In-home supportive services: provider timesheets.

Existing law provides for the county-administered In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program, under which qualified aged, blind, and disabled persons are provided with services in order to permit them to remain in their own homes and avoid institutionalization. Existing law permits services to be provided under the IHSS program either through the employment of individual providers, a contract between the county and an entity for the provision of services, the creation by the county of a public authority, or a contract between the county and a nonprofit consortium. Under existing law, the State Department of Social Services is required, in consultation and coordination with county welfare departments, to establish and implement statewide hourly task guidelines and instructions to provide counties with a standard tool for consistently and accurately assessing service needs and authorizing service hours to meet those needs. This bill would require the standardized provider timesheet used to track the work performed by providers of services under this chapter to contain a legal certification, to be signed by the provider and recipient, verifying that the information provided in the timesheet is true and correct. The bill would authorize, in addition to other criminal penalties, the imposition of a specified civil penalty against a person who is convicted of fraud, as defined, resulting from intentional deception or misrepresentation in the provision of timesheet information under the IHSS program.