The Community Care Licensing Division (CCLD) develops and enforces regulations designed to protect the health and safety of individuals in 24-hour residential care facilities and day care. Licensed facilities include child care; foster family and group homes; adult residential facilities; and residential facilities for the elderly. The Governor's budget proposes expenditures of $117 million ($46 million General Fund) for the CCLD in 2000-01. This represents a 17 percent increase in General Fund expenditures from the current year. This increase is primarily due to a proposal of $5 million from the General Fund for the Child Care Safety Initiative.
We withhold recommendation on the Child Care Safety Initiative, pending receipt of additional information supporting the budget proposal.
The Governor's budget proposes a one-time $5 million General Fund augmentation in 2000-01 for the Child Care Safety Initiative. These funds would be used to distribute informational material to 13,000 child care centers and to train 10,000 child care center staff. The materials would include a guide to evaluate the security of facilities. The training would address how to reduce the threat of traumatic events and how to counsel families coping with the stress and trauma associated with violence, earthquakes, and fires. Of the $5 million proposal, $3.4 million would be used to provide the training while $1.6 million would be used to produce and distribute supporting material.
We have requested information from the department on how the costs of the training and materials were estimated. At the time this analysis was prepared, we had not received sufficient information to determine if the proposal is funded appropriately. Consequently, we withhold recommendation on the Child Care Safety Initiative, pending receipt of additional information supporting the budget proposal.
We recommend elimination of four community care licensing positions, for a General Fund savings of $230,000, because the positions are not needed according to the department's formula for determining ongoing workload needs. (Reduce Item 5180-001-0001 by $230,000.)
As part of its annual budget for community care licensing, the department uses a caseload-driven formula for determining the number of positions needed to accommodate the ongoing licensing workload. This component of the budget proposal--referred to as the "Program Growth" budget change proposal--is distinct from the 46 positions (18 new and 28 continuing) being requested to address specific needs identified separately by the department.
The formula for the Program Growth component shows that the number of positions needed by the department is approximately four positions less than the number currently authorized (consisting of 2.7 licensing program analysts, 0.4 supervisors, and 1 clerical). The budget, however, does not propose to eliminate these positions.
While this is a relatively small number of positions compared to the base of about 490 positions, we believe that it would be appropriate to follow the formula. Accordingly, we recommend elimination of the four positions, which would result in a General Fund savings of $230,000 in 2000-01.