2015-2016 Grand Jury Final Report 07/01/16

Conclusions 7

• CL1 Page 149
  During its investigation, the Grand Jury learned that most counties in California and throughout the nation are grappling with the challenging responsibilities of foster parent recruitment and retention. It is not the intention of this study to suggest that Orange County alone is remiss in adequately caring for dependent childrenin “hard to place” categories. In fact, even the most vocal critics of the system frequently stated during interviews that Orange County Children and Family Services is far better to work with and for than social service agencies in neighboring counties. Nevertheless, every County has an ethical responsibility to care for its children –all of its children, regardless of how difficult the task. Statements of need and intent must be followed up with genuine efforts, with resources and with dedicated staff. In the Academy Award winning film, Spotlight, which told the story of the Boston Globe’s expose of child abuse in the Catholic Church, a child advocate poignantly states, “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.” (Spotlight, 2015) Orange County cannot be a County that contributes to the neglect and abuse of already victimized children who cannot advocate for themselves by simply
• CL2 Page 150
  Fostering a Better Foster Care System declaring that “they present a problem,” or “we are working on that,” or “we don’t have funds.” CFS must adhere to the spirit of AB403. For those County officials, employees and citizens unmoved by moral and ethical arguments,it is important to consider practical realities. If foster care children are not given the opportunity to REPORT become healthy, educated, stable and contributing adults, the County will “pay” later when they 4 emancipate to unemployment, mental instability and prison.
• CL3 Page 7
  Fostering a Better Foster Care System
• CL4 Page 384
  Through the process of conducting personal interviews, reviewing numerous financial documents, and comparing data from other large California governmental entities, the Grand Jury concludes that Orange County is taking adequate, but not aggressive action to reduce the unfunded liability and therefore, is adversely affecting the level of service to the public that it could provide if the liability was eliminated. There is a distinct disconnect between the reductions of the unfunded pension liability in recent years and the actuarial projection of the pension liabilities increasing for the next several years by nearly $500 million.
• CL5 Page 7
  Orange County’s $4.5 Billion Unfunded Pension Liability & Retirement Plans
• CL6 Page 504
  The Grand Jury is cautiously optimistic that the OIR will return in fiscal year 2016-2017, but it remains to be seen whether the new OIR will get the cooperation it needs from the OCDA. Moreover, the revised 2015 OIR ordinance lacks details on program design, duties, key performance indicators (KPIs), and outcome measures. The County has yet to develop a detailed vision of exactly what this iteration of the OIR will look like or achieve. Much work remains to fill out the details and reestablish the OIR.
• CL7 Page 505
  Office of Independent Review: What’s Next? On balance, the Grand Jury believes the original OIR was a worthwhile addition to County government to ensure that the Sheriff’s Department’s internal investigations and responses to in- custody deaths or serious injuries were thorough, fair, and effective. It suffered, however, from expectations by the Board that were not supported by the founding ordinance. This created tension between the Board and the OIR throughout the past eight years. Now the Board has put the original OIR to rest and started building its replacement with new provisions more closely, but still not perfectly, matched to the Board’s expectations of independent and pro-active investigation as well as review. Obviously, it is too early to judge how effective the new OIR may be. Based on its investigation, the Grand Jury is providing a number of findings and recommendations in this report. They are directed to the Board for its consideration as it fills in the details of the new OIR, and to the five agencies called out in the 2015 ordinance. The hope of the Grand Jury is that the new OIR will apply the lessons learned from the successes and struggles of the original OIR, and fulfill its mandate as an independent watchful eye ensuring thorough, fair, and effective law enforcement for the citizens of Orange County.

