Jorge Jimenez testifies on grievance process loopholes

I'm here to support 307.

I consider it extremely important, but I think there's a point that is being restated every time we talk.

It's the fact that the majority of the issues that are affecting people

are usually related to grievances that cannot be reported.

There's actually a lot of conversation about huge words like homicide, rape, grand larceny, or theft, or things like this.

But mainly, one of the problems that we're experiencing is that there's some sort of tactical avoidance.

And plausible deniability that can be created when a process of grievances is not well established.

That's why I feel, and actually I'm going through a process like that right now.

I've been trying to report a grievance for the past five months, and I have actually followed the specific hierarchy of things that I had to do with the specific

children provider, in this case, a drop-in center provider.

And pretty much what I've done, it leads to nothing.

I keep entering a loophole that is full of tactical avoidance, implosible deniability, and then there's some specific little tricks that happen.

One of them being

You have to send us an email.

But how can I send you an email to start the process if your staff never provides emails, email addresses to contact them?

I cannot start the process if you don't provide me with that.

Is there not a general email address or line to submit grievances?

No.

Pretty much what you must do is try to guess.

Guess the first letter of the worker, the last name, and then you put at whatever organization you're with, and maybe that becomes...

The way you deal with that trick.

That's one of the tricks.

There's another one.

The other trick is the let's have a conversation about this.

Well, the conversations cannot be tracked down because it disappears.

It becomes a conversation.

There are other tricks that happen, and these are usually correlated to one specific thing.

I'm not sure.

These are contracts.

And these contracts have to be reviewed every year for performance.

A huge amount of grievances can actually lead to a decrease in the qualification that they receive every year, from excellent to good to average.

Some of these contracts are for like millions of dollars over five years.

Too many complaints, let's not use the word complaint, too many grievances, reports can lead to that.

We're forgetting two aspects, the business aspect of this part.

And another aspect that we're forgetting is the human factor.

One central position, one central type of professional that we're missing.

of the social worker.

We don't need more case managers.

That's an euphemism that is being used financially in order to avoid hiring social workers that have been trained to deal with this multiplicity of issues.

But social workers are expensive.

Can I just ask you a question?

For the complaints or grievances that you've submitted, are you saying that you've not received any sort of formal response?

It was impossible for me to start the process because I did not have the email.

Then I found the email through a process.

But there's no like box or anything on site where you can just submit.

And then what happened is I actually found the email.

I sent an email to the case manager, but that case manager never answered.

So that's the other trick.

If they don't answer, there is no continuity of service in order to establish a bridge that will actually lead to a proper grievances report.

Okay.

And it's premeditated.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for your testimony.

We'll follow up with you directly as well.

Thank you.