C&Y - Senate & Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative & Military Affairs- House
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So I'm going to call this meeting to order, and we're going to start with comments from Representative Fite. Oh, here we go. Representative Fite, you're recognized. Thank you.
Representative Lanny Fite
Unverified
0:15
I think it's very appropriate that this committee pause for a moment and remember what day this is and how 18 years ago today our nation was attacked by an evil enemy and the lives lost and how all of our lives have changed.
So let's just pause for a moment. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Fyde. We're going to move on. Do I have a motion for consideration to approve the minutes from the July 9, 2019 meeting? Got a motion and a second. All those in
favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, a no motion carries. Moving on to item D, the consideration to adopt an interim study proposal.
Representative Lanny Fite
Unverified
1:05
Representative Fite, you are recognized. Thank you. Representative Kelly could not be here today. He is at a conference out of state. And so he asked me to present this, and I'm not going to go into it at this time. I'm just going to ask that we adopt it for study. It's an act to amend the law concerning adoptions and for other purposes. Are there
any questions on this ISP? Seeing none, I have a motion to adopt. I have a motion and a second.
Speaker 18
1:36
All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say no.
Representative Lanny Fite
Unverified
1:42
Motion has been adopted. And I believe that Representative Kelly and Representative Penzo will be asking to present this in detail to us
at a later time. Sounds good. Moving on to item E, Department of Human Service, Division of Children and Family
Services. Director Martin. You are recognized with E1.
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
2:16
will be presenting the annual report card. And the annual report card covers the fourth quarter. So to try and be efficient, I figured I would, it came just about the time that the agenda got made, and so I asked to be able to present the annual report card, and then I'll go over it, not necessarily the fourth quarter, unless there's specific questions, because as you'll see, throughout the annual report card, it reflects what happened in the
fourth quarter. Members, that is item E1 in your handouts, E1. Go ahead,
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
2:46
Director Martin. Thank you, Senator Hester. Again, my name is Misha Martin. I'm the Director of Children and Family Services. And I'll begin on page one. You can see on page one reflects the total of calls to the child abuse hotline, which was 34,226. 28,000 of those were assigned to Division of Children and Family Services. And as you can also see, once those calls are accepted, they either go to a traditional investigation route or to what we call differential response,
which is explained further in the ribbon on the right side of the page where you can see differential response on the right bottom and the types of allegations that go to differential response. And so of the total amount, we had 6,000 go to differential response. Moving on to page two, you'll see our findings of child maltreatment investigations on the top. As you remember, Annie saw on the first page, some go to DCFS, some go to Crimes Against Children Division at State Police,
And then we also break out on that top chart what the true findings for DCFS and true findings for CACD and for a combined overall rating of 24% of our investigations were found true. Looking at the bottom of page two, the percentage of children in true allegations of maltreatment, you'll see again that the bulk of our true findings are related to allegations of neglect. And that total is 5,631.
Then on the top of page three, this is where we report our fatalities and near fatalities. You'll also see on the ribbon on the right that there is an appendix in the back that better goes through each individual case, shows the area and the fatality. We had 33 true findings and one near child fatality true findings. Now, of those child fatalities, those could be with a history, without a history, but those are where we had a child fatality, like where there was a child fatality in the state
and an investigation of a child maltreatment investigation that went with that. If you look on towards the bottom of page three, that's where we go over our statistics related to differential response. We had a total again of 6,005 in differential response cases and then broken out on the bottom of page three are the types. As continues with the trend, the leading is educational neglect followed by environmental neglect. Moving on to page four we look at
timeliness of initiation. So some of our investigations have to be initiated in 24 hours others are categorized as priority two and have to be initiated in 72 hours. You can see prior years we continue to stay on trend with last year but we have increased over previous years somewhat to a total of 84 percent. So again you can see in red priority one and blue priority two which are the 72 hours and then the combined total of 84 percent. On the bottom of page four you'll see
timely completion of child maltreatment assessments. You can see that we've increased since 2016 and 2017 because we have made that a priority to ensure that we are completing investigations timely. We do a monthly chart of what we call overdue investigations, and except for our spike around Christmas, we have maintained under 150 overdues. At one point in, I believe, 2017, we had over 1,000 overdues. So it's a real achievement of the division to keep those
underdues under 150. Sometimes we go for spans under 100, but on average below 150 except for Christmas. Page 5, back to differential response, you can see timeliness of initiations. Differential response and initiations continues to be a struggle for us, but we are at 70% for the year. And then timely closure of differential response up from previous years of 2016-2017, but a slight decrease from last year. And Senator Feight, do you want me to wait and take questions at the end
or throughout. I just wanted to make sure that I knew
Speaker 33
7:01
what the plan was. I don't have any current questions for
Speaker 34
7:06
members right now. Okay. Moving on to page six, you can see on the top
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
7:11
preventing the reoccurrence of maltreatment. So that really is important for us to watch and it's one of the gauges and data points that we look at to see is are we keeping children safely and closing cases at an appropriate time because if we're not appropriately engaging with families and closing cases at the right time, we would see a higher level of reoccurrence of maltreatment.
