[The following article appears in the September 1995 edition of
_Public_Sector_Quality_Report_, page 3.]

   REENGINEERING HUMAN SERVICES ELIGIBILITY, CASE MANAGEMENT

     As described in the September 1995 issue of Government
Executive magazine, the Merced County (CA) Human Services Agency
has undergone a dramatic reengineering in how it delivers
services to clients. 

     The agency determines eligibility and manages the cases of
citizens who receive five forms of public assistance, including
Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamps and
Medicaid. 

     That process historically was administered in "vertical"
fashion, with an applicant visiting one of the agency's
departments to apply for AFDC, another to fill out a food stamps
application, and so forth. 

     In all, the department shuffled more than 700 paper forms. A
typical client might be asked to complete a total of 30 or more
pages of applications and be interviewed by several case workers.
Once the torturous application process was complete, it could
take as many as 45 days for the applicant to receive notice of
benefit status. 

     All this changed a few years back when the agency decided to
refocus and redesign its processes around the needs of customers.
Among the changes:

     * Policies and rules for the various programs were
     streamlined and consolidated, to the point that applicants
     now complete a one-page application, and are notified of
     their benefits within four days or fewer.
     
     * More than 400 paper forms have been eliminated.
     
     * Staff training time and turnover has been reduced, and
     staff evaluations now are based on quality and accuracy of
     service delivery, not on paper-pushing efficiency. 
     
     Today, according to the magazine's report, agency case
workers actually are handling more cases, even as the agency
trimmed its administrative costs by more than half between 1990
and 1995. 

     Projected to save about $5 million annually, the
reengineering effort is reality is saving the county more than
twice that amount on a yearly basis. 

     In a final testimony to the effort's success, the report
notes that California's state auditor found that Merced County's
administrative costs for combined food stamp/ Medicaid/AFDC cases
($273) are running about 36 percent less than the statewide
average ($431).

CONTACT: Rita Kidd, former project director, Catheys Valley, CA,
(209) 966-3212.

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