Where every number comes from

Every task-time figure on this site — on the rank guide, the hours page, the Clarity Report and the Appeal Package — renders from a single file, _build/htg-estimator.json. Nothing on the site keeps its own copy.

That file holds the CDSS Hourly Task Guidelines: all twelve task grids, verified cell by cell against the CDSS IHSS Training Academy's HTG Documentation Worksheet. Nine are scored by Functional Index rank; three — menstrual care, repositioning, and prosthetic devices and medication set-up — are assessed on need alone. Housework, laundry and shopping carry flat guidelines rather than ranges.

CDSS publishes a range for each task at each rank, not a fixed number. Bathing at Rank 4 is 2.35–4.08 hours a week. The social worker assesses your actual need and compares it against that range; the range is a reference point, not an entitlement, and assessed need outside it is permitted as a documented exception.

Where this site has to name one figure — in the Appeal Package, for instance — it uses the floor of the published range. That is the number a county cannot argue is unsupported, and it is never below what the guidelines allow.

The guidelines are weekly. Monthly figures multiply by 4.33, which is what CDSS itself uses: MPP 30-763.2 states that monthly need is the weekly amount multiplied by 4.33, and the HTG worksheet repeats it — “Total Need Per Week (Monthly Need ÷ 4.33)”.

A constant of 4.0 is an easy mistake and understates every monthly total by about 7.6%. We made it, and corrected it.

CDSS publishes the ranges in decimal hours — 0.50, 1.92, 4.08. This site converts them to HH:MM, because that is how hours appear on a Notice of Action, an SOC 293 and a timesheet. The stored values stay decimal so they remain checkable against the source worksheet.

No estimate on this site is a prediction of what a county will authorize, and every total is capped. A county may authorize at most 283 hours a month where the recipient is severely impaired, or 195 where they are not (WIC 12303.4, MPP 30-765.111 and .121). “Severely impaired” is a specific finding: a total assessed need of 20 or more hours a week across non-medical personal services, meal preparation, meal clean-up where preparation and feeding are both required, and paramedical services (MPP 30-701(s)(1)).

Protective Supervision counts inside that ceiling, not on top of it. Need above the ceiling should be recorded on the Notice of Action as unmet need.

County wages, caseloads and average authorized hours come from CDSS IHSS Program Data and the CDSS county wage sheet, stored in _data/ and regenerated on every deploy so the site and the source cannot drift apart. The month each dataset covers is printed on the pages that use it.

County application phone numbers are kept separately from the numbers in the CDSS dataset, because in several counties the published number reaches the Public Authority — which serves providers — rather than the intake line an applicant needs. Each entry is marked verified, same-number, or needs-confirmation, and we do not present an unverified number as confirmed.

Guides that make load-bearing claims carry a Sources block citing the Manual of Policies and Procedures, the Welfare and Institutions Code, and CDSS All-County Letters. We cite the section we actually checked.