Chapter 2. Staffing Standards in Other States

In this chapter

2.1 State Survey
2.2 States with Staffing Standards
2.3 States without Staffing Standards
2.4 Summary

This chapter provides information collected from a 50-state staffing standards survey. Specifically, this chapter identifies which states currently have staffing standards and provides a brief description of those states’ standards. It also provides information we gathered from other states, including information from a few states that do not have formalized staffing standards but that use specific tools to help them assess their staffing needs.

The information presented here was gathered partially from a survey conducted by Virginia as part of its federally-funded Staffing Demonstration Project and partially from a survey administered by Policy Studies Inc. staff of states that identified themselves as currently having staffing standards.

2.1. State Survey

In February 2000, Virginia’s State IV-D Director contacted (via e-mail) all of the State IV-D Directors in the country asking them whether their state had staffing standards. Virginia received responses from 27 states and four of those states said they currently have staffing standards. We sent these four states—Colorado, New Jersey, Virginia and West Virginia—a set of questions that we used as an interview guide to capture additional information about those standards. The primary questions we asked were:

When were the standards first developed and by whom? How often are they updated?
Why were the standards developed and what method(s) was used to develop them? What method is used to update them and what factors are considered in that updating?
What factors does your staffing standard consider and what is that standard? Does the standard differ by case function? By office size?
Have you made (or are you considering making) changes to the standard in response to increases in automation and administrative enforcement remedies mandated by federal law (e.g., income withholding, license revocation, FIDM)?
Does the standard consider federal performance criteria or an individual office's performance relative to those criteria?
Do the staffing standards separately consider interstate caseloads and if so, how?

We also contacted the states that did not respond to the Virginia survey to ensure that we had a comprehensive understanding of what states were using standards. None of the states that did not respond to Virginia’s initial inquiry appears to be using staffing standards at the present time.

2.2. States with Staffing Standards

The base components of formulas for states with staffing standards are displayed in the table below. Exhibit 4 compares the four states with staffing standards across a range of variables.

Table 2.1. Exhibit 4: Staffing Formulas for States with Staffing Standards

State	Standard for Technician or Technician Equivalent	Attorneys	Other Staff Considered in Formula
Colorado	378-581 cases per enforcement FTE	not included	Intake Establishment Customer Service Accounting Reception Mail Supervisors/ Managers ACSES (statewide automated system ) Liaison Small County Add-On
New Jersey	480-720 per professional staff	not included	Coordinators, administrators, attorneys and supervisors are not considered professional staff
Virginia	about 400-500 cases per FTE for case-related work (no formula specified, this is deduced from the number of recommended staff and caseload)	not included	Supervisors/managers Operations Support Fiscal Computer Technician Other support staff
West Virginia	575 cases per legal assistant	3,500-4,000 cases per attorney	Support staff Supervisors

2.2.1. Colorado

A complete description of Colorado’s existing staffing standards was provided in the previous chapter In summary, Colorado first developed staffing standards in 1990. The standards were developed using the Delphi technique by a statewide task force. They are revised each year as necessary by a committee comprised of staff and supervisors representing different functional levels in the child support program and different geographic areas from across the state. The standards were last revised in 1998 and are currently being reviewed by Policy Studies Inc.

2.2.2. New Jersey

New Jersey developed its staffing standards in 1990. The standards were originally developed to ensure that the County Welfare Agencies had enough staff to maintain performance standards for paternity establishment, order establishment, location and modification. The standards are revised every year in which statistics are submitted.

New Jersey’s staffing standards are defined for all types of caseloads, including paternity establishment, order establishment, locate, enforcement and interstate. Unlike Colorado, however, the New Jersey standards do not make adjustments for the size of the child support office. The formula used allows for 600 cases per professional staff on average with a 20 percent variance, not including supervisors or attorneys.

New Jersey recently revised their standards in January 2000 to include the performance-based standards to meet the federal child support incentive criteria and they will be revised each year based on the federal incentives.

2.2.3. Virginia

Virginia developed its staffing standards in 1995 to improve the delivery of child support services. Recommended staffing is determined for each function and, like Colorado, were developed using the Delphi technique. Virginia’s standards determine staffing needs for workers in intake, customers service, locate, paternity establishment, enforcement and judicial support. The standards were developed with input from line staff and supervisors.

