A HOLIDAY MESSAGE

[NO AUDIO]
Ed Lake,
Director, Oklahoma Department of Human Services

Director Lake: Happy Holidays to all of you in the DHS family. 

This is the time of year where I think we both celebrate our holiday season, look forward to the new year, but it's also that time of year where we do personal and professional assessments of where we've been. I want to spend just a couple of minutes talking about that with all of you.

This marks the end of my third year here at DHS; very rewarding, very challenging, just like it is for all of you each and every day. It's heartening to see how far we've come as an agency in those three years. We still have many challenges to meet, but we've come a long way and we've made some progress that I think is worth mentioning at this time of year.

First of all, when I first came here, I did a number of what we call listening tours around the state, five in total. In each and every one of those, DHS employees would ask me, "What can we do to improve our image? People don't think as much as we'd like positively about DHS, why is that and what can we do about it?" My standard answer at the time was that, and I didn't mean to be too sarcastic about it, but my notion was that we couldn't PR our way out of a credibility or image issue. We can't put out news releases and expect people to think that we're special now, or that we're much better, or that we fixed all of our problems. We have to perform our way to improve our image and our credibility. 

After three years here and looking back and seeing where we are today, I think we can say that we can begin to PR our way to an improved image based on our performance. I wanted to highlight some of those things that I think where we've made significant progress. I don't want to leave anyone out when I talk about our progress, I'm going to hit some of the major highlights that I see all across this agency. It has to do with the work that you've put in to making this happen. The commitment of DHS employees is unbelievable. We've done surveys in the last couple of years, one last year compares us in terms of employee engagement, and commitment, and dedication to other agencies. We stack up very favorably. Where we don't stack up favorably, as I've mentioned earlier, is in our own image of ourselves. That's something that we can take responsibility for. If we don't have a good positive image of ourselves, it's not likely that anyone else is going to hold a positive image. Let's not dwell on our failures all the time, let's not do what the media does to us, let's celebrate our accomplishments. I know that outside the department that they're not that many people jumping up and down to tell us how great we are, but we certainly can jump up and down within DHS, recognize the accomplishments that we've made, and salute our employees who are making those contributions.

First, of course, we have the Child Welfare Division, the Pinnacle Plan work. It started out slowly, it's been an uphill climb but over the last year, and particularly over the last six months, the progress being made in child welfare is amazing. We've reduced the average daily population in our shelters by 55%, we've reduced the back-log of child protective services investigations dramatically. We, with our new and extended numbers of partners involved in helping families stay together, we've been able to keep more children safely in their homes and out of our system. Last year was a monumental year in the number of adoptions consummated, a record year I think for the department. A lot of work still to be done, we've been able to continue to hire people to bring the workloads down. Things aren't perfect in Child Welfare but compared to where we were just a couple of years ago, and even six months ago, those differences are dramatic.

In the Developmental Disabilities Division, another wonderful year of accomplishment in closing the two resource centers that we operated in Oklahoma and through the efforts of our entire division in DD, along with the Office of Client Advocacy and our providers, we have truly made a difference in over 200 people's lives allowing many people who were institutionalized to be provided for in community settings and, in many cases, blossom in ways that I think their parents and guardians, and maybe even our own staff, were amazed at.

In Adult and Family Services, excellent work going on from a client perspective, which I think is so valuable. Sometimes we make changes to the way we do things and it works for us, but it doesn't necessarily work for the client. It's more important that it works for the client than it works for us sometimes. Through a lot of efforts, we have been making strides in understanding how people access our services or have difficulty accessing our services. We're changing the ways that we interact with clients from the front door on back to make that process more speedy and more comforting, I think, for our clients.

In our Aging Division, our folks have developed what we call a No Wrong Door process that, although we didn't receive additional federal funding to totally implement, we're expanding the concept to improve access to services for not only the aging population, but also those with developmental disabilities and their families. This has now become a statewide interdepartmental effort that will bear fruit and improve people's ability to figure out where they need to go for the services that they need. It's just going to be a special, special accomplishment.

Moving on to the Child Support Division, another record year in collections. Excellent performance in terms of the cost benefit in child support. I think what's more important for the children and the families served is the continuing emphasis, redoubling efforts in child support, not just to collect money, but to help absent parents connect or reconnect in better and more important ways and more consistently with their families. That will pay benefit for the children served by that program.

Last on my shortlist but certainly not least would be a number of the support groups that we have in the department, without which none of the rest of this would be possible. If we didn't have Finance and Budget and Human Resources employees working really hard to save money, to support managers, to do the right thing by employees, we would not be where we are today. Our Inspector General's office who help us meet our accountability goals and our audit teams, all of these functions add up to make this department what it is; that it's special. Human Services is special. What we do is important, what you're accomplishing everyday is important. I don't care if you're stacking boxes in the warehouse this morning or you're the director of a program, every contribution makes a difference here.

It's one thing to talk in general about the accomplishments of employees across the department. I think it's also important to talk specifics about the case by case accomplishments and achievements that people have made in DHS this year. For a little bit of a summary of that, I would direct you to take a look at our new annual report where we have highlighted some of these achievements by employees. There are a couple of others that come to mind that I wanted to relay.One of our OIG employees is a volunteer fireman and was part of a rescue team helping a family escape from their vehicle that had plunged into a river during the storms.I'm reminded of a Native American Oklahoman who had had a series of difficulties through his entire adult life and his youth, totally distrustful, not only of our government but of his own tribal government, who came to be served by an APS Adult Protective Services worker and was so moved that he wrote to talk about how that experience changed his perspective and also influenced his life for the better. There are many other stories like that, we had an Adult and Family Services worker who was approached by someone coming through the small town with a load of fruit juice that he wanted to donate. Within a matter of minutes, our DHS employee had gotten those logistics figured our and took advantage of that generous donation. These are just a few of the examples that go on everyday. 

That's why I say that we need to stop ourselves and recognize each other for these extra special efforts that are made to help Oklahomans. I would also encourage all of you to share those with us 
so that we can communicate those through our Infonet and also through news stories that will begin to better tell the story of what this department stands for and what it accomplishes, 
and what it means to serve hundreds of thousands of people everyday who sometimes desperately rely on our help and service.

You know, you can tell I've been around a long time but this is the most gratifying experience I've ever had in my 40+ years of public service. This is a heck of an agency to be associated with. I'm proud to be the Director of Oklahoma Department of Human Services, proud of what we do each and every day. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this experience. 

I feel that we have made great progress, but I am more encouraged by the trajectory that we are on, that we have momentum, that we can see where we need to go, and that we have a plan and a way to get there, and we will only become better and better.

I, again, thank you for your efforts. 

I wish you and your families a happy holiday and we look forward to another great new year in Oklahoma DHS.

[NO AUDIO]
Happy Holidays