning work on the basis of judgment
of individual proficiency or preference, a reclassification to a line-
type position seems warranted. To maintain the fiction on organization
charts and elsewhere that the department now has a specific internal manage- -
ment analysis capability is to obscure and compound some very real problems
in personnel management and organizational functions.
58. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT THE WELFARE DIRECTOR RESCIND HIS
DEPARTMENTAL MEMORANDUM OF APRIL 1, 1971 RELATIVE TO THE "OFFICE OF THE
DIRECTOR.
11
We now turn to the specifics of a reorganization proposal for the
Alameda County Welfare Department. We will first focus on administrative
considerations related to the department's social service and income main-
tenance delivery systems, in which slightly over two-thirds of the department's
existing personnel are directly involved. The composition of the basic units
of these two systems consists of six eligibility technicians, one clerk, and
one Grade I Eligibility Supervisor for each eligibility unit, and seven
social workers, a clerk and one Grade I Social Service Supervisor for each
social service unit. Based on positions filled in June, 1971, the depart-
ment contained approximately 760 eligibility technicians, clerks and Grade
I Supervisors in 95 eligibility units. The department also had 477 social
service workers, clerks, and Grade I Supervisors in 53 social service units.
Assuming a Grade II Supervisor for every six units, this would call for
about 16 Grade II Supervisors in the eligibility series and eight or nine
in the social service series. We will not present the units in terms of
aid category or function, but it is important to note that 11 of the 53
social service units cover the as yet unseparated General Assistance caseload,
- 224 -
providing both social services and eligibility work to this category. There
are also three social service units assigned to Highland and Fairmont
Hospitals for determining medical eligibility. There are two units of
eligibility technicians assigned to child welfare for work exclusively on
the foster home component of AFDC (the caseload here is 240, double that of
the eligibility technician in a regular AFDC caseload).
The essential points to keep in mind are the size and composition
of the basic eligibility and service units, and the overall ratio of eligi-
bility to service units which is now almost two to one. Although the
number of basic delivery units dramatically favors the eligibility side,
supervisory and administrative changes have not kept pace. While the depart- -
ment feels it has an acceptable class specification (briefly, a statement of
duties and qualifications for a position) for a Grade II Eligibility Tech- -
nician, a specification for a Supervising Eligibility Technician II has not
yet been written. This is in part a result of current debate between the
department and the Civil Service Commission regarding qualifications, which
in turn is a result of the historical linkage of the eligibility technician
series to the clerical series. This linkage tends to underrate the very
complex knowledge of regulations and procedures which the ET must understand,
as well as the quality of judgmental skills which must inevitably be
exercised. It is to the department's credit that they recognize this as an
important matter and have taken a strong position with the Civil Service
Commission with regard to it. It is the Task Force's hope that some of the
findings of this study will convince the Civil Service Commission that the
eligibility technician supervisory series demands urgent attention. In
fact, we join with the department in its conviction that the distinction
- 225 -
between social service and eligibility series at the Grade II Supervisory
level should be eliminated and education and experience in management be
introduced as a basic qualification in a class specification, which directly
supervises 42 to 48 postions:
59. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT THE GRADE II SUPERVISORY LEVEL IN THE
SOCIAL SERVICE AND ELIGIBILITY TECHNICIAN SERIES BE REVIEWED BY THE ALAMEDA
COUNTY CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION WITH A VIEW TO 1) ELIMINATING ALL DISTINCTIONS
BETWEEN THE SOCIAL SERVICE AND ELIGIBILITY SERIES NOT PROHIBITED BY LAW OR
REGULATION, 2) AND THAT THIS COMMON GRADE II SUPERVISORY CLASS REQUIRE
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE IN SUPERVISION AND MANAGEMENT, AS A PRIMARY QUALIFI-
CATION, AND 3) THAT FUTURE RECRUITMENT FOR SUCH POSITIONS BE NOT ONLY ON A
PROMOTIONAL BASIS BUT OPEN TO APPLICATIONS FROM OUTSIDE THE DEPARTMENT AND
THE COUNTY.
If the development of income maintenance supervisors is still
inadequate or undefined in terms of position specifications for the Grade I
and Grade II levels, it must be said that the question of an administrative
classification for the income maintenance series at the Division Chief level
has barely been addressed. Each branch or area Division Chief in the depart-
ment supervises, on the average, nearly twice as many eligibility technicians
as social service workers. It is generally understood in the department
that about 85% of a Division Chief's time is spent on eligibility matters.
