- All right, thanks so much for being here today, to the Family TREE, 
yay! They have been working so hard for several months. It's amazing when 
you go inside, how transformative it is. So the last time I was at this 
building was several months ago. It looked more like the former shelter 
space that it was. We had the tape up and everything on the inside, and 
it's just remarkable. As we look today within these walls, you're going 
to find a high quality, innovative and integrated system for caring for 
children, birth parents and foster families. So in this one building, 
families are going to have a team of professionals that are dedicated to 
renewing and strengthening the family unit. The Family TREE also hosts 
onsite medical, which you'll see, mental and behavioral health services, 
as well as quality family visitation centers. There's four of them in 
there, which you'll see. And they look beautiful, they look like a home. 
So it's so comfortable for the families. But this is much more than a 
building and a team. The Family TREE represents years of work and 
dedication to improve the outcomes for children and families involved in 
the child welfare system, right here in Oklahoma County, and is now a 
transformative space for hope. I think that's a good sign, right, it's a 
good symbol. Strength and positive change to take root for these 
families. So thank you so much for being here to celebrate the grand 
opening of the Family TREE, to celebrate, really, hope and healing. It's 
because of so many of you that we're even here today, which is why we 
need to thank some of you. The Children and Families Council would like 
to acknowledge the work of our amazing founding partners. CASA of 
Oklahoma County, DHS of course, North Care, the Oklahoma County Juvenile 
Court, OU Center of Child Abuse and Neglect, and Child Studies Center, as 
well as the OU Fostering Hope Clinic. Thank you guys so much. And of 
course, we couldn't do this without the generous supporters. The Arnall 
Family Foundation, thank you so much. Jeff and Lori Blumenthal, thank 
you. Chesapeake Energy Corporation, Citizens for Children and Families, 
Bob Funk Senior, the Inasmuch Foundation, the Oklahoma City Community 
Foundation, and the United Way of Central Oklahoma. This would not happen 
without you. Now, please join me in welcoming our first speaker. She's 
amazing, Georgeann Duty. Now in October of 2017, Georgeann became the 
first director of the Family TREE. Her background in children's 
behavioral health and community collaborative development is what 
inspired her to join the Family TREE team, the community. Georgeann has a 
passion for supporting relationships within our community, and those we 
serve. So please, a very warm welcome to Georgeann Duty.

- I'm going to take a breath here and just look out there. Welcome, we 
are so pleased that you are here, and we hope that you feel welcomed. 
This is an exciting day. Most of us have a good understanding of the 
Family TREE, its history and its vision. However, it feels really 
important today to stop and remind ourselves of a journey that actually 
began five years ago. That's amazing. In 2014, Judge Lisa Tipping Davis 
had a vision for something better for the children and families we serve. 
She used her amazing powers of persuasion to enlist other folks with a 
heart for the children of our community. To begin the tough conversations 
about what and how we needed to go about, making a whole new way of 
serving others, in a paradigm shift. These champions of change became the 
Children and Families Council of Oklahoma County. Interestingly, not long 
after that, Judge Davis was looking for some answers, and the 
announcement of the closure of the shelter occurred. The council jumped 
into action, appointing a committee and partnership with DHS and key 
stakeholders, to identify the repurposing of the shelter. In 2016, 
following two years of intense research, planning and partnering, the 
Family TREE was launched. And for those of you who don't know, it was 
launched literally across the street. So what is the TREE? The Family 
TREE is many things. The Family TREE is a unique public-private 
collaborative that supports improved outcomes for children and families 
involved with child welfare. The Family TREE is a model, rooted in best 
practice and evidence spaced interventions. Through a robust, 
multidisciplinary team called the Family Resiliency Team, the TREE works 
to identify the right supports and services that families need to meet 
their unique needs, and to set them on the course of success. Not just 
for today, but for next year, and years after. The Family TREE is a model 
supported by the expertise of our community's brightest minds, and 
subject matter experts. The TREE prioritizes stability and placement 
while our children are in care, increased quality family visits, 
increased rates of children being reunified, and getting children to 
permanency safely and in less time. The Family TREE is also more than co-
located services. It is a true integration of team members across 
agencies and across professions. This group creates a unified system of 
care for our children and families. So what is the vision of the TREE? At 
capacity, the teams within the TREE can serve up to 150 children and 
their families at one time. However, the goal, and our vision, is to 
harness the lessons that we are learning, and to share them, and to take 
it further into our community and into our state. The Family TREE in our 
beautiful new home represent people coming together on behalf of children 
and families. The building behind me is our stake in the ground. It is 
where we are saying, "We are moving forward. "This is not it, but we are 
moving forward." It is all of us engaged in the action of working 
together to create something even better. And again, we are only moving 
forward. I would like to ask, this is just me, I was sitting here and I 
would like to ask if you guys would take just one moment and look around 
at the many folks that are in this room. Each one of us here is a part of 
the Family TREE, and for us, this is a big day. It's really interesting, 
I had already been thinking about this, and folks kept coming up and 
saying this is a big day. And so guys, enjoy it. Take it in, this is your 
day, this is significant. I'm incredibly thankful and overwhelmed for the 
potential of this work. I'm thankful that people continue daily to come 
to the table and dive in. It's not easy and it's not always clean. 
Sometimes it's messy, but it's worth it. And thank you for being someone, 
or an agency, or a partner, who will do that. We're thankful that you've 
chosen to invest in relationships and in the relationships of change. So, 
thank you. Now, it's my distinct honor to introduce Governor Kevin Stitt, 
and to thank him for being here today. J. Kevin Stitt is the 28th 
governor of Oklahoma. He is leading this great state with the vision to 
become top ten, top ten in critical categories from growth and 
infrastructure, education, and healthcare. And also, his lovely wife is 
here, so we welcome you as well. Thank you, as a family, for what you're 
doing for this state and for the leadership and the vision that you have 
for doing things differently, and better, for our state. And we 
appreciate it. We welcome you, thank you.