So that's a data point that we track. You can see that over prior years, we've stayed about steady of reoccurrence within 12 months at 7% and reoccurrence within six months at 4%. And that's for cases. And then the below chart is related specifically to differential response. Moving on to page seven, this is where we start talking about our in-home cases. that is where we have a true finding on an investigation we do not remove the child the child remains in the home and as you'll see as we get into foster care we serve many more children
and in-home cases than we do in foster care cases on any given day so you can see how many at the end of 2019 we served which was on the point in time 2323 I'm sorry we had 203 2323 that's a lot of twos and threes, amount of cases, but those cases involved 5,396 children. On the bottom of page seven, you can see the average number of days that an in-home case is open. On the top of page
eight, you can see the age in which the kids that we're serving in-home are in that wheel chart. And then you can see on the bottom of page eight are the percentage of cases in which we see children monthly. As you can tell by looking at prior years, we have made it a priority to make sure that we are seeing children in our in-home cases. And while I am proud that that number is now increased from the prior three years, I still believe that we have a lot of work to do because that's one of the most important things that we can do is see our kids that are in-home because
there was some abuse or neglect that opened that in-home case. So it really is a priority to not just see that family but continue to offer services and assess safety you can say you can see victimization rate among children who received protective and supportive services on page nine continued by rate of entry into foster care among children who received protective and supportive services so the bottom chart is if you have an open case and then you end up in foster care what
is the percentage of children when that happened. And do you want
me to stop? We do have a few questions. Would you like me to stop? Yeah, let's stop. So I'm
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
9:59
going to start with Representative Mayberry. Do you have a question? Thank you. Going back a little bit to the child fatality, and maybe I'm just lost in all the charts, but it shows, let's see, page three, the true investigation is 33.
I don't see where that compares. Is that a normal basic
Speaker 42
10:17
number year to year? I'm missing that, like 2017, 2016. And I apologize, but we'll
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
10:22
have to get that to you because, I mean, it is in our other annual report so we can get that information to you. I will say that in the last few months of the fiscal year, we had a high rate of child deaths in the state. And so I do know that in May and June, we at the division tracked that, oh, we've had a significant increase. But I can get you the prior years so that you can see a comparison as to whether that's normal or not.
And, again, that is any child in the state who dies, and then there is a true finding for maltreatment related to that death, not necessarily our kids in foster care or necessarily kids on our in-home cases.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
11:09
cause yeah i mean more detailed than that to know what what is the
Speaker 47
11:14
cause of that yes so looking at i believe that is on the appendix chart appendix g as what the true finding was for but i'm misspeaking let me see here yes it is so
So allegations, if you look on page 35, page 35 has allegations or preliminary cause of death. So that's that middle column.
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
11:35
Now, normally, I can't say 100%, but whatever the allegation is called in, that's subsequently what it's trued for. There might be a case where an added allegation, but we could get that information to you. And then we would know more facts than just the two-word explanation, but that does give you some type of understanding of what was called into the hotline,
whether it was physical abuse, inadequate supervision. You can see failure to protect. So that is there, but we have more information about each of these deaths. We look at these deaths. Not only do we look at these deaths, but we really take a close look at deaths where the child was either in foster care or had some prior history with DHS in the last two years. Okay. Okay. Thank you for explaining that in a little
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
12:23
bit more detail. It just seemed like a high number.
I was curious. Yeah. Representative Richardson, you're recognized?
Representative Jay Richardson
Unverified
12:31
Thank you, sir. I get two questions, actually, going back to the one you just described. Is there an opportunity to get the cause of death in a little more detail? Because when I read inadequate supervision, I mean, that can mean a plethora of different things.
Speaker 34
12:46
So to you as a legislator, yes, and we do
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
12:50
put our child fatalities online. we do have a website where we post our child fatalities and the information that we're allowed to release by law. If you have a specific case that you're interested in, you as a legislator
can request that and I can provide information, all the detailed
Speaker 34
13:06
information on the case. Thank you. My second question is
Representative Jay Richardson
Unverified
13:09
when we talk about the average number of days the cases are open, I know that there's a downward trend, but is it good or bad? I mean, I don't know. Right. So I think
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
13:19
that that is good. And I'll tell you why I think that's, and I'm talking from a state perspective, right? Every case has, needs an individual assessment to determine what that, what that need is. Right. But we did make an effort over the last really two years to really start saying we need to, like, if we're going to have a case open, you need to be making a monthly visit and you need to be assessing safety and working with the family.
If you just have a case open because you haven't gotten around to close it, then that's not appropriate. So there has been a concerted effort to look at these in-home cases. Are you regularly assessing safety? Are you regularly visiting? Are they just open because you're unsure how to open them? And that has brought our number
Representative Jay Richardson
Unverified
14:03
of days open down. But in comparison, the number itself, the 130 or the 126, in comparison to other states, is that number large? Which, I mean, is that acceptable?
Is it acceptable for something to be open 130
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
14:18
days? So our policy, I don't know the other state question. We can try and look at that. Our policy does support keeping a case open about six months. But, again, it's an individual assessment. I don't want to keep a case open six months if the family really was just needing some help with housing, and we help them get into housing, and they're stable in that housing, and there's no other risk factors with that family. there's no reason to keep that case open. So I don't, we can look at other states and, um, we do
give some guidance around six months, but every case is an individual assessment
Speaker 47
14:50
of what does that family need? And if we don't need to be in your life, we
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
15:00
need to close that case. Thank you. Representative Birch, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I have a couple of questions, but they're all surrounding differential response.
So, um, probably starting on page five. So is DR a, the definition of DR is that policy or is that a
Speaker 47
15:16
statute somewhere? Um, that's policy. The law allows us. In fact,
it's just like a one word. I mean, I'm sorry, one sentence in the law that allows us to create policy to respond differently to, and I'm not quoting it correctly, but basically the law gives us the authority to create policy around differential response. Mr. Chair, would you give me a little
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
15:36
leeway to default? Please, thank you. All right, so with regard to DR and the way it's defined now, and you mentioned that you were, there's a little bit of a struggle responding within the 30 days. We're talking about food, clothing, shelter, some really significant things that go to
DR. First, back up a tiny bit, is it determined whether it goes to DR or elsewhere at the hotline? Is that the person that takes that call, makes that determination? So the hotline sends
Speaker 47
16:02
it, like says it meets the criteria for DR, but then there's a second tier review.
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
16:07
It was at central office to determine whether that was appropriate. I think we did move that out to the field. Yeah, we did to the field person. But I will say that I wanted to correct something. So we have 30 days to work that case.
