PRACTICE AND POLICY LECTURE SERIES, FEBRUARY 2013 - NEW BEGINNINGS: THE FUTURE OF OKDHS

Sandra Harrison: Our Director has come to us from Tennessee. He started out as front line worker, back doing child welfare in Tennessee and served there for many years. He worked every kind of job almost that you can imagine in Tennessee Department of Human Services until he retired as a Deputy Commissioner there at DHS. 

I'm sure all of you have read that we did two nationwide searches for a director and we are very excited to come up with a director that not only has proven leadership but knows a lot about human service delivery. In fact, he is our first director that weÆve ever had in Oklahoma Department of Human Services that has a Master's in social work, so...

(applause)

Sandra Harrison (continues): Yeah! Feel like that gives him a unique perspective in order to be able to lead the agency and to be able to work with the kind of clients and partners that we have. I know some of you are DHS employees, but a number of you I see out there are different partners and such and so we feel like we are very well positioned going into this year and many years to come with a director with such great knowledge and experience and we are just grateful to have him here in Oklahoma. 

So with that if you would like to read his full biography it is available on the website under the practice and policy lecture series but without any further ado let us welcome Director Lake.

(applause)

Director Ed Lake: Thank you. I'm going to attempt to move around through here. Less space than I thought. I was warned that they had roasted vegetables today. Is that right? So if you didn't get a toothpick you might want to look at your neighbor and smile real quickly... 

(laughter)

Dir. Lake (continues): I see a lot of familiar faces from either the listening tour or for the department. Either I'm just completely fascinating or you're going to try to see if IÆll say the same thing twice. We will see how this goes.
 
I would start out by making this observation as a newcomer to Oklahoma and to the Oklahoma Department of Human Services: 2012 for this department was an incredible year of transformation. In fact you might entitle that a year of torment instead of transformation. Let me just run down some of the things that have happened to this department and put it in context. I'm not aware of an organization this large that really has gone through so many different changes in the course of 12 months. 

The long-standing director retired. Two of the chief officers of the department retired. The department had two interim directors during that period of time. They settled the children's rights lawsuit, developed the Pinnacle Plan and began implementation of it. What they termed "vertical reorganization" was done with three divisions. That's basically eliminating one division of the department that kind of spanned across the other two divisions to provide management support and changed it so that the program divisions were more vertically aligned. So in essence people doing the same work are reporting to people doing the same work. 

The long, long time leader of the developmental disabilities section retired. The commission that previously governed the department made the decision and sculpted a plan to close the NORCE and SORC centers - that process is under way. Hired a new director after a lengthy hiring process.

(laughter)

Dir. Lake (continues): And then on top of that went ahead and the citizens of the state changed the governance of the department that had been in existence since its existence, I think in the late 1930's. So I think you can see that is quite a bit of change for one organization to weather. And I have said before it is a credit to the managers and employees of the department that it was still standing when I got here in December. 

No Audio: New Beginnings. Reorganization gives us the opportunity to remake ourselves û not the time to ôsettle in.ö ItÆs the time to accelerate change! Listening sessions held in Jan. 2013 to hear from employees and key stakeholders: Lawton, Enid, Oklahoma City (2), Broken Arrow, McAlester

With these changes though, becomes opportunities for a new beginning. It gives us an opportunity in DHS to remake ourselves. You don't get these kinds of opportunities many times in government and this is our time. So, I would say, and I have had people say to me, "We are really glad that you're here." So many people said that, that I had to say after a while that, "Well you are really glad anybody is here. 

(laughter) 

Dir. Lake (continues): It is not Ed Lake." But I think that the message was now we can kind of settle down and get things back together and move forward. Well I would challenge all of us in DHS that this isn't the time to settle in. It is the time to accelerate the changes that are underway. 

In order to find out as much as I could about Oklahoma and DHS, decided that one of the quickest ways I could think of to do that would be to be embarking on listening tours across the state. So in January that's what we did. 

We went to... really held six different ones in five different locations. We had an extra one in Oklahoma city for our centrally-located employees at the end of the time. What we did was have a session in the morning with our stakeholders and then in the afternoon two sessions; one with front line employees and one with our management teams. Here are some of the results that we found from the sessions. One being I drank a lot of water. 

