IHSS Provider Workweek Limits: 66-Hour Cap and 90-Hour Exemptions

If you provide In-Home Supportive Services in California, your workweek limit is 66 service hours, no matter how many recipients you serve.¹ The IHSS provider workweek limits run from 12:00 a.m. Sunday through 11:59 p.m. the following Saturday, and every service hour you log for every recipient counts against that single ceiling.² Providers who travel between recipients can claim up to seven more hours of paid travel time on top of the 66, and two narrow exemptions can raise the total to 90 hours per week and 360 per month.

The 66-Hour Cap in Practice

Sixty-six hours is the outside ceiling, but most providers hit a lower personal limit first. Each recipient’s monthly authorized hours are divided by 4.33 to produce a weekly authorized amount.³ A recipient authorized for 195 hours a month works out to roughly 45 hours per week. You cannot go past that weekly figure for that recipient unless the county approves an adjustment.

If you serve more than one recipient, add their weekly authorized amounts together. That sum is your working ceiling, and 66 is only a factor if the combined authorizations push you that high. Work 40 hours for one person and you have 26 hours left for anyone else that week before the statutory cap kicks in.

Recipients can ask their county to adjust a provider’s weekly authorized hours above 40 as long as the total stays inside the monthly authorization, and those adjustments can even be applied retroactively to hours already worked.³ That flexibility exists because real care needs rarely divide into identical weekly blocks.

Travel Time Between Recipients

If you serve two or more recipients and drive directly from one recipient’s home to another on the same day, you can be paid for that transit, up to seven hours per workweek.¹ Those seven hours sit on top of the 66-hour service cap and do not reduce any recipient’s authorized service hours.⁴ Only recipient-to-recipient travel counts. Your commute from home to a recipient does not.

To get paid for travel time, submit form SOC 2255, the IHSS Provider Workweek and Travel Time Agreement, to your county IHSS office before you start claiming the hours.⁴ The form documents your schedule across all recipients. After approval, travel time gets logged through the same electronic timesheet you use for service hours. Going past seven hours of travel in a week is a separate violation.

When Overtime Kicks In

Any hours over 40 in a single workweek are paid at 1.5 times your base hourly rate.¹ Both service hours and travel time count toward the 40-hour threshold. Work 38 service hours plus 4 travel hours and you have 42 total, with 2 of them at the overtime rate.

A provider working the full 66 service hours and 7 travel hours in one week gets base pay on the first 40 hours and overtime on the remaining 33. Payroll calculates this from your electronic timesheet. Because the workweek always runs Sunday through Saturday, you cannot shift hours between pay periods to avoid overtime.

Exemptions That Raise the Cap to 90 Hours

Two exemptions allow up to 90 hours per week and 360 hours per month. Both go through the county IHSS office, and neither applies automatically.

Exemption 1: Live-In Family Providers (Closed to New Applicants)

Exemption 1 is only available to providers who met every qualifying condition on or before January 31, 2016. It is closed to new applicants. To have qualified, the provider had to live in the same home as all the recipients served and be related to each one as a parent, adoptive parent, step-parent, grandparent, or legal guardian. Providers who qualified apply using form SOC 2279.⁵

Exemption 2: Extraordinary Circumstances

Exemption 2 remains open. It covers providers serving two or more recipients, where each recipient meets at least one of three criteria:⁶

Complex medical or behavioral needs that require a provider who lives in the same home.
A rural or remote location with limited available providers, where the recipient has been unable to hire someone else.
A language-access need, where the recipient cannot find a provider who speaks their language to direct their own care.

The complex-needs criterion requires the provider to live with the recipient. The rural/remote and language-access criteria do not. In every case, recipients must show they made reasonable efforts to find and hire additional providers before requesting the exemption. Apply by submitting form SOC 2305 to the county IHSS office. Either the provider or the recipients can send it in.⁶

What Happens If You Go Over

Exceeding your workweek limit, or claiming more than seven travel hours in a week, triggers a violation. The state uses a four-step progressive system:⁷

First violation: a written warning from the county.
Second violation: the county sends instructional materials on workweek and travel time rules along with a certification form, and county staff reach out to discuss corrective strategies. Sign and return the certification within 14 calendar days and the second violation is rescinded.
Third violation: a 90-calendar-day suspension from the IHSS program. You can request a county review.
Fourth violation: a one-year suspension.

The second-violation certification is the one real reset in the system. Complete it on time and that violation comes off your record. Miss the 14-day window and you carry the violation forward, so the next slip lands you at the 90-day suspension. Providers facing a third or fourth violation can request a state hearing to contest the action.⁷

Tracking Your Hours

All IHSS timesheets are submitted electronically through an Electronic Visit Verification method, either the web-based Electronic Services Portal or the Telephone Timesheet System.⁸ Providers who do not live with their recipient must also check in and check out for each shift and note whether services happen in the home or in the community. Providers who live with their recipient are exempt from the check-in and check-out requirement. Pay is based on reported hours worked, not the gap between check-in and check-out, so the running total on your timesheet is what determines whether you are approaching the 66-hour ceiling or the seven-hour travel cap in any given week.

1
California Legislative Information. California Welfare and Institutions Code WIC 12300.4
2
California Department of Social Services. IHSS Workweek Scheduling
3
California Legislative Information. California Welfare and Institutions Code WIC 12301.1
4
California Department of Social Services. SOC 2255 – IHSS Provider Workweek and Travel Time Agreement
5
California Department of Social Services. IHSS Overtime Exemption 2 – Section: Exemption 1
6
California Department of Social Services. IHSS Overtime Exemption 2
7
California Department of Social Services. All County Letter 16-36 – Violations for Exceeding Workweek and/or Travel Time Limits
8
California Department of Social Services. Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) Help – IHSS