PRACTICE AND POLICY LECTURE SERIES, DECEMBER 2013 - CHILD WELFARE SERVICES REFORM: PINNACLE PLAN UPDATE.

Deborah G. Smith: Good afternoon. Sounds like I'm miked up. She was fixing it from the back of the room so I am amazed at how that works. Thank you Connie for that very nice and warm welcome and introduction but most of all for the opportunity to provide you all with an update on the Child Welfare Services Reform and the Pinnacle Plan. 

We started down this journey in January 2012 when Children's Rights and the Department of Human Services signed a settlement agreement. And this settlement agreement resulted in the author crafting the Oklahoma Pinnacle Plan. That Pinnacle Plan was approved in July of 2012, so we are about six quarters into this improvement plan. The plan was created in partnership with the Governor's Office, the OKDHS Commissioners that were in place at the time, and both House and Senate members. 

We had OCCY, Oklahoma Commission On Children and Youth present for those planning sessions. We also went to the field and talked with front-line staff, and foster parents, and tribes and getting input from, also from judges and attorneys, and youth alumni to really make sure that we crafted a plan that incorporated people's ideas and suggestions. It was pretty quickly obvious there were certain things that all the groups really wanted to see included in the improvement plan. 

Today I'd like to give you an update, including our progress, some of our successes but some of our challenges as well. It is a five-year plan and we sometimes forget that because we all want the improvements so quickly that we just want it today. But it is a five-year plan, it takes a long time to turn a system around and begin to see improvements. So I often have to remind myself, "Deb, it is a five-year plan, it's... we're only six, we're only a year and a half into it." 

But before we begin, I want to echo Connie's comments about thanking you for being here today. This certainly shows - your attendance, and your willingness to brave the cold, to come out and hear about the improvement plan - it certainly shows an investment in children in Oklahoma and your commitment to making sure that we have the kind of child welfare program that we'd all like to have. 

So, the presentation purpose, start with just kind of an agenda and the reason that we're all here today is to provide you an update on the Child Welfare Reform in Oklahoma. To ensure your voice is heard and your suggestions are considered and to ask for your help. The Pinnacle Point involves seven Pinnacle Points. Pinnacle Point Seven, which is the last but certainly not the least important, talks about the involvement of stakeholders and all Oklahomans committed to doing this work. We certainly can't do the work alone at the department and we ask for your help and we will have some specific asks or requests towards the end of the presentation. 

Always want to start with the quote that we included in the Pinnacle Plan. This is Marian Wright Edelman. "If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much." 
This quote certainly reflects the passion of Oklahoma's child welfare professionals and foster parents who stand up for children in harm's way every day. Each day they're committed to keeping children safe, ensuring families stay together if possible, and ensuring children have permanent homes when they can't. The work in child welfare has always been difficult. She's always around. 

(laughter) 

Ms. Smith (continues): She told me smile when you talk or you're going to get some funny pictures so... 

(laughter) 

Ms. Smith (continues): ...thank you Caroline. The work in child welfare has always been difficult and complex and last year Oklahoma was certainly challenged and committed to doing it better. Again this Pinnacle Plan details a five-year plan and the agreement with Children's Rights. First I want to start though and just kind of show you how the overall goals in Child Welfare certainly relate to and connect to the Pinnacle Plan goals. 

The Pinnacle Plan goals are consistent with our practice model and the goals that we're trying to achieve in Child Welfare. It's certainly not separate from all the work that we're doing. The plan is 47 pages and has seven Pinnacle Points with many, many initiatives. Fortunately for you today we're not going through all 47 pages. In reviewing the plan, it's easy to get overwhelmed with all the details but we really pulled out the highest priorities for you for the discussion today. 

On the left, the Child Welfare Services overall goals of safety, permanency, and well-being for children. These goals have been in place for child welfare programs nationwide for several years now through the Child and Family Services review process. On the right though we pulled out the three, what we call the highest priorities in the Pinnacle Plan. These are consistent with the Co-Neutrals, the people who are monitoring our plan, these are consistent with their priorities. 

So when you think about the overall plan, these are the three goals that we must achieve substantial improvement in to be successful with the Pinnacle Plan. Number one is reducing shelter usage. We're actually going to dig pretty deep into this, the data and this issue today. Increasing foster homes statewide - we certainly need the number and the type of resource homes that are willing to accept our children, and care for our children, and have options available when children come into care. So we're focusing heavily on increasing foster homes. 

And then creating manageable caseloads. Do we have any Child Welfare workers today? Raise your hand. Okay, I am certain they will echo this one as a priority. Child Welfare staff are passionate, they're committed, they want to do the best for children and families but they must have manageable caseloads to be able to achieve the outcomes that they really want to achieve for families. So we've put a lot of our efforts and initiatives into supporting our staff in carrying out their initiatives and their work with children and families and we're going to talk about that a little bit as well today.