The standards were last revised in 1999 as part of a federally-funded Staffing Demonstration Project that defined optimum caseloads for a typical small and large office and then evaluated the impacts of those standards on office performance. The evaluation findings from the small office study showed that using the staffing standards level recommended by the Delphi techniques produced positive and tangible results. The evaluation findings from the large office study should be available before the end of calendar year 2000.

2.2.4. West Virginia

The standards West Virginia currently uses were first developed in 1992. They are based on standards previously developed by the Federal District Court when the Court was providing oversight to the Child Support Bureau’s operations. (This oversight resulted from a consent decree in class action litigation in which the Court was authorized to control the caseload.)

The standards were revised in 1994 by further review of the Court and examined in 1998 by the Child Support Bureau when it had to make a decision on the allocation of 72 additional positions. In terms of their development, revision and application, the Child Support Bureau uses the actual caseload at a point in time to allocate staff resources. The caseload size standard for the various positions is:

Legal Assistant: 575 cases

Attorney: 3,500 to 4,000 cases

Support Staff: 1,500 cases

Team Leaders: Supervise up to 12 staff.

The Child Support Bureau projects caseload growth by geographical region based on historical trends. However, the Bureau cannot, due to personnel regulations, easily reallocate staff positions based on shifts in where the caseload is located. Other than occasional re-allocations of a single position, caseload sizes are readjusted across regional lines only when additional positions are available. This has made it difficult to maintain standards across the regions in which the Bureau is administratively organized.

Unlike Colorado, the standard does not formally consider office size as an adjustment factor, but some attention is paid to the fact that some staff members travel to cover several satellite offices. Unlike New Jersey, the staffing standards do not currently take into account interstate caseloads or the recently enacted federal performance criteria. No changes have been made in the staffing standards in response to increases in automated and administrative enforcement remedies.

2.3. States without Staffing Standards

Exhibit 5 displays the full results of the 50-state survey. Of those states that did not have staffing standards, a few have considered or are in the process of developing standards and a few use benchmarks to set a caseload standard for child support technicians. Although the information states provided or that we gathered is somewhat incomplete, some of the key findings from the 50-state survey include:

Considering/developing standards: Georgia is in the process of reviewing staffing standards for its workers and California has a new mandate from the State Legislature to develop staffing/caseload standards for human services staff, including child support technicians.
Informal standards based on caseload: Although not based on a formal study, some states, such as Maine and Utah, use caseload statistics to maintain a certain number of cases per FTE. Also, Idaho has some recommended staffing and caseload standards, but they are advisory only to individual counties.
Informal standards based on external factors: Montana has an informal standard of 400-500 cases per FTE, but uses other, external factors (e.g., automation, caseload characteristics) to make adjustments in the number of FTEs. Oklahoma also has an informal standard of about 350 cases per FTE (an average for all IV-D staff, not just case workers) but uses other tools (e.g., population projections, allocated FTEs, underserved populations) to determine staffing needs.

Of further interest in Exhibit 5 is the apparent absence of standards in states that formerly had standards. For example, the 1994 Virginia small office study cited earlier identified North Carolina and North Dakota as two states that had and were using staffing/caseload standards. They apparently have stopped using those standards if the information gathered in this recent survey is correct. Also, at the time of the Virginia study Iowa was in the process of developing standards. According to the former IV-D director, however, the state abandoned that effort because of the inability to develop precise standards.

2.4. Summary

We have the following summary observations about the survey data.

For whatever reason, very few states have and are using staffing/caseload standards. Moreover, some states that had standards appear to have abandoned them.
For those states that have standards, average caseloads per FTE appear to range from 300-600 cases. These averages, however, are highly variable depending on the child support function, the size of the office, and other internal and external factors.
There is little consistency in the standards in terms of how they were established and are updated. Some of the factors states consider in setting/updating their standards are (1) caseload statistics, (2) office size and office characteristics, (3) program changes (e.g., technology, federal and state regulations), (4) program performance, and (5) external factors (e.g., population growth, existence of underserved populations).
The most common approach to establishing standards has been to use professional estimates either using a Delphi technique or similar approach to arriving at those estimates.
With the exception of the Virginia staffing demonstration project, there are no evaluation data about the efficacy of standards, what an optimum standard should be, and how those standards can be revised/maintained over time.