(laughter)

Dir. Lake (continues): Now I'm not pretending that everything that we heard from stakeholders and employees is absolutely represents feelings of large numbers of people all across the state. It depended on who came and what the issues were that came up. 

But we tried to distill all the information that we got; all of the suggestions, all of the concerns, all of the problems that were raised, and sort of summarized the ones that we heard almost every place that we visited. 

The first one, something that I heard certainly before I even came to Oklahoma was that DHS needs to improve its communication with providers and other partners and also between our own divisions in order to better serve our clients. That kind of segues into the second thing - that we need better collaboration with outside partners who serve the same clientele. 

Over and over again that has been brought to my attention that we should involve our stakeholders in our planning and our policy development and our decision-making in ways that heretofore maybe we didn't truly do or do all the time. 

On the upside, very positive atmosphere here in Oklahoma. Where we, as I've described it, we have sort of moved beyond the slings and arrows period of pounding on the department for its problems and failures and there's a spirit now that I feel from all different venues with people wanting to get behind the department to help us fulfill our mission, to help us succeed. And I think this is again the time that we want to seize upon that energy to help us. 

Then we got into some very practical things in the same way, and IÆll talk about this in a minute, that state employees have gone a long time without pay increases, providers have soldiered on for quite a long period of time without rate increases. And that was a universal concern. 

Also universal was, both from our employees and from the stakeholders, was the need for us to provide more customer service training to our employees. And of course the message behind that is to help make the department truly be a caring organization. A place where people are helped, where we perform at a high level and we express our caring. 

Specific recommendation also was that we look at the way we communicate with clients so that we are speaking to our clientele in a voice that can be understood whether itÆs written or oral or whatever. That too many of our forms and instructions are either written at too high of a level or they're too confusing, so on and so on and so on. And then we have a lot of specific program recommendations that were made as well. 

Employees, as we introduced each listening session Sheree Powell would introduce me and go through a routine with the employees to help them understand that there are things the director can't do anything about. That pay raises are one of those things that you have to do across all of state government. So those were sort of areas that, you know, I guess the implication was don't ask him about pay raises and of course the very first question and concern...

(laughter)

Dir. Lake (continues):  ...was pay raises! Again when many, many employees have not had raises for six or seven years straight, I can understand why that becomes a critical issue. Also coupled with that, which makes the pay issue feel worse, is that with the recession and budget cuts and staffing cuts, we really are having to make due with fewer employees in many areas. So that there was a universal feeling across most of our major program areas that workloads were beginning to become untenable. And of course that is true. 

I will give you an example in three major areas. The most obvious one would be in the Child Welfare Division where we are in the process of implementing the Pinnacle Plan and trying to hire additional positions. Other areas are in our Adult and Family Services area where we're doing family support, with trying to make due with fewer people, even after recession-level increases in caseloads have remained at recession levels. 

Another area is the Child Support Division, where there's a return on investment in that division if only... Very high volume of work in that division, and that cuts across most of the rest of what we do here.

The other issue around that were career paths. Many... certainly was true in my experience in Tennessee and its true here to a degree. That youÆre a college educated person let's say, or you are even a clerical or administrative level person, you come into a position and that's pretty much it until, or unless, you are able to be promoted into supervision or management. So there's really not a career path as such for you to be able to follow. 

The last thing was improving the hiring processes. I think we already have been working on that to a good degree. It takes so long by the time you get the word that you can hire a position to get people in, and interview them, and recommended and placed. Programs are very complex, the training and the learning curve are extensive, and hiring a person today doesn't make them fully capable of assuming caseloads until many months down the road. 

So the turnover we have creates this sort of cycle of getting further behind and having high workloads with the experienced staff who are still there that have to assume, on and on and on it goes. 

Employees also asked for more customer service training, which I see as a very positive thing. That we have recognized that we need to do more, we need to think about how we respond as a caring organization. And I said the first day I was appointed that the broadest of the goals I could think of was for us to move where we were recognized as a caring organization. And I challenge our employees to start where they sit, that we're not going to be seen as a caring organization until we treat each other well, care for each other and also show in our everyday interactions with our clients that we care. 

