There are five steps to building a staffing standard from the time estimates presented in Exhibit 9 above. They are summarized below.

Step 1 Count or estimate the number of completed processes displayed in Exhibit 9. This considers the total number of completed processes in calendar year (CY) 1999 for each County participating in the focus groups.

Step 2 Multiply the average time estimate for each process by the number of processes completed to determine staffing needs. For example, say County X established 100 support orders administratively last year and it takes 5 hours on average to establish an administrative order. By multiplying 5 hours by 100 support orders, we find 500 hours of staff time per year are needed to achieve this outcome. This is repeated for each process within a function and for each County participating in the focus groups to develop the total number of hours of staff time by function.

Step 3 Adjust for time not spent directly on processes (e.g., staff meetings) and convert hours into FTEs by considering holidays and other non-work time.

Step 4 Relate hours needed to caseload by function. For example, if 3 FTEs are needed to perform all establishment processes and there are 900 cases without orders, the staffing standard is 300 non-ordered cases per FTE.

Step 5 Make additional adjustments for supervisors and managers and other support functions (i.e., fiscal, customer service and ACSES liaison).

Most of the counts of processes were taken from summing the outcomes displayed in Monthly Management Report 410 (MM-410) for calendar year 1999. The data source and assumptions for each process are discussed in greater detail below by function. In the discussion, we use the following conventions:

No additional assumptions were necessary to complete Step 2 with the exception of dividing the total number of orders established in Grand County between administratively and judicially established orders. The number of APAs in Grand County exceeded the number of orders established, so we assumed that all orders were established administratively in Grand County. Nonetheless, the number of APAs in Grand County could have exceeded the number of order establishments because it included modifications. No additional adjustment was made for this.

County IV-D directors and supervisors were asked about the number of paid holidays and vacation time. Most of the counties have 11 paid holidays and two to three-weeks of paid vacation. In developing the staffing standard, we assumed 11 paid holidays and three-weeks of paid vacation.

County IV-D directors and supervisors also were asked how many hours staff spend in meetings and training. The responses varied widely among Counties and even among teams within the same County. As a result, we assumed 80 hours per year, which was toward the high-end of the estimates.

We made an additional adjustment for vacancies. The vacancy rate averaged 8 percent in the counties participating in the focus groups. As evident in Exhibit 10, when all factors are considered, we estimate that there are 1,630 available work hours per year per FTE to work directly on processes. (This is approximately 86 percent of total paid time.)

The Virginia Staffing Standard assumes 1,372 staff hours available per year before vacancies^[23]. Since Virginia’s vacancy rate is also 8 percent, this further reduces the total number of hours per year available to work directly on processes in Virginia to 1,210 hours (58 percent of total hours available). This is considerably less than what is shown in Exhibit 10 for Colorado, but Virginia did not separate out the extensive establishment and enforcement case management that was captured in the Colorado focus groups. If Virginia has excluded case management time from its calculations, the estimate of available work time would be higher.

The time logs also provide some indication of the proportion of time available to directly work on processes and that information supports our higher estimate of available work time. For the three sites recording time logs, the proportion of time spent working directly on processes was calculated at 67 percent, 87 percent, and 88 percent. We assumed that intake and locate technicians could work 75 percent of their time directly on processes. For establishment and enforcement technicians, we assumed 1,630 hours per year available to work directly on processes, but added hours for daily and monthly case management, which amounted to about three to four hours per day. The specific amounts added are based on the hours per day required for establishment and enforcement case management (Activities 17 and 24). There were no additional assumptions necessary for fiscal and customer service staff because they are related directly to caseload.

Caseloads were derived from the MM-410 reports for CY1999.

The caseload for each function was divided by the total number of minutes required to complete each of the processes within that function, which was calculated in Step 2. This was done individually for each county that participated in the focus groups. We used an average for all the counties as the staffing standard.

Other functions considered in this task are fiscal activities, customer service and ACSES liaison. In this step, we also add supervisors and managers and address the small county add-on.

Fiscal Activities. Staffing for fiscal activities is based on information from the focus groups. Since no measurable outcomes for fiscal activities exist, we developed a caseload standard directly. Our approach was to take the number of ordered cases divided by the average number of hours per day (converted to FTEs) spent on fiscal activities.

As shown in Appendix E, the number of ordered cases per fiscal FTE averages 2,040 cases and ranges from 1,299 to 2,424 ordered cases per fiscal FTE.

Customer Service. As discussed earlier, customer service is one of the most difficult functions to define precisely. It is particularly difficult in the smaller counties where customer service is entangled with intake, establishment and enforcement processes. To add further difficulty, it is similar to fiscal activities in that there are no measurable outcomes. As a result, we developed a caseload standard similar to fiscal activities. To do that, we used total caseload because some customer activities (e.g., Denver County’s staff person dedicated to handling walk-ins) may involve spending time on ordered and non-ordered cases.

As evident in Appendix E, the number of cases per customer service FTE averages 1,869 cases and ranges from 848 to 3,194 cases per customer service FTE. Due to the wide range, we discussed the issue with the MIG Advisory Group. They recommended using 1,500 cases per customer services FTE, which is closer to the median shown in Appendix E.

ACSES Liaison. Per the recommendation of the MIG Advisory Group, an additional adjustment for the ACSES Liaison was added to the standard later. An e-mail was sent to the ACSES County Users Group requesting they send estimates to project staff about the average amount of time spent on ACSES Liaison duties. Some of the ACSES Liaison duties include the following:

Four counties responded to the survey. The number of cases per ACSES Liaison FTE equivalent they reported were 8,915; 116,408; 9,778; and 15,576, respectively. We eliminated the highest estimate to arrive at an average number of cases of 11,423. We rounded this number to 11,400 cases per ACSES Liaison.

Supervision and Management. Assumptions about management and supervision are based on (a) existing staffing levels for those positions, (b) experiences at other child support offices, and (c) a discussion with the MIG advisory group. The recommended staffing levels for supervision and management are:

Small County Add-On. We found little evidence in our work to justify a small county add-on. With the exception of customer services, the time estimates for the processes showed no major departure by county size.

With respect to customer service, smaller counties had a higher ratio of cases to customer service hours in the focus groups. (That pattern was not evident in the time logs, however.) When presented with this issue, the MIG Advisory Group recommended a limited small county add-on: the minimum number of staff for a county would be 1.0 FTE. That is, if the staffing formula resulted in a staff level of 0.5 FTE, the number would be increased to 1.0 FTE. The basis for this recommendation is that it would be difficult to fill a part-time position.

Exhibit 11 summarizes the staffing standard developed in this chapter. It provides three options:

For comparison purposes, the existing standard is also displayed in the exhibit. The effects of these proposed staffing standards on Counties are also displayed in Appendix G.