BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE HUMAN
SERVICES COMMITTEE
Senator Jim Beall, Chair
BILL NO: AB 2547
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AUTHOR: Gaines
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VERSION: May 15, 2014
HEARING DATE: June 10, 2014
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FISCAL: Yes
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CONSULTANT: Mareva Brown
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SUBJECT
Placer County Integrated Health and Human Services Program
SUMMARY
This bill deletes the provisions making the program
inoperative and providing for its repeal, thereby extending
that program indefinitely. The bill would delete obsolete
related provisions and make other conforming changes. It
also makes legislative findings related to the need for a
special statute for Placer County.
ABSTRACT
Existing law:
1) Creates a series of public social services to
provide for protection, care, and assistance to the
people of the state in need thereof, and to promote
the welfare and happiness of all of the people of the
state by providing appropriate aid and services to all
of its needy and distressed. (WIC 10000, et seq.)
2) Authorizes Placer County to implement a pilot
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program with the assistance of the appropriate state
departments, within the existing resources of those
departments, for the funding and delivery of services
and benefits through an integrated and comprehensive
county health and human services system. (WIC
18986.60.)
3) Requires the Placer County pilot project to do all
of the following:
a. Implement and evaluate a system of
universal intake for those seeking services.
b. Implement and evaluate a system whereby a
family or individual eligible for more than one
service may be provided those services by as few
as a single county employee, through an
integrated, coordinated service plan.
c. Implement and evaluate a system of
administration that centralizes the management
and support of client services.
d. Implement and evaluate a system of
reporting and accountability that provides for
the combined provision of services as specified,
without the loss of state or federal funds
provided under current law.
4) Defines services within the integrated system to
include any or all of the following:
a. Adoption services.
b. Child abuse prevention services.
c. Child welfare services.
d. Delinquency prevention services.
e. Drug and alcohol services.
f. Mental health services.
g. Eligibility determination.
h. Employment and training services.
i. Foster care services.
j. Health services.
aa. Public health services.
bb. Housing services.
cc. Medically indigent program services.
dd. All other appropriately identified and
targeted services, except for dental care.
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5) Requires that the county not reduce services to
eligible populations, not generate increased General
Fund expenditures nor result in the loss of federal
funds and not reduce the county's state funding for
eligible populations. (WIC 18986.6 (d)-(g))
6) Authorizes the state departments that oversee the
various programs within the integrated model to waive
regulations regarding the method of providing services
and the method of reporting and accountability, as may
be required to meet the goals of the program. (WIC
18986.6 (i))
7) Requires Placer County to evaluate the pilot
program and to prepare and submit a final evaluation
of the program to the Governor and policy committees
of the Legislature not later than six months following
the third year of the implementation of the pilot
program. Additionally, requires the county and
appropriate state departments to seek private funding
for the program's evaluation and eliminates the
requirement to do an evaluation if non-state resources
can not be used. (WIC 18986.61.)
8) Includes a sunset date of July 1, 2016, at which
point the statute becomes inoperative, and a date of
repeal of January 1, 2017, unless those dates are
altered by a new statute. (WIC 18986.62.)
This bill:
1) Eliminates the sunset date, thus making the program
permanent, and strikes language referring to the
program as a pilot project.
2) Removes the requirement that the pilot project be
evaluated in three years.
3) Adds a Legislative finding that a special law is
necessary due to the unique circumstances of Placer
County and the success of the Placer County Integrated
Health and Human Services Pilot Program.
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FISCAL IMPACT
According to an analysis by the Assembly Appropriations
Committee, there are no significant costs associated with
this legislation.
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
Purpose of the bill:
AB 2547 will allow the County of Placer to continue to
operate its integrated Health and Human Services Pilot
Program permanently. According to the author, this program
has demonstrated success in implementing a family-centered
and needs-based model of services to children and families
since 1995. The System of Care has demonstrated how
efficiency, streamlining and fully integrated programming,
can be achieved to provide a good public service for
families with needs in child welfare, mental health,
probation and education.
Public Social Services
Federal and state statutes and funding provide a safety net
for California families needing a variety of support
services including health care, cash assistance and
nutritional aid, child welfare oversight and family
services, and mental health and drug and alcohol treatment,
to name a few. In general, families who need more than one
service must apply, be found eligible and be assigned
caseworkers separately in each program. This leaves
counties with multiple programs managing cases for the same
family and leaves families to meet requirements of multiple
caseworkers across various locations, requirements and time
frames.
Placer Model
In 1993, AB 1741 authorized a pilot program to address the
uncoordinated, separately funded and narrowly targeted
categorical programs that created barriers to addressing
broader needs of children and families. This law allowed
Placer County to create a county child and family services
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fund that blends funding streams for services such as child
welfare, drug and alcohol abuse, health and probation. It
provides the mechanism to request waivers of regulations
and policies to support these integration efforts.
The "Placer Model" focuses on strengthening families by
blending child welfare, mental health, probation, and
county office of education services and staff into one
physically and functionally integrated division, rather
than having families manage their services through
individual contacts in each system. The model effectively
shifts the burdens of access and navigation from the family
to the county.
According to the California State Association of Counties,
which writes in support of the bill, the integrated
approach used in Placer County has reduced the number of
children entering foster care by 20 percent and helped more
than 100 children find stable, adoptive homes
Related legislation:
AB 1766 (Gaines) Chapter 364, Statutes of 2010, extended
Placer County's pilot program five years to July 1, 2016.
AB 2039 (Logue) 2010, would have deleted the pilot status
and made the Placer County program permanent. The bill was
vetoed by the Governor with a note that a sunset date
allowed for periodic reviews of the program.
AB 1859 (Leslie) Chapter 268, Statutes of 2006, extended
Placer County's pilot program five years to July 1, 2011.
AB 308 (Leslie), Chapter 17, Statutes of 2001, extended
Placer County's pilot program five years to July 1, 2006.
AB 1259 (Strom-Martin), Chapter 705, Statutes of 1999, gave
specific authority to Alameda, Humboldt, and Mendocino
Counties, to operate an integration pilot similar to Placer
County's.
AB 866 (Thomson), Chapter 265, Statutes of 1997, gave
specific authority to Solano County to operate an
integration pilot similar to Placer County's.
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SB 1846 (Leslie), Chapter 899, Statutes of 1996, authorized
Placer County's pilot program to integrate the funding and
delivery of services and benefits for the county health and
human services system.
COMMENTS
Since this statute was enacted in 1996, the sunset date has
been extended three times, each time for five years. This
bill, which removes the sunset date and makes the program
permanent, has faced no opposition and had zero no votes.
PRIOR VOTES
Assembly Floor 73 - 0
Assembly Appropriations 17 - 0
Assembly Human Services 7 - 0
POSITIONS
Support: Placer County Board of Supervisors
California Legislative Women's Caucus
Place Community Foundation
Oppose: None received.
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