Many other issues that you see in large organizations, front line employees wanting their managers and supervisors to have more training. That's around the support, when you're in an organization, when you're in a field where youÆre under pressure all the time, then it's very important that your management be seen as responsive, as people you can go to, as people that will listen to your concerns. 

We can't change everything to make it all better. There's no silver bullet. But a management team that supports employees, that involves employees, listens to employees, tries to make the changes to better support employees, will do wonders for the morale and performance of employees. 

Other issues we have that are certainly no surprise: computer equipment itself is failing. Our IT infrastructure is aging. Some of the systems don't work together. Think we are getting pretty close to crisis points on some of these things. We, some of our programs we are definitely beholden to our systems to support the work that we do. We couldn't anymore go back to a manual processes than if we were going back to covered wagons to get around town in. 

Some employees brought up that some of our offices were not in good repair and also that there are security issues in some of our offices where additional people have been packed into available space, if something were to happen, there is not a way for employees to protect themselves and so on. And those are all things that weÆre going to be looking at. 

IÆve said this ad nauseum, I think for those who have been at the listening tours but we can't PR ourselves to a better image. We have to perform ourselves there, and that is a process that isnÆt going to happen in six or seven months, by any stretch of the imagination. When we're trying to re-invent ourselves and sort of remake who we are and how we're seen, the only way to do that is to perform differently and to perform better. So that we will rebuild the credibility, trust and respect of ourselves and of the community at large. 

So how are we going to get there? There's nothing magical about this list. This is pretty standard stuff. Especially for someone coming in new to the agency and some of these things are regular features of the work at DHS now.  I'm not coming in pretending that everybody or saying that everybody in the department is doing things poorly or that they don't know how to do things. ThatÆs just not so. 

But what I would like to do, because I'm new, it's a great opportunity as I said not to settle but to continue to push for us to change. And the first thing that you have to do towards that end is to systematically, piece-by-piece review our operations, our finances, our personnel system and our methods. We have to turn over all the rocks that haven't been turned over in a while and see what we find. 

I assure you that, and I assure our employees that there are better ways of doing what we're doing now. ThereÆs no perfect processes and itÆs not to say what weÆre doing in the past was bad or poor, it is just that time goes on and there are new ways and better ways of doing things if we examine them coldly and in detail. 

I want to improve employee working conditions, and by that I mean a gamut of things. The Environmental - their office space, security issues that I mentioned. Compensation which I certainly can't do all by myself but can advocate for and do what we can to improve that picture. And then also to work on the management support involvement and communication with employees. 

Really hard to do in an organization with 7,300 people but that's the primary management responsibility. It is up to me and our senior leadership to be sure that all of our managers are working towards those ends. That it's about listening to employees, getting their feedback, changing what we can change and then giving more feedback about those changes. It's not sexy but it is the way you do it. 

Based on the feedback that I've already talked about, we want to find ways to better involve our partners in policy and program development planning and decision-making. And that means in a meaningful way, I heard too many times that it seems like the department would listen but then would make a decision or launch a new service or program but not really get feedback and input ahead of time. It's more like, "Well, here is our new program. So go do it." 

Want to expand the implementation of evidence-based practices and all program areas to improve client outcomes. Now in the Pinnacle Plan that's basically what you see. There are other examples in the child support program I mentioned before it gets recognized nationally, our child care program is recognized nationally, thatÆs because itÆs based on practices that research has been found to work and to work over time and that is what we should be doing to enhance our performance. Let's find things that work that have research behind them and let's go down that path long enough to see if it works for Oklahoma. 

I mentioned the IT systems, we have so much to do there. It appears that the state, the state government, the information technology system... I mean, structure in the state is also going to help us in this regard. It's important that we do things as a part of state government, not all to ourselves. It ends up being way more expensive that way and if we're thinking globally and thinking across state government, we can come up with solutions that not only work better for us but work better for another agency perhaps and also for mutual clients. 

It's always the criticism of state governments that you go here and you give this information and you go over here and you got to give this information all over again and you go over here and itÆs the third time you are doing it. In the meanwhile, our employees are doing the same thing: they enter it this time and they have to enter it over here and over here within our own agency. That's not the best way to do business. 

The breakthroughs in information technology will become when we are able to treat our citizens as clients of all of our services. So that they and we will be inputting information that we need once, not 20 times. 

