By Mary Clesi, Department Fiscal Officer, Santa Clara County DCSS
We are excited to announce that Santa Clara County DCSS is hosting the first ever “CSE Financial Workers’ Town Meeting” on September 26, 2018, in Los Gatos, CA.
Prior to California’s conversion to CSE, the LCSAs using the “CASES” legacy system had in-person quarterly meetings of its financial workers at the Santa Clara County Department of Child Support Services. The meetings were eventually reduced to three times per year and stopped when we converted to CSE. Financial workers throughout the state participated as well as the CASES Consortium staff.
The purpose of the meetings was so that financial workers could get to know each other, network, promote uniformity in our financial case work practices, develop procedures and training materials, work through complex financial issues, and make recommendations for changes to the CASES system. Our meetings were a great success, and those of us who are still around remember how memorable and beneficial they were, but also fun!
Over the last 10+ years (since our conversion to CSE), we have lost many experienced financial workers throughout the state due to retirements, promotions, etc. These were valuable resources with lots of historical knowledge especially related to legacy systems and conversion. We also lost the contacts we made over the years with counterparts in other counties, which has contributed to the isolation of financial workers (especially those in small counties) who don’t know who to contact for help. Additionally, there has been a loss of uniformity in how financial workers do our jobs, which directly affects all of us especially when cases transfer between counties.
Our goal with this Town Meeting is to give financial workers throughout the state the opportunity to make valuable contacts with their counterparts in other counties. As with the CASES Financial Workgroup meetings, we need to meet our fellow financial workers to network, share challenges and accomplishments, identify training needs and procedures to promote uniformity, develop a communication method where we can talk with each other and share problems/issues, and talk about changes we would like made to CSE to make our jobs easier, etc.
We’re hoping this will be the first of many meetings for California CSE Financial Workers. This initial town meeting is “in person only”—webcast or conference call options will not be offered at this first meeting.