First I want to call your attention to our website, the DHS website, www.OKDHS.org. This is what you'll see when it comes up, and over here on the far left you'll see the Oklahoma Pinnacle Plan logo. And here we've started posting this information during even the planning of the Pinnacle Plan. Goes all the way back to January of 2012 and includes the settlement agreement, and each version of the Pinnacle Plan that was submitted, and the summits, and the focus groups that we held around the state, and the summaries of what was said and occurred at those meetings, and then eventually the Pinnacle Plan that was settled, the final approved plan. 

Then in addition to that we have quarterly updates. So every quarter you'll see an executive summary that's prepared and then all of the initiatives that are under the seven Pinnacle Points are outlined and the details discussed in those initiatives. So if there's a particular initiative that you're interested in, go to this website, drill down, and read about those specific details. The other information on this website is the monthly reporting. And the monthly reporting started in July, and we're not going to go through this, I just kind of want to show you what it looks like. You're not... it's pretty fuzzy so I know you can't read it from there. But there is a monthly report that's included on this website that drills down to that month's data and that you can review as well. 

This monthly public reporting includes reporting on maltreatment in care, both while children are in DHS custody but also while they're at home with their parents. We report on new foster homes, both traditional and therapeutic foster care, worker-child visitation, shelter usage, caseload standards for workers. And then there are three remaining areas that we will start reporting on soon: the permanency, the adoption and the placement stability. Those measures we're still working with the Co-Neutrals on confirming exactly what we'll be reporting and how we'll be reporting, so those will be forthcoming. We want to stop and take a pause here and talk about the number of children that are in the child welfare system. 

No Audio: bar graph ôNumber of Children Removed at the Beginning of SFY10-SFY14ö 2010 û 9,489, 2011 û 7,970, 2012 û 8,206, 2013 û 9,132, 2014 û 10,233. Data source: Y1706.

This is a bar graph showing at the beginning of each state fiscal year, starting with State Fiscal Year '10, all the way over here to the right, to the beginning of State Fiscal Year 2014 and the number of children in care. You'll see a drop from 2010 to 2011 but then a steady increase since 2011. Today I looked at the number and, Director Lake, we did go over 11,000. I thought we were going to last week but we did go over 11,000 this week. We are at 11,011 children in DHS custody as of, I believe, Monday. So it is steadily growing. 

This increase has certainly overwhelmed the supply of foster parents and our caseloads. We're completing a data analysis around... you know, many people have asked, "Why the increase? Why did we see a decrease for several years and now we're seeing an increase?" So we've looked at the quantitative data to see if there are trends across regions or counties or the type of abuse/neglect that is occurring. We see some trends but the numbers only tell you so much about what's occurring out in the field. So our next step is to do a qualitative analysis. 

We're in the middle of that currently and we've selected five sites around the state to actually go do case reviews and focus groups in those communities to learn a little bit more about what that increase is about. We have several theories that we're testing. When we talk with staff, front-line staff, the one thing that people consistently say is, "It's the substance abuse and domestic violence in this state that's really driving these numbers." It's one theory that doesn't necessarily hold true because you'll see maybe two counties right next to each other with similar, probably, drug use and domestic violence patterns where one is showing an increase and one is showing a decrease. So that's one theory but maybe a little more to it than that. We're also looking at the services that are available in that community so when a child is thought to be abused or neglected, do we have the services in that community to prevent that child from entering the system? 

Certainly differences across the state as far as the service array. We're also looking at our staff, we have a lot of new front-line staff and supervisors and there's a fear factor there that we're exploring as far as being fearful of making a bad decision or wrong decision, when you either do remove or don't remove, or whether you're recommending reunification or not. So, is that playing a role in all this? So, the three or four theories we're looking at but we really felt like going on-site and looking at cases and talking with workers and supervisors and people in the community would help us get a better perspective of that. Certainly concerning though, when we planned the Pinnacle Plan we planned all these initiatives and all these goals on around 8,500 kids. So we're at 11,011 now. 

So while you'll hear some of our successes related to recruiting foster homes, you'll see pretty quickly all those new homes we recruited, we quickly filled up so it's certainly not meeting the current need. So let's talk about Year One highlights. We've made stride in some areas and we certainly have a ways to go in other areas. Let's start with approving foster homes. The first year we have approved nearly 250 more homes than we had previously approved in any other year. That was really significant. The goal was 781 new traditional foster homes to be approved. We approved 796 but if you had a chance to read the commentary or some of the information that's been going kind of back and forth about the data, we still can't quite brag that we achieved the goal yet. 