Last but not least in this area, is to improve transparency of an accountability for the department's actions. That certainly was the drum beat before I arrived, and continues to be - that people want their government to be open. They want to know what's going on and why. 

And in our particular area, where we're working in some of our divisions where the questions are matters of life and death sometimes, people want to understand what our decision making is like and whether we're succeeding or not in our mission. 

Towards that end there is some specific things that are going on. We're going to have four Citizens' Advisory Panels that were established when the state question was passed. One for our administrative area, administrative issues, one in our child and family services areas, one for aging issues and one for disability issues. 

Also will be a Blue Ribbon Panel appointed by the Governor specifically for improving services to the developmentally disabled. And then a report that's soon to be published, I believe, is the DHS Commission's special review of child deaths - a very detailed analysis of child deaths over time with recommendations. 

No Audio: Current Budget Priority Needs: Pinnacle Plan resources, Developmental Disabilities Services provider rates, Aging Services provider rates, Child Care provider rates, Employee compensation, IT infrastructure and equipment.

Now, it's hard to bite off all of that at one time especially when it gets down to budget time. When if you add up everything we thought we needed in the department and it's $175 million, it's pretty obvious that isn't going to happen. So we tried to work towards something that expressed our priorities in the short term, and reflected the highest needs of the department. 

So we have Pinnacle Plan is one of those high needs, and what we've asked for this year in our budget was sufficient funds to pull some of the services and some of the responses that we're making to fulfill the targets in the plan, forward into this next fiscal year. We need to jumpstart some of the things we are doing in order to be successful down the road. 

A lot of it's not the only answer but a lot of what weÆre doing depends on having sufficient number of child welfare staff to do the job at hand. And that's one of the important things we would like to pull forward, is some additional hiring early on so that we can get some of these workloads pared down. So that people can do what they're supposed to do to a high level of quality. 

Also going along with it, would be pulling forward some funds for additional contract services, to support goals of permanency to provide greater and better resources for children who are in our care. 

In the developmental disabilities area, provider rates is a major issue for us, as well as that kind of bleeds over into the request list or waiting list that we have that's so large. That's definitely a priority. The aging services and child care provider rates, same sort of issues: long time without rate adjustments. 

You can't expect providers after some period of time to continue to absorb the work and the cost and provide a high level of quality that we expect and want for our clients without having rates moving somewhat in line with our expectations for quality. Employee compensation I have talked about already and IT infrastructure and equipment. 

Now of course we didn't and probably won't get all of that funding. That is the way it works. WeÆre pretty happy that in the Governor's budget that we have been included for around $50 million to hit several of these areas so that in the DDSD... the disability determination area, the Pinnacle Plan and some aging provider issues that we will be able to work towards those priority funding needs in a meaningful way. 

Now that's sort of where the department is right now. I would like to take questions from the audience. And do we have a microphone? It's much easier for me to answer questions. 

Connie Schlittler: Raise your hand and wait for the microphone. Oh yes, please introduce yourself as well.

Barbara Perkins: I'm Barbara Perkins from Child Support Services. When do you anticipate that the four advisory panels will begin?

Dir. Lake: ThatÆs a good question. I'm not sure. That process is still underway. And, you know, to this point I think there has only been one official appointment. Didn't give you long enough to nap did I?

(laughter) 

Dir. Lake: Oh, no, Connie!

Connie Schlittler: I'm Connie Schlittler.  What will your first thing that you do, in terms of, do you have a sense of what the most important thing is right now?

Dir. Lake: Well in coming here clearly the... helping to ensure we fully implement and timely implement the Pinnacle Plan is A#1, but also when I arrived we had the issue of the two resource centers closing. So that's a priority. 

It's funny when you get... when I looked at this I thought, "Well, there's a big bonfire over here in this area but things are not on fire in other parts of the department." Well of course then you get here and find out "uh-oh."

(laughter)

Dir. Lake (continues): Well that wasn't the way it was. (laughs) I think it's going to be up to me, and I've said this before to folks, that not to forget that we have other important things going on in this department and that the trick is spreading myself appropriately and well across those other areas. We'll see how that goes as we go. 