- Thank you so much.

- Yeah.

- Thank you so much, such an honor to be with you as we celebrate this 
exciting grand opening for Family TREE. And Governor Knigh, it's such an 
honor to have you with us today. And I've gotta pick Georgeann's brain a 
little bit and make sure she teaches me what my kids are gonna try to do 
at the Governor's Mansion, 'cause I know that she was there. Make sure 
you tell me how you snuck out at night, all that kind of stuff. But it's 
good to have the First Lady here as well. You know, strong communities 
and these public-private partnerships are so important to help family, 
children services. I'm just so excited that DHS is partnered with Family 
TREE to roll this out. And I wanna thank all the sponsors, the people 
that are here today that have given, and made this possible. It's just so 
important for our state. Government can't do it by itself. We can't pass 
enough laws. It takes these organizations that walk hand-in-hand and 
mentor, and walk with folks, to really change the outcome of young 
people, and give them a future. So I know that's exactly what your heart 
is. I know that's what everybody's heart here is today, is to change the 
future for our young people and for our city. So thank you for doing what 
you do. Thank you for getting involved, and thank you so much for your 
leadership. It's just such an honor for me to be here and lend my support 
to this great organization. Appreciate it, thank you guys. And am I 
introducing--

- [Justin] You can introduce--

- I am introducing, okay, this is the great part. It's our second press 
conference today, right?

- [Justin] That's right!

- So, he is leading DHS with the vision to become a top ten agency, and I 
think he's doing a fantastic job. Put a great team together, and so put 
your hands together for the greatest DHS director, Justin Brown.

- Thank you, Governor Stitt. 'Preciate you being here and lending your 
support to The Family TREE. I've just got a few things to say really 
quickly, and I appreciate you all. It's a little warm, but I promise the 
opportunity to be here is worth it. In just a few months of serving as 
DHS Director, I continually remark about the dedicated DHS staff that we 
have here within the agency. They are dedicated to serve our customers in 
ways that I'm so thankful for every day. I also stress the importance of 
our agency breaking down walls, to support collaboration and innovation 
within our partners. Critically important that we work together to change 
our state and to serve the people that need to be served. The Family TREE 
is so exciting because it represents both collaboration and innovation in 
their truest senses. The Family TREE team, comprised of DHS staff and 
those from partner agencies, work together to truly support our families 
and connect them with the services they need, whether it's within the 
TREE, or within their partner agencies. Biological families have access 
to a number of quality services and parent-coaching opportunities to 
improve parenting and resiliency skills. Foster families receive supports 
and resources they need to stabilize the placements in their homes. And 
children receive the ultimate benefit through increased permanency. 
Everything in this building was chosen with intent to best serve our 
customers, and to provide them an inviting space to have meaningful 
visits with their kids. We know that frequent and meaningful visitation 
with children is critically important to our biological families, and 
impacts a number of important outcomes, like strengthening the 
engagements of the parents with their plans, increasing the stability of 
children's placements in their foster homes, reducing the time children 
spend in DHS custody, and reducing the likelihood of future abuse or 
neglect when they are reunited. Perhaps most importantly, children 
experience an improved sense of well-being, and their families experience 
better coordination and collaboration amongst their service providers. 
The Family TREE represents innovation at its very root level. This is 
important, this concept does not exist currently anywhere in this state. 
It's critically important, this is true innovation, and partnerships, and 
collaboration, and relationship building, and that's what DHS is all 
about. Thank you for being here to celebrate this momentous occasion. 
This has, as mentioned before, been in process for many years, and I 
wanted to make sure to recognize the team that worked before me, and 
before our administration, to really see this vision, because this is 
what will impact future generations, that vision from prior years. So 
thank you to Director Lake, and all of those who came before. We stand on 
the shoulders of giants. Yes. Behind these doors, lives are changing, and 
you are a part of that, so thank you for being here. I would now like to 
introduce our next speaker, Judge Trevor Pemberton. Judge Pemberton 
became Chief Juvenile Court Judge at the Oklahoma County Juvenile Justice 
Center in mid May. He secedes our beloved Judge Lisa Tipping Davis, who 
passed away on April 14th. He's become a great friend, and an advocate 
for collaboration and innovation in our society and our community to 
serve our kids. So Judge, come on!