The class specification for Division Chief strongly emphasizes the complex
administrative and management content of the position. The minimum qualifi-
cations, however, state as follows:
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MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
Either I
Two years of experience in the class of Social Work
Supervisor II or in an equivalent or high level
social work class in the Alameda County service.
Or II
Four years of experience in a supervisory capacity
in the field of social work.
Or III
Some acceptable combination of education and
appropriate experience.
NOTE:
The Civil Service Commission may modify the above
Minimum Qualifications in the announcement of an
examination.
60. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT THE DIVISION CHIEF (WELFARE) CLASS
SPECIFICATION BE BROADENED TO REQUIRE EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE IN SUPER-
VISION AND MANAGEMENT, AND THAT THE PRESENT EMPHASIS ON PROMOTION UP
THROUGH THE SOCIAL SERVICES SERIES BE ELIMINATED, OR
alternatively, if the county should follow recommendations below which
call for separation of services and income maintenance throughout the
organization,
IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT TWO KINDS OF DIVISION CHIEF (WELFARE)
BE CREATED -- ONE FOR INCOME MAINTENANCE THAT EMPHASIZES MANAGEMENT SKILLS,
AND ONE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES WHICH, IN ADDITION TO MANAGEMENT SKILLS, MAY
ALSO REQUIRE A MASTER'S DEGREE IN SOCIAL WORK.
The essential point here is to recognize that the essential administrative
problem of welfare is income maintenance. We feel that point cannot be
overemphasized, especially when we read in the State's 1970 report on the
department:
- 227 -
Separation provides many benefits
with the
specialization of the eligibility function, it
is possible to employ technical workers who have
less than four years of college, thus opening the
way to jobs for many persons who could not formerly
gain employment
3
Expansion of the labor market is an important priority. One does not have
to go to college to become a good eligibility technician. But, the fact
that these are the only benefits of separation listed by the State suggests
to us that the potential in separation for improving overall income main-
tenance management has not yet registered as much impact with State staff
as it has with the county department.
Thus, one of the facts confronting our proposed department
reorganization at this point is a definite lag in recognizing separation
administratively and in developing an income maintenance supervisory/admini- -
strative group. There is nothing to prevent the department and the county
from taking steps in this direction, however.
There is another fact, however, which limits the flexibility of
organizational planning, and that is the bricks and mortar of the department's
branch offices. Welfare branch office planning is virtually a study in
itself. Its history during the 1960's in any large California county is but
one more example of the effects of rapid growth and change in welfare during
this decade. Adjustments in staff and procedures can be made fairly easily;
buildings require advance planning and long-term financing and do not have
similar flexibility. Because there is always a lag between program require- -
ments and facilities, buildings themselves have a tendency to shape
3 Supplement to Administrative Review of the ACWD, by State Department of
Social Welfare, March, 1970, p. 1.
- 228 -
organizational structure. We will see shortly the effect of this tendency
in Alameda County. Our brief review of this phenomenon in other California
counties suggests that welfare branch office planning is either not yet a
very sophisticated art or it simply does not submit to a careful planning
approach. To have come through the 1960's with branch office arrangements
that permit organizational groupings suitable to the 1970's is probably as
much due to luck as anything else.
While we would like to have seen evidence of more thoughtful
planning of branch offices commencing with the first moves out of the main
branch at 401 Broadway in the mid-1960's, we must say that the best of
planning might have made little difference, and the county has taken a
comparatively cautious approach toward branch office development. The
county's plan, until recently, has been toward development of 150-man
branch offices, and six such units have been established. By contrast,
Sacramento has followed a program of 40 to 50-man branches; Contra Cost 50 to
100; Santa Clara 75 to 100; San Diego 200 to 225. In late 1969, the County
Administrative Office rejected the department's proposal for further 150-man
offices, and the department conducted a careful study of the matter which
resulted in a recommendation for 300-man branch offices. The new North
Oakland and Hayward branches, scheduled for opening in late 1971 or January,
1972 will make it possible to pull approximately 300 staff scattered in six
smaller office locations in central Oakland and Hayward. The chart below
is introduced at this point for several reasons -- it shows the branch
locations scheduled for occupancy approximately January 1, 1972 and locations
scheduled to be released in 1971. It shows the capacity of these offices
based on State standards of 125 square feet per position and current occupancy
levels. We have also shown the terms of lease arrangements and expiration
dates in order to indicate the county's commitments on specific structures.
