COMMISSION REPORT: DECEMBER 2011

Director Howard Hendrick: Good morning everyone. Sorry about my voice this morning.
I'll do the best I can to get through it.
I'll run through the site visits, do some good news, bring you up to date 
on SNAP and child welfare issues, talk about the two resource centers 
and just hear some major information issues. It's been a very fast month again.
These are just some of the various sites that went... 
I think the main thing I want to bring to your attention out of all these this month is, 
really, the amount of getting out among the field staff.
I think it's so important for us to be able to go listen to people
who are doing the work, hear their challenges, try to be responsive
to them and I've tried to do that in this last month 
as much as I could in the middle of everything that's gone on.
So, those are the main things. 
I want to say thanks to Margaret Hall. This is her last Commission meeting.
And Margaret has worked for the state for forty years. And we are very grateful.
Let me...Margaret, you can come up here, and Brad. I appreciate that.
I'm just going to give you a certificate.
I promised Margaret we would not do anything big because Margaret is not, 
she's not inclined to having a big deal out of anything. 
But I do want to read this certificate for you 
because we are very grateful for all your years of service.
"This is a certificate in great appreciation to Margaret Hall for forty years 
of faithful service to the state of Oklahoma and Oklahoma's most vulnerable families.
Margaret started working at the State Capitol on October 25, 1971.
She became Commission Secretary for the Oklahoma Commission for Human Services on January 16, 1987.
Thank you for your outstanding commitment and dedication to the Commission 
and the children and families we serve in fulfilling our mission to help individuals 
and families in need to help themselves lead safer, healthier, more independent, productive lives.
Thank you for a job well done. Appreciate you Margaret.
Margaret Hall: Thanks. It's been great. Thank you.
(applause)
Director Hendrick: You're welcome. There's another one in here also from the governor. Thank you.
Margaret Hall: Thank you.
Brad Yarbrough: We also, before the Director goes to the next one, presented Margaret 
with a certificate from the Human Services Commission and we want to thank you 
from the Commission for all of your hard work over the years.
Let's give her a round of applause for the Commission.
(applause)
Director Hendrick: Margaret is a very kind person. 
The more you are around her the more you love her.
She just kinda, she grows on you. Thanks Margaret.
We want to give a Director's Award, also, to Olivia Kyaterekera.
How'd I do with that? All right. Come on up Olivia.
Before we make the presentation we're going to show a little video clip from Channel 9, 
which explains what all Olivia did. (inaudible)
Adriana Iwasinski: Well this DHS Case Worker says she was just doing her job following up 
on a tip they received on a child abuse hot line but it was her persistence 
and instinct that something wasn't right that led her to make the shocking discovery.
These are the pictures of the closet the 5-year-old child was forced to live in, 
blocked by a plastic baby gate and kept away from a fridge full of food in the nearby kitchen.
Olivia Kyaterekera: She didn't have any fat on her body, she, you would count the ribs.
Adrianna: Olivia Kyetarakara is the DHS case Worker who found the little girl 
hidden away inside this house in south east Oklahoma City.
Olivia Kyaterekera: I just asked this girl to take me where she lived.
She held my little pinkie finger and walked me down to the bedroom and in the bedroom was a closet 
and she pointed into that closet and in that closet there was a cup that had urine and feces.
Adrianna Iwasinski: Olivia says at first no one would answer the door at the house 
but she persisted until someone finally did.
Prosecuters say that was the key to saving this little girl's life.
Suanne Carleson: Many workers fear for their safety and rightfully so 
but she persisted in gaining access to the house.
That's an extremely important factor here that did lead to this child's rescue.
Adrianna Iwasinski: Olivia again persisted when the mother, Asusina Gonzeles,
refused to let her inside to see the child.
She says Gonzeles left the little girl's name out when she was asked to name all of her children.
Olivia Kyaterekera: I just knew there was something wrong, because as a mother, there's no way 
you can miss all of the six kids that you have, all the kids that you have 
and leave off this one child's name.
That's something that made me feel like there was something wrong somewhere.
Adrianna Iwasinski: And it's knowing that she was able to save at least one life 
that keeps this Child Welfare worker going.
Olivia Kyaterekera: It does. If you save a life, I mean, it does.
Adrianna Iwasinski: Olivia is going to be honored at the next DHS Commission meeting 
set for Tuesday.
That is where she will be receiving the highest award a DHS Case Worker can get 
for saving this child's life.