DR still has the same initiation response time of 72 hours. Like, none of those should be severe maltreatment, so not 24, but they still have the 72-hour response time, initiation, that's the word I should use, initiation time, and then it's a 30 days. Now, you can always ask for an extension to keep the case open if the family needs support, and staff can always ask to change it to an investigation if they get out there and the situation is more
Speaker 47
16:51
serious than what they think that a differential response case can offer.
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
16:57
Final, do you keep stats on that, on when you get out there and you say, oh, my goodness, this is really more significant than change? Are those stats somewhere?
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
17:08
They're not here, but we have, we've pulled those pretty recently of which cases go from DR to investigation. In fact, I think, it wasn't as recent as I'm thinking. I know I pulled it during legislative session when we were looking at educational neglect. We pulled all the educational neglect DRs and all the DRs to see how frequently are we switching them over to investigation.
And I can get that to you. We can do a more recent
Chair
Unverified
17:36
pull and pull it again. Thank you.
Representative Lanny Fite
Unverified
17:39
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Feit, you recognize? Did you get that? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ms. Martin, some of our members are fairly new on this committee, and they may not realize that we have a panel that looks at all of the child deaths in the state. would you explain that
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
17:55
briefly and the difference in that group and the one through Children's Hospital? Yes, ma'am. So, I'll start with Children's Hospital through the Injury Prevention Unit. They have child death review teams across the state that review every child death. And so,
and DHS is a part of those, I'm sorry, every child death involving sudden and uninspected deaths. So your SIDS cases, your ATV accidents, your suicides, but then also the cases involving maltreatment. And DHS or CACD, and sometimes both, has representatives on those teams through Children's Hospital where we bring our records. Those teams incorporate. I can talk. I was lead for Pulaski several years ago, and we had the coroner on the team.
We had law enforcement. And they still probably are. I'm just not on the Pulaski County team anymore. prosecutor all the key players involving child deaths now sometimes those teams see those child deaths and take some further action but the idea behind those teams is really to collect data to determine what public policy needs need to be met so do we need to be doing more messaging on suicide do we need to do some more things on safe sleeps and those are run by the injury prevention team at Arkansas Children's Hospital, and you all get a report once a year from that team that comes
before this committee. DHS has put together a team. It used to be statutory, but we put it in our policy, so even though it's not in the law, it is promulgated and a part of our policy that we will have child death review teams, and our team reviews, and not just DHS. Representative Fight is on that team. We include someone from the governor's office, CACD, the CACs, the child advocacy centers. I'm sure the ad litems, court, some people from the court. I'm sure I'll forget
somebody, but really a collection of stakeholders, the prosecutor's office, a collection of stakeholders to come around the table and look at deaths where those deaths involved DCFS in some way in the last two years. And those deaths don't even necessarily have to be allegations of maltreatment. They had to have been called in for a death assessment. So it could be a sudden unexpected death of a child or, but all child deaths where there was previous DHS history,
we review those and we're reviewing sometimes with the lens of public policy, but also a lens of, Is there something that we could have done differently? Do we need to change our policy? Is it how we're engaging with families? Is it a staff issue? Just looking at it from a perspective of DHS. Is that good, Representative Fite? Any more questions? I don't see any more questions. Tell us
what page you're on when you get started again.
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
20:47
Okay. I'm going to pick up on page 10, and that's the start of foster care.
So as you'll see, over the past few years, we have seen a decline in the number of children in foster care. And that really is due both looking at entries as well as exits. And you can see on the, I think you can't talk about the top number without talking about the bottom chart, which is number of admissions and discharges in foster care. We have made a concerted effort to really focus on moving children through our system more timely and believe that part of the reason that we're seeing a decrease in children in foster care
is our focus on discharges. We have also, as you've seen, seen a decrease in removals. And we back in 2017, yes, I want to say, yeah, end of 16, early 17, hired program administrators through the support of you guys as well as the governor's office. and their primary function is to there's 10 across the state one for each area and their primary function though they do do other duties is to do removal consults and so what we learned
from a national level as well as a local level is that staff needed to feel supported to make good decisions so that individual worker who's been with us six months did not have the expertise to be making good decisions they needed support from the supervisor and we needed consistency across the state. So those program admins work directly for the area director. They come in every other month for coaching and training from central office so that we're also having some consistency about the removal decisions that we're making, and we're also supporting that
frontline staff and making good decisions about removals. And then you'll see on page 11 what continues to be a primary issue for us and kids coming into foster care continues to be substance abuse and neglect. Now, granted, most of those kids come in for both reasons, right? There's a substance abuse issue, but because of a substance abuse issue, there is a neglect issue. So you can have two, you can have multiple types of reasons for kids coming into foster care. You'll see on the bottom of page 11, the discharge reasons for how, where kids are going when they come into
foster care and ultimately they have some type of permanency. The majority of our kids are reunified with the person from whom custody was removed. Um, normally that's a parent, you know, but every once in a while we do remove a kid from a custodian, but 41% of our kids are reunified with the person from whom custody was removed, 28% adoptions. And then you can see on down relatives. Now, um, some of our adoptions are with relatives. I just want to make that note. We do have relatives that adopt so that there are some relatives built into adoption as well
as into relative custody and on the guardianship the number of kids under guardianship we have even though it's only 37 we we are really pushing and training and advocating for relative guardianship subsidized guardianship and so we're slowly seeing increases in relatives getting guardianships guardianship has some benefits that relative custody does not and we have seen that if we support relatives better long term then usually the placement will stay and when we send
kids on with custody with relatives with no support sometimes those kids end up back in the system director martin
yes i have a question i actually got an email this week from a
constituent that along those lines they they're not a relative they were a fictive kin and took some kids in they didn't have a financial issue but they emailed me with the concern that they said you you know, it took them five months to go through the whole process before they could start getting a board payment. Right. Their concern was what about someone that meets a fictive kin
but they cannot afford to support that child for the five months reaching up until they get through the process to start receiving a board payment. Is that just the way it is, and if you're not approved, you
Speaker 47
24:50
can't get help? Not necessarily. Now, I will say, you
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
24:53
know, our system is set up to where relatives that are, that's called a, or fictive kin, relatives or fictive kin, have six months to get open to get a board payment but we as a division have said we think that kids belong with relatives if safe and appropriate and though we can't pay them a board payment until
they're fully licensed we have trained with resource staff we have trained at supervisor meetings it's like it's an in like how can we help you outside of that board payment can we help you with groceries can we help you with gas and support can we help with paying tutoring or whatever is needed so like how can we support that family outside of an actual board payment and then we can make some some also some exceptions I cannot do this on every relative or fictive kin but we have done this on cases where families say took in four or five kids and
they really didn't have the income they were financially stable but they didn't have the income to support that many kids we'll do one-on-one training we can get them open very quickly so that they can start that board payment and we can support them in other ways outside of a board payment. We have done huge messaging with staff on this issue, but it still have 1,200 staff, 75 counties. It still is an issue in some areas, though. I think we're doing a better job across the state, but I can tell you if you're a fictive kin friend, they didn't identify financial issues,
they probably wouldn't have heard from my staff, hey, here's the other ways that we can
support you until this board payment is
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
26:27
up and running. Representative Evans, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and this is a two-part question, if you'll allow. Thank
you. Ms. Martin, I notice on the bottom of page 11, there's 197 discharges for child aged out. At what age
Speaker 47
26:43
in the system does a child age out? Well, that's a complicated question to answer. So technically, kids
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
26:49
in Arkansas can remain in care until they're 21 if they are doing three things.