- 229 -
BRANCH OFFICE DATA
ALAMEDA COUNTY WELFARE DEPARTMENT
Rated
Estimated
I. Branch locations as
Capacity
Occupancy
Lease
Expiration
Square
Monthly
of January 1, 1972
(Positions)
)
June, 1971
Term
Date
Footage
Payment
1. Main Office
401 Broadway
826
822
Lease/Purchase
103,000
$12,500
2. East Oakland Area
7800 MacArthur
109
109
7 yrs.
7/74
13,750
3,050
3. Fremont Area
4333 Hansen Ave.
128
137
10 yrs.
5/79
16,000
4,080
4. Berkeley Area
2530 San Pablo
142
139
10 yrs.
2/79
17,700
4,083
5. Bond Street Area
4340 Bond St., Oakland
158
154
10 yrs,
3/79
18,000
4,167
6. 3rd & Adeline Sts.
Oakland
160
160
5 yrs. 10/74
20,000
4,000
230 I :
7. Hayward Area
Amador St., Hayward
300
--
15 yrs. 11/86
37,500
10,250
8. North Oakland Area
4801 Broadway
300
---
15 yrs. 1/87
40,000
8,700
Sub-totals
2123
See
265,950
$50,830
Below
II. Branch locations to
be released in 1971
Unit Identification
Proposed Relocation
17th & Broadway
70
Social Service Units
Bond, East Oakland, Main
1212 Broadway
35
Training Div. & SIU
Main Office
Hayward:
Main
78
Hayward Area Offices
New Hayward Area Office
Southland Center
40
"
Atherton Street
38
If
Eastmont Center
50
Social Service Units
East Oakland
Filled Positions 6/71
1813
(Excludes 31 in Medi-Cal Units at Hospitals)
Space Available 11/72
2123
As the department acknowledges in their January, 1970 branch office
study, the branch office pattern has a profound effect upon standardization
of administrative structure and upon administrative costs, particularly for
building management positions (division chiefs, secretaries, screeners,
clerical supervision, switchboard operators, etc.), for maintenance costs,
for standardization of architectural design, and for lease terms -- in
addition to considerations related to delivery of services and coverage of
geographic areas.
When we first looked at this pattern of branch office development
and projected it in terms of facilities and needs by the end of this year,
we despaired of making a reorganization proposal that would be an optimal
compromise between the demands of caseload separation, the most effective
geographic distribution of staff, a balanced span of control at division
chief level, the logistics of serving more extended geographic areas at
both ends of the county, and the fact of having to do all this within
existing lease commitments that extend from 1974 through 1987. After
further review, we now think it is possible to achieve a good compromise
between these competing demands and, in the process, reduce the number of
division chiefs from their present total of nine to six.
A review of branch office development over the past decade clearly
indicates that one of its results has been to generate a new division chief
with each new branch. Instead of looking at division chief needs in terms
of a balanced span of control or division of functions in the organization,
it has historically been felt that each new building required a separate
chief. As one of the guidelines to our proposal, we felt that programs and
people to be supervised were more important to creation of division chiefs
- 231 -
than bricks and mortar. We also felt that allowing a 150-man branch office
concept to govern some division chiefs' span of control has created a
considerable disparity in division chief workload (one division chief at
the main office, for example, is responsible for about 25% of the total
service and eligibility worker staff in the department). As we have already
expressed, we very strongly feel the need for stronger representation of
income maintenance in the top management councils of the department, and we
look to the creation of division chiefs with concerns that are exclusively
in this area. We also feel, partly as a result of our interviews with
social service staff, that there is also a need to create at the division
chief level departmental administrators who can provide administrative
attention to social services unimpeded by preoccupation with income main-
tenance concerns. Finally, we see in separation, with its functional
specialization and its simplification of the Division Chief's responsibilities,
the possibility for increasing span of control at this level.
It will be helpful, as this discussion is read, to refer to
existing and proposed organization charts which we insert at this point.
It should be noted that the "existing" chart is the Task Force staff's
notion of how the organization works presently, rather than the department's
idea. The proposed organization plan is reduced to base essentials for
clarity. The proposed chart indicates basic divisions and sections only,
reserving to the discussion part of this report indication of organi-
zational refinements.