(applause)
Director Hendrick: Thank you. I don't know what to say.
Thank you for doing your job so thoroughly.
Thank you for the passion with which you do your work.
Thank you for going above and beyond, really, in fulfilling your responsibilities 
and we're very grateful for your service. And, today this... 
I'm going to read this whole certificate because a bunch of this was embedded in the video but...
Today this child is alive and thriving, thanks to Olivia's compassion, 
determination and perseverance.
Abuse and neglect is a tragic reality for many children
and frontline Child Welfare Workers quietly save children's lives every day.
We commend Olivia for her heroic actions that undoubtedly saved the life of this child. 
Thank you.
(applause)
Director Hendrick (continues): Olivia, congratulations.
I want to bring you up to date on some of the program information that we are dealing with.
We've had two months, since we met last, of data to present to you.
Our all-time high again on SNAP is still 625,000 in September.
We've had a slight drop the last two months. We're still up over the same month a year ago.
You can see in October the number of children on SNAP services, 278,000 children, 
30% of all the children in the state are receiving food assistance in October of this year.
So, the good news that the rate of which the growth over last year continues to decline.
Hopefully that will continue.
I want to bring you up to date on, just a Child Welfare issue.
Most of you know about the Children and Family Services review.
The second round of those reviews were done in 2006 and 2008.
No state has ever quote, "passed" the CFSR but all states enter a Program Improvement Plan 
with the Federal Government with certain detailed efforts and targeted performance.
We completed our second Children and Family Services review with the Federal Government 
and entered into a Program Improvement Plan effective October 1, 2009.
Our quarterly reports are filed each quarter showing progress on the performance measures 
and compliance with certain required actions steps.
Each quarter beginning October 1, 2009, Oklahoma has filed with the
Regional Office of Administration for Children and Families 
a progress report on the Program Improvement Plan with detailed data
documenting certain tasks and performance measures.
On November 22 of this year, last week, we received confirmation
from the Administration for Children and Families of its receipt 
of our passing all actions step portions of the Program Improvement Plan
through the seventh quarter which is June 30, 2011.
The eighth quarter report was filed in November for the period ending September 30, 2011 
but has yet to be reviewed by the regional office.
Key points in the status report, the regional office has reviewed the quarterly submissions 
received on August 15, 2011 and considers the requirements met 
for the designated seventh quarter actions steps as submitted. 
OKDHS completed all of the actions associated with Strategy 1, which results in 
no additional actions steps or benchmarks associated with Safety Outcome 1 and Safety Outcome 2.
With regard to National Standards and CFSR Item Measurements. 
As noted in the previous letter, Oklahoma has achieved the improvement goals 
negotiated for the CFSR items specific measures.
The only National Standard remaining unmet is for Permanency Composite 1: 
Timeliness and Permanency of Reunification.
The negotiated improved goal for Permanency Composite 1 is 118, 
which goes into quite a bit of detail about how that's actually computed.
The department and the Children's Bureau will be engaged in discussions 
on how to properly measure this last remaining data composite.
Because of the passage of state law that ended the standing orders during the time 
between the base period and the improvement period, 
the base period was measured using one practice method 
which had many short-term removals 
which kept the time for reunification short 
because people would be removed and returned so quickly.
And the improvement period which did not include those many short removals 
because we used safety plans to not necessarily have kids unnecessarily removed, 
since protocols were negotiated with local law enforcement agencies.
Fewer removals occurred but the average time of the children now removed 
is longer than the time for which the children were being removed 
when short-term removals were counted.
So, we'll have about a year to work with the Children's Bureau to attempt 
to reach agreement on the final data measure, which needs to be completed 
to complete our Program Improvement Plan. This is excellent progress.
However, we will need to resolve this one final issue over the next several months.
So, just to bring you up to speed on where we are with that.
I don't bring this up often because we're complying.
It's not necessarily a big deal to do but I think this is an issue that we need 
to just be aware that this one issue is outstanding that we'll have to work out.
The other thing we need to really address quite a bit, 
spend quite a bit of time with here today. It's on our agenda.
It's the future plans for the Southern Oklahoma Resource Center 
and the Northern Oklahoma Resource Center.
Jim Nicholson will spend quite a bit of time going through this with you 
but I want to kind of hit some of the high points and share with you 
what I recommend that we do as part of this overall planning process 
and you can decide how you want to handle it among yourselves.
So, these are the key vision points:
We want to try to avoid major capital costs at both sites.