Counting foster homes is not quite as easy as one would think, so we're still working on that. But certainly compared to previous years, we've definitely surpassed any previous year goals as far as approving new foster homes. We drastically reduced children under two spending the night in shelters. Again, we're going to dig pretty deep into that data in a few minutes. We provided the first of incremental increases in reimbursement rates for foster parents and staff salaries. Certainly that increase for foster parents was significant; there had not been a foster care increase for a long time. Certainly not a large amount but certainly goes a long way to show the foster parents that we support them, we are finding ways to support them, not only financially but other ways. So that was a strong message from the state to foster parents. 

Do we have any foster or adoptive parents here today? No? A big shout out if they were here. I would tell them how much we appreciate them. We can't do this work alone. And you'll see throughout the presentation today, the Pinnacle Plan was really focused on those people who work closest to the children. So what can we do to support foster parents in a better way? And our front-line staff and supervisors in a better way? They're the ones closest to the children so you will see quite a few initiatives designed around taking care of those taking care of children.

Third - oh we got through that one. Next we increased the Child Welfare workforce by nearly 600 positions. 539 of these were Child Welfare Specialists, Child Welfare Supervisors, and Child Welfare Assistants. With... 91% of these were in direct service. Certainly many of those staff are in training and in Core but we have certainly increased our Child Welfare workforce trying to achieve those more reasonable caseloads that we talked about earlier. A significant amount of time in Year One was spent revamping our entire Child Welfare Services organizational structure. 

There was a thought and belief that the way that we had our system set up with a Field Operations division and a Child and Family Services division, - we had field workers and the management structure here and we had the program staff in a different division - was thought to be, that we could be more effective by joining everyone into one division. So we started with leadership and created an entirely new Child Welfare executive leadership team that's different from the Area Director and County Director restructure that we had before. 

And then we created District Directors and Field Managers who had front-line child welfare experience and really focused their efforts on only supervising child welfare. In the past you had Area Directors and County Directors who had other job responsibilities. They not only supervised child welfare, they supervised all the family support benefits, Medicaid and TANF and adult protective services. They were responsible for the building structure and maintenance of the buildings. 

So, we created a much leaner structure where from the worker, to the supervisor, to a district director, to a deputy director, to me, there's only five links, if you will, in that organizational structure and everyone is focused on Child Welfare Services. We also created new partnerships with private vendors for foster care providers. Do we have any of our new vendors here today? No? They're busy recruiting, good. 

(laughter)

Ms. Smith (continues): We will talk a little bit more about that but we, when we went out to the field and we talked with front-line staff and others about what are the parts of the system, or the practice that we do really well and what are the parts of the practice that we were not as successful in? One of the areas that we consistently heard people talk about was the recruitment of traditional foster parents that we're struggling with marketing and recruiting and getting families through the approval process. So we decided that was one piece of the work that we needed to turn to the private sector and ask for their help. So, we turned over the recruitment, retention, and support of traditional foster parents to for-private vendors that started work in August of this year and are ramped up, building their teams, and out there recruiting traditional foster parents for the state of Oklahoma. So we're excited about that, to see their progress. We need them yesterday. 

We implemented competency assessments for all new Child Welfare workers. When Child Welfare staff come online with the agency they go to a training called Core training. It's a classroom training, has some on-the-job tasks that they do as well, but we put in place a competency assessment that they have to actually demonstrate skills of interviewing and assessing safety and entering case information before they're assigned a caseload. That was implemented this year, actually last year, right Jamie? Last year. That was a big change for us, we're also working on certification. Every level of Child Welfare Specialist will be certified and they'll have to meet certain requirements to maintain that certification. 

The second bullet really made a large difference for about 1,500 children in the system. We had a system in Oklahoma that had a primary worker assigned and sometimes a secondary worker assigned. That would happen when, say for example the case was originated in Oklahoma county and the court case was in Oklahoma county but maybe the child was placed in Cole county. We would have a primary worker in Oklahoma county who had a responsibility to report to the court and oversee the management of that case but they would have other case workers assigned in other counties to visit the child and communicate back and forth about the progress. 

And sometimes that didn't work as well as we would like and certainly a challenge sometimes to make sure that everyone knows what everyone knows. So this year we started with the bordering counties, and if a primary worker has a child in a bordering county, they visit that child themselves rather than sending a secondary worker. So 1,500 children in the state are being visited by their primary worker, hearing first-hand information from their primary worker as opposed to hearing that information from a secondary worker in the case. We will move to statewide, the implementation date has actually been moved back a little bit. We need to make some more improvement on our caseload standards to get there. So that has been moved back to July of next year that we will go statewide with that initiative.

