By Frank Mejia, Division Chief, Economic Assistance & Employment Services
Background
California legislation passed a few years ago (and updated in 2021) enacted the CalWORKs Outcomes and Accountability Review (Cal-OAR) process: an effort to measure the impacts of the many program investments aimed at improving outcomes of CalWORKs families across the state, including locally for us in Santa Barbara County.
Cal-OAR is a local, data-driven program management system that facilitates continuous improvement of county CalWORKs/Welfare-to-Work (WTW) programs by collecting, analyzing, and disseminating outcomes and best practices.
Cal-OAR consists of three core components: performance indicators, a county CalWORKs self-assessment (Cal-CSA), and a CalWORKs system improvement plan (Cal-SIP). The Cal-OAR continuous quality improvement (Cal-CQI) process (which includes the Cal-CSA and Cal-SIP) will take place over five-year cycles. The first Cal-OAR cycle began on July 1, 2021 with the implementation of Cal-OAR.
Cal-OAR Local Team
Locally, our Cal-OAR process was launched with the creation of a Cal-OAR countywide team that includes line staff, supervisors, DBS’s, managers and external stakeholders such as our Behavioral Wellness department partners to help us develop a framework that could help us guide our Cal-OAR journey. The group has been meeting for a few years (including a state ordered pandemic-era pause in the process) and worked on some early initiatives aimed at helping us clean up data in CalWIN/CalSAWS and tackle any low-hanging fruit that would in turn enhance our ability to meet performance measures we knew the state would be looking at.
From this group, a number of system improvement recommendations were made and new initiatives were launched. These included the creation of a post-aid Job Retention program to support former CalWORKs families transitioning to the workforce, as well as creating and implementing a cash incentive program to reward completion of certain program benchmarks while encouraging clients to engage or re-engage in our program services more consistently (which was very challenging especially during the pandemic). These initiatives have already made positive impacts to our performance measures, and we will be sure to further explore new creative initiatives to further enhance our efforts!
Cal-CSA
As we progressed through the Cal-OAR process, we utilized our team to kick-off our Cal-CSA efforts. These consisted of an in-depth review of our entire CalWORKs/WTW program with an eye on improving state-identified program measures that are being captured. This state-defined process included us gathering stakeholder input from all levels of staff, partner agencies and clients alike. There were numerous feedback sessions held, surveys completed, and lots of data to inform us of our program strengths and our opportunities for improvement.
An additional key component of this process included obtaining peer county review of our program and sharing the results of our Cal-CSA to help us then identify two to three focus areas of improvement that we would select to formalize into our Cal-SIP. The peer county we partnered with was Ventura County, whom we met with earlier this year and continue to work with as we roll out our coming Cal-SIP. We learned there were many similarities between our two counties in terms of client demographics to how we are structured, and that we had similar challenges, making our peer sharing a valuable and enriching process.
Cal-SIP
We have completed our Cal-SIP and are currently awaiting final state approval of our plan before we go to our County Board of Supervisors for approval and to share our plans for improvement for this first ever Cal-OAR cycle. We will be required to show that our goals are aligned with program mandates and outcome requirements and demonstrate how our goals will positively impact our clients and that they were developed through a diversity, equity and inclusion lens. Once approved, we will embark on an ambitious plan to improve our measures and strengthen our programs with an eye on positively impacting the families we serve, which is the ultimate goal and mission our department. We are fortunate to have dedicated staff that are committed to the community we serve and we have no doubt that together we will not only meet our Cal-SIP goals, but also exceed them!
Cal-SIP GOALS for Santa Barbara County are:
- OCAT/Appraisal Completion Timeliness Rate: Increase OCAT/Appraisal Completion Timeliness Rate to 40% from 23%
- First Activity Attendance Rate: Increase First Activity Attendance Rate to 63% from 32%.
- Engagement Rate: Increase Engagement Rate to 30% from 19%.