BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
SB 472 (Correa)
Hearing Date: 5/26/2011 Amended: 5/2/2011
Consultant: Katie Johnson Policy Vote: Human Services 7-0
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BILL SUMMARY: SB 472 would require the Secretary of California
Health and Human Services and the Superintendent of Public
Instruction to develop an integrated assessment or a process to
coordinate multiple assessments to assess the needs of children
receiving special education and related services.
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Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 Fund
SPI assessment over $1 million in FY 2011-12 and FY
2012-13General
development process
CHHS assessment potentially hundreds of
thousands of dollars General
development process in FY 2011-12 and FY
2012-13
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STAFF COMMENTS: SUSPENSE FILE.
This bill would require the Secretary of the California Health
and Human Services Agency (CHHS) and the Superintendent of
Public Instruction (SPI) to develop an integrated assessment and
process, by January 1, 2013, in consultation with
representatives of county mental health services and the
California Children's Services program (CCS) to assess the needs
of children receiving special education and related services.
The integrated assessment would be required to initially focus
on infants and toddlers, but it would be flexible enough to
continue to service the needs of children as they age. CHHS and
the SPI would be required to report their findings to the
Legislature by January 1, 2013. Although unclear, this reporting
requirement implies that further Legislative action would need
to be taken to require and implement utilization of the
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assessment.
This bill would require that CHHS and the SPI develop the
integrated assessment in one of two ways:
1) An integrated assessment instrument that could be
performed in one place at one time each year and that would
serve the assessment needs of all service agencies.
2) A process whereby the several required assessments could
be conducted in one place at one time.
This bill would codify findings and declarations that state:
1) Children receiving special education and related
services are often clients of a regional center, of CCS,
and recipients of county mental health services;
2) Each organization may require separate, multiple
assessments annually and may require parents to provide the
same information multiple times and travel to multiple
locations each year for the assessments.
Staff recommends amending the bill to make the findings and
declarations uncodified.
Development of the Assessment(s)
In order to develop an integrated assessment or a process to
coordinate multiple assessments, several different state
departments, including the California Department of Education
(CDE), the DDS, and the Department of Health Care Services
(DHCS), and representatives of county mental health services
would need to come together to provide an accurate picture of
all of the aspects and goals of each of the assessments. In
addition, representatives of the 21 regional centers that
contract with DDS to provide assessments and coordinate services
for approximately 240,000 consumers, county health department
representatives that determine CCS eligibility, and local
education agencies (LEAs) would likely want and need to be part
of the assessment development process.
It is not known how many children utilize services provided by
all of these agencies or by a combination of some of these
agencies. In some cases, there could be significant overlap and,
in others, none at all. The assessments currently required for
each child would depend on their needs, age, and county of
residence. Additionally, each separate assessment has a
different purpose. For example, the assessment for the
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development of an individual education plan (IEP) has the goal
of determining the supports that a child would need to have a
free and appropriate education; the assessment for the
development of an individual program plan (IPP) by a regional
center would be to determine the supports a child would need to
reside in the least restrictive environment; the assessment
conducted by a county medical director would be to determine a
child's eligibility based on a specified health condition for
CCS. The FY 2011-12 Department of Developmental Services' (DDS)
November 2010 Budget Estimate assumes 3,885 children would be
served in its Prevention Program and 28,209 children in the
Early Start program, a program for young children aged birth
through 2 years with disabilities. As of December 1, 2009, there
were 6,309 children aged 0-2 years and 18,034 3-year-olds in
special education.
The development of the integrated assessment or process would
likely involve both a public agency and department stakeholder
group as well as input from stakeholders in the community
including families, county mental health providers, and regional
centers. With one year to complete the development of this
assessment tool, which would likely consist of a complicated
stakeholder and tool development process and need to ensure that
federal and state requirements were being met, costs to both the
SPI and CHHS would likely be in the hundreds of thousands to low
millions of dollars General Fund.
This bill would require CDE and CHHS to report their findings to
the Legislature by January 1, 2013. If the Legislature chose to
implement this assessment or a process by which all assessments
were conducted at the same place and time, there would be
ongoing costs in the millions of dollars; it is unclear if
existing funds used to currently conduct assessments could be
redirected for this purpose.