How to Complete SOC 2255 and Claim IHSS Travel Time Pay

The SOC 2255 form, formally titled the Provider Workweek and Travel Time Agreement, is the document California IHSS providers who work for more than one recipient must file with their county before the state will pay them for travel between clients. It is not the form you use to claim travel time each pay period. It is the setup form: it tells the county your full weekly schedule across all recipients and your estimated travel between them, so the county can enter a Travel Time Record into the state payroll system. Only after that record is in place can your separate SOC 2275 travel claims be paid.¹²

Who Has to File SOC 2255

Any IHSS or Waiver Personal Care Services provider who delivers authorized services to more than one recipient must complete SOC 2255.³ If you serve only one recipient, you do not file the form and are not eligible for travel time pay, because there is no second service location to travel to.

You also have to update the form when your situation changes. If you pick up a new recipient, stop serving one, or shift your days and hours, you must notify your county within 10 calendar days. Depending on the change, the county may require a fresh SOC 2255.³

How to Fill Out the Form

The current SOC 2255 is available as a PDF from the California Department of Social Services. It runs in three parts: your workweek schedule, your travel between recipients, and your signed agreement.³

Part A: Workweek Schedule

Part A is a chart covering every IHSS recipient you serve. For each one, fill in:

Column A: the recipient’s name.
Column B: the recipient’s case number.
Column C: the date you started, or will start, working for that recipient.
Column D: the recipient’s full address, including street, city, and zip code.
Column E: the number of hours you work, or plan to work, each day from Sunday through Saturday.
Column F: the weekly total for that recipient, adding across Column E.

At the bottom of Column F, add the weekly totals for all recipients. The combined figure cannot exceed 66 hours. If yours does, you will need to adjust the schedule or apply for a workweek exemption through your county.³

Part B: Travel Time

Part B begins with a yes-or-no question: do you plan to travel directly from one recipient’s service location to another recipient’s service location on the same day? If no, skip the rest of Part B. If yes, complete a row for each pair of recipients you travel between:

Columns A and B: the name of the recipient you travel from, and the name of the recipient you travel to.
Column C: the date you began, or will begin, making that trip.
Column D: the distance in miles between the two locations.
Column E: your estimated travel time in minutes for one trip.
Column F: how many days per workweek you make that trip.
Column G: Column E multiplied by Column F, which gives your total estimated weekly travel time for that pair.

Add the figures in Column G at the bottom. The total cannot exceed seven hours, or 420 minutes, per workweek. You must also mark your method of travel: car, public transit, or other.³

Part C: Signature and Agreement

Part C is your declaration that the information is true and correct and that you understand and agree to the program’s requirements. Sign, date, and print your name. The bottom of Part C is for the county worker, who reviews your estimates and notes the source used to verify the distance and travel time.³

Where to Submit It

Send the completed SOC 2255 to your county IHSS office, not to the statewide timesheet processing facility. The county worker reviews the form, verifies your travel estimates, and enters a Travel Time Record into the state’s Case Management, Information, and Payroll System, known as CMIPS. Until that record is in the system, no travel time claim you submit can be paid.² Contact your county office for its specific address or drop-off procedure; county contact information is available through the CDSS IHSS program page.⁴

What Happens After You File It

Once the county enters your Travel Time Record, you can start claiming travel time each pay period on the separate SOC 2275 Travel Claim Form. IHSS pays on two periods per month, the 1st through the 15th and the 16th through the end of the month. A travel claim can only be processed after the matching regular timesheet for the same period has been submitted and paid, so you cannot send SOC 2275 in place of, or ahead of, your timesheet.¹

On the SOC 2275 itself, travel hours are claimed under the recipient you traveled to, not the one you traveled from. Mail the completed form to the IHSS Travel Timesheet processing address: IHSS Travel Timesheet, PO Box 989780, West Sacramento, CA 95798-9780.⁵ That is a different destination from where SOC 2255 goes. State law requires signed payroll timesheets to be submitted within two weeks after the end of each pay period; the state must still pay a late timesheet within 30 days of receipt.⁶

The Rules the Form Assumes You Know

SOC 2255 is built around a specific definition of travel time. Under Welfare and Institutions Code Section 12300.4, travel time is the time spent going directly from a location where you provide authorized services to one recipient to a location where you provide authorized services to a different recipient. “Directly” is the operative word: stopping at home, running an errand, or working a non-IHSS job in between breaks the trip, and the interrupted portion is not compensable.⁶

Your commute from home to your first recipient and from your last recipient back home is not travel time. One exception: if you serve a recipient in your own home and then travel to a second recipient’s location, that trip is compensable, because you are going from one service location to another. The return home after the second recipient is still an ordinary commute. Travel time pay covers the actual time in transit regardless of mode, whether driving, public transit, biking, or walking. Transportation costs themselves, such as gas or bus fare, are not reimbursed.²

Travel time is capped at seven hours per workweek, which runs Sunday at 12:00 a.m. through Saturday at 11:59 p.m. If your travel regularly nears that limit, you are expected to work with your recipients to rearrange the schedule. Providers serving multiple recipients also cannot work more than 66 total service hours in a workweek. When federal financial participation is available to fund travel time pay, travel hours do not count toward the 66-hour cap, but they do count toward overtime: any hours over 40 in a workweek, including both service and travel time, are paid at one and one-half times your hourly wage. Travel time is not deducted from any recipient’s monthly authorized hours. If you travel between recipients in different counties, you are paid at the hourly wage of the destination county.⁶

What Happens if You Go Over the Caps

California runs a four-level progressive violation system for providers who exceed the 66-hour workweek limit or the 7-hour travel time limit. Claiming more than seven hours of travel time in a workweek triggers a violation, though the claimed time is still paid.⁷

First violation: a written warning from your county.
Second violation: a one-time offer to review voluntary instructional materials. Completing the review and returning the certification form within 14 calendar days rescinds the violation; declining leaves it in place.
Third violation: 90-day suspension from working and being paid through IHSS.
Fourth violation: one-year suspension.

You have 10 calendar days from a violation notice to request a county review using the SOC 2272 dispute form. A full year without another violation drops your count by one, and it continues to drop by one for each subsequent clean year.⁷

Mistakes That Delay Travel Time Pay

Most payment delays trace back to a few avoidable errors. The biggest is submitting a SOC 2275 travel claim without a SOC 2255 on file. If the county has not entered your Travel Time Record into CMIPS, the system cannot pay the claim. The same wall hits providers who take on a new recipient and forget to update SOC 2255: the county’s records do not reflect the new route, so the claim stalls.²

The next most common problem is sending in the travel claim before the regular timesheet for the same period has been approved and paid. The SOC 2275 cannot be processed until the matching timesheet clears, and mailing both together sometimes results in the travel claim being rejected because it arrives before the timesheet is done.¹ Other issues that slow payment include claiming travel under the recipient you left rather than the one you traveled to, illegible handwriting, and forgetting to sign and date the back of the SOC 2275. Any of these can bounce the form back and push payment to a later cycle.

1
California Department of Social Services. All-County Information Notice No. I-20-16
2
California Department of Social Services. All County Letter No. 16-01
3
California Department of Social Services. SOC 2255 – Provider Workweek and Travel Time Agreement
4
California Department of Social Services. In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) Program
5
Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services. IHSS Providers and How to Be a Provider
6
California Legislative Information. California Welfare and Institutions Code 12300.4
7
California Department of Social Services. All County Letter No. 16-36