We also changed the way abuse/neglect is investigated in facilities. Catherine Burr here? I think I saw her come in. The Advocate General. They are... the Office of Client Advocacy is responsible for investigations of abuse/neglect in facilities - so shelters and group homes. And in our system we had two different systems of investigating. 
We had Child Welfare doing investigations on foster homes and child care facilities but then we had the Office of Client Advocacy doing investigations on facilities and children who were maltreated there. 
Different processes, different initiation timeframes, different completion timeframes. And we changed that to have one process, so that if a child is alleged to be abused or neglected they will get the same initiation timeframes, the same completion timeframes, the same standard of the evidence. Did I say that right? Standard, yeah that's right. So they have completely revamped their process to be like Child Welfare in those areas of investigation and completion timeliness. 

Certainly changing their focus from just looking at say, compliance issues and abuse/neglect in the facilities to over-arching safety of children and they're involved in helping us assess the safety of children in those facilities in a new way. Been a very big change but it's been a good change for us. This will allow us to have our federal reporting, if you kind of follow our federal reporting and complaints that have been mentioned in the past is that those investigations from facilities were not included in our overall reporting each year on abuse, neglect, and care. 

So this will allow the same reporting so they will be included going forward in our federal reporting. So you'll actually see an increase of child abuse/neglect in care because of this. It was occurring before, it just wasn't included in the federal reporting so you will see a change soon in that federal reporting that may surprise you when you first see it.

No Audio: öChildren and Shelter Usageö Number of Children not placed in the Shelter: SFY11 û 5,051, SFY12 û 4,775, SFY13 û 6,291, SFY14 (projected) û 7,203.
 
Let's talk a little bit more about children and shelter usage. This is a chart that shows, beginning in State Fiscal Year 2011, over there to the far left, through State Fiscal Year 2014. The top line is the percent of children removed with a shelter stay. We were at 36.6%, went up a little bit to 41.8% and went down to 31.1%, and then our projection for this year, if we continue at the pace that we're at, will be at 29.6%. We also included, because of that increase of children in care, the total number of children who were not placed in the shelter so that you can see what a success the staff have had this year in not placing in a shelter. So then the numbers along the bottom are the number of children not placed in the shelter who came into care, and then it looks like we will continue to grow. 

So that is obviously a positive trending in the right direction. We want children to be with families as quickly as they can and as quickly as we can make a good placement. Beginning in January of this year, we focused on the under two population. With a few exceptions, such as a large sibling group or a teen mom and her child, children were not, our goal was to not have them in shelters. 

We did allow those exceptions, for obvious reasons. We wanted to keep children together and mothers and teens together. So that goal was in January, and then in July we started focusing on the under sixes in not being served in shelters. 

No Audio: Bar graph ôChildren Removed Compared to Shelter Stays SFY11-SFY14ö In SFY11 - 7,970 children were removed and 2,919 stayed overnight at a shelter, SFY12 û 8,206 children were removed and 3,431 stayed overnight at a shelter, SFY13 û 9,123 children were removed and 2,841 stayed overnight at a shelter, SFY14 û 10,233 children were removed and 1,010 stayed overnight at a shelter.

These bar graphs, show a little bit different picture but a similar thing. The blue bar showed the children removed at the beginning of each State Fiscal Year. And we've talked about the increase of children in care and this is what you see with the blue bars. The green bars show the children with an overnight shelter stay. So in spite of the increase of children we're still showing a decrease of overnight shelter stays as you go into State Fiscal Year 2013 and then this State Fiscal Year '14 is just a to-date. 

No Audio: Line graph ôShelter Nights Use û by Age Group, SFY11-currentö Shows general trending down of shelter nights for children 5 years and younger, while a general trending upwards of shelter nights by children older than 5 years.

Some more bar graphs, this one shows all ages of children. Along the bottom, the blue is the zero-and-one-year-olds, the red is the two-to-five, the green is the 6-to-12's, and the purple the age 13 and up. This chart is actually counting shelter nights which is the way that we count the data. A child can enter the shelter, so if law enforcement removes a child or Child Welfare removes a child at seven or eight o'clock in the morning, they can certainly go to the shelter, be served at the shelter. They can get a warm meal, take a nap, have a bath. But we're looking for a placement before they go to bed. That's the goal. 

So you may see children served in shelters, but what we are actually counting are how many spend the night and we actually count at midnight. So sometimes if the child comes in at eight o' clock in the morning you've got a lot of time to plan, you can call a lot of foster parents that day, right? Foster care here in front? Although some children come in 10 or 11 o'clock at night and you probably are not going to be quite as successful. We actually had an entry the other day at 11:50 p.m., 10 minutes till midnight, and I did, I'm sorry Director for a second I went, "Can't you just drive around the block?" 

(laughter)

Ms. Smith (continues): It didn't come out of my mouth but it certainly popped into my head because it wouldn't count till midnight but it's not about counting numbers obviously, it's about taking care of children so I thought it but it didn't come out of my mouth. 