But fortunately, there are some really good people in the department that know what they're doing and will do the right thing as we go forward. It's my job to inspire, to lead and to ensure that we are working on these things that I've sketched out today. 

No Audio: The young woman holding the microphone is forced to walk across a large auditorium in order to get to the people with raised hands.

At our listening tour, Sheree Powell did this job here and lost seven pounds. 

(laughter)

Linda Monroe: Hi, I'm Linda Monroe from Child Support and I'm not going to dog you with child support stuff today like I did at the listening sessions. (laughs) There are, as I understand, there is more than one bill or at least one to break up DHS into separate parts and I guess I'm wondering how you feel about that and what do you think the likelihood of that happening?

Dir. Lake: Oh, I'm already out of touch. I'm not aware of that bill. 

Linda Monroe: Well maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's just the rumor mill.

Dir. Lake: Well I think... you know, let's face it, itÆs a very large department and when you look at Oklahoma and Oklahoma state government itÆs an extremely large department within that context. But I think that's one of those things where, breaking things up and changing the structure without a plan or a reason maybe doesn't make as much sense. 

I have seen that in other states, for example, when things go wrong in child welfare... I'll use that example, and you don't have distinct children's services department or child welfare department that there's sometimes a rush to, "Well our answer is let's create a separate department and that will make it all better." 

Well, it doesn't make it better if that's not managed well, if it's resourced well and if that is not implemented well. And I have seen that go awry in my own previous home state. so I would say to that there are many things weÆre working on in DHS right now that can be fixed, that will succeed, and then we'll see where we are, is the way that I would look at that. 

What does it look like when we've completed implementing these important goals and objectives? And then somebody can decide whether it ought to be broken up or not. Well, wait a minute.  Let me get back here, it's closer for her to walk.  

Kay Sears: I'm Kay Sears from University of Central Oklahoma and I just want to know what the Pinnacle Plan is? So can I find out about that? I have not been to any listening sessions. 

Dir. Lake: The Pinnacle Plan is the comprehensive plan developed by the state, not just by the department, by many players in the child welfare field to address the problems that the department was having and that were brought to bear by the children's rights organization that sued the state. 

Part of the settlement included the development and beginning of the implementation of that plan. That plan attacks issues in the child welfare system from start to finish, from intake, to permanency and adoption and attempts to put into practice best practices from current thinking in Oklahoma, to better the child welfare system. In a nutshell that's what it is. 

We have that online for you if you want to read through it. It is quite a comprehensive plan and we're looking forward to fully implementing it.
 
John Turneys: I'm John Turneys. I've been a senior advocate for over 20 years. I was very happy to hear you say that you would like to avoid spending case workers' time entering the same data 20 times. Seniors have been asking for this all this time and finally it looks like we're going to have a IT unification, which we appreciate. 

Especially since we now find a lot of grandparents having to take care of grandchildren. And getting those systems to work together would save a lot of time and enable us to do a lot more. 

Dir. Lake: The state's information technology section is very interested in this and again I guess the term these days is an "enterprise system" - that something that cuts across a variety of organizations. Usually you start with organizations doing like things, similar things because you get more bang for the buck. The developmental process can take two or three years, it won't happen tomorrow. 

But again the benefit is the agencies have some things that are unique to them that come from the enterprise system but then they share those things that are not unique which might be demographic information, you know, everything from address, to like case numbers and so forth. So that again the agencies donÆt have to do it and certainly our client population doesnÆt have to do that.

Kelley Duplee: Hi, I'm Kelley Duplee with Sunbeam Family Services and we are a proud DHS partner and we have a long history at Sunbeam of having effective public/private partnerships like many people in this room who are also partners with DHS. 

So I was very excited to see how it is one of your key points to further engage providers and other community partners. So I just wanted to kind of get your thoughts on how do you see that happening, really nurturing those partnerships?

Dir. Lake: I think thatÆs something that I hold myself responsible for to start with. That the only way to do that is who are our providers? How do we meet and engage our providers in a meaningful way over and over? So it can't be "Well, let's meet this year and then we will not see you till next year." It has to be some sort of regular process that we engage in. 

Now we have a lot of providers, so the challenge for me is, how do I sort of... how can I clump some of these things? How can we keep up a pace where providers who want a stake in what we do are able to come to the table and express their needs and concerns? So initially that's what I'm going to be working on. 