We have a lot of capital improvements that are deteriorating.
We've tried to listen to the desires of residents and their family members.
We've tried to listen to staff regarding their vision for the care of the residents.
We've developed a plan that is feasible for what is foreseeable, 
not necessarily for every future contingency. I want to make that point.
The main purpose of this plan is try to get as far down the road as we can get 
down the road without overdriving our headlights, so to speak. Things change.
You know, when you're in a bit of a fog you have to drive as far as you can see, 
not necessarily beyond what you can't see.
So, this is really an attempt to try to get as far down the road as we can see 
and as we get there we can then make another assessment about what else to do.
We want to recognize that the situation is difficult for all involved 
and that preferences are mutually exclusive.
We can't both avoid capital costs and continue the same level of operation.
Those are mutual exclusive options so...
Those are main challenges that we'll have to work out.
In other words, there's probably no way you're going to make people happy 
because there's only one option or the other in terms of what is to be accomplished.
The plan highlights: We recognize the aging character of both 
the residential buildings at the facilities.
We recognize the cost to rebuild or maintain them.
We set guidelines for how much will be spent on capital costs to maintain the buildings.
The plan describes the census today and the projected census 
on August 13, 2013 for each residential site.
August 13, 2013 is the date when certain Life Safety Code enhancements become mandatory.
The plan reduces the combined population of both sites from 245 to 112 by August 13, 2013.
The plan describes the current structure and status of the operations 
including the conditions of the properties.
It describes alternative service array available for residents who will leave
and describes how priorities will be established for persons 
who may choose to move from SORC to NORCE.
It describes the process by which input was secured from stakeholders to develop the plan.
And includes appendices that describe Home and Community Based Waiver services 
and how safety and service quality are assured in
delivering home and community based services.
Other plan highlights: It describes future residential arrangements for residents who move. 
Those will include Specialized Homes, Medical Support Homes, Comprehensive Support Homes, 
and a placement at SORC or NORCE. So, we're not closing either facility.
The plan calls for continuing to operate the facilities based upon
those properties which presently meet the Life Safety Codes 
as we believe they will exist on August 13, 2013.
These four options for residential placements, includes Specialized Homes 
which includes an Agency Companion arrangement where a resident 
would move into a residence owned or rented by their caretaker.
So, for example, we have well the program is called Agency Companion 
and it's just as described there.
If a resident had a person who wanted to care for them 
and this resident wanted to move them into their home, 
those kinds of arrangements could be developed.
Medical Support Homes: These are homes rented by two to four
medically-challenged persons who share nursing services 24/7.
Comprehensive Support Homes are homes rented by two to four persons 
who share support services and individualized plans for employment 
and other community-based services.
Then some persons will reside in buildings that presently meet 
the set Life Safety Codes as they are expected to exist on August 13, 2013.
These persons will not be required to move 
if the building in which they reside meets Life Safety Codes.
Ten male and ten female beds will be made available at NORCE 
for persons at SORC who desire a facility placement.
For the employees there's an attempt here to try to do as well as we can 
by the employees who have worked there and who care and have relationships with residents.
Some employees will be retained at both campuses to care for residents who remain.
SORC's population will be reduced to 15.
The administration at SORC will be merged with either the area office, state office or NORCE.
Some employees who perform services that are needed to support
community placements will be moved to community services, 
like training, case management, client advocacy, etc. 
Direct Care and Nursing staff who care for persons who will be moving 
to newer residential arrangements will receive two incentive payments 
to become employed by the community provider to care for former residents. 
One is a health care stipend upon separation and a second payment that's proposed 
is a continuity of service stipend paid after six months of employment 
with the provider caring for the former resident.
Plan highlights the process for residential transitions is detailed in the plan 
including the payment and purchase of a limited amount of residential furnishings.
Plan highlights the property identified as surplus will be sold.
However, flexibility is going to be encouraged so that existing community relationships 
are maintained where possible so some negotiation with community partners is encouraged.
Specifically, what we have in mind there is that in Pauls Valley, for example, 
we have the city of Pauls Valley works with us and we work with them to actually use 
some of the land for some of their municipal needs.
If we want to try to, if we can in a fair way, treat them right as best we can, 
at the same time we don't need to continue to own some property that is actually surplus.
Some of the cost of duplication like keeping some staff at the facility 
while providers hire staff or persons who transition will be minimized 
in state dollars because of favorable Federal matching rates 
during the first year of a community placement.