- I've noticed that nobody is turning the page up here, so I will 
actually get to my remarks in here in just a moment. Listen, I know 
there's a number of folks here who have not yet been recognized today, 
and if we were to recognize every important person in the room, then we 
would spend the rest of the afternoon doing just that. But I would be 
remiss not to recognize at least my colleagues, and so I certainly want 
to do that. We have Judge Sue Johnson here with us today, and Judge Lydia 
Green, who are both at the Juvenile Center and have made my stay here, 
hopefully my stay. I know Judge Johnson's wondering, because I still have 
a white wall in my office, she's wondering if I'm staying or not. But I 
do plan to stick around. So they're doing amazing work and have been 
doing it for a long time. They've made it an easy transition, or as easy 
as it could be. Judge Ogden, Judge Stenson and Judge Savage are here as 
well, and the Preciding Judge Prince is around here somewhere, so I want 
to recognize them and appreciate them being here in support of what we're 
doing here today. If one is in fact able to look down from Heaven, I have 
no doubt that Lisa's looking down today with great pride and joy. As you 
know, Judge Davis passed too soon, but not before having left an 
indelible mark on the child welfare system in Oklahoma County, our 
state's largest and greatest county. That wasn't a point for laughter, 
that was just true. The structure that we have joined to dedicate today 
is in fact symbolic. And yes, it does represent a vision, but more than 
that, it represents action. An action by a group of folks, group of 
citizens, who care more about others, the children and families of our 
community, than they care about themselves. And that's the way forward. 
Thousands of lives will be positively transformed as a result of the 
collaboration that is The Family TREE. Many arrive lacking hope, but 
through the tireless work of the compassionate individuals working within 
these walls, families and generations to come will leave hope inspired. 
So what now? We get to work, and that's exactly what Judge Davis would 
have wanted us to do, get to work! And so we continue the fight to 
restore families, to break the chains of poverty and addiction, chains 
that I'm certainly familiar with in my personal family background, and to 
provide a future once thought unattainable. We as a community must 
continue to collaborate. We must reach across agency, political and all 
other lies, that too often serve as barriers to collaboration. Let's 
think outside the box and pursue innovation in ways that culminated in 
the Family TREE. I am honored now to introduce Deb Shropshire, the 
Director of Child Welfare Services. Also, a very good friend, and I think 
it's no coincidence or no accident that Justin, and Deb, and so many 
others involved here, have quickly become such great friends in this work 
in collaborating together. Deb has served Oklahoma's families and 
children with great passion and commitment in many roles over the years, 
including being the medical director for 15 years at this very building, 
when it was the Pauline E. Mayer Children's Shelter. So please join me in 
welcoming my friend, Dr. Shropshire.