They are either in a course of treatment, they're working, and there's a set hours. Is it 80? Oh, good. Okay,
Speaker 34
26:59
80. And education. So if they're doing one of those three
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
27:05
things, they can choose to stay in care between 18 and 21. Now, I will say I just can't seem to kick a kid out if they're going to be homeless, even if they're noncompliant. So we're not just you do these three things and you're out. I'm real passionate about that. So, but we could have a kid technically age out at 18.
We have 18-year-olds who say, I mean, they're adults. I don't want to be in foster care anymore. I don't want your money. Like, no matter how many people try and talk them into saying, they're like, I'm done. And so technically that 18-year-old aged out, but age out is really 21. I mean, they could stay until they're 21, and then at 21 they would also be included in
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
27:43
the age out count. And the second part of that, so for that child that at 18 says, I don't want to be a part of this system anymore, what do we as a state offer to that child outside
of that foster home for reentry? I mean, to help them get a job, fill out resumes, learn how to open a bank account, all those things that we would hopefully assume that they learned under the care of those foster parents, but probably in reality, they didn't. So what can we do or what do we offer to help that transition? Well, and let me
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
28:18
18-year-olds that are choosing to leave care were not in a foster home. Maybe they had suffered, you know, mental health issues and they're in psychiatric residential hospitals
or they were in group homes. I mean, I'm just going to be real with you about that. So a lot of them that are choosing to leave are not in this stable foster family and have said, I don't want to live with this foster parent anymore. Now, as far as services, our kids who are, quote, 4E eligible, which the majority of our kids are, they are eligible for Medicaid service, categorically eligible without an income test up until age 26. So they are eligible for Medicaid. As far as
services, once they leave us, once they choose not to have DCFS jurisdiction, they're going to that county office and applying for services through the county offices, which I'm not expert on but you know or they may connect with one of our providers like a nurse um who is serving those youth outside of us they may go to workforce and sign up for workforce services but let me not make this pretty the if they walk out and choose to leave our care it is a bleak look for them
it is it is bleak I'm being very honest um it's also why I'm very passionate about trying to beg, plead, think creatively to try and get kids in a place where they will at least stay for a board payment. Because once they're 18, we don't make them stay in a foster home. We have criteria about what should happen for them to move to an apartment. But frankly, if they're over 18 and they're in care, I'm responsible for placement of them. So sometimes it means we have to get
really creative. I will say that Becky Dunnigan, the deputy director who's here, if you see me looking over, she's also our data queen, so I'd just like to make sure I'm not saying anything wrong. We are working to procure services for supervised independent living setting. We have some partners such as Get Real 24, Anna Merce, but we're really looking to grow the array of services and
Speaker 47
30:21
support that we have for that category of 1821 to 21. Thank you. Thank you,
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
30:28
Mr. Chair. All right, Director Martin, proceed. Okay. So moving on, moving on to page 12, you can see the length of stay of kids in foster care. Um, um, it goes from anywhere less to 30 days all the way up to 30, 36 plus months. And, um, I apologize. I'm gonna go just a little off track just to tell you guys that we're currently we started in September a permanency focus and so the division are as many of you know we've been very focused on placement and getting kids
in the right placement and trying to get kids with family and to tie right into that we are starting a focus on permanency and so for the next three months we're focused on adoption and pull the data we are collaborating with our stakeholders as well as our staff to finalize 285 adoptions by November but the permanency focus is bigger than just adoption we are looking at our our kids that are 36 months and more actually we're looking at our kids really closely 24 months and more and my central office team like we did with placements is doing weekly permanency team coaching sessions
where we're pulling up these individual cases and coaching local staff trying to think creatively how can we move our kids and when we say permanency we mean family but not a family in foster care we We want kids to leave foster care and be with a permanent family, whether bio family, adoptive family, relative family. We do not want them lingering in foster care and growing up with the system. So our focus for the next six months is all about permanency and really drilling down to individual kids and figuring out how we can coach staff as well as use data to move kids to permanency.
So hopefully you'll see some of that. The data really doesn't tell that picture, but I'll try and give some other reports that show you how we're coming along with our permanency initiative.