- 232 -
WELFARE DIRECTOR
CHIEF ASSISTANT
WELFARE DIRECTOR
Personnel
Staff Development
(Training)
ADMINISTRATIVE AND FISCAL
PROGRAMS
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
Community Resources
Coordinator
Fiscal Section
Adult Services
Child Welfare
Validations Section
Division
Division
Division Chief
Division Chief
Hayward Branch
Organization and
Family Services
Appeals and Complaints
Management Section
Division
Section
Division Chief
Division Chief
Fremont Branch
Special Investigations
Systems and Procedures
Unit
Division Chief
Section
Berkeley Branch
East Oakland Branch
ALAMEDA COUNTY
Division Chief
WELFARE DEPARTMENT
Division Chief
APPROXIMATE CURRENT
ORGANIZATION CHART
AUGUST 1971
Bond St. Branch
Employment Rehabili-
tation Services
Division Chief
Grade II Supervisor
WELFARE DIRECTOR
FISCAL DIVISION
SERVICES DIVISION
MANAGEMENT DIVISION
INCOME MAINTENANCE DIVISION
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
Bond/E.Oakland Branch
Main Branch
Fiscal Section
Management Analysis
Personnel Section
Division Chief
Section
Division Chief
24 Soc. Svc. Units,
Section Head
Section Head
27 Income Mntc Units,
incl. Blind, Ch. Welf.
Section Head
5 Soc Svc Units (261)
(216 pos.)
Validations Section
No. Oakland Branch
Appeals and Com-
Berkeley Branch
Syatems and Procedures
plaints Section
Section
Division Chief
Division Chief
Section Head
Section Head
30 Income Mate Units,
14 Social Service
Section Head
240 positions
Units, 126 positions
Special Investiga-
Social Services
Hayward Branch
General Services
tions Unit
Training Section
Section
Division Chief
Grade II Supervisor
Section Head
26 Income Mntc Units,
Section Head
5 Soc Svc Units(253)
PROPOSED ORGANIZATION
CHART
Fremont Branch
ALAMEDA COUNTY WELFARE
Resources Develop-
DEPARTMENT
Division Chief
ment Section
AUGUST 1971
12 Income Mnte Units,
5 Soc Sve Unite (141)
Community Resources
Coordinator
Income Maintenance
Training Section
Grade II Supervisor
The final draft of this report which staff presented to the Task Force for
their last review and approval before going to press, included the position of Chief
Assistant Director. The organization chart presented to the Task Force also proposed
four Assistant Directors in place of the current two. The Task Force membership was
satisfied that the four Assistants represented a logical, more sharply defined alloca-
tion of duties to top departmental staff than is now possible with just two Assist-
ants and one Chief Assistant. The Task Force membership accepted and agreed with the
concept that separation of services and income maintenance should be reflected at the
Assistant Director level. They agreed with the differentiation of duties between the
Assistant Director for Fiscal matters and the Assistant Director for Management. The
Task Force accepted the reallocation of miscellaneous supervision responsibilities,
such as Personnel, Training, and Resources Development, to positions below the Assist-
ant Director level which would free positions above this level for the broader depart-
mental concerns, such as coordinating Services with Income Maintenance, etc.
The Task Force membership, after review of these several factors, raised the
question as to the continued need for a position of Chief Assistant, particularly in
light of the proposed four Assistant Directors and the fact that some of the direct
supervision duties of the Chief Assistant have been proposed for reallocation farther
down the line. Another factor which persuaded the membership to this view was the wish
to refocus the Director's attention to internal concerns of the department. The feel-
ing was that if there was no position to whom the Director could delegate administra-
tive responsibility for internal management, he would then be forced to assume this
role because the Chief Assistant position would not be available to serve as a
buffer between him and internal management concerns.
The immediate response of staff to these expressions by the Task Force members
- 235 -
was that even though there are four Assistant Directors proposed there would still
be a need for a Chief Assistant to act for the Director in his absence and to assist
in the very critical coordination of departmental programs and operations. The Task
Force membership in response suggested the position of executive assistant or
"assistant to" the Director. Staff, in turn, responded that this type of staff
position was out of the command channel and was definitely not of the same character
of position as a Chief Assistant Director. The Task Force membership then generally
expressed the view that if acting for the Director in his absence was a problem it
could be assigned to one or more of the assistants. Staff, on the other hand,
felt that if the position of Chief Assistant were not to be retained, it would be
better to specifically designate one of the four proposed assistants as the position
to act for the Director in his absence and that this should probably be the position
of Assistant Director for Management. Staff concedes the validity of the observa-
tions of the Task Force membership relative to the need for a position of Chief Assist-
ant. However, Task Force staff retains its reservations regarding the wisdom of such
a move in a department of nearly 2,000 employees which has had almost disastrous
experiences in assigning critical executive functions to a very limited staff, and
in which a substantial reorganization is proposed.