So here we're counting nights and so you'll see starting over there from July 2010 on the little ones you'll see quite a bit of progress around January, February, March... April has gone up a little bit into later in the year. But just an overall picture of certainly shelter nights going up for older children while all of our effort are on these younger children. But over time you should see all those lines start to come down as we have more foster homes statewide who will accept older children as well. 

This one really digs deep into the zero-to-one-year-olds. What you see, this is by month starting over there with July we run the data by State Fiscal Year. And you see the State Fiscal Year '11, '12, '13, and '14 along each row. And what you want to see of course, is positive trending would be going down. So where you see the red line, the green line, the purple line we want to continue to see that go down. Looking from year to year, shelter nights for zero-to-one-year-olds. Our target set for the Pinnacle plan is zero nights, but that doesn't take into account exceptions such as large sibling groups or teen moms. 

So you'll probably always see even when we're exactly where we want to be, you'll probably always see some nights where children spend the night in the shelters even at this young age for those reasons. These are the two-to-five-year-olds. Not quite as much progress on the two-to-five-year-olds but still progress. And looking at July along the far left, you see in State Fiscal Year '12 over 1,200 nights. Went up in '13 to over 1,400 nights. But in State Fiscal Year '14, 800 nights. So certainly decreasing the time that children are spent in shelters versus being with families. 

So I talked a little bit about the goal, the overall goals in the Pinnacle Plan was certainly to support foster parents. So I wanted to list for you and kind of talk through some of the initiatives that were put in place to support foster parents and children in care. We touched briefly on the new contracts for traditional foster parents. This model and the agencies will recruit the families, so they will carry the families from the beginning of the process all the way through final approval. They'll do the home studies, the training, and have kind of a one-stop shop, if you will, one person helping them through the approval process. 

And the agencies will bring the information to us, as a family to do final approval, and then they will continue beyond that approval to support that family in a new way. So, built into their proposals and their plans, their work plans are ways to support families in more creative ways. So it's not just about recruiting them, they also will be working hard to retain the families that they bring into the system. And the four vendors that are providing these services statewide will have metrics that will become public. 

You'll actually be able to see the four vendors and how they're trending on their data. I think it's 15 different metrics that they'll be evaluated on. Such as, do they have a home when we call? Do they make a placement the same day that we call? That's the expectation. If we call and ask for a foster home, the agency needs to be able to help us find a home that day so that children are not spending the night in shelters. They'll help us, and if they don't have a home or put some of the other providers to find a home in that community. They'll be evaluated on keeping children in their same school districts, on bridging with the parents, on placement stability, and a host of other measures 
to make sure that they're supporting our goals in their work as vendors. 

We have more support groups around the state. We've really focused I believe on Pottawatomie and Tulsa counties I believe the first year. Because we're still serving kinship families, we actually are pretty quick at approving kinship families and helping them through the process. Although we've shortened the timeframe to have more timely approval of kinship families, but more support groups out there for foster families around the state. When foster parents spend time together they certainly understand one another's challenges and are great support for one another.

We increased the reimbursement for the first year. We also created the Child's Passport, which was already in the works when the Pinnacle Plan was created. But the Child's Passport is an online access to child-specific information for the foster parents. They can log on and if that child is in their placement, in a placement in their home, they can log on and get health information, and immunizations, and educational records. And so we've really tried hard this last year and a half and communicate and make sure foster parents know how to access that Child's Passport. Great information out there. 

No Audio: www.okbridgefamilies.com û Bridge Support Center website.

We also have the Bridge Support Center, which is where families call in if they're interested in becoming a foster... anyone here from the Bridge Support Center here today? No? Foster parents can call there when they can't find their worker, their supervisor, and ask basic questions like, "When's the next court hearing? What's the medical number?" things like that but then also if they're interested in being foster parents they can call and talk with someone about becoming a foster parent. 

We've been focusing on trauma focus training for them, give them more timely approval of kinship families, systems of care support, we've been working with the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. Around systems of care, a model that supports foster parents, and placements in a different way, better way. And then more transparency about the process, we have all this information available online to them, to foster parents but also we're conducting focus groups. 

We did last year, and we're conducting those again in the month of December statewide where foster parents come in, much like this, and hear a presentation about how the Pinnacle Plan is going, and child welfare reform to get their ideas and suggestions. And those are being held in every county across the state in December. Supporting Child Welfare staff was another huge area that we focused on. 

We worked on a worker/supervisor ratio of 5:1, so every for five workers you should see one supervisor. We worked on caseload standards, and we're not quite there. We're going to talk a little bit about that data in a minute. Caseload standards really calls out the number of cases, or children, or resources that a worker should be assigned, an ideal number and a maximum number in most cases. 

For Permanency Planning workers, do we have any Permanency Planning workers? There's two in the back row. They should have... there's one back here, they should have no more than 15 children. Do you look forward to the day? Okay, we're not quite there yet but that's the standard. 

