State Responsibilities 430-05-05-20-05

(Revised 01/01/04 ML2893)

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State responsibilities include supervision of certification, issuance and outreach activities, maintenance of Quality Control, quality assurance, a complaint procedures system, statewide fiscal accountability, settlement of claims resulting from fraud and non-fraud claims, and developing, conducting and evaluating statewide training.

 

Emergency Food Stamp Program

The State Emergency Food Stamp Plan of Operation must be followed when there is a presidentially declared disaster. The State Office will issue instructions.

 

Training

The State Office is responsible to institute a continuing training program for workers, supervisors, fair hearing officials, and performance reporting system reviewers.

 

The county is responsible to ensure staff attend training sessions.

 

North Dakota's open-meeting law and Federal regulations permit attendance of non-employees at training sessions. The role of public participants must be limited to observation only.

 

Quality Assurance Coordinator

The State Office is required by federal regulations to establish a continuing performance reporting system to monitor program administration and program operations. The components of the system must provide for:

• Data collection through Quality Control reviews and quality improvement reviews (QIR).

• Analysis of data collected by Quality Control and QIR and all other management information sources.

• Corrective action planning.

• Corrective action implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.

• Reporting to FNS on program performance.

 

QIR

Food Stamp Program regulations mandate that the State Office conduct a QIR of all counties. The reviews determine if the counties are administering and operating the Food Stamp Program in accordance with program requirements contained in the State Certification Manual and the State Issuance Manual. The review must include an examination of random selected casefiles, personnel, training, certification procedures, client services (outreach), reporting/record keeping, security/control, issuance procedures and a physical inventory and reconciliation of EBT cards.

 

The results of this review assist counties in improving and strengthening the administration and operation of the Food Stamp Program. The QIR must provide data on how the program is being administered at the local level and identify those areas that are deficient. The county should use the results of the QIR as a basis for corrective action.

 

Corrective Action Planning

The objectives of corrective action planning are to develop appropriate measures to correct Food Stamp Program deficiencies based upon the results of data analysis performed by the Quality Assurance Coordinator.

 

The State is responsible for the development of two types of corrective action:

• Remedial involves rectifying past errors in individual cases.

• Preventative involves correcting patterns of deficiencies.

 

Corrective action plans are monitored by county and state personnel to determine if they are completed in a timely manner.

 

FNS requires identification of counties that are not administering the Food Stamp regulations correctly and require the State Office to initiate corrective action.

 

Quality Control

A Quality Control system has been established to comply with federal regulations. This system documents the number of and reasons for errors in eligibility and issuance of participating households.

 

Counties are required to correct case errors cited by Quality Control.

 

A review is a statistically random sample of active and negative cases to determine if households are receiving correct food stamp benefits and if cases are denied or closed correctly.

 

Cases reviewed by Quality Control are randomly selected. Matching random digits against the last four digits of the primary individual’s (PI) social security number generates a statewide sample list.

 

Death Match

The State Office conducts matching on a yearly basis with the Social Security Administration to identify individuals who are deceased. The county will be advised of any matches that require action on the part of the worker.