Speaker 49
32:19
You can see on the middle, it's super important, on the middle is the placement of
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
32:24
children in foster care, the breakdown of where our children are, foster family, and then relative care. What we call congregate care is traditional residential care, therapeutic foster home. Child home visit means they're back with the person from whom custody were made, but still in foster care.
and then you can see other types such as pre-adoptive as y'all know you have to be with the family six months before we can finalize an adoption acute and sub care acute care which are typically medicaid covered services independent living which is our services for 18 above and then some other which would be incarceration and some other like dd placements and such you can see on the bottom of page 12 our permanency goals the majority of our kids in foster care are working on reunification. Page 13, casework visits. Again, you can see that we have focused
on increasing seeing our children every year that I've been there, and it will continue to be our focus. It's so important that we are seeing our children not only on in-home, but in foster care cases. The bottom of 13 is those initial screens that come into, once a child comes into foster care, they have to have initial health screens, and you can see on the bottom how we're doing on those. Something I'm super proud of and I think we're proud of as a division is page 14, siblings placed together. You've seen an increase the last four years of our siblings being placed together
and I hope over the next four years you'll continue to see an increase in that. That is definitely a priority for us is keeping siblings together. Also we're proud of the chart number on the bottom which is rate of placements moves per thousand days in foster care. Now when I say I'm proud of it. I'm proud that it's going down. It's still dismal. So, um, so even though we're still above the national average and we still have a ton of work to do in this area, we are trending in the right direction, meaning we are getting kids more stable and not moving them
around. We are still nowhere where we need to be on that, on that particular issue. Page 15, permanency within 12 months of entering foster care. Um, we've had an increase of 54%. We are well above the national average. Re-entries into foster care on the bottom of 15. We had a slight increase this year, but still doing better than we went back all the way to 2016. Page 16, looking at the number of children available for adoption, you can see decreases in the number of
children available. You can see on the bottom age and characteristics of the children who are available for adoption. And then on page 17, you can see where the kids who are currently available for adoption are placed. So moving on to the bottom of 17, I have some concerns about this, the length of time from TPR, which is also why the length of time from termination of parental rights, sorry for the acronym, termination of parental rights to adoption saw a little bit of an increase this year. Another reason that we're focusing on permanency, and that is one of the
things that we will be tracking monthly, um, so that hopefully we will see increases. Now, again, we always want to do what's right for a kid and we don't want to rush a family to adoption. But as I tell my staff and tell stakeholders, we don't want a kid sitting in foster care over bureaucratic tape work. So that's what we're focused on. It's not necessarily rushing families to adoption, but we, we don't want kids sitting in foster care if it's really about paperwork.
Speaker 71
35:51
Dr. Martin, if you will. Oh, yes. Wait. Representative Birch, you're recognized.
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
35:55
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was just going back and looking. It's saying preventing children's reentry, so
8% of the children. So you're counting individual children. Do you keep statistics on cases? I mean,
realizing there may be five kids in one. I'm sorry, Representative Birch, I lost you.
Speaker 65
36:13
Where are you? I apologize. Go back to page
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
36:17
15. Okay. It's probably. Reentries? You're looking at reentries? Yes. But it's probably with several of these categories, even, I'm curious, because it says just over 8% of the children, so you categorize each individual child, you're not looking at case numbers.
Speaker 47
36:34
That's right. Because, you know, as you're aware, we don't really track cases, we track kids. I'm not sure we can do that. Can we do that? I don't think we can do
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
36:44
that. Because our system, we link parents with kids, but the problem is going to be, like, as you, we might have two of the kids in care and two of the kids not in care, so I couldn't say this family, these families had reentries if these kids came back but these kids didn't, which I know doesn't necessarily make sense, but, like, say you have a medical neglect case where the parent can't parent because it's a medical neglect, but they can parent a child that doesn't have, you know what I'm saying?
I mean, that's an example, but I don't think that I can pull the data via cases versus children because we just don't track it in that way. Just can say
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
37:17
that five or six cases when you've got five or six kids can skew your numbers. Yes, ma'am. Significant. I get that. Representative Mayberry, you're recognized.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
37:30
Thank you, Mr. Chair. While we've taken a little break, I'm going to go back a little bit, too, if you
don't mind. with the siblings that are placed together in care. I have a family that I know of that had foster children,
and all of them couldn't go to her house, and that just really broke her heart because their bedroom was not quite large enough to hold. I think there was four, and maybe two had to go someplace and two someplace else or whatever. And I just wonder if we have our priorities right. I mean, if we're talking just a little bit more space in a room, Well, I
Speaker 47
38:04
have my priorities, right, because I would waive that. So we waive that every week. So apparently, like, if you're getting those cases, I hope that in the future you will funnel those to me.
Because we have a whole process, and I can tell you almost every week, if not multiple
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
38:21
times a month, we waive space issues and take it before the Child Welfare Licensing Board to place siblings together. I wish I had contacted you. Yes. I'll learn next time. Okay. I mean, if you look at the Child Welfare Licensing Board agenda, it's usually a whole list of waivers from DCFS related to space and not just relatives, but even foster homes. Because we're really, like I had just yesterday, a foster home came across my plate that wanted seven siblings.
And so we had to make a space waiver. So, yeah, we're doing that regularly. So if you have cases like that, please raise it to our attention because we must have a local staff issue that we need
Speaker 34
39:03
to address. Thank you. Director Martin, tell us what page you're on. I'm back on page 18 because I'm not going to skip over the number of adoptions finalized. Though, a little bit down from 2018, and compared to 2016, we are rocking some
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
39:17
adoptions. So we are focused on moving kids through the system.
Again, I've already talked about that. But if kids, if their rights are terminated, we need to move them to adoption, and we have amazing partners. It's not just DCFS. If you haven't checked out Project Zero, they run our heart gallery for us and do it all based on funding. They also do recruitment and they do monthly parties to help us find adoptive families. So if you're not aware of the Project Zero, they have been a huge partner to us in helping us not just find families but then also support those families
Speaker 34
39:54
and finalize adoptions. You can see on the bottom of 18, subsidized adoptions.
