DCSS Case Opening Team Changes
Greetings, Union Brothers and Sisters,
On September 24, 2026, your 005 governing board and subject matter experts met with DCSS management to discuss issues and changes recently faced by the Establishment Case Opening Team at DCSS.
Under the state compliance date, staff have 20 calendar days to process applications and open child support cases when an assignment is received. Recently, the department set an internal goal of 16 calendar days, which was impacting the workers with their volume of assignments and added pressure to speed their work. Reminder emails would be sent when 16 days were approaching or reached, but no one was and will not be disciplined for opening the case within the compliance date of 20 days.
Additionally, we raised concerns about the way that the Delivering Excellent Customer Service (DECS) tickets were being handled. Staff were indirectly advised to monitor each other’s performance and delegate their work based on how many tickets were completed amongst them. The assignment of work to others and monitoring of staff performance is outside of the scope of our bargaining unit’s (005) duties, and this has been ceased immediately.
The following proposals were made, to which agreement was reached:
Staff are allowed to open and process cases within the 20-calendar-day state compliance timeline. The date for both 16 and 20 days will be reflected in the assignment, but workers will not be reprimanded as long as it is completed within 20 days.
DECS ticket assignments and monitoring will be done by the supervisor, not our 005 bargaining unit members.
Case Opening Teams A and B will be combined in the work instructions given, for more consistency across the teams.
If the department determines they need to expedite case openings before the end of the fiscal year, September 30, 2026, they will advise staff to only do “quick-opens,” meaning they will not be required to also do all of the corresponding work associated with opening a case by the 30th. They would only need to open the cases, as many as possible, without any enforced quotas, by the 30th. If quick opens do not need to take place, staff will continue working as usual.
We’re happy we could raise our voice collectively and make a change for the better to improve working conditions.
UPE thanks advocates Deborah Tellez, Patricia Edwards, and Tina Kimmel.
TOGETHER WE ARE STRONG!