And after that, of course, you're really involving your senior leadership in the department to help you with the nuts and bolts of that. That is fine for me to say, "Yeah well let's meet and talk about your needs and our needs and your concerns and our concerns." It's another thing to operationalize those things. 

There's one thing I have learned in government, it's that we donÆt lack for great ideas in government. What we sometimes donÆt do very well at all is implement them. And when you get right down to it, isn't that the most important thing? WeÆre going to have the ideas itÆs putting them into practice at the level you envisioned that counts.
 
Donna Gregory: Hi, my name is Donna Gregory and I'm with OU Center for Public Management but I am permanently assigned to Oklahoma Child Support Services. I'm their grants person. And I have a follow-up question with what my good friend Kelley from Sunbeam has asked. 

One of the challenges that we're having as we are going out to develop external partnerships and weÆre bringing them in as we're developing new programs, is the contracting issue, "the tainting the well." So if we bring in our subject matter expert, external partners in to help us develop something then once we get it developed and we are ready to implement it, then there is the question of transparency and conflict in the bidding process, so do you have any strategies to help us with that? 

Dir. Lake: What a great point and question that is. Because if I looked at some of our early contracting and thought about, "Well how do we involve them?" And then I've had a few meetings with our purchasing people and they said, "Well you can't do that." Well, (laughs) I have had some early discussions with Preston Doerflinger who heads the Office of Management Enterprise Services about this issue, and I sort of see how Oklahoma has gotten to this place. 

You have abuses in the contracting system, you have too many sole-source or inappropriate contracting relationships arise and so what do we do? We run over here and we make it about as restrictive as we possibly can make it because weÆve screwed this up before and now you can't involve vendors unless they donÆt want to bid on the services that theyÆre giving you input on. So, I don't have an answer yet for that. 

But I think thatÆs something... itÆs beyond our department, that we should be looking at. Because we're not going to get the services we want, we're not going to develop these relationships that we want, and we're not going to develop the sense of "Hey weÆre all in this together" if we're back to "Well we'll just going to have to develop this contract and tell you what it looks like and then you can bid on it." That is kind of where we are... 

Any roasted vegetables left? 

(laughter)

Jenny Kearn: My name is Jenny Kearn, and I'm with an agency, North Care here in Oklahoma and we also, like Sunbeam, have unique partnerships with the department. And IÆm also a graduate student at the University of Central Oklahoma and since IÆm fairly new to the state as well, I just had a question in terms of are there any plans, or could there be consideration of plans, for the department kind of pairing up with and creating a relationship with Oklahoma university students, so that those students who are studying social work or organizational leadership or anything related to what our mission is as a community, so that the young leadership within the state can kind of all be on board and plant new seeds?

Dir. Lake: Good question. I know - I'm not familiar with all the details - I know we are doing some things with the universities and students but I would really like to see that expanded. It keeps you fresh. It's a source of cheap labor... 

(laughter)

Dir. Lake (continues): ...and I like to have the relationships with the universities cause I think that also helps not insulate us and also is a good pipeline for understanding what best practices are from the academic world. Thank you.

Ashley Allen: My name is Ashley Allen and I'm from Public Strategies. And I was curious what the partnership might look like with DHS and data sharing and this information with the Department of Public Education and if you have any plans to kind of collaborate in terms of education partnerships and information sharing? 

Dir. Lake: I think one thing having to do with... that butts up against issues of transparency and accountability and the most glaring issues there are on the child welfare side where there are state and federal requirements for confidentiality. But that line is not altogether clear, as I have found out. 

So I think what we would like to do is continue to push up against those boundaries so that we can share the information that we have for the purposes either of helping the public understand what we do and why and hopefully how weÆre succeeding, cause I think we succeed far more than we fail with our clients. 

But also in a way that helps us serve mutual clients better. How do we talk to each other? How do we share information that we each have so that you can provide better services and we can provide better services to our clients? I think that is an ongoing discussion. 

Bob Davis: I'm Bob Davis, with Rose State College and Power Program - it's a training project for TANF. And my question involves the new legislation that was passed concerning TANF clients and the drug testing. 