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
40:00
So as I've talked about in the past, if the child is 4E eligible, which is complicated, and they meet the special needs criteria, which is not developmental disabilities, but it could just be age or other, like a siblings, it's not a typical special needs definition, the family can qualify for a federal subsidy. DCFS does have to pay a state match on that,
and then also the child comes eligible for Medicaid. We do finalize adoptions that are state match only. That is a very small percentage, but we do have state only, and
Speaker 47
40:39
you can see that right there. 884 children began receiving adoption subsidies. Of those, 878 were federally funded. Only six were state funded. But again, of those 878, the state does have to put
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
40:53
up a match to that federal funding. And a significant portion of DCFS's budget is related to paying these adoption subsidies.
We pay more monthly payments for adoptions than we do children in foster care, just to keep on your mind when you think about budget time and our budget. Moving on to page 19, you can see a total number of cases at the, I'm sorry, the case number at the end of the fiscal year, and then the bottom chart is the total number of cases in which we served throughout the year. So I'll focus on the bottom chart. These are our different types of cases. I've already gone over them, but you can see the volume there of the number of cases
or children, like foster care's children, that we serve in those types of cases. you can also see on page 20 that we have seen a decrease in caseloads and I'd just like to say thanks again I always do I appreciate the legislature and the governor's office for the continued support and staff we still have a huge problem with turnover but with the increased staff and funding that we've received since 2016 we have been able to bring caseloads down and I I think as caseloads continue to come down, we will continue to see improved quality.
We are still having areas that are struggling. Senator Hester's area up in northwest Arkansas, a competitive market. So it's hard for us to hire staff. So caseloads are higher in that area. So we are still seeing pockets of areas that are experiencing very high caseloads. Director Martin? Yes, sir. Um, what is
that like, is there a national average that or, or recommended caseload? So, um, and
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
42:38
I'll just mention on page 40 is the breakdown by county page 40 is the breakdown by
county on. So that's a complicated question to answer. And I'll just say,
Speaker 47
42:48
because every state classifies what is a case differently? Like, is it a is it the specific child? Is it the family? Is it a case
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
42:59
on in-home versus the child on foster care? So we have this crazy formula to factor in caseloads. But I will say that when Mr. Paul Vincent came in at the governor's request in 2016 and made a recommendation to the state on caseloads,
his recommendation was that we would get caseloads down to 20. And, again, if you want to look at your specific county that you cover, page 40 will tell you what the caseload is in your county that you cover. Number of foster home beds, so number of foster homes and foster home beds is on the middle of page 20. We have seen a decline in foster homes, and we have done some very targeted messaging about our need for
foster homes 10 to 17, and we've been working with our partners. But because of that, we have not been putting out a crisis message that we need any foster home, because we have a lot of foster homes for zero to five. We need foster homes for ages 10 to 17, and we really think that that is contributing to our decline in foster homes. But thankfully, as we've seen a decline, we've also seen the decline in kids in care, and we've stayed at a bed-to-child ratio about the same, and we even track monthly our kids 10 to 17 who are in foster homes, and while there again the
number's not great. We've seen an increase every month for about the past six months now, about six months. And then, oh, so I mentioned the bed to child ratio. That's on the top of 21. You can see that we grew and we've stayed about SETI. We're still higher than we were in 2016. You can see a decrease in the percentage of foster families with true reports of maltreatments on the bottom of 21. Director Martin.
Oh, yes, sir. Senator Hammer, you're recognized. I fear page 40 has got his attention. Oh,
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
44:58
about his county. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So
Saline County has 30.72. Pulaski has 17.89. Oh, page 40. On page 40, on the caseload. Does the manpower shift to the need of the county, or how do you accommodate that so that two counties that are close together like that that Saline isn't being shorted manpower or if you pull away from Plaston County, would that drive those caseloads up? How do you deal with that? Well, Saline, it's not
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
45:34
a shortage of positions. It's a shortage of bodies in positions. So we did send our SWAT, our statewide assessment team to help. We've also given them extra help positions. But, you know, there's been some change in Saline County, and with change means people leave and positions are empty. And so until we get that fully staffed, you're going to continue to see a higher caseload number. So could we get a printout
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
46:01
that shows the number of vacant positions by county? So if I look at Saline County and I see 30.72, I would know
that there are two vacant positions. How hard would it be to amend? I can give it
Speaker 60
46:15
to you. Like, I could look it up right now or I can give it to you afterwards. I have
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
46:21
it. I get a monthly, I'm sorry, a weekly. I get a weekly vacancy report so that we can monitor where the vacancies are, even down to
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
46:29
where we are in the hiring process. So could I get a map like this, a diagram like this, that would show in addition to that you could put on there the number of vacancies when you bring these reports before the legislature?
How hard would that be for your system to be able to add that
Speaker 47
46:49
bit of information? Not easy, but if that's the request that I'm getting, can we provide you with the information and then maybe monitor it and see if it's something that we really want to add long-term to the report? I'm a member of this committee,
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
47:02
but that'd be to the chair. But as an individual legislator, we can talk afterwards and figure it out, but thank you. I'd ask that you provide that individually as is requested.
Thank you. And it looks like you
Speaker 47
47:19
may be at the end of your... Oh, yes, I am, but I saw a question. I am. The rest is just the
appendix that are all referenced in the blue ribbon
Representative Danny Watson
Unverified
47:35
on the right side. Are there any more questions for Director Martin? Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Continuing on page 40, Ms. Martin, a neighboring district to me is in red.