- It's a big day, it's a big day! We're excited to have you here. My 
name's Deb, I'm a pediatrician. I'm the Child Welfare Director right now, 
but I've been a pediatrician longer than that. I don't actually like kids 
very much, but I fell in love with the people who advocate for them a 
long time ago. A long time ago in Oklahoma County's courtroom, one of the 
courtrooms when Judge Stewart was here, fell in love with the many folks, 
community and professional folks, who come together to try to advocate 
for children. And it's an honor to have the opportunity to serve in this 
space. I was thinking about this, about being here today, and thinking 
about how all of us have a past, a present, and a future. The families we 
serve have that as well, and this building has that as well. And for a 
long time, this building served as not just a place that housed children 
who did not have a foster family to go into, but it also served as the 
representation of what we could imagine at that time. And so the child 
welfare system, at that time, couldn't quite imagine that in a populated 
county like this, the children who entered foster care could go straight 
to a family, that we would have enough resources in our community to do 
that. That was the past. And for 15 years, as Judge mentioned, I had the 
opportunity to serve children, and workers, and case workers in this 
building. And in 15 years, I saw 20,000 children pass through the doors 
of this place who needed foster homes. 20,000. And at some point, you 
sort of watch that happen and you say, surely we can do this differently. 
And there was a point at which child welfare and many of its partners 
began to dream about what it might look like if children actually, who 
needed to come into foster care, could go straight to a family. And the 
resulting actions over the last number of years, and the partnership with 
so many folks in our community and other agencies, have caused us to be 
in a place where the present for this building doesn't look like the 
past. It looks like how do we serve families differently when those 
children are in foster care. And how do we serve the entire family, not 
just a child? But I think what is exciting to me is imagining what the 
future might look like. And those of us who've been working in the Family 
TREE are already beginning to talk about, how would we serve families, 
maybe even some day before there was a need for foster care. How do we 
leverage this space, as Georgeann mentioned, kind of a stake in the 
ground, a flag in the ground that says this is how we are gonna serve 
families and children in Oklahoma County. And not just in Oklahoma 
County. I've had the opportunity to serve in this child welfare director 
role now for about, I don't know, like a minute. 12 weeks, or something 
or other. How do we take the lessons learned here across the state, so 
that families and children across our state are served in new innovative 
ways. Today is our present. And we could not do it without the many 
people in this space, and many people who aren't even here today. My 
mentor was Deb Smith, who was our previous child welfare director, and 
she used to say, "We can't do this alone." Talking about child welfare. 
Child welfare can't do this work alone, and that belief has reflected in 
the collaboration that brought us together to create the Family TREE. She 
called me, I don't know, five, six years ago, and said, "Hey, will you 
come and serve, "and work with child welfare to do community 
partnerships." And I said, "What will we do?" She said, "I don't know, 
we'll just make it up. "But we know we can't do this work alone." Well it 
wasn't two or three months after that that Judge Davis reached out and 
said, "I need people." And so, I got assigned to all those folks who 
thought they needed people, and here we are. We do have some special, 
significant announcements that we do want to make today, just kind of in 
closing. First of all, we want to say thanks to the Arnall Family 
Foundation, and to Sue Ann, and all your staff. The Arnall Family 
Foundation was founded by Sue Ann Arnall with a vision to make lasting, 
transformative improvements to the systems and programs that serve at-
risk children in the community. The Department of Human Services is 
grateful, incredibly grateful. Lindsey, all the rest of your team, Sue 
Ann. Incredibly grateful for the partnership that we have with Arnall 
Family Foundation. We recognize that both their leadership, and their 
financial contributions, have made a day like this possible. Lori 
Blumenthal. Lori is a founding member of the Children Famililies Council 
of Oklahoma County, and a long-time CASA. Lori and I actually met before 
this project was ever under way, as she was serving as a CASA for a 
youth, and we interacted with each other. And I met a lady that I 
absolutely fell in love with because of her heart for advocacy. Little 
did I know that we would have the opportunity to work closely together on 
an effort like this. And Lori and her husband, Jeff, have been 
extravagantly generous with their time, their resources, their 
leadership, and their advocacy, and we're grateful for them. And I'm 
pleased to announce that the training rooms here at the Family TREE are 
being named in honor of the Arnall Family Foundation, and Jeff and Lori 
Blumenthal. Now in 2014, as I mentioned, I was summoned, and you know 
what that means, summoned by Judge Davis. She'd met with Calvin Kelley, 
who was our regional child welfare director at the time, and told him 
that she needed people. She'd been here, I think, about four-five months. 
Judge Pemberton, you're the recipient of a awful lot of people that Judge 
Davis gathered up before you. She said she needed people, and the next 
thing you know, we were working with her, or maybe for her, was always 
sometimes hard to tell. Building a team, which is now the Children and 
Famililies Council of Oklahoma County. I love this model, this idea of 
how do agencies partner with civic leadership in the community. That just 
says we think we want something better for children and families, and 
we're willing to step in and provide leadership and guidance for that 
space. And we work together to develop models for serving kids and 
families better, as you've heard. Judge with a force of nature, she was 
deeply passionate about her work, in the courtroom and outside of the 
courtroom, and you couldn't help but care about that too if you were 
gonna spend any time in her space. She loved her family and her friends, 
and we're pleased to have them here with us as we honor the naming of 
this building as the Lisa Tipping Davis Family Center, the home of the 
Family TREE. So thank you to so many of you in this room who have had a 
part in this work. Lacey, thank you, I'm gonna turn it over to you. But 
thank you for all you've done in service for kids and for families with 
us over the years. We'd call and say, "Will you come help us?" And you 
just always do, so thank you for that. I'll turn it back to you.

- Thank you. And of course, thank you to Deb for keeping these babies 
healthy, and just helping the whole system, and this whole progression 
over the last several years. We really appreciate it, and thank you guys 
so much. I know we're all glistening, so. If you were here at the ground 
breaking, you will be particularly excited to see what it looks like now, 
it's amazing. So if you're interested in a tour, please make your way now 
to the doors of the building. And guess what, there's water, that's 
always good. There's cookies, that's amazing, from Eileen's by the way. 
And an opportunity to leave your well wishes for the Family TREE are also 
available inside. What a remarkable day, and truly an honor to be here. 
Thank you guys.