For Bridge workers or Foster Care workers, a goal of no more than 22 families. And I know that you look forward to the day you are only serving 22 families. For those who do investigations or assessments and CPS workers, no more than 12 open investigations, and for adoption no more than 8 families and 8 waiting children. They had kind of a combined workload and we have some targets to meet the end of this year. Just a few weeks away we need to be at 45%, that 45% of the workers are meeting that standard, we may not make it, we'll see. 

We have new technology for field use. Workers needed improved technology to be able to use Mapquest and iPhone, not iPhone, email and other ways to communicate while they're out in the field, so they all have updated technology for field use. Again we focused all levels of management solely on Child Welfare Services so the front-line staff and supervisors have management who understand and know child welfare and have done that. So they can offer that level of support that they need. 

We are creating a field training program for participants after they finish Core. They leave Core and they do their competency assessment and then they go to the field with field training workers, if you will, for a certain time period - I believe it's going to be 90 days - where they're worked, kind of mentored more closely as they finish that Core. Really those first few months when we look at turnover rates at the entry level, we're still seeing a lot of turnover at the entry level. 

And most staff who leave, leave at five months. So there's something about completing Core and going to do a few home visits, maybe attending a court hearing, that really scares I guess, frightens people. So we feel like we really need to support them better after that Core, after they've accepted a caseload, for that time period so they can really get on their feet, and do their job and feel competent to do the job and supported.

Again more transparency. We completed last year and will complete again this year, child welfare summits around the state where we go out and talk with front-line staff to hear their suggestions. How's it going? What do you need? What do we need to do different? What do we need to adjust? We'll do those again this year. Very helpful to hear first-hand from them how it's working and what suggestions they have. They are not shy, at all, about saying what they need, which is good. 

I didn't talk about... I skipped the increase of 309 workers and 105 supervisors... Oh, I went on to the next slide. I got lost. An increase of 309 workers and 105 supervisors and the Child Welfare Assistant positions, I skipped a few bullets. Those are the paraprofessionals, a new job title that was created around the state, that are paraprofessionals who support the workers in doing administrative kinds of responsibilities. And we created 125 of those statewide to support the Child Welfare staff. 

No Audio: Pie chart ôTotal Child Welfare workers Meeting Workload Standards july1, 2013 û sept.30, 2013.ö 25.3% met caseload standards. 8.6% were within 20% of meeting caseload standards. 66.1% were over and above meeting caseload standards.

Caseload standards - this is what the monthly reporting or quarterly reporting will look like on caseload standards. The green is good. This is from July through September of this year - how many staff are meeting workload standards. We were at 25.3% who were meeting the standard. The yellow are people who were close, within 20% of meeting that caseload standard. And the red was the percentage that was over-meeting that standard. And we also have this data broken down in the monthly report if you want to look at that online, for each worker type. So you can see how the Permanency Planning workerÆs doing, how the CPS workers, the Adoption, the Bridge, to drill down and get more detail. But this is where we are overall with meeting that standard. 

So what's ahead in Year Two? We will continue the iterative process with the Co-Neutrals to ensure public reporting is adequate. When you're talking about counting foster homes, or counting workload standards, or counting permanency, it sounds so easy but it actually is pretty detailed to try to understand and make sure you're counting the same things the same way. You're using the same terms, using the same start dates, it all gets a little more complicated. So we're continuing to work with them on making sure that our public reporting is adequate. 

The team sitting back on this back row here on the right. They're kind of smiling, like it's so hard. They're doing an exceptional job in working with the Co-Neutrals to try to make sure that we're adequately, and appropriately, you know, and accurately reflecting the data that's in our system. And kudos to them, they do a great job.

Next a huge, a huge focus will be this year and has been so far in recruiting, training, and supporting and retaining foster families and the Child Welfare workforce. We're still seeing parts of the state where we're posting positions for Child Welfare staff several times and there's no one interested in the job. It is a tough job, it's complex, it's challenging but we've got to do a better job recruiting and retaining and supporting the Child Welfare staff to get to the outcomes that we all want. 

So HRMD, I don't know if is anyone here from HR, but they do an exceptional job and special job fairs and things to help us recruit Child Welfare staff. School of Social Work is here, exceptional job to try and help us recruit Child Welfare workers, but it's a tough job. But we need to do a better job retaining them and supporting them and hopefully some of our turnover will improve. Although we are seeing some improvement in the turnover, which is very optimistic so far this year. 

Same thing with foster families. We lose a lot of foster families to adoption, which is a good thing. We lost 1,000 foster families last year because they adopted the child that was in their care. That's a good thing. But we need to constantly be recruiting, and approving, 
and supporting foster families in a way that is effective. 