Rationale of why they are so extremely high, just out of curiosity? They
Speaker 47
47:50
lost staff very recently. Sevier County has been a very stable county. I previously worked in Sevier County. But when you have a quick loss of staff, you're going to see an influx in case count. Now, what we do is we ask the areas to come up with a plan on how to support. That's a bigger part of an area. So instead of just jumping over everybody's head, we ask the area and the county supervisor,
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
48:16
what is it that you think that you can do to support this county while they're in crisis? And then if they say, okay, I don't have any other staff from any other county that can come help cover while we're in crisis, then we, from the central office, we have the statewide assist team, And we, based on who's in the most crisis, we then send help to support them. And then another mechanism that we use is extra help. So do you know somebody that previously worked for us? Can we send you an extra help position to go down there and help while you're in crisis?
Chair
Unverified
48:47
But I happen to know Sevier pretty well, and they've had
Representative Danny Watson
Unverified
48:53
a loss of staff. One more question, if I may. Sure. Do you see any end in sight as far as making progress for staffing for Sevier County? I mean, I know it took a while for them to
Speaker 122
49:05
get, you know, losing staff. Are they making some progress is what I'm curious. Oh,
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
49:10
I think so. Sevier County is a strong county, and, you know, they've had stability over the years. So this is definitely an abnormal thing for Sevier County.
They have a strong county supervisor down there. They have a great community. They don't have as much problem hiring. So I think Sevier County is more likely to stable. Like, if I'm just being really honest, I'm more worried about Washington County and Benton County. And even though Benton has seen significant decreases in their caseloads in the last couple months, those are more my areas. We've seen, and do I have hope? Yes, because Sebastian County, which struggled forever, as you can see, they're down to 19.76.
and we were having huge turnover issues and instability. So I'm always hopeful, but these things don't change overnight. So, you know, even if I get somebody hired, then they're in graduated caseloads. You know, you just have a period of, the period of instability is longer than I like, but I don't see severe, I don't see severe county as a long-term issue. I mean, I was just making sure I got a second on that, but I know severe county pretty well. It makes me feel a little better. The number,
Representative Danny Watson
Unverified
50:15
needless to say, is extremely high, but that's a little bit comforting.
Hopefully, everybody makes sure they'll keep working for that. I appreciate
Chair
Unverified
50:25
it. Senator Hammer, you are recognized. Thank you,
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
50:28
Madam Chair. Did I understand you to say a minute ago that there's a shortage of foster homes, or did I misunderstand you to say that? I
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
50:36
don't think that that's what I said, but we're always looking for more foster homes that will take 10- to 17-year-olds. We have, I'm looking at Becky because I think it's about 39%, 39% of 10 to 17 year olds, isn't that right? Maybe a little, oh it's
Speaker 47
50:51
in the 40s now, it's in the, okay.
It's been on the increase, but we still have room to grow when it comes to foster homes taken to 10 to 17. And
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
51:02
frankly, we're always going to lose foster homes because they're going to adopt children, they're going to, even if they're supported,
they're going to get tired and need a break. So, I mean, we're always going to be needing more foster homes. I don't ever see that as something that I'm not saying, hey, have you talked to your friends? Have you
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
51:23
talked to your neighbors? We need some foster homes. Okay. And we've had private conversations about the effect of family first and limitations that it's put on your department in order to be able to place sibling groups, especially with youth homes.
So, direct correlation between the inability to place in conjunction with the shortage of homes, because I know that's going to take some federal changes, but do you have any comment on that? My
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
51:53
comment on siblings and our use of family cottage setting providers is that I'm not sure that it is a recruitment issue for foster homes. it is difficult to take in seven children not impossible because I did have a foster I mean we
were just working with the foster family who took in seven children but there in the state there is a need for our providers who have family-like setting true house parents and then also have the support model to be able to take in those large sibling groups and we haven't made a commitment to those providers until June of 2020 while we work to hopefully change their models into
foster homes, but sibling groups and placing large sibling groups together is going to be hard in a traditional foster home.
Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Seeing no further questions, thank you, Director Martin, for coming. Moving on to item F, Director Crump and Bonnie Stribling, you're recognized. When you get ready to talk, you'll push
Speaker 132
53:10
that button. Good afternoon. My name is Michael Crump. I'm the director of the Division of Youth Services.
What you have in front of you are the quarter three and quarter four, and I have Ms. Bonnie Stribbling here with me as well. I'm just going to point to a couple of key statistics in this report, then I want to would like to use that to sort of jump off and tell you all about some of the changes we've made at DYS, particularly around treatment, and then Ms. Stribbling would like to tell you a little bit about her story and what she does for DYS. She's one of our newer employees and part of our new treatment team. So if I could, I will go ahead and dive into these quarterly reports. Please proceed. I'm just going to start with the quarterly report four because they're
very similar and really just on page two are the two things that I would like to point to. This report is primarily tied to judicial districts and commitments to DYS and sort of the demographics of those kids coming from judicial districts. In the near future, we will be adding some information to these quarterly reports. This is just the way they've been done in the past. I want to be able to bring some more DYS-specific information and data to you to show how things are going at the Division of Youth Services once the kids are committed to us.
The first thing I'd like to point out on page two, if you look at the total commitments for the fourth quarter, and it's broken down for the last three years, so it would be just for those three months, You can see a decline from 2017 of 121 commitments to DYS, 2018 101 commitments to DYS, and in 2019 down to 81 commitments to DYS, this most recent fourth quarter. You can see the same kind of trend in quarter three, and honestly, it's reflected in our population at our residential centers.
You can see over the last few years a downward trend in the number of kids that we have in our custody. I think you could probably, you know, aside from maybe a drop in crime, you can attribute it to the adoption of the validated risk assessment that a lot of the judges have already gone to. And this body recently passed juvenile justice reform in the session to require all of the judicial districts in the state to eventually move to using the savory right now is the one they've chosen, the validated risk assessment tool.