Although not unanimous in their position, Task Force members present at
the final draft review were overwhelmingly in favor of the proposed organization
chart included above.
- 236 -
One of the concepts of the proposed reorganization, as far as
direct delivery of services and income maintenance is concerned, is to
allow the new 300-man offices and the main office to serve income main-
tenance functions over relatively large territories and to convert smaller
offices to virtually exclusive decentralized delivery of social services.
Thus, the new North Oakland branch and the main office would
provide income maintenance functions to a territory that receives social
services from smaller satellite offices in Berkeley, East Oakland, and Bond
Street. The concept would have to be compromised slightly at the Main Branch,
where it would seem advisable to maintain at least two emergency social
service units to accommodate needs which will probably always be presented to
the main branch because of its high visibility as "the welfare department."
We would also propose move of the management of Medi-Cal eligibility functions
from the East Oakland branch to Main as a means of bringing coordination of
this matter, which is department-wide in scope, closer to top management of
the department. Moving south, the concept would have to be compromised a bit
further in Hayward, where it would make sense to detach to this income main-
tenance center at least as many (5) social service units as are presently
working out of Hayward. Finally, Fremont, because it is the outermost
extension of the department, covering an area of relatively low population
density, with poor public transportation facilities, should probably remain
organized much as at present, with five service units and 12 income maintenance
units.
Below, then, is a comparative breakdown of present and proposed
staffing patterns for social service and eligibility positions expressed in
terms of units with position counts reflected through the Grade I Supervisor
- 237 -
level. No non-unit positions are reflected (Grade II supervision, non-unit
clerks, department-wide staff, etc.). The proposed staffing pattern is
also based on occupation of new buildings and release of existing short- -
term or monthly leased facilities.
- 238 -
EXISTING AND PROPOSED STAFFING PATTERNS
Based on Shift to 300-Man Offices
(Eligibility and Social Service Units Only)
EXISTING STAFFING PATTERN
PROPOSED STAFFING PATTERN
Eligibility Social Service Total
Eligibility
Social
Service
Total
Location
Units Position Units Positions Units Pos.
Units Positions
Units Positions
Units Pos.
Main* (All except G.A.)
38
304
20
180
65
547
27
216
2
18
32
261
Gen. Asst./Medi-Cal
7
63
3
27
North Oakland
-
-
-
-
-
-
30
240
-
-
30
240
Berkeley (All except G.A.)
10
80
3
27
14
116
-
I
11
99
14
126
Gen. Asst.
1
9
-
-
3
27
East Oakland
-
-
All except Medi-Cal
13
104
4
36
20
167
8
72
239 I I
Medi-Cal/Gen. Asst.
3
27
3
27
24
216
Bond (All except G.A.)
11
88
4
36
16
133
-
-
10
90
Gen. Asst.
1
9
-
-
3
27
Hayward (All except G.A.)
12
96
4
36
17
141
26
208
4
36
31
253
Gen. Asst.
1
9
1
9
Fremont (All except G.A.)
11
88
4
36
16
133
12
96
4
36
17
141
Gen. Asst.
1
9
l
9
I
I
Total
95
760
53
477
148
1237
95
760
53
477
148
1237
*All staff in offices satellite to Main included in Main office total (i.e., 3rd & Adeline, 17th and Broadway,
etc.). Propose two emergency social service units at Main plus transfer of Medi-Cal units from East Oakland
to Main office.
As can be seen from the chart the proposed staffing pattern presents
an equalization in span of control (in terms of staff supervised by Division
Chiefs) and at the same time achieves physical caseload separation and the
specialization made possible by it. The existing groupings of eligibility
and service staffs are now in a configuration of one large group in excess
of 500 at the Main office with five small branch office groups in the 100-150
range. The proposed pattern would involve four administrative groupings of
200-250 with only two in the 100-150 range. In addition, the proposed pattern
would consolidate all income maintenance functions into three major locations
(North Oakland, Main, and Hayward) with a small income maintenance sub-unit
at Fremont. The present staffing pattern places income maintenance functions
in six branches; the implications of reducing the number of income maintenance
centers for standaridizing procedures, improving management controls, reducing
reporting requirements, etc. should be obvious.
The proposed staffing pattern also presents three branch offices
which would be devoted exclusively to social services --- Berkeley, East
Oakland, and Bond. As indicated before, it would still be necessary to
retain a few service units at Main, Hayward, and Fremont. The administrative
arrangement for these outlying social service staff would involve their
direction for program purposes by the Assistant Director for Services. All
matters pertaining to their housekeeping accommodations would, however, be
the responsibility of their income maintenance division chiefs.
