INSIDE OKDHS IN THE NEWS -- AUG 2011

Mark Beutler: Hello everybody, I'm Mark Beutler from the OKDHS Communications Division and this is the news for August, 2011.  This month marks the return of the Practice and Policy Lecture Series with a presentation on early childhood development. The first of the season lecture will be presented by Dr. Lisa Klein and is entitled, "Why Early Childhood Matters: Brain Development Birth to Five."

Dr. Klein is the Executive Director of the Birth to Five Policy Alliance in Leawood, Kansas. This lecture will be held at the Oklahoma History Center from noon to one on August 17. You’re welcome to bring a lunch to this and all of the lectures or you can arrive a little early and order your lunch from the Winnie Mae CafΘ on the third floor of the History Center. We'll keep you posted on upcoming lectures or you can visit okdhs.org to find out more.

Next up, we want to make sure everyone is aware of the Information Security Officer's Employee Disaster Fund. This is a fund to help the people who take care of other people: OKDHS employees. It was created by our very own Mark Gower to assist the families of OKDHS employees who’ve had a significant impact by a disaster. 

Disasters in Oklahoma are a given, especially during tornado season.

Every year, many Oklahomans find themselves facing the loss of a home to a tornado, a flood or some other natural disaster. With the large number of employees who work for OKDHS, the odds of a disaster catching up with some of our own is almost certain.

Mark Gower, who is the agency's Information Security Officer, saw a need to have a fund in place to assist OKDHS employees when their lives are turned upside-down by disaster.  We caught up with Mark to find out how the fund came about.

Mark Gower:  I decided to start the Information Security Officer's Disaster Fund to support our workers out in the field. We have a large job where we take care of people every day and when something bad happens in our life we need someone to take care of us. 

Since we began the fund in the last two years, we've been able to help ten families with direct assistance and help others with provided services reconnecting them to other services in the community.

Mark Beutler: Mark explained to us that the fund is not just a way to distribute cash when a family is in crisis but is designed to be there in any way possible. Maybe the family needs help clearing fallen trees or needs hot meals for a while.  The Disaster Relief Fund works with the Office of Volunteerism to recruit help. As you may have guessed, you can pitch in to help any way as well.

Mark Gower: The partnership with the Office of Volunteerism has evolved over time through the assistance and support of Karen Jacobs.  She helps the office collect and receive and distribute the funds as well as connections with all of her partnerships so that we're able to then give support to families with supplies or other things that we do not normally have.

Every DHS employee can help in small ways.  Giving a donation here or there to the fund, obviously, is a major help. But also when disasters strike, you make the call to provide services, maybe to a fellow employee and help cleaning up disaster mess or other things that might be a good benefit to the family.

Just stepping forward and giving of themselves like we do every day.

To find more information about the program you can contact our office at 405-522-0522.

Mark Beutler: Let's go over that information one more time.  If you know someone who’s been struck with a disaster and could use assistance or if you would like to donate to the fund or offer your help, phone Mark Gower at 405-522-0522. 

Now we'd like to offer a pat on the back to all the employees in Area IV. As you know, OKDHS, along with other state agencies, the Governor's Office and our two biggest universities, will be tobacco free beginning January 1, 2012. The folks in Area IV offices went ahead and began the policy this past Spring. All offices and Human Services Centers in Area IV have been completely tobacco free for more than four months now.

As many of us know, quitting tobacco is not easy and many people in Area IV have been smoking for years. For many employees this has been a challenge.  Needless to say, we're all very proud of everyone who made the effort to quit while at their workplace. The tobacco ban will hit all OKDHS offices  in just about four months.

NO AUDIO: “OKDHS will be tobacco free beginning January 1, 2012.”

This early announcement gives everyone a chance to begin quitting now so the transition won't be quite as difficult.  Because stopping tobacco use is a challenge, local wellness coordinators can help employees access resources.  A list of wellness coordinators is available in the Outlook address book at WELLNESS.COORDS.ALL.

Another challenge many people face is caring for an elderly or disabled family member or friend. If you or someone you know is involved in caring for a loved one who requires a high level of care then you might be interested in a group that meets at the State Office.  The Caregiver Support Group meets once a month  in the basement of the Sequoyah Building to share information and discuss experiences.

There’s no registration and prior notification is not required. If you think this support group might benefit your situation then try to make plans to attend.

NO AUDIO: “Caregiver Support Group Laree.Reidenbaugh@okdhss.org 405-522-6005”

To find out more about the Caregiver Support Group contact Laree Reidenbaugh by email or by phone at 405-522-6005.

NO AUDIO: “Richard.Combs@okdhs.org  405-522-8591”

You may also contact Richard Combs by email or by calling 405-522-8591. Caring for someone who requires round-the-clock assistance is a very difficult situation at best, please reach out for support when you need it.

