OKDHS COMMISSION REPORT - JANUARY 2012

Director Howard Hendrick: Good morning, we'll run through some site visits, share some of the good news, things that are happening in the Agency, give you an update on SNAP, bring you up to speed on the characteristics of some of our expenditures - there's a chart you've seen before. We'll talk about some Child Welfare issues, some SORC issues, some information technology issues. 

It's been a while since we've had a regular meeting. We've had several special meetings but we haven't had a regular meeting in several weeks, so this is kind of the update on a lot of the activities. One of the things I'd like to point out here is our annual meeting of the Research Advisory Group. It really is a very outstanding group of people that come give us guidance on how we're doing in our research. 

Actually, one of the things I'm pretty excited about that I think will come out some time in the next 60 days, is the first report on the married couples here in the state. You may remember the Family Expectations research is one of the most outstanding... We're really very fortunate to be involved in this research. The first study has come out on unmarried couples. 

It's a longitudinal study and our Oklahoma City site is the only site in the study that is showing statistically significant outcomes for unmarried couples who get the intervention. We should get the first report on the married couples in the intervention some time in the next 60 days. So, I'm pretty excited.  

I don't know what it's going to say but it's really neat just to give you, to refresh your memory about the study, there are 500 unmarried couples in a control group and 500 unmarried couples in an intervention group, 500 married couples in a control group and 500 married couples in an intervention group. And 2,000 couples, 4,000 adults, 2,000 children; 6,000 people in this study.  

And it's a longitudinal study to see whether or not the 30 or so hours of class plus the case management that was provided to these families until the children turn age one, actually does a better job of improving relationship quality and also does a better job of extending the relationships. We know that from the Fragile Families research that the... 

By the way, just to put this in context, the reason why this is so vital is 40% of all the births in the country, and including Oklahoma, are now to unmarried couples. So, we also know that the length of those relationships is something on the order of two to three years; much shorter than the relationships of the couples who actually married. If we can extend the time of those couples staying together, you know, we know that we will have a significant positive effect of reducing childhood poverty. 

We know that kids who get the benefit of both their parents, even low income kids who get the benefit of both their parents, do much better at completing high school, do much better going to college, lots of outcomes that are so much better, so reducing poverty by working on family structure is really the gist of this. 

This has been a long time coming and we should get our first outcome report on the married couples hopefully in the next few months and I'm excited about getting that back. And so the researchers were here to kind of run through where they are and it will be fun to see what happens on that. Then, of course, in December we saw... you heard if you were here and if you didn't, you can go online and listen to it, the lecture of Paul Amatto on the effects of divorce on children and the longitudinal effects of divorce on children. So, Paul's a demographer from Penn State and is a member of the Research Advisory Group. 

I had a very good meeting in response to our last December Commission meeting with representatives of both parent groups from SORC and NORCE and the OPEA representatives to review the plan. We took a lot of... we took the input that we heard from the Commission Meeting last time and I'll talk in a moment about what modifications were made to the plans as a result of that meeting and the input that was received here at the Commission Meeting in December. 

A lot of Holiday events, went on a variety of issues, I'm going to just kind of rush on through and see if there is anything else that jumps out. Really a nice event last week I'd like to bring to your attention which is a joint event between our agency and the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services who has been the recipient of a new grant that will partner with us on the delivery of Systems of Care Services to children and families who are involved in the Child Welfare System. 

And it was very encouraging to see parents who have had their children in Foster Care who now have their children back but because their children went through mental health issues, including some of those children who are involved. I recall a very sensitive conversation that I had with a young 22-year-old adult who had been in the Foster Care system for many years and she came to me at the end of the session and in a very moving way - she had been in more than 20 placements in Foster Care and she said, "I want you to know that I want to say thank you to all the workers that I had during the time I was in Foster Care. Even though I went through all those placements - I was a challenging child," she said, "I wasn't too nice to some of the workers during that time in my life 
but I've got things together now." 

And she was just... she just wanted to say thank you to our staff for having been involved in her life. And her story and other stories, I think, will be very valuable in terms of building relationships around families who are going through mental health issues, particularly, whether they're being reunified or they're coming into care because they are having behavior challenges. 

I'm very excited about what that grant will do, including addressing trauma which is also one of the main things that we're doing in our Child Welfare system. As you know, we're one of three sites in the country selected to participate in the development of how to actually apply trauma services throughout the state. I'll bring you up to speed on these other things in a moment, I guess. 

More good news, as of yesterday we had 1,009 finalized adoptions this year. That's in, really six months and, you know, six or seven months now. We're on track to have our best year ever for adoptions. I don't know if we'll do it or not, we've still got five more months. I don't recall that this early in a year we ever crossed the 1,000 finalized adoptions point before now, so people are really doing a terrific job and I'm very proud of the work they're doing. 

Last month in December we stress test the OKDHS Live system. We sent notices to every SNAP recipient who was the subject of a recertification process. That's about 27,000 notices a month. We had mixed results, we had a lot of people came in and used the deal but the system... there were program... the reason you stress test something is you don't know if it'll take the stress. There were about two or three days where it didn't take the stress, 
we had a lot of things that backed up in the system. 

All of the changes that were necessary to eliminate those challenges were corrected and so this week 27,000 new, for the month of February, recertification recipients are getting notices as we speak and we think that we're going to have a very successful event. Just to give you some sense of how critical this is for improving our process, about... under our old process, where we would mail notices and tell folks, "these are the things you need to come in to bring with us to get your case recertified," really only about 15-20% of the persons who got that notice really responded timely, brought us the stuff so we could get the certification done timely and they would come in after the month was over and they needed their... really needed to eat they'd bring their stuff in and do it at that time. 

We're seeing in our use of the OKDHS Live process, literally about 50%... between about 40-50% of the people who get this notice actually go online and are able to get their recertification done. So that will save us a lot of effort, we hope, in our offices by moving online to the public. Now, there's a lot of folks who aren't going to get any benefit out of this they don't have access to technology, they're not digital natives and so they're just going to continue to use the same process we've always used. For those folks who have access, this will be a really nice way for them to help us keep their benefits current while they are eligible and it's a good addition for us to actually become more advanced in doing that work. 

These pictures are the same pictures you saw last year in January because we had another great year but this year we did even better. We had our biggest year ever in terms of children through the Office of Volunteerism. Karen Jacobs and all of our warehouse staff, local Child Welfare workers, dozens of churches, literally, I underestimate... this is the first year, I think, we've crossed 6,000 children, who actually got their requested gift list completed. So, it's been, really, the most remarkable Holiday year we've ever had in terms of really being there for our kids and I want to say thank...I issued a... wrote an op-ed on that and both of the major papers were kind enough to publish. And I really am grateful for the public support of our children, it's very gratifying. 

SNAP - In December we had 620,000 persons receiving the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Now you can see, if you look at this closely, that from September through December we've had three consecutive months of decline in SNAP for the first time ever. However, if you look a little closer you can see that for the last five months all of those months are 620,000 or more. 

So, during the first six months of the fiscal year we've had the heaviest caseload of persons receiving SNAP in the history of the state. So, food assistance is still a big challenge. We're seeing a little bit of relief the last three or four months but when you look at the overall status of things over the last six months we've never had six months like the last six months of demand for services. 

It's up in December 40% over the numbers that we had in December of 2008. So, that's 180,000 people in December this year more than we had in December just 36 months ago. So, staff are really... 30% of all of the kids in the state... in just December, this is the numbers from October because the numbers in December aren't going to change very much. 30% of all children in the state were receiving assistance during December. 

And 40% of all children in the state have received assistance for food in the last 12 months, for at least one month in the last 12 months. So that gives you a sense of how demanding it is on our staff, they're doing a terrific job. It doesn't look like very big growth numbers one year over another, and they're not. But when you look at the aggregate cumulative weight of the growth of where we've been over the last 36 months with no new staff, our people are really doing a terrific job. 

And, our accuracy rate is one of the best accuracy rates we've ever had, so people are doing a really terrific job, really terrific job. This is a chart. Some of you who have been here for a while have seen before, some of you have not but this has been updated a bit and I thought maybe we'd spend a little bit of time running through this one chart just so you can have a little bit of appreciation when budget time comes around to again refresh your memory, just, you know, maybe this is a five-minute learning exercise for those of you who haven't been through this before but I think it's helpful to get a little picture of how the Agency's budget works. 

If you add this $67 million here, this $90 million here and $413 million here in round numbers that will equal the state dollars we have to work with in our budget in these three columns. These $90 million of state funds are mandatory expenditures by Federal law. So these are things we cannot cut. So, when we have to deal with budget cuts from across the street we're stuck with that $90 million of expenditures no matter what. 

All the cuts have to come out of other places. When we look at these $67 million of state programs to be funded, hardly any of these programs can really be cut because the reason... the biggest programs that are funded in this expenditure are Foster Care payments and Adoption Subsidy payments that... for children who don't qualify for Federal financial participation. 

So, you're not going to pay a foster parent a different reimbursement rate, or adoptive parent a different reimbursement rate, just because the child that's in their home doesn't meet some Federal rule. You're going to keep paying on the same price you pay all foster parents. So, there's not hardly very much room in this column here to make many adjustments. 

Even though it looks kind of simple on the surface, there's not that much that can really be adjusted here. Most of the adjustments have to come out of this $413 million of state funds. And these $413 million in state funds buy these $313 million in Federal funds that we spend inside our agency and they buy this $295 million of Federal funds that we don't spend inside our agency. These are the Federal match dollars that are used to pay DDSD Providers, 
Aging Services Providers, for the ADvantage Waiver Providers. 

And so even though our budget's $2.1 billion or so, $2.2 billion we really effect about $2.4 billion because these expenditures and other agencies are effected by how we spend our money here. So, just to give you a little bit of perspective- the biggest expenditure in the Agency are programs that are funded within 100% Federal funds. 

Sometimes people want to say, "Well, why not just cut the..." People, who really, I think innocently, well-meaning, may say, "Well why don't you just cut Food Stamps benefits or something like that?" Well, once they realize that literally, almost a billion dollars of this $1.2 billion is 100% Federal funds are just food for low income persons who meet eligibility standards. You know, there's not a lot of room... it wouldn't do us any good in terms of our budget crisis to cut the SNAP benefit. 

Once you understand that the average SNAP benefit is $4.23 per person, per day, you know, I like to say it's three weeks of somebody's Food Stamp benefits to sit in the end zone at an OU football game. And if you sit down and think about it that way... I don't know tickets might be cheaper in Stillwater, what about that? You think? They're more expensive. (laughs) Whatever. 

Commissioner: (inaudible)

Director Hendrick: They're more intelligent there, okay. 

(Laughter) 

Director Hendrick (continues): Anyway, I'm not going there any more. That will give you some sense of the Agency's budget. I think it's just kind of good sometimes to go back through that and get a sense of how the big picture works. 

Child Welfare- all of you know because you participated in special meetings, we settled the D.G. matter, at least, as far as we're concerned, last night. Judge Frizzell signed an order preliminarily approving the settlement agreement and set the fairness hearing for February the 29th. We've had two meetings with the co-neutral since the settlement agreement's been signed and I think Deb Smith is going to give you a little update later in the meeting on how the plan is being developed. 

I mentioned this in our last meeting about the... we talked about the Children and Family Services review and the Program Improvement Plan. We've completed the Children and Family Services review and our Program Improvement Plan which became effective October 1, 2009. Each quarter since October 1, 2009 we've filed progress reports with our regional office. Last week we received confirmation from the regional office of its receipt and of our passing all the action steps for our Program Improvement Plan through the eight quarters which ended on September 30, 2011. So, that's really good news. 

As I reported at last meeting, the only challenge we have remaining with our CFSR is Composite One which is the Timeliness and Permanency of Reunification. And as I mentioned there the base period for the measurement of this measure was prior to the adoption of our practice model and prior to the adoption of legislation that eliminated the standing orders. So during our base period, we had a lot of removals that went back home. And when those removals that went back home... what that meant is they went back home fairly quickly. 

Our average length of stay during the base period of time was low because we had a lot of short-term removals. After the standing order was repealed and all the prevention work we're doing now, a lot of those children aren't being removed so they never come into care at all. What that means is that only the kids who are in care, coming into care now are staying longer because we're not removing the kids who kept our average low. 

So, we have to work with the Federal Government on reworking how we do or don't measure up on this one standard. They've expressed an openness to additional discussions for alternative measures. We have a very good relationship with them. I just want you to know though, kind of the status of everything and this kind of fills it in. We are through with our PIP except for this one measure. We'll continue to submit data for an additional year beyond the PIP but we have one loose end to work out. 

SORC and NORCE- I want to come back to this issue today. You'll hear more about it today. I want to give you kind of, just a brief, very high-level review of what we talked about last month, what we've done since last month, what we submitted to the Legislature and then you'll have a more detailed discussion about it later, I'm sure. But these are the same key vision points that we discussed at our last meeting. 

The things that have changed since the last meeting include the plan modification process. After the last meeting I did meet with representatives of OPEA and the Parent Guardian Associations of both facilities. These are my observations of our meeting. Two big observations: one is that there is an irreconcilable difference on whether or not capital expenditures should be made or not. That's the bottom line. There are folks who believe that capital expenditures should be made and folks who believe that capital expenditures should not be made. 

Neither the original plan nor the modified plan contemplate capital expenditures for maintenance in excess of $5,000. So that's probably the biggest sticking point from my observation of between the persons with whom I met and what the plan provides. 

The second is that several parents did express a willingness to actually visit multiple community sites and staff have agreed to make those visits. There were some parents who... I shouldn't say "unwilling", they were just more committed to their vision of the plan. I don't think anybody said, "I'm not going to do it." That's probably an exaggerated statement on my part there. But, I think that they were very committed to their vision of having more construction and that's what I took away from the meeting. 

The final plan that was submitted to the Legislature by January 1st, which is what was required under the law, clarifies that the final combined populations of both sites will be reduced from 245 to 120 persons. Previously we reported it to be 112 but as we went back through that data, we were able to figure out we could actually keep the combined population of both sites at 120. There's a new express description of the individualized planning process which directs attention to Appendix 3 for more specific information. 

I think this is mostly in response to the concerns expressed by Mr. Bullock at the last meeting where he pointed out, rightfully, that there is a need to make sure that all services are in place prior to actually making the transition. And that has been our practice but it's much more clearly expressed in the modified plan. 

This also removes the references to the OCA, Office of Client Advocacy staff, since they will provide advocacy services on a regular basis, not at time limited, previously a 90-day basis. And it creates a detailed description of the Transition Safeguards. Information Technology Consolidation- I think good news for us since the last time we met is we have received a letter deferring any transfer of staff until adequate due diligence can be resolved to address our continuing concerns about cost allocation and the high risk of loss of Federal funds if the Office of State Finance were to proceed with consolidation. 

We continue to have conversations with the Office of State Finance and this is... I can tell you this is an extremely complicated issue financially, but being wrong about this is millions of dollars. So it's something that, really, cannot be... there cannot be enough due diligence, in my opinion, prior to making any of these changes. 

Even if you agreed with consolidation the financial consequences are pretty significant. This doesn't even cover whether or not it's a good idea managerially or not. Even if you could do it for cost neutral, on a cost-neutral basis, in my opinion, it would be a mistake managerially because of the separation of the roles of responsibility and authority. 

In other words, all the responsibility for all our IT would be shifted to the Office of State Finance and we would have no authority, even though we have the responsibility for compliance, filing reports to the Federal government, we have the responsibility for making sure that everything is right in the field with all of our staff. 

We don't have any control over whether or not the people who run the Data Services Center in the Office of State Finance actually show up or not or how good their service is, or many other things. I don't think it's a very good idea from a managerial perspective. But, independently of that, financially it's clearly, at least from what we know today, not a good idea. 

I think they have recognized there's a need to, at least, do due diligence on the financial side of the question, which is good on their part and I appreciate their willingness to work with us on that. Some good improvements, I think, since last time we met on various IT issues, I shouldn't say this is all necessarily... this is complicated by IT Consolidation, but these are a number of the projects that we have going that are very critical in terms of technology. One is the fingerprinting service. 

We've made some progress to give you some sense of what's involved in this. As you may recall, the Legislature passed a law last year that said that we would not be permitted to reunify children with their parents in Child Welfare until after we've done FBI fingerprint background checks on the biological parents. So, it's an incredible amount of extra work to go do these fingerprint checks. 

That doesn't answer the question of whether or not a person who's a parent who may have a serious criminal record has a constitutional right to have their kids back. They have a constitutional right as a liberty of a being a par-... being a parent is a liberty interest in the constitution, so even if you found a bunch of dirt on their fingerprints they would have a constitutional right as a liberty interest to probably get their kids back even if you found a bunch of dirt. But, that's neither here nor there. 

The law still requires us to do this fingerprint work prior to the reunification. This is complicated for a couple of reasons. One is there's not enough access across the state to fingerprinting service to get fingerprints processed promptly through the FBI. We are partnering with the Department of Education who has a similar obligation to do fingerprint background checks on education personnel. 

So, we hope together to be able to have enough purchasing power jointly to get a good per fingerprint rate with some private vendors who will establish some sites across the state where, either education employees or our families who need fingerprints could come to those private provider sites, get their fingerprints done at some expedited rate. So that RFP is fairly close, it may be on the street even. I'm not sure how far along it is, but some good work has been done to... with the Department of Education to expedite that. 

One of the other complicating things about that is one of the requirements of the FBI is that the only person who is permitted to look at an FBI fingerprint report is the person whose fingerprints were taken or another person who has been fingerprinted by the FBI. So, literally... and even in those cases... I mean we can't even have people in our agency process fingerprints without those people being fingerprinted also. 

So all of our Child Welfare workers are going through the process of being fingerprinted through the FBI. Plus, you can't... even when we get them back we have very strict rules in terms of how those fingerprints are controlled in terms of even giving them to the court. So, even judges have quite a bit of restrictions on their access to this information so, it's quite an involved process to get that resolved but we are making progress on it. 

Child Care Monitoring... 

Commissioner Lane: What difference is it... excuse me but, in its... what kind of time frame is it actually costing on being able to get the kids out of DHS custody because of having to do this? Do you have any idea about the timeframe? 

Director Hendrick: I don't have a number for you but it will be longer. Obviously. We've made some good progress, since our last meeting, on this Child Care Monitoring Information System. We're very optimistic about this transfer... this is a transfer from the Indiana system. We have a very robust system ourselves. 

They had a robust system but we liked the look and feel. We were able to transfer this at a very reasonable price. Big process to do it but it's going very well. And that had not been done the last time we talked. 
I mentioned...another thing that we've completed since our last meeting is all of the imaging processes throughout the state for Food Stamp eligibility in all the offices. 

So every site has a remote-based imaging processes. That's critical to being able to use the OKDHS Live system because by having all that imaging infrastructure across the state, when people come in for their eligibility determination they can just scan that information and we have a permanent record at the time we receive it, not some later time. 

And by getting that information at the time we receive it that case, if that particular office, say, has a lot of people who had to leave or they're on sick leave or something like that, that work can now be done in some other office because all the work is now digitized. So we feel very good about that initiative in terms of more and more digitalization for the eligibility determination process. And I mentioned earlier the OKDHS Live. State-wide notices were sent in December and January and we'll see how the December and January deal goes. 

Personnel guidance- I mentioned earlier OSF has deferred transfer of all of our employees... state law was going to provide, or did provide that all of our IT persons, which is more than 300 employees would, on February 1st, be employees of the Office of State Finance. Of course, by doing that as I mentioned earlier would create a lot of financial loss besides all the other reasons I mentioned. 

But as I said that has been deferred until all the due diligence can be done and we're grateful for that cooperation. We're still working through a number of equipment issues. 

Thank you. I'm coming to this slide because I'm announcing today I intend to retire 
as Director of the Department of Human Services. My last day on the job here will be the last day of February. 
I don't know exactly what my official retirement date is but I've worked through a number of vacations so I've got a lot of vacation time accrued. (laughs)

So, I'm going to take a little bit of vacation at the end here and figure out what's next. There's never a good or a bad time to retire. No matter when you pick, whatever day you pick, there's going to be a lot of work left. I could have retired more than a year ago. But as I've kind of, processed over and over the main thing I was concerned about really, was getting through this litigation that has been so prominent. 

And, I feel very good that actually the last day I'll be here is also the day Judge Frizzell has set for the hearing on the approval of the settlement agreement. And so, I can leave... I came here with a consent decree 13 and a half years ago with the Homeward Bound Case, we were able to, after three weeks of litigation, get that consent decree dissolved. 

It takes a lot to get out of a consent decree if you're in a consent decree. Fifteen days of trial in front of Judge Ellison for us to leave the consent decree of the Homeward Bound Case. That was one of the main reasons why I was so adamant that we not have a consent decree, if at all possible in resolving the current litigation because we were either going to litigate to get in or litigate to get out, you might as well litigate on the front end if you're going to get into it if you're going to litigate to get out of it. 

Of course, the great thing I think about what is proposed in the settlement is we won't have to litigate to get out of it assuming things go as we hope that they will go. Which is, once we begin the process of getting the plan in compliance with the plan, the good faith standard of excellence will be a plan... a status that hopefully we will not have to litigate to get out of court supervision. So, as I mentioned earlier, it's an unprecedented way in which to resolve this kind of litigation. 

I feel good about that. I've got other things I want to go do. I've got a billion books I want to read. I'm looking forward to spending some time with my grandkids and I'm going to go do something else, I don't even know what I'm going to do. But I think if I don't stop now, I'm not going to stop... for a long time. 

And I think it's better for me to stop now and take my breath and give myself a break and go down the road and do something different than it would be to sort it out later. So, that's what I'm going to do. I feel good about it and I've always loved... (regains composure) 

Audience Member: We love you Howard. 

(Applause) 

Commissioner Chase: This is a... (inaudible)

Director Hendrick: The hardest part, the hardest part is the people. I just love the people... that's the hard part. But, I can say this, I've always loved John Williams' definition of success. Williams, of course coached the UCLA Bruins and all of his records will never be broken... but Williams definition of success was, "Peace of mind is a direct result of knowing you did your best to become the best you're capable of becoming." I've done my best. Thank you. 

(Applause) 

Commissioner Lane: You're awesome. 

Commissioner DeVaughn: Good job. 

Director Hendrick: Thanks for being my friend. Blessings to you. See you. 

Commissioner Chase: We ought to get a picture of that. 

Director Hendrick: That's a good thing, it's a good thing.