We need to achieve permanency for more children. We have 11,011 children in care. And while many of those children, I'm sure, needed to come into the system, certainly a district attorney, a judge, and other people were involved in that removal. So that's been looked at and reviewed. But once they get involved in our system, we need to do a better job of getting them to permanency. And what I mean by permanency is either reunified with their family safely, or adopted, or to guardianship. Children should not grow up in the foster care system. So we need to do a better job of the 11,000 children we have, once we have them, how do we get them to permanency more quickly? 

Some of the tools we're working on this year are permanency round tables, it's a method of just getting people together. Experts around the table to see, what can we do a little bit different than we've tried in the past and who can we explore to help achieve permanency? Family meetings, special strategies for children who have the goal of adoption who don't have an identified placement. So lots of initiatives around getting children to permanency and out of our system this year. 

And then we're implementing a new quality assurance program. It's been... the initial draft was approved by the Co-Neutrals and we have our first pilot site set for the first half of 2014. A completely new on-site review process and looking at data in a little bit different way. So we're excited about that quality assurance program. We certainly don't have all the details worked out but we want to do some pilots and get feedback from those groups before we go statewide. But we're looking forward to that new quality assurance process.

Challenges. It has not been easy. Year One I thought was really challenging. Wow, Year Two has been really challenging as well! When you look at the five-year plan, and you look at the initiatives, you wonder where the Year Four and Five initiatives are, because everything is really pushed early into the plan. There are so many initiatives in Year One, Two, and Three that they just kind of feel like they're on top of each other a little bit. 

So really this year and next year, we really have to stay focused on practice improvement while also positive trending on measures. And what I mean by that is, DHS Child Welfare was in the process of implementing practice standards and a practice model. We started around 2008, 2009, 2010 when all of this Pinnacle Plan, the settlement agreement, and this activity started happening. And while the two compliment one another, the Pinnacle Plan and the practice model, they don't conflict they're trying to achieve the same outcomes, it did distract us a little bit and we don't have as many conversations as we were having about practice standards and the practice model, family engagement, how do we keep children out of the system and provide the appropriate services and safety planning? So we've got to, somehow, maintain focus on the practice standard and the practice model while also achieving all these goals over here related to shelter usage and caseload standards and that. So that's a challenge. 

The increase of children in care is a challenge, recruiting sufficient numbers of foster homes and workers, I've discussed that. And then again Year Two is just really challenging, there's just so many initiatives to manage. We want input from you. 

Pinnacle Point Seven talks about, we can't do it alone and we need your help. This is an email group that was created last year when we were planning the Pinnacle Plan and it still exists today where you can send your suggestions. DHS, if you can't read that - it's kind of light, dhs.childwelfareplan@okdhs.org. It wasn't named when we created the inbox but it still exists today and we welcome your suggestions, ideas for how to improve the child welfare system.

Foster parents will also have an opportunity to attend the focus group meetings around the state, Child Welfare staff can attend the summit. And do we have any tribal Child Welfare staff here today? No? We have an ongoing state tribal work group that we certainly encourage everyone to participate in. Again we can't do it alone. I start with foster and adoptive parents and we certainly can't do it without them. We actually cannot take children home with us. 

(laughter)

Ms. Smith (continues): Although there are times we really want to. We really cannot take children so we rely on our foster parents and our adoptive parents who are just amazing, who take children at the drop of a hat with no information. We don't even know, you know, what their favorite color is, or what their favorite cereal is, or if they have allergies and you know, they just, in the middle of the night, they're just amazing and willing to step forth and take care of children. We can't do it without them. 

Legislative support, we've had amazing support throughout the planning and implementation of the plan from legislators. We, of course, continue to need that support as well. Tribal partnerships, around 30% of our children in out-of-home care are Native American. And the tribal partnerships, working jointly with the tribes to ensure children have positive outcomes is certainly critical to all this work. 

Provider support of our overall goals, so we're asking providers to look at their overall goals and their efforts to align those with the direction that we're going. We have citizen advisory boards now that replaced the commission, and they are certainly helping us to oversee the Pinnacle Plan. We certainly can't do it without them. Judicial and other key stakeholder support, we certainly can't do it without the judges and the attorneys as we try to improve all these outcomes. We've updated our response protocols with law enforcement, we can't do the work without them. 

And then last but certainly not least, are there any media people here today? No? Well shame on them. We have a story to tell, so shame on them Charice, shame them for me. We have a foster parent recruitment campaign that Governor Fallin has so graciously agreed to participate in last year and I think she's even agreed to do some updates for us. And then we have a recruitment campaign for Child Welfare staff as well to recruit staff, to encourage people to become Child Welfare staff. We have a story to tell and we asked the media to partner with us to tell that story.

No Audio: Deborah Smith, MSW. Director û Child Welfare Services. (405) 521-6602.