So, while it's going to cost us some money to make the transition, 
there will be some duplication.
You'll see some periods of time when the cost per person at the facilities 
will go up quite a bit because as the census comes down there's certain amount 
of fixed costs that still have to be spread among the declining population 
so their cost per person goes up.
We're trying to minimize that cost per person going up by actually providing 
incentives to staff who work there to go become employees 
with the community providers to care for residents who do get transitioned.
That will lower our costs in terms of retaining them 
but it will have to be worked out as we go along.
How would I assess the plan?
There's plenty to not be happy about because, you know... you're not...
everybody doesn't get what everybody wants. 
But it's an attempt to try to find a bit of the middle ground 
and make a soft landing for as many people as possible.
A lot of persons will get at least, some or part of their desires,
which is the really good thing about how this has been developed.
Both facilities remain open at least for the foreseeable time frame.
However, no commitments are made beyond August 13, 2013.
It's just impossible to know what would happen beyond that date.
Transition planning on a person-by-person basis will be the norm 
and employees may choose and are incentivized to be part 
of the transition process for those persons who do move.
My recommendation to you is if you approve the proposed plan in principal, 
I suggest flexibility in finalization of the plan in its implementation.
We may become aware of suggestions or ideas that will improve 
the plan from input we receive over the next few weeks.
I view this as a near-final draft. I don't view this as the final draft.
People may come up with ideas that as a result of this meeting or other things 
that will come to our attention before January 1st when we have to submit 
the plan to the Legislature.
I think those ideas that create more win-win opportunities 
ought to be incorporated into the plan.
We're trying to create as many win-win situations 
out of a bad environment as we possible can.
Therefore, I recommend that the plan be approved in principal 
and staff be given authority to make refinements as necessary.
So, maybe I should stop there. I think maybe I won't. 
I think if you have questions on the plan, we'll let... 
we'll talk about that in more detail on the agenda item.
I'm just trying to get the highlights there 
and then when Jim comes up on that agenda item, 
we'll go into more detail if you have questions about this.
These are just other information items for you.
IT consolidation - the act talks about an agreement between agencies 
and the CIO and we do not have an agreement nor have we been offered 
a proposed agreement so our status is pretty much the same as it has been 
in the last meeting or so.
I think OSF is trying their best they can to get around 
to the different agencies but it hasn't all worked out yet.
The act does transfer assets and personnel to OSF 
unless an exemption is granted subject to an appeal.
So we're concerned about the loss of Federal funds and service quality.
We do have resolved our hot site back-up service capacity, 
which was a big issue for us a few months ago.
I don't know really how this is going to work out. 
We're still working with the CIO and OSF to try to come to some resolution 
about how things will work.
Other things that are pending: We have finger printing services that
we're trying get up in collaboration with the Department of Education 
so we can have a state-wide network and get a better connection back into the FBI 
for finger printing foster parents, other kinds of people that we're required 
to finger print for child welfare issues.
We did have good news last week in terms of approval 
for purchase of our Child Care monitoring information system.
We feel very excited about this.
It'll take us about a year to get this completed and up.
But it's basically a transfer of the system from Indiana 
and that has been approved through the processes.
We're very close, if not finished now with the Family Support imaging initiative.
That means we'll be state-wide in a paperless environment 
for all of the eligibility determination processes.
December will be the first month when all notices for renewal of benefits 
will go out in a form that directs recipients to go to OKDHS Live for renewal purposes.
We've had several months of gradually rolling a few counties out at a time.
We've had good response in that process and so this is 
a pretty major business operations change that, really, 
is going to be pretty valuable in terms of helping us reduce some of the work 
off of the frontline Family Support Eligibility Determination folks.
Folks who go to the website will then be able to just verify their information.
If they verify their information and deliver whatever supplemental documentation they need 
they can continue their eligibility and not have to have an interruption in service.
Long time coming, but I feel very good that we are well into the process.
There will also be an 800 number that people can call and get information 
about whatever they may not understand.
Not everybody will have computer access - they can call the 800 number.
Some people can come in they will still keep coming in, 
it's kind of a "no wrong door" environment.
They can keep on doing what they've been doing if they want to do that.
We think a lot of people will go to web.
That's what our initial experience has been on the counties that have rolled out.
We've had good response to participate in that.
We don't have any guidance yet on how personnel will be aligned 
with OSF on the IT consolidation.
And, we also don't have a good, clear indication of how the network will work.
This is the Eligibility Determination we just mentioned.
Just a little FYI on benefit costs, I think one of the things I'm very sensitive to right now 
is the challenge we have to pay our staff something. 
I think we all wanted to do for them and I thought  it would be helpful for you 
to look at just these set of numbers.
I would be careful about putting too much weight into the FTE Paid numbers.
This is not necessarily the number of positions of different people
but this is, you take the total payroll and divide it by the number of hours.
This is the actual number of paid time based on upon the amount of money paid for the time.
That includes some 999 employees who don't have benefits, that would include 
some overtime in here, so this is a little bit over-stated in terms of the number of FTE.
So this number would really be worse than what I'm telling you down below.
The long and short of this is: if you look at what we spent in 2005 
on health insurance and the employee benefit allowance you can see
we spent about $45 million in 2005, and in 2011 we spent $85 million.
You can also see for retirement costs in 2005, we spent $23 million 
and last year we spent almost $40 million.
None of these increases involve appropriations from the Legislature.
You can see that in 2005 the statutory mandate for agency match for employees was 10%.
Remember, employees pay about 3.5% so together employees and the agency in 2005 
were paying 13.5% of payroll for retirement costs.
That has gradually been increased over time to 2011 at 15.5% and 2012 it's 16.5%.
So, that's a 6.5% of payroll increase just in retirement costs in the last six years... 
and not to mention all the health care costs.
So, when people talk about the economy recovering and jobless recovery 
and those things, we're not exempt from anybody else. 
But my point is, the wider the gap that's between what it costs to hire somebody 
and what a person can take home means there's going to be less jobs for a while.
Until we lower that gap so people could actually hire people for less money, 
or people can take home more money, we're going to have 
probably a more difficult economy for a while.
So one of the things I'm an advocate of, for our staff at least,
even if we don't get any more, even if we have a flat budget, 
which we probably will, maybe a slight reduction given the fact 
that we have quite a bit of one-time money in our 2012 budget 
that we won't have available for 2013's budget. 
I still think we ought to do something for our employees 
if we can get the legislature to agree that the amount of contributions 
to the Public Employees Retirement System is excessive 
for what is necessary to fund the retirement plan.
The retirement plan was reported to be about 60% funded last year
but that actuarial assumption included cost of living adjustments
that have never been passed by the legislature for future costs of living 
adjustments because the Legislature had engaged 
in a practice of granting cost of living adjustments, 
the actuaries added a prospective cost of living adjustment, 
so it made the liability very large.
Last year the Legislature passed a law and said, 
"We're not going to give any more costs of living adjustments unless 
we actually put the money into the plan to pay the cost of living adjustment 
at the time we pass it." 
Well, then the actuaries went back and cut off all the future cost of living adjustments 
so now the plan is funded at 83% or something like that, between 80-85%.
So, I say all that to say, I think it's, in my opinion, it would be safe
to reduce the amount of money we're contributing to the retirement plan 
to have that money available to pay increases for state employees.
Which is what I think ought to happen. But I just want to make everybody aware.
The big main point is this is about a $50 million increase in benefits, 
from $66 million in 2005 to $114 million in 2011 and none of that was appropriated.
All the time our revenues for our Agency also were being cut.
And this doesn't count 2012.
But I just want you to be aware of what's happening in terms of benefit costs 
what a challenge they have become.
Commissioner: I'm sorry. What's the body count state-wide?  Approximately?
Director Hendrick: About 7300.
Commissioner: When you talk about revenue, what sources of revenue are you talking about?  
Is it just the Legislature?
Director Hendrick: No, we receive no appropriations to cover these increased costs. 
That's my point.
Actually, we had less revenue when you look at the appropriation levels. Yeah.
Major issues ahead: preparing for the Legislative session 
and completing the roll out of OKDHS Live, 
getting clarity in where we are on our IT issues, 
preparing the final plan for SORC and NORCE.
I want to bring your attention to, especially, a lecture 
that will be presented next Tuesday at noon at the History Center.
Paul Amato will be in town from Penn State.
Paul has been an incredible resource for us for many years on 
the Family Expectations Initiatives, Marriage Initiatives and things.
He is the Nation's leading Sociologist and his topic is, 
"The Generation at Risk: The Impact of Divorce" and he talks about how the... 
well, you just need to go listen to him.
I won't tell you what he talks about, you go listen to him and see for yourself.