Tables and Figures

Recommendations 2

• R1

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  That the Board of Supervisors instruct Mariposa County Human Resources Department to conduct an employee survey of all county employees every two to three years.
• R2

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  That the 2012 King County Employee Survey, or another deemed by the County’s HR Director and the Grand Jury to be of high quality, be used as basis for the survey. Responses We require the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors respond to this report. 2 | P age EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION WITHIN THE MARIPOSA COUNTY HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENT SECOND INVESTIGATIVE REPORT BY THE 2013-2014 MARIPOSA COUNTY GRAND JURY Introduction For the last three years Mariposa County Grand Juries have been aware that the Human Services Department would be a likely subject of a review. Last year’s Jury received two formal complaints against Human Services, initiated preliminary inquiries, and at the end of its term conducted a survey of Human Services employees in cooperation with the department’s leadership. Though the results of that survey were provocative, it was not until this year’s Grand Jury received a letter of concern and two additional formal complaints and heard of the Director’s planned resignation that we decided to launch a thorough investigation, conducted under authority of California Penal Code § 925, which states in part “The grand jury shall investigate and report on the operations, accounts, and records of the officers, departments, or functions of the county…” Human Services is the County’s largest agency, employing 108 people with an annual budget of around $30 million. It is organized in two major service divisions: Behavioral Health and Recovery Services (BHRS) and Social Services (SS), each with a deputy director in charge. BHRS primarily works with clients with mental illness and alcohol and drug problems. SS deals mostly with adults, families and children in crisis. A third major department within Human Services is Fiscal Administration. There are 30 employees with BHRS, 42 in SS, 18 in Fiscal Administration and the remainder work in Office Support. The complexities of the financial aspects of Human Services are considerable, and they have been recently examined and addressed by the County Auditor. This investigation concentrated on specific personnel issues within the agency with an eye toward their ultimate impact on the delivery of services. 3 | P age Methods All Human Services employees were invited by the Grand Jury to participate, anonymously, in an employee satisfaction survey. Employees were contacted via email and the survey was conducted using an Internet web-based system. To preserve anonymity of the respondents, we only asked that they identify the major Human Services division within which they worked and their general employee rank. Several respondents (11 out of 53) still chose to not indicate within which division they worked. Thus, the survey data does not allow us to know the specific units or program areas responses are coming from, but it does allow us to make comparative assessments between the major Human Services divisions and across employee ranks. The survey inquired into nine different aspects of the Human Services work environment: training, communication, appraisals, organization, management, recognition, career advancement, satisfaction and aspects of their major division within Human Services. For each category four or more positive statements were made such as “Hard work is formally recognized at Human Services.” Employees were asked to respond by indicating “strongly agree”, “agree”, “neutral”, “disagree” or “strongly disagree.” Employees were able to include a written response to each statement, and each of the nine categories included an open-response question asking for suggested changes or improvements. The survey concluded with three additional questions: “How would you rate your overall experience working for Human Services? (Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, Terrible)”, “Would you refer others seeking employment to Human Services, and if not, why?”, and “If you had an opportunity to make any single change at Human Services, what improvement would you make?” We also interviewed the acting director, deputy directors, supervisors, line staff, and former employees. Here we concentrated our attention on those working in or supervising Child Welfare Services and the Emergency Response Unit (both within SS) and Adult Systems of Care (within BHRS). These interviews took place in the Grand Jury office and usually lasted for more than an hour. Facts Results from the Survey