My name and contact information is listed for you but I want to show this PSA. This was actually done by our Child Welfare staff, and it's a recruitment PSA to attract people to the child welfare field. Has anyone seen these on video? A couple, people? Okay. I think they did a great job so I want to show you, it's very quick but I want to show you this PSA. 

Narrator: The safety of children is my priority. I became a Child Welfare worker because I want to help families in crisis. My job is to safely keep families together. I can have a real impact on somebody's life. It's the most important work I've ever done. It takes courage to be part of the solution. 

No Audio: Be Brave. Join our Child Welfare team. 405-521-3613. Okdhs.org/careers.

(music) 

(applause) 

Ms. Smith: In wrapping up, I just want to really shout out to the Child Welfare staff, those that are here, those that are not here. They do amazing work every day and they don't get the thank you that they deserve and so thank you to all of you. I'm going to tear up if I think about them too much but thank you for what you do, you are amazing. 

(applause) 

Ms. Smith (continues): Do not tell them I cried about them okay? I've got a tough exterior here. So I just want to open it up for questions, we have a few minutes. I covered it pretty quickly. I tell people I can do a Pinnacle Plan update in five minutes, I can do a one hour, and I can do an eight hour. So you got the kind of 45-minute version, lots of details left out I know. So I certainly am open to your questions, if you have any. I'm brave, I can handle it. We've got one at the back. 

Audience Member: In the class-action lawsuit the children, the identified outliers, and with some of those children having placements over, you know, 20-30 placements, multiple case workers. Things like that. What are you doing to identify the outliers that are currently in your system? Or prevent the next group of outliers?

Ms. Smith: That might be the eight hour version but that's a really good question. His question was around, in the class-action litigation there were outliers, the children's examples that were brought to light. Where children had long stays in care and multiple workers and multiple placements. Many children in our system today have, unfortunately, multiple workers and multiple placements. 

I would just say the simple answer is, the whole plan is designed to prevent that. So if we put the right amount of energy and effort into recruiting the right kinds of families who understand our children, we support them in a different way, we train them in trauma training, and they understand how to care for that child in a different way, you're going to see placement disruptions reduce. If you're making good matches between children and families. 

For Child Welfare staff, same thing, if you give them the tools, the experience, the support that they need to do their jobs, and the supervision they need to do their jobs, you're going to see turnover reduce, you're going to see that improve. As far as identifying specific outliers, there are lots of... the metrics that we talked about we didn't really drill down deep into those around placement stability, and those children who've been in care the longest amount of time that are all parts of baseline data that we're tracking, cohort data that we're looking at specific children through many of the metrics to drill down to specific case children. Like an example would be the permanency. 

We're looking at children who have a case plan goal of adoption but don't have a permanent placement. So there are specific strategies around those, is it 350 children? I may be making that up Sherry. 350, was I close? Okay. And we're looking at those specific children. So tracking those 350 children to make sure that they achieve permanency before they turn 18. So there are some of those kinds of examples that drill down to specific children to try to prevent the outliers. But overall the whole plan is designed to prevent and have fewer of those children ever make it to those situations. Yes?

Audience Member: Do you want to talk maybe a little bit about teenagers and kind of this group of kids that are... what we can do around independent living? 

Ms. Smith: Oh, good point. She asked if I would like to talk about teenagers. I raised five of them, they're all grown now. So I can talk a long time about teenagers and what to do with teenagers. She asked specifically though about independent living services. I think we have some people from OU today that work with us on our independent living program. I think one of the most exciting things that we're working on right now is a two year planning grant around preventing homelessness among our children in custody. 

So we're working together with the Department of Mental Health, the Housing Authority, the local service providers in Oklahoma City and Tulsa area. What can we do as an entire system, not just DHS, but an entire system to prevent those children from having bad outcomes before they age out of the system? We're excited about that two year planning grant and just that partnership of, "We can't do it alone," and how do we bring these entities together to really bring about positive outcomes for those kids and prevent them from ever transitioning... they're called "transition youth." 

We come up with a term for almost everything, and those are those children who are turning 18 and have not achieved permanency. And how do we prevent them from having homelessness and other poor outcomes through this system. Another really exciting partnership is with the Department of Education and working to really highlight children in foster care and their educational goals and how do the two systems come together in a better way then we have in the past to think about... children move around from placement to placement and sometimes will lose educational credits and their records will not get transferred timely, just a lot of challenges for children in foster care and their educational goals. 

So that's an exciting new partnership to try to prevent some of those things from happening for children aging out of the system. Other questions? Okay, you've been an amazingly pleasant audience. I usually get a little more challenged and pushback so, and tough questions, so you've been very supportive today. I appreciate each and every one of you for coming out, and drive safely home. Thank you. 

(applause)