Commendations 3

• CM1 Page 106
  The Grand Jury would like to commend the employees of OCTA andthe cities interviewed in the course of this investigation for their hard work and dedication to advancing light rail and other transit options in Orange County. Each seeks to promote the public good and economic growth intheir communities and within Orange County based on their understanding of the benefits of various public transportation options. The Grand Jury also commends each for recognizing the need foralonger term County Transportation Master Plan that could help create an intra-county network of light rail and other transit options, as well as additional rail links with Los Angeles County.
• CM2 Page 186
  The Grand Jury appreciates the extraordinary time and effort that the Sheriff’s Department provided to coordinate the numerous events essential to the completion of this report.
• CM3 Page 19
  Sheriff’s Temporary Detention/Holding Areas, Patrol Areas and Special Services

Observations 15

• OB1 Page 227
  Financial Outputs (i.e., bill pay, year-end reconciliation, taxes). Currently the IT Dept. extracts data from E-CMDS and copies it into an Excel spreadsheet in order to interface with the Auditor Controller.
• OB2 Page 227
  Reports. Some report functions were built into E-CMDS in 1999, but were designed in an antiquated report generating system program. The person who built the reports is no longer employed by the County, so there was no transfer of information to the IT person 2015-2016 Orange County Grand Jury age 30 P
• OB3 Page 228
  Court Inventory and Assets Reports:This critical functionis completed manually in MS Word, leaving the door open for human error when inputting data. Additionally, the MS Word format does not comply with theJudicial Council format consistent with Rule of Court 7.575 requirements,which suggest that Inventory and Asset items must be listed and sub-totaled in “categorized” format by similar class of assets,i.e. cash, bank REPORT accounts, marketable securities, real properties, business interests, notes receivable, etc. 6 The most recent RFP from February 2015listed several state-of-the-art features deemed essential for the updated case management system.(Please refer to Appendix D for Essential Features Required). For now, these critical items remain a wish list, with no solutions offered to Public Administration and Public Guardian staff in the foreseeable future. PUBLIC GUARDIAN TRAINING AND CERTIFICATION All Public Administrator and Public Guardian deputies are required by Probate Code (Division 4, Part 5, Chapter 3, 2923) to comply with continuing education requirements that are established by the CaliforniaAssociation of Public Administrators/Public Guardians/Public Conservators (CAPAPGPC/Association). The CAPAPGPC, often referred to simply as “the Association,”is a non-profit association representingpublic administrators, guardians and conservators from each of California's 58 counties. According to their website, the Association's mission is to foster communication between counties, provide education and certification to its members, and provide legislative advocacy on behalf of individuals served by these programs. This requirement is reiterated in Public Guardian Policy 1.01 Public GuardianCertification and Continuing Education, which states, “Public Guardian Deputy staff are required to obtain and maintain certification by the Association within 18 months of employment.”Some of the courses that lead to certification include Ethics, Investigations, Laws and Codes, Administration and Case Management, Identifying and Marshaling Assets, Taxes, and Elder Abuse –all critical aspects of the Public Guardiandeputy responsibilities.The expectation and process for keeping membership dues current and the reimbursement process for dues is not specified in the policy despite this beinga major issue for most Public Guardiandeputies. 2015-2016 Orange County Grand Jury age 31 P
• OB4 Page 235
  Vision or Mission Statement
• OB5 Page 235
  Code of Conduct/Progressive Supervision REPORT
• OB6 Page 235
  Process or Requirements for being Deputized 6
• OB7 Page 235
  Process/Expectations for Conducting Performance Appraisals
• OB8 Page 235
  Orientation Guidelines
• OB9 Page 235
  Special Incident Reporting
• OB10 Page 235
  Continuous Quality Improvement The Health Care Agencyprovided the Grand Jury documents from their agency that included these topics, but they have not been included in the Public Guardian’s Officepolicy manual. Several members of the Public Guardian staff told the Grand Jury that they do not consider Health Care Agency policies relevant to their department. Perhaps the most glaring omission in the policy and procedure process isa system toensure that policiesare:
• OB11 Page 235
  Systematically reviewed and revised
• OB12 Page 235
  New laws/statutes/regulations are incorporated into the existing policies
• OB13 Page 235
  New policies are establishedas needed
• OB14 Page 235
  Policies are distributed in a systematic way that employees are trained on new and/or revised policies
• OB15 Page 235
  Afiling system is established for revised and deleted policies so they canbe referenced in the future due to lawsuits, audits, etc. According to the Public Administrator/Public Guardian response to the Grand Jury’s

Agency Responses 1

Government agencies' official responses to this report's findings and recommendations. Click on a response to see the structured breakdown.

No Responses Found 1

Government entities assigned to respond to this report. No response documents have been linked in our database.