MONTICELLO, NY — Timothy Ball of the consulting firm The Bonadio Group gave an update regarding performance of the Sullivan County Division of Family Services (DFS) on August 18 to the county legislature. Ball reminded the legislature that when Bonadio was hired to consult on improving DFS in the wake of the exit of former Commissioner Randy Parker, the DFS had over 800 applications for various services per month that were over 30 days old. In July the number was down to five and the number continues to hold in the low single digits.

Next Ball spoke about the activities of the fraud investigation unit. In 2013 and 2014, the county claimed about $18 million each year in “cost avoidance,” which means that services to applicants were denied. But Ball said that was a very high number for a county this size, and the only way to achieve this number would be to turn away an applicant one month and claim cost avoidance for the year, and do the same thing the next month.

Ball said that slow changes were made in the fraud investigation unit and the cost avoidance figure for 2015 was about $4 million. But more importantly the amount of fraud money that was recovered had jumped from about $440,000 in 2014 to more than $800,000 in 2015.

Legislator Joe Perrello said the cost-avoidance figures make it appear that the DFS is giving out more services than in the past.

Joe Todora, the commissioner of DFS, said the number of people applying for services such as temporary assistance and the supplemental nutrition assistance program has not changed. He said, “We refocused on not this fictitious number that gets fed to legislators all the time, we focused on the actual cash. In other words, the year before we only collected $400,000 in fraud money, last year we collected $800,000 in fraud money. Which would you rather have: a fictitious number, or would you rather have cash in your hand?”

The conversation then turned to a discussion of workers involved in Child Protection Services (CPS). Ball said that it appeared that 75% of CPS workers had more than 15 investigations in February, which the state considers too many. The statistics also showed that only 40% of safety assessments, which are made at a place where a child is staying, are made within the required seven days.

Ball said the statistics in both cases were misleading because in fact the safety assessments were being done in the required time, but they were not being approved by supervisors in the required time; similarly, investigations were not being approved by supervisors in a timely manner.

Ball said he is working to make the teams operate more efficiently and that by June of this year the number of workers with more than 15 cases dropped to 35%, and the number of safety assessments being approved on time had risen to 67%.