My question being, is there a process for evaluating and reviewing the impact of that bill as we go forward on children that are unfortunately the innocent victims of parents who may be a little less straight-laced then our legislature would like to think they are or... 

So the question being, the safety net now may resemble more of a trampoline, trying to get on a trampoline than into a safety net, so the old process seemed to work pretty well in evaluating those needs for drug treatment. Is there any process in reviewing that to see the efficacy in that legislation?

Dir. Lake: I'm going to look at Jim, help me on this one Jim. 

Jim Struby: (inaudible)

Dir. Lake: Jim, hold it a second. Jim Struby is head of our Adult and Family Services Division. 

Jim Struby: What I was saying, for the sake of the microphone, is if you saw in the Daily Oklahoman - I think it was Saturday - there was an article where we talked about some of the statistics that we're already collecting on this. 

So itÆs normal operating procedure for us to do that with any laws that are put in place that could affect our clients or is to track that and we are going to continue to do that. So I hope over time we will definitely have enough statistics to see what affect it has. At this point in time, it's a very small number of clients affected by it all.

Dir. Lake: I'm almost out of water... So.

(laughter)

Lynn Beam: I'm a Sooner fan; I'm Lynn Beam. I work with Aging Services Division. Do they have plans when they're closing NORCE and SORC to... Where are those people going? Are they getting more group homes? WhatÆs the plan for that? 

Dir. Lake: Yes, the plan is for every resident to be placed in a community-based home and, hopefully, of their and their families choosing. And a tremendous amount of effort is going to go into that work. Several different divisions with checks and balances to ensure that we do the right thing for the residents. That they receive the services that they need to thrive in a community-based setting. WeÆre going to do it right.
 
Linda: Hi, my name is Linda and I work at reception. And I was wanting to find out, do you have plans in place to maybe change up the documents, the forms that the clients have to fill out? I noticed you put on there for the forms and correspondence to be more user-friendly. Cause there is a lot of confusion in the wording on the request for benefits and different things like that. And I just wanted to know if you had anything in plan for that? 

Dir. Lake:  That's one of those things that we do when we talk about going through all of our processes and methods and materials and looking at them. It's...  you can get trapped just attacking forms. I think what we want to do is, let's examine what weÆve got out there in terms of forms and documents. 

We were talking the other day in the office about my experience with that earlier in my career is we went out to a major urban office that was buried in paperwork and they were complaining. And we said, "Okay, okay, okay. You get together a group and look at the paperwork that is odious and we'll take a look at it." 

Well it turns out that a majority of the paperwork they were talking about was self-inflicted. They were locally developed forms not from the central office. So we do some things to ourselves. But yes, we need to look at all of our messaging to our client population in particular and also to our employees. 

But we want it written at a grade level that most people can understand and it be as clear as it possibly can be. It will save us time in the long run, if people understand what we wanted we won't have to explain it or we won't have to correct the mistakes that are caused because people couldnÆt understand it. 

Brandon Claves: Director, my name is Brandon Claves and I'm a Police Chief in Midwest City and also a former commissioner. I see my friend Brad Yarborough here, too. We never got a chance to say thank you to the men and women who dedicate their lives on a daily basis to DHS, so I want to personally say thank you for that. 

And I also want to thank Brad for his work on the Pinnacle Plan and especially thank you, Director, for what I have seen today, it sounds like youÆre on the right track and doing the right things and we wish you the best of success and as a private citizen we dedicate ourselves to help you become successful, so if we can ever help you please let us know and thank you.

(applause)

Dir. Lake: Well, let me give you my new Oklahoma tag number, so when I blow through Midwest City...

(laughter)

Connie Schlittler: Okay, I think we have time for one more question or comment, that was an excellent comment. Where is that last question? I can call names... 

(laughter)

Connie Schlittler (continues): I'm so glad you guys came out today. Please join me in thanking our Director. 

Dir. Lake: Thank You.

(applause)

No Audio: To view the full ôDirectorÆs Listening Session Topicsö, go to the OKDHS website at www.okdhs.org. To contact OKDHS Director Ed Lake - OKDHS website: ôAsk Edö Icon. Email: DHS.Ask.Ed@okdhs.org. Call the DirectorÆs Helpline: 1-877-751-2972