Mono County Department of Social Services

Complainant did not provide any credible evidence to substantiate claims of discrimination and harassment by her DSS eligibility worker. Recommendation: None.

Complainant did not provide any credible evidence to substantiate claims that Complainant’s civil rights were violated. Recommendation: None. 9

Complainant’s Medi-Cal benefits were correctly calculated according to applicable laws and regulations. Recommendation: None.

No evidence was found to substantiate Complainant’s claim that communications by DSS were in Spanish rather than English. Recommendation: None

Complainant’s assertion that information about and documentation for the Medi- Cal program was withheld may have resulted from Complainant’s misunderstanding of DSS procedures intended to reduce duplication of materials (multiple languages used in form documents to mention availability of materials in other languages). Recommendation: None

Food stamps were not improperly withheld from Complainant. Recommendation: None

The current Director of DSS began serving in this position recently and was not the director during the time period on which the complaint was based. Recommendation: After the Director has one or two years’ tenure in the position, the Grand Jury should consider an overall review of DSS operations to generally determine how effective DSS is operating and to specifically examine whether the DSS workload continues to be heavily impacted by adverse economic conditions.

Complainant’s failure to comply with reasonable DSS procedural requirements substantially contributed to the denial and termination of benefits that Complainant would have otherwise received in a timely manner. Recommendation: None.

DSS procedures failed to correlate documents received from applicants with the deadlines to which those incoming documents were responding. As a result, one of Complainant’s responses, because it was overdue, was overlooked by DSS for a period of time since it was not prioritized for handling before other submittals, which were responding to more recent deadlines. In mitigation, this deficiency in DDS procedures did not cause a problem until a major increase in DSS cases (due to economic conditions) caused eligibility workers at DSS to experience large increases in their workloads. Furthermore, the problem would not have occurred but for Complainant’s failure to submit the response at issue in a timely manner. Recommendation: As soon as DSS became aware of this problem, it revised its procedures to ensure that this problem did not occur in the future. For this reason, the Grand Jury finds no need to make any further recommendation.

The July 25, 2013 Mono County DSS internal investigation contained a number of factual errors and lacked adequate detail in some findings. Recommendation: DSS should consider establishing a procedure to ensure that internal investigations are reviewed for accuracy and completeness. 11