The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) has issued guidance about the Cal-OAR California Continuous Quality Improvement (Cal-CQI) process. Cal-OAR establishes a local data-driven management system to facilitate improvement to county CalWORKs programs. The Cal-CQI occurs in three-year cycles using data gathered from Cal-OAR. During each three-year cycle, counties must conduct a self-assessment, develop a system improvement plan, implement and evaluate strategies for improvement and report progress.
Each county must conduct a self-assessment to 1) comprehensively evaluate services, program implementation, and outcomes; 2) identify strengths and challenges of current program practices and 3) describe how local operational decisions and systemic factors affect outcomes. Counties are required to work with local stakeholders in the Cal-OAR process. Counties must also have a peer review component. Based on this information, counties develop a plan for improvement in which they select a measure or set of measures for focused improvement and develop strategies to improve performance on the chosen measures.
When the self improvement plan is approved by the Board of Supervisors and CDSS, the county will work to implement its improvement strategies. Counties must do a progress report on implementation progress of the self improvement plan.
CDSS will provide training on the Cal-OAR process in a variety of formats. (ACL 19-108, November 27, 2019.)