So the courts are using this tool to help them make decisions on which kids really need to be committed to DYS versus those that need to stay in the community and receive their services. And so I think that's probably driving it down over the last few years. And we look for that probably to continue, especially as those other counties come on board. We are training. Some of my staff is at training this week, as a matter of fact, so we can make sure that we understand the savory, and my staff understands it well enough that those kids that in the interim
that maybe come to us and are committed without that risk assessment, that we can sort of fill that assessment in and do it ourselves to be able to align those kids with all the other kids in our custody. So if you look in here, most of this is about basically by judicial district, the kids that are committed, how many have been committed from this court or the other. But the other thing on page two that I would point to is it would be the third thing, And this is kind of where DYS, and this is why I'd like to bring more information to you now that we've been really cleaning up and getting our data in order.
I'd like to bring more information to you about what's going on at DYS once the kids are in our custody. You see first commits versus recommits. It looks like around a third, I think in quarter three, it was around a quarter of the kids committed to our custody had already been committed to our custody once before. Obviously, this recidivism is something that's our ultimate goal is to prevent recidivism. So in light of that, part of the governor's transformation plan that we've been involved with since I came into this position several months ago
is to sort of restructure the way DYS approaches things. In the past, probably could have done a much better job the way things were structured and the way we approached treatment and assessment of the kids that were committed to our custody. We just basically had DYS broken down into two units. It was community-based services and residential services. So what we've done and one of the first new units that we set up when we changed that was we have what we call a treatment unit now. Our treatment unit is responsible for bringing the kids when they come into our custody of spending the right amount of time assessing each child to give them an individualized treatment plan.
And that was a big part of the transformation was that it needed to be individualized in the past. And, again, I hate to bring these things up sometimes because I don't want to denigrate the past efforts of DYS employees, but we could have done a lot better job. When a child was committed to our custody, it was basically a DYS staff member, and that child would go to a room after they were in one of our assessment beds, and there might be a probation officer on the phone. They would look at the kid's charges and give them more or less a standardized sort of template.
here are your goals and here's where you're going to go and it was it's it was not a real involved process the child didn't really take much ownership in it it was just sort of an administrative task what we started doing and it was the first unit that we set up out of the three units that we're now divided into was we started to bring in clinicians my assistant director is a nurse that oversees that unit we've brought in behavioral health clinicians we have a contract for that And we've set up a whole team of individuals that when a child comes into our custody, that team spends, the goal is for 14 days.
So to have that kid assessed, meet with all these individuals, and have them placed with an individualized treatment plan within two weeks. So now when they come into our custody, you have that behavioral health clinician, you have an education specialist, you have an independent living specialist, you have the education specialist. I don't think I mentioned that yet. You have a behavior management specialist. We are involving the aftercare provider. Instead of waiting until the kid's about to leave our custody, we are inviting them to come to that assessment process.
The family is invited to the process. I think typically they normally, I think, participate by phone. They're invited to come in person, but I think a lot of the times they participate by phone. You have the probation officer there. You have the case coordinator, who is a DYS employee who is going to be sort of like a caseworker in DCFS, but it's for the kids in DYS. They're supposed to keep up with the child's progress and make sure that the plan is going as we expected. You also have Ms. Stribling, who is our peer recovery support specialist who's involved in that process.
It's really just a whole team of people who individually spend time meeting with the child, discussing, you know, maybe what their real problems are. because if you just look at a charge, that doesn't necessarily tell you what a kid's needs are. You know, substance abuse, things like that, you can't always tell just from looking that it was, you know, residential burglary or disorderly conduct, which whatever it may be, you can't tell what the kid's needs are. So we're trying to treat what the real needs are instead of just treating the charges, if that makes any sense. once the child is placed after that two-week process is over in the past what happened at
DYS was it was more or less sort of left up to the facility to provide the treatment and then someone at DYS or the facility would decide that this it looks like this this child's probably ready to go we would we would go ahead and schedule some sort of review hearing and and try to get them out of our custody and return to the community. The same treatment team now, when a child comes in, they're receiving a length of stay. They're receiving their individualized treatment plan. And then there's a review for each kid that comes into our custody.
So anywhere from one to three months, that team will be getting back together with feedback from the provider, feedback from the case coordinator, and really anyone else that's involved with treatment, their therapist, and reviewing their progress to see if, is Is this treatment plan working or do we need to make some changes, is there something wrong with the placement? Whatever it may be, the treatment team is going to make an effort to review their progress and make changes if necessary. And then as the child gets close to the end of their time, their expected time with DYS,
the treatment team is going to review that and make a determination, you know, unless someone brings something to us that there's a real problem and there's a good reason or bad reason to keep this child beyond the anticipated release date, they're going to be returning to the community, and we will have made all those plans. So it's radically different. I'm sorry. If
you'll hold it, I've got a member with
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
1:01:46
a question. Representative Birch, you're recognized. Yes. Thank you,
Mr. Chair. So I need help a little bit with the understanding of the administration when you say we, because at this time last year, we meant DHS or DYS people, our state employees, right?
But now it's contracted out. When you say we, are these the contracted people? Because I had a really big issue with regard to the education services. They subcontracted out the teachers, and they didn't get them hired all in time. And so when you say we, and we're looking at these, we're the ones doing these assessments, we're the ones doing this.
Speaker 132
1:02:23
Who's we? We is DYS. These are all DYS employees doing the assessments, doing the treatment reviews. Again, it's changing the culture from allowing that all to be performed by the provider and bringing that in-house.
It's our job to hold them accountable and to monitor the child's progress and making sure they're getting the services. There will be, you know, sometimes there will be bumps in the road. We'll have to send our monitors out to see if they're complying with the treatment plan and that the kids are getting the services they're needing. But we as DYS are
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
1:02:52
doing the assessment. Follow-up, Mr. Chair? So what I
need to know is who is we, because when I call, whenever I have a concern, whenever somebody, a constituent, has a child or the judge has an issue, