Corrective Action Planned:
The Bureau of Employment Supports has undergone significant programmatic changes over the past 3 years. As part of those changes, our Work Verification Plan was updated and submitted for approval on July 8, 2022. It was approved by the Administration of Children and Famil...
Corrective Action Planned:
The Bureau of Employment Supports has undergone significant programmatic changes over the past 3 years. As part of those changes, our Work Verification Plan was updated and submitted for approval on July 8, 2022. It was approved by the Administration of Children and Families on February 9, 2024, making the updates to the NH work verification plan in effect back to July 9, 2022.
The audit period in question is from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. Trainings, supports and guidance have taken place throughout that time to correct hour errors such as those identified through this audit. Uploading documents into the e-folder was found to be error prone, therefore, on March 1, 2023, NHEP leadership provided guidance and training on a specific process of indexing and scanning documents to ensure that moving forward the Career Counselors are checking their e-folder’s to ensure that documents are properly uploaded and visible. In addition, a statewide training took place on May 5, 2023, to look in depth at past audit findings, during which, strategies were identified to help alleviate these errors from re-occurring. An additional statewide training also took place on December 15, 2023, which involved discussion around the audit, which was about to begin, including what the general focus of the audit has historically been.
As of April 2023, an additional Quality Assurance Specialist was hired to help monitor and support newly hired career counselors in their first year of employment. This additional Specialist has allowed for guidance to be available not only to newly hired staff, but also to seasoned staff throughout the state. The need for an extra layer of training throughout the year for newly hired Career Counselors was identified in the summer of 2023 and the NHEP Leadership Team developed a weekly Quality Assurance meeting. These weekly meetings started August 30, 2023. These meetings provide real time training to review best practices and further career counselors understanding of federal and state policies. The meetings have been successful and are now bi-weekly. As of February 28, 2024, the meetings have been opened to all career counselors throughout the state, not just those under 9 months of employment. The meetings ensure that there is consistent messaging across the state and also provide an opportunity for statewide collaboration between career counselors.
Through cursory investigations, we believe that these new supports and processes, have already shown to be effective in improving the accuracy of supporting and recording hours. The last audit yielded 15% discrepancies in hour errors. This audit period had a decrease of 12%, indicating 3% discrepancies in hour errors. NHEP leadership has also been working with the NEW HEIGHTS system to streamline the process of uploading documents to further decrease the potential for errors. A change request form was submitted approximately two years ago.
In order to address the audit findings, within the next 90 days, NHEP leadership is holding a statewide mandatory staff training to review the audit process and findings that were identified. During the meeting, in regards to the over reporting hours error, the Leadership Team will reiterate and discuss the importance of uploading documents prior to inputting hours. In regards to the under reporting hours error, the meeting will also include further training about the importance of justification for any differences in hours than what is reported on the activity tracker. Further, that any differences need to be documented in either a sticky note or a RID note. In addition, the Quality Assurance meetings will continue to be held bi-weekly to address issues or trends in the moment. Our continuous transparency will further ensure buy-in from the staff to put systems in place for themselves as well as to increase self-monitoring practices and in turn, decrease errors in the future.