San Joaquin County Grand Jury • 2003-2004

Case #0703 San Joaquin County Public Guardian Conservator’s Office Reason for Investigation:

Published: April 23, 2004 8 pages
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Findings and Recommendations 8 findings

F1
Held 17 vehicles belonging to conservatees in an unsecured lot, exposing them to the elements, which resulted in deterioration and loss of value to the conservatees’ estates.
No recommendations for this finding
F2
Had no current policies and procedures to identify, store and dispose of personal property of conservatees or to conduct ”Inventory and Appraisals”
No recommendations for this finding
F3
Underutilized CompuTrust modules resulting in missing or incorrect information on 50-75% of client accounts
No recommendations for this finding
F4
Failed to preserve the estates of some conservatees as evidenced by unsecured vehicles and the inability to sell vehicles due to missing “Inventory and Appraisals”
No recommendations for this finding
F5
Failed to complete client account audits on 40-50% of their existing client base.
No recommendations for this finding
F6
Requests were made to purchase a ladder, a memory chip for a digital camera, a hand truck and a furniture dolly for the conservatee warehouse, but the requests were denied by management from Behavioral Health. The PG/CO must get approval from Behavioral Health management to use a county vehicle, to conduct routine business including visits to clients and managing the clients’ properties. CONCLUSION: The Grand Jury investigation focused on two primary allegations: 1) auditors were scheduled to be laid off without completing account audits and 2) the PG/CO failed to protect the estates of conserved individuals. Based on the current investigation, the Grand Jury concludes that the allegations in the original complaint are true. Audits were completed on caseloads of specific workers who were under criminal investigation by the District Attorney’s Office. Random audits were done on the remaining cases, but the Grand Jury found no evidence that an audit was completed on all cases in the Conservator’s Office. Due to the high turnover in the Conservator’s Office and the fact that most of the Deputy Public Guardians have less than one year of service in the office, it is the opinion of the Grand Jury that a full account audit would not be advantageous. Owing to a lack of systems for performing basic clerical and accounting duties, and the low staffing levels, estates for some conservatees were not monitored resulting in failure to collect fees for several years. At the time of our investigation the Public Guardian/Conservator had a part time data entry person assigned to review all client accounts starting with the conservatorships. The data entry person was responsible for pulling case files, reviewing court documents, verifying information and updating client data in CompuTrust. The Grand Jury concludes that the data entry position would go a long way towards reconciling conservatorship accounts and determining what authority the PG/CO had. It is the opinion of the Grand Jury that shifting Representative Payees from Deputy Public Guardians to Account Managers does not solve the problem of heavy case-loads. Currently each account manager is assigned to support a Deputy Public Guardian making the caseloads the same. With the proposed reorganization, accounts would not be co-mingled. Account Managers would do the bill paying for payee cases and Deputy Public Guardians would handle all LPS and Probate Conservatorship cases. We heard credible testimony that current staffing levels at the PG/CO would be enough to provide adequate supervision of client accounts if the office was not responsible for Representative Payee accounts. The Grand Jury concluded that inexperience, low staffing levels, poor accounting and a lack of systems and management direction contributed to the poor performance of the agency. The new Public Guardian has taken positive steps to address issues at the Conservator’s Office and Ms. Hughes has started an aggressive plan to reorganize the (PG/CO), improve staffing levels and raise the level of experience in the areas of accounting and property management but she still has a way to go.
No recommendations for this finding
F7
Dispose of all stored vehicles and eliminate the need for long-term storage
No recommendations for this finding
F8
Train all users to maximize their competency in operating CompuTrust computer database modules RESPONSE REQUIRED: Pursuant to Section 933.05 of the Penal Code: The San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors shall report to the Presiding Judge of the San Joaquin Superior Court, in writing and within 90 days of publication of this report, with a response as follows: As to each finding in the report a response indicating one of the following: a. The respondent agrees with the finding. b. The respondent disagrees with the finding, with an explanation of the reasons therefore. As to each recommendation, a response indicating one of the following: a. The recommendation has been implemented, with a summary of the action taken. b. The recommendation has not yet been implemented, but will be with a time frame for implementation. c. The recommendation requires further analysis, with an explanation of the scope of the analysis and a time frame not to exceed (6) six months. d. The recommendation will not be implemented, with an explanation therefore.
No recommendations for this finding

Conclusions 8

No Responses Found 1

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

San Joaquin County County