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One DSD · People, Access and Culture

Eligibility and Service Delivery

Look at the steps people must navigate, communication needs, and opportunities to make access easier.

This learning exercise is optional and does not record your responses. Staff remain responsible for using the current DHS Equity Policy and Equity Analysis Toolkit in their work.

Where this job family is based: MnCHOICES Assessment and Access, Support Planning and Case Management.

Other areas this job family often helps with: Home and Community-Based Services Policy and Waivers.

Explore this work context

Where equity shows up first in this role 3

A likely pattern, grounded in what this role is defined to do — not a description of the specific work in front of you.

The steps people must navigate

A process that is the same on paper for everyone can still take more steps, more trips, or more help for some people than others. Usually step 4.

Communication needs

Whether a person can act on what they are told depends on the language and format it arrives in. Usually step 3 (engagement) and step 6.

Opportunities to make access easier

Once a barrier is named, the next question is what could change about the process itself. Usually step 4 and step 5.

Material already built for this role

Questions about the steps, time, and effort a process requires

Already built for this role.

Access checks before a meeting, outreach, or session

Already built for this role.

Using community context without profiling

Already built for this role.

Something here doesn’t match your work?

This is a Program work category, not an official job classification, and it is not mapped to bargaining-unit representation — that data does not exist anywhere in the Program. It does not know which specific step in your process is the one people get stuck on most often — nothing here was guessed to fill that in. Telling the consultant is the single most useful thing you can do with it.

Apply the toolkit

The rest of this page is the same for every program area and job family in the Division.

An equity analysis is the point where equity stops being something we believe and becomes something we decide — done before a decision, it changes the decision; done after, it is paperwork.

Which one do I need: an analysis, or a scan?

Answer these two questions about the work in front of you.

  1. Has this already been through a full equity analysis — and were those results built into the work?
  2. Is there genuinely not enough time to do a full analysis?

Yes to either An equity scan is the right instrument. Six questions.

No to both A full equity analysis is the right instrument. Eight steps.

The work in front of you TWO QUESTIONS Already analyzed, results built in? Not enough time? yes to either no to both Equity scan 6 questions Full analysis 8 steps
Two questions decide it. Neither is a matter of preference.

A scan is shorter, not lighter: it keeps every element of the full instrument and adds engagement, evidence, accessibility and accountability criteria of its own.

A Tribal Nation may be affected? Stop here — go to Tribal and Urban Indian Relations. Consultation is government-to-government; a community brief is not that door.

The 8 steps of a full equity analysis
  1. Desired results and outcomes. What are you changing, what do you want to happen, and who could this land on hardest?
  2. Data. What do the numbers already show about who is affected? What is missing, and how could you get it?
  3. Engagement. Who is most affected, who have you actually talked to, and what did they tell you?
  4. Benefits, burdens, and mitigating unintended consequences. Who gains, who carries extra weight, and how could the plan change to reduce harm?
  5. Equity impact statement. Pull the findings together in one place.
  6. Accountability, evaluation, and communication. How will you know if it worked, who is responsible, and who hears back?
  7. Alignment. How does this fit the equity work already under way?
  8. Sustainability. Is it funded, staffed and resourced to last — including the data and the engagement?
The 6 questions of an equity scan
  1. What is the desired outcome? What change do you hope to see?
  2. Define the impacted communities or groups. Be explicit to race and intersecting identities.
  3. What can you learn from the data? Use disaggregated data — numbers broken out by group, not one total.
  4. What are the equity impacts of these actions? Who benefits, who is burdened, and how will you reduce harm?
  5. How have you used what you learned to confirm or change your design?
  6. How will you communicate results to impacted communities or groups?

Terms on the real form. Disaggregated data — split by group, not one total. Intersecting identities — a person belongs to more than one group at once. Equity impact statement — the written summary in step 5. Kept in the Department's own words on purpose.

The same questions, five kinds of work

It is the same instrument whether the object is a bill, a policy, a program change, a notice, or a class standard.

A bill

Who is impacted?

A funding formula reads as neutral. Split by county and by race and the reach becomes visible.

A policy

What can you learn from the data?

A documentation rule applies equally; whether people can meet it equally is a different question.

A program change

Who benefits, who is burdened?

Moving a service online lifts a burden for some and sets one down for others.

A public notice

How will you communicate results?

A letter that only works in written English decides who can act on it.

A class standard

What is the desired outcome?

A credential the work does not need narrows the field before hiring begins.

See it done: four versions of one decision

The decision, in all four

A waiver program is considering moving annual reassessments from in-person home visits to video calls.

Numbers below are constructed for teaching and marked illustrative — not DHS figures.

Reassessments move to video Broadband, no interpreter needed Reassessed sooner Greater Minnesota, weak connection Call drops, visit rescheduled Interpreter not arranged ahead Assessed on partial information All three at once Falls out of the process — and appears in no single group’s total This row is the one a single-category count will miss
The same change, four households. The bottom row is where intersecting identities stop being a phrase.
“We don’t have that information yet”

This is a legitimate answer — step 2 asks for it directly: what additional data would be helpful, and how could better data be obtained? Naming a gap is stronger than quietly filling the box.

Write it like this: “We do not have this broken out by race. The lead agency case system holds it. Requested; expected [date]; [name] following up.”

When one group sits inside another
A change can look fine for people with disabilities as a group, and fine for Somali Minnesotans as a group, and still fail Somali Minnesotans with disabilities.

Everyone this Division serves has a disability, so every other difference — language, distance, income, race, age — arrives on top of that one.

  • Split the data twice: race and region, language and age.
  • If numbers get too small to split, say so — that is a finding.
  • Ask who would be missed by every category just used.

Minnesota community briefs can help you ask better questions. They do not tell you what an individual needs.

Your working draft

General terms only — no names, case details, or confidential information. Nothing is saved or sent; it disappears on reload.

Where the real toolkit lives

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Please leave out case, medical, personnel, complaint, and identifying details anywhere in this program. It is not connected to DHS information systems, does not hold DHS case or personnel records, and does not replace decisions made by responsible department offices.