CALIFORNIA

REGIONAL ADMINISTRATORS' STRATEGIC FUNCTIONS

Goal: To strengthen state oversight of local child support agencies in order to promote greater uniformity, ensure accountability, and improve performance and customer service in the agencies throughout California.

Description: Regional Administrators (RAs) were created in statute as a part of child support reform legislation enacted in 1999. The lack of coordination and integration between the state and the 58 Local Child Support Agencies (LCSAs) was identified as a major impediment to getting child support to recipients. At this time, 11 county programs have been folded into 5 LCSAs, bringing the total to 52 LCSAs.

Although specific responsibilities are defined in statute, the Department of Child Support Services (DCSS) envisioned a broader role for the RA to promote an effective state-local working relationship and an environment of continuing improvement in the California child support program. RAs are intimately involved in the implementation of California's Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement (QAPI) initiative. QAPI provides a framework for performance improvement by developing performance targets for every LCSA and action plans that detail how each performance target will be achieved. Each RA tracks LCSA performance in the federal measures against local agency performance targets and also evaluates other measures of performance, such as collection rates and orders established by default. The RAs work directly with LCSA directors to identify business strategies to improve collections and performance.

The two Southern California Regional Administrators coordinate the Big Five meeting of the largest California counties, including Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego LCSAs. The Big Five Forum was established to focus on performance improvement and includes a detailed review of the status of the performance improvement efforts, as well as issues of mutual interest and concern on the operation large caseload sized program. In addition, each RA conducts regional meetings that provide a forum for sharing best practices, discussing operational issues and challenges, and working through performance improvement strategies.

More broadly, RAs provide direction in other program activities:

• Program oversight: Ensure that the California child support program is being administered locally in a uniform manner throughout the state by monitoring the implementation of regulations and other departmental directives;
• LCSA site visits: Have a visible presence in the LCSA through regular and comprehensive site visits and demonstrate familiarity with the operations, issues and needs of each LCSA.
• Compliance: Actively participate in the identification and resolution of compliance issues including participating in information gathering, and conducting reviews and audits related to state and federal law or regulation;
• Program Improvement: Facilitate collaboration and sharing of best practices between LCSAs throughout the state.

Results: RAs have been involved in the development, implementation, and oversight of major DCSS initiatives including operational transition from District Attorney to separate and independent LCSA, the undistributed collections initiative, data reliability audits, and performance improvement efforts. Additionally, a performance monitoring tool that tracks progress towards achieving performance targets in the federal measures was developed to assist RAs performance tracking. The cumulative effect of these efforts is a consistent emphasis on performance improvement in the federal measures, particularly, in the current support measure. Performance of the California child support program has improved in all areas mentioned due to the RA strategic function.

Location: RAs are assigned to six regions statewide encompassing all local child support programs.

Replication Advice: Any agencies considering replicating the RA structure should consider carefully where the position is situated in your organization. The RAs have been successful in bridging the structural and communication divide between the state and LCSAs in part because they are part of the Executive Office of DCSS and report directly to the Chief Deputy Director. The ability to bring important programmatic and political issues directly to the attention of the Directorate has enabled DCSS to make better-informed decisions based on accurate, timely, and direct information from LCSAs. By virtue of their reporting relationship RAs are able to work across all divisions in DCSS as well as to speak with authority in our communications with counties and LCSAs. The direct relationship of RAs to the DCSS' executives is critical to the effectiveness of the position.

Contact:

Bill Otterbeck

Regional Administrator, Region Two, Bay Area Counties

Phone: (916) 464-5496

Email: bill.otterbeck@dcss.ca.gov