The six division chiefs in the department would involve two Chiefs
for Services and four Chiefs for Income Maintenance, which is a rough
approximation of the total staffing ratio between services and income main-
tenance. It should be noted that we have proposed a single division chief
- 240 -
for a social service branch located in two existing facilities at Bond
Street and East Oakland. Although this chief would be split between two
headquarters they are reasonably close and the overall staff in service
units would be slightly over 200. He would probably wish to make his
headquarters at Bond Street since it is the larger office. We would also
propose that the Blind program and Child Welfare be placed with this
division chief.
We have proposed retention of a Berkeley Branch as a distinct
unit because to include it in the responsibilities of a Bond Street
East Oakland Division Chief would perhaps spread him too thin. The
Berkeley Branch should be retained as a services branch because it is too
small for efficient income maintenance.
We move on now to reorganization proposals related to department-
wide staff. These proposals in effect summarize recommendations made earlier
in this study in sections pertaining to specific problem areas. As noted
in our section on Social Services we have proposed that the Community
Resources Coordinator be responsible to the Assistant Director for Services.
We have also recommended that the departmental training be specialized and
separated in terms of income maintenance and social services and we propose
that the training function be immediately supervised at a Grade II Super-
visor level under the Assistant Directors for Services and for Income Main-
tenance. Earlier in this section of the report we discussed the functions
of the Assistant Directors for Management and Fiscal Office Services and we
have reflected this schematically in the organization chart.
We recognize that we have made a major reorganization proposal.
We acknowledge that the scope of the change proposed will have a far-reaching
- 241 -
effect on many smaller functions and processes of the department which we
have not had an opportunity to thoroughly review. For example, although we
have called for the separation of services and eligibility in General Assist-
ance, our proposed staffing pattern does not, at this point, reflect this.
For another example, we have not considered what implications there may be
in this reorganization for Child Welfare. Consider also the present arrange-
ment of having the foster home component of AFDC eligibility within the Child
Welfare Division. The proposed reorganization has not addressed this
question. For another example, we have based our proposed branch office
staffing patterns primarily upon the need to separate services and income
maintenance and to consolidate income maintenance functions as much as
possible within building capacities. We have not done any study with census
tract data, caseload geography, etc. for the purposes of perfect coterminous
balancing of services and eligibility caseload.
All that we are saying here is that we have been forced to apply
some limitations to the depth of our study of departmental reorganization,
and we acknowledge that further review will have to be given to the impact
of these large recommendations upon some of the sub-functions and processes
of the department. We do feel quite confident, however, in the main thrust
of our organization proposals and are firmly convinced that:
61. THE ALAMEDA COUNTY WELFARE DEPARTMENT SHOULD SEPARATE SERVICES
AND INCOME MAINTENANCE FUNCTIONS THROUGH THE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR LEVEL WITH
THE DIRECTOR ASSUMING RESPONSIBILITY FOR PROGRAM LIAISON;
THE NUMBER OF DIVISION CHIEFS SHOULD BE REDUCED FROM NINE
TO SIX, AND THE REVISED DIVISION CHIEF STRUCTURE SHOULD REFLECT A REVISED
DIVISION OF LABOR BETWEEN INCOME MAINTENANCE AND SERVICES;
- 242 -
INCOME MAINTENANCE FUNCTIONS SHOULD BE CONSOLIDATED WITHIN
THE LARGER OFFICE FACILITIES WITH SOCIAL SERVICES PROVIDED PRIMARILY FROM
SMALLER SATELLITE OFFICES;
A FOURTH POSITION AT THE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR LEVEL SHOULD BE
ADDED FOR THE PURPOSES OF DIRECTING AND COORDINATING DEPARTMENT-WIDE MANAGE-
MENT AND QUALITY CONTROL FUNCTIONS.
In conclusion we recognize that we have called for additional
staff in the course of making these recommendations on departmental reorgani-
zation; we propose four Assistant Directors where there are now only two
Assistants plus the Chief Assistant; we have called for the creation of a
three-position Management Analysis Unit which does not presently exist.
We do feel that these recommendations can be more than counter-balanced by
the need for a stronger management presence in the department, and in
proposals that we have made in connection with reducing the Division Chief
number by three and in proposals which we have made in connection with the
Employment Rehabilitation Service.
- 243 -
SECTION X
WORK INCENTIVE PROGRAM/EMPLOYMENT REHABILITATION SERVICE
WORK INCENTIVE PROGRAM/EMPLOYMENT REHABILITATION SERVICE
This study of welfare in one major California county has led us
to the inescapable conclusion that our efforts to resolve our unemployment
problems through current manpower programs have failed. The programs of the
early 1960's - the Community Work and Training provisions of the 1962
Social Security Amendments, the Manpower Development and Training Act, the
"unconditional War on Poverty," -- are typical high expectation-low yield
efforts that have not only been costly, but counter-productive. A recent
effort -- the WIN Program, administered through the State Department of
Human Resource Development - appears, on the basis of its 30-month record
in California, to be no more successful than its predecessors. These programs
have failed due to reliance on the concept that people are unemployed mainly
because of personal "barriers" such as lack of motivation, poor attitudes
about work, limited child care facilities, inadequate transportation, etc.
The operational implementation of this concept has been: to solve unemploy-
ment we must concentrate on the unemployed, who are out of work because they
are "disadvantaged." Alameda County manpower programs represent a microcosm
of the national experience with the personal barrier concept, and we feel
that our studies within just two of the systems in Alameda County (Welfare
and HRD) support the conclusion that this concept is a failure.
We would also suggest that one of the most telling body-blows to
the personal barrier theory, especially in California, has been the significant
intrusion of unemployment into suburbia, as a result of aerospace industry
cutbacks and general cooling of the economy. The growing incidence of
- 244 -
unemployment among the relatively well-educated, highly motivated middle
class is emphasizing a simple fact known by many of the "disadvantaged" for
some time: that the biggest barrier to employment is a lack of jobs. Most
of those recently laid off in aerospace cutbacks would probably also agree
that personality disfunctions are primarily a result, rather than a cause of
unemployment. Further evidence on a national scale of the impact of broad
economic factors upon employment is the fact that one act -- the tax cut of
1964 -- probably had more impact on employment than all of the manpower
programs of the 1960's; the economic expansion generated by that move actually
brought the nation below the full employment index of 4%.
It is our contention that the most effective manpower strategy is
to concentrate not on the unemployed, but on the employment market, and to
reduce unemployment by increasing the demand for labor. At the conclusion
of this discussion, we will propose recommendations for action at local,
State and federal levels. These recommendations will not call for expendi -
ture of new money, but for radical redirection of some of the enormous out-
lays being channelled through existing manpower programs.
Let us first take a short journey back through the 'sixties, to
the high-water mark for the personal barrier theory of unemployment -- the
Social Security Amendments of 1962, and, in particular, the provisions therein
for "Community Work and Training Programs.' These provisions were designed
to encourage the states to establish programs which would offer training and
job opportunities to employable individuals over age 18 in families
receiving AFDC. The federal standards stipulated that recipients must be
offered training and work at not less than minimum or prevailing wage on
projects which served a useful public purpose. Recipients were not to be
- 245 -
employed if the work would otherwise be done by public or private employees,
and assistance would be denied anyone refusing work without good cause.
Community Work and Training Programs were conducted by county
welfare departments through units such as the Employment Rehabilitation
Section (ERS) in the Alameda County Welfare Department. This unit received
referrals of cases from individual workers and tested, screened, and
counseled recipients and in turn referred them to a specific work experience
or training project, or work assignment. We will discuss certain measures of
the success of this unit in Alameda County below. Whatever its record was
between 1963 and 1967, the Congress in 1968 felt that Community Work and
Training was a failure, as well as the 1962 Amendments relating to social
services:
Thus convinced that social services and voluntary-
compliance work programs do not solve the problem of rising
AFDC costs, Congress in the 1967 amendments redirected the
thrust of the AFDC and other federally assisted welfare
programs. By developing extensive employment programs,
making them mandatory upon the states and expanding the
scope of required recipient participation, the legislation
increases the federal government's role in meeting the needs
of welfare recipients.
The shift in focus is evidenced by the shift in control
from HEW to the Department of Labor. Thus the solution to
the poverty problem is being sought in employment rather than
in social services. The objective of these programs is to
"assure, to the maximum extent possible, that such relative,
child and individual will enter the labor force and accept
employment SO that they will become self-sufficient. "l
The shift in control from HEW to Department of Labor was reportedly also a
result of a struggle for management of the new manpower program at the
1
Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems, "Compulsory Work for Welfare
Recipients under the Social Security Amendments of 1967," Third Quarter,
1968, p. 199.
- 246 -
Departmental Secretary level.
The Work Incentive Program provisions of the 1967 Amendments
(PL 90-248; 42 U.S.C.A. Sec. 602) were implanted in California law through
AB 210 (Chappie), 1968 Session. In a statement on his bill in January,
1968, Assemblyman Chappie commented that it was probably the first imple-
mentation in any state of the new federal work incentive procedures. An
early release on the bill claimed that it would "transform thousands of
hopeless, hard-core, unemployed into hopeful, taxpaying, job holders." The
bill carried out the Congressional intent for transfer of program responsi-
bility from the welfare to the employment system. It was characterized as
a three-pronged effort which would: 1) find jobs or on-the-job training for
employable AFDC recipients; 2) provide training and rehabilitation for those
whose employment potential can be improved; and 3) establish special projects
with public or private non-profit agencies to provide jobs for persons who
would otherwise be welfare recipients.
An analysis of AB 210 by the California Taxpayers' Association on
February 6, 1968 noted that it "abolishes community work and training programs
under the Department of Social Welfare 11 The analysis noted that Mr.
Chappie said that California legislation should go farther than simply
paralleling the Social Security Amendments; "since these persons will draw
paychecks, pay taxes and, in effect, become independent citizens, we should
distinguish them from unemployables remaining fully dependent on welfare
rolls. 11 AB 210 at this stage apparently did go beyond the federal provisions.
According to the Cal-Tax analysis:
What is being said in that aspect of the bill is that
every person in a welfare caseload transferred to the
Department of Employment as an eligible under the Social
- 247 -
Security Amendments will no longer be classed as a welfare
recipient. The recipient clearly becomes the responsibility
of the Department of Labor and the Department of Employment
and would no longer be carried in a welfare department
caseload nor require the activities or social studies here-
tofore required by a caseworker. What is being sought here
is a clean break with the welfare caseload, and a definition
of departmental responsibility with respect to work incentive
programs.
The bill also required the Director of the State Department of Social Welfare
to report to each regular session of the Legislature on the cost effectiveness
of the program. As we shall see, somewhere between the introduction of AB
210 and its passage as Sections 11300-11308, Welfare and Institutions Code,
and Sections 5000-5403 of the Unemployment Insurance Code, this cost effect-
iveness reporting by SDSW was dropped. Also the "clean break" with the
welfare system actually resulted in rather sloppy surgery, and the wounds
are still not healed. Of significance to our later discussion is Section
5014 of the Unemployment Insurance Code:
It is the intent of the Legislature that the
department shall make maximum use of the accumulated
experience of personnel who were employed by county
welfare departments in job training and placement
programs immediately preceding the effective date of
this division.
2
How does WIN work? We should start with WIN's statements of purpose
and intent which, although lengthy, are worth reviewing for their emphasis on
the personality disfunction theory of poverty. Emphasis is added:
The purpose of this division is to establish a
program utilizing all available manpower services
under
which individuals receiving aid to families with dependent
children will be furnished incentives, opportunities, and
necessary services towards the employment of such individuals
in the regular economy, the training of such individuals for
2
Unemployment Insurance Code, Section 5014, Vol. 65, 1971.
- 248 -
work in the regular economy, and the participation of
such individuals in special work projects, thus
restoring the families of such individuals to independ-
ence and useful roles in their communities. It is
expected that the individuals participating in the
program established under this division will acquire a
sense of dignity, self-worth, and confidence which will
flow from being recognized as a wage-earning member of
society and that the example of a working adult in these
families will have beneficial effects on the children in
such families.
It is the intent of the Legislature to concentrate
maximum state efforts on providing increased employment
opportunities and upgrading of employment skills in order
to open the way to permanent self-support for persons who
have been or otherwise might become dependent on public
aid. To this end the Legislature intends that persons
affected by this chapter shall be assigned to the primary
jurisdiction of the Department of Human Resources Develop-
ment, which shall be responsible for implementing and
executing the provisions of this chapter.
Consistent with the intent of the Legislature to
promote and achieve permanent employment of persons
qualifying for work incentive programs under this
division, it shall be the responsibility of each state
agency and the political sub-divisions of this state to
cooperate by providing as many opportunities as possible
for the permanent employment of such persons 3
Section 5013 of the Unemployment Insurance Code sets out the
following priorities for assigning persons to WIN programs:
(1) Persons who were in training or employment under a
community work and training program immediately
preceding the effective date of this division.
(2) Unemployed fathers.
(3) Unemployed mothers whose children are school
age or older.
(4) Unemployed mothers with pre-school age children.
3 Unemployment Insurance Code, Sections 5000 and 5001, Vol. 65, 1971.
- 249 -