Report 2016-126 Recommendation 8 Responses

Report 2016-126: California Department of Social Services: Its Caregiver Background Check Bureau Lacks Criminal History Information It Needs to Protect Vulnerable Populations in Licensed Care Facilities (Release Date: March 2017)

Recommendation #8 To: Social Services, Department of

To ensure that it more effectively shares, receives, and uses administrative action information, Social Services should, as it receives administrative action information from other departments, share this information with the county agencies that perform licensing duties on its behalf.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From November 2018

All Interagency Agreements include the requirements for receiving, sharing, and using administrative action information with county agencies that perform licensing on its behalf. Refer to the agreements attached.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Fully Implemented

Social Services interagency agreements provide for the sharing of administrative action information through a centralized database. If implemented as described in the agreements, this sharing would fully implement our recommendation. A full validation of this implementation would require follow up audit work.

1-Year Agency Response

The interagency agreements with the Department of Aging, Department of Public Health, and the Emergency Medical Services Authority have been finalized. The Department of Health Care Services agreement is under review. As part of the Resource Family Approval (RFA) background check, counties are required to, pursuant to RFA Written Directive 6-03A, which states in pertinent part, check for prior licensing-related administrative actions contained in the Administrative Action Records System (AARS) database maintained by the Department; check for prior licensing history and criminal record exemption denial or rescission actions contained in the Licensing Information System (LIS) database maintained by the Department; and check for prior Resource Family-related administrative actions contained in AARS and Notice of Action (NOA) databases maintained by the Department. Thus, the AARS is how the Department shares such information.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Partially Implemented

6-Month Agency Response

See response to Recommendation 5.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Pending

Social Services indicates in its response to recommendation 5 that it is hoping to finalize the interagency agreements to share administrative action information by December 2017. We look forward to seeing Social Services' progress at the one-year response date.

60-Day Agency Response

See response to Recommendation 1.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

In its response, Social Services refers to recommendation one. This number is different than the numbers assigned to recommendations on our website. Social Services is referring to the recommendation that we have numbered five.

All Recommendations in 2016-126

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.