The Commission for Human Services held their monthly meeting July 26, 2011 and, as usual, we have a few clips of Director Hendrick’s comments to the group.  He spent some of his time announcing a national award bestowed upon the Child Support Enforcement Division.

Director Howard Hendrick: We're really, really, really proud of our child support people.  This is being announced today, nationally. We won the Outstanding Program in the Nation for our child support program in 2011. Gary, stand up on behalf of all your co-workers, we're just really proud this is being announced today nationally and -- great job.

(applause) 

Dir. Hendrick: We really couldn't be more excited about what's happening in our Child Support program.

NO AUDIO: Letter from the NCSEA (National Child Support Enforcement Associations) citing that Oklahoma Child Support Services has won the 2011 Outstanding Program of the Year Award.

This is part of the letter from the Executive Director: “The Awards Committee was impressed with the outstanding achievements of the Oklahoma program over the past several years and strong commitment to improvement and quality with a sustainable governance structure.

In addition, the solid, consistent training and continuous development of staff and the commitment to customer service which is reflected in the numbers of your results is highly commendable. The committee was impressed with your involvement and partnerships with the justice community and with the great metrics in your call center, the accomplishments and innovations of your program are commended and is the type of national model the Outstanding Program Award is meant to highlight.” 

Our folks have really done a great job and they have a lot of new initiatives even beyond the placement of this, they've started a number of other things in the division even to keep their improvement, so they've done a great job.

Mark Beutler: Hendrick announced the fifth consecutive winning of the USDA Director's Award for the Southwest Region for Best Performance in Overall Administration of the SNAP Program for fiscal year 2009. This award goes out to all Food Stamp workers who are handling more cases with less staff than ever before. You were the best around in 2009 and you continue to do superior work for the people of Oklahoma. Records are being set on a regular basis.

Dir. Hendrick: The numbers for June in our SNAP Program are up again over May. This is the fourth consecutive month with another increase. It's not a large increase but it is some increase. We're up 4% over last year, same month last year, but we're up 24% over the same month two years ago. We're up 45% over where we were three years ago. So quite a bit of increase overall. 

By the way, 30% of all the children in the state, in May, 30%, 274,000 - 275,000 kids almost, of all children in the state were on SNAP during the month of May. Nine hundred twenty thousand kids in the state. Here's our monthly average for Food Stamps the last fiscal year, 609,000 people in the last 12 months, in an average month were on SNAP. This is the highest average monthly SNAP participation in the history of the state. It's higher by about 40,000 people, I guess, over last year. And over two years ago ù what is that 170,000 people almost -- more than two years ago? So, that's just the average month. Remember if we looked at the unduplicated count that means the number of different people served in the course of the year. This number in 2010 was 820,000 different people  in calendar year 2010 received these benefits. 

So we're probably looking at 850,000 or so different people in round numbers what we can say about this caseload is about half of these people about 300,000 of the 609,000 people - if you look at the National data about half of these persons were on SNAP all year long.

The other half, the people were on and off and on and off with another couple hundred thousand people, so there's quite a bit of activity for our workers to do each month in terms of re-determining eligibility or removing eligibility for people who find employment.

Mark Beutler: In addition to the record setting numbers in SNAP cases, child support collections are way up as well.

Dir. Hendrick: This is the highest Child Support collection we've ever had, $317,993,000. This is up about 6.2% over last year and these numbers may change a little bit at the end of the day but these are our initial findings.

We had 1,141 children who had a finalized adoption here in 2011. It might look like a drop and it is an absolute drop but if you look the number of different children that were in care at the beginning of the year, it might give you a little bit of appreciation for, really, the good work that is done to get that level of adoptions, if you go back to 2007 when we had 1,152, we started that year with 11,941 children in care on the first day of 2007.

We started 2011 with 4,000 less children in care and still received almost the same number of finalized adoptions in 2011. So staff have done a really good job of getting kids to permanency and continue to have one - if you go back and look at the last - I think it's three or maybe it's five Federal fiscal years, add up all the adoptions for the last five Federal fiscal years, divided by the number of kids in the state, we would have the number one adoption rate  of any state in the Nation per capita.

Our folks have done a really good job of getting kids to permanency here.

Mark Beutler: Hendrick’s presentation also covered the initial findings of the Build Strong Families studies, some key state-level retirement announcements, major issues ahead for the agency and some other topics as well.  You can watch his comments in their entirety with minimal editing by clicking the Commission Report button on this page.

He makes these presentations each month and we’re able to bring them to you thanks to our video crew in the OKDHS Design Services Department. We'll be back next month so please make it a point to join us. It's our goal to bring you current information about our agency right from the comfort of your own desk or mobile device. 

Keep in mind many schools have opened now and many will be opening soon so watch out for children when you’re driving.  Thanks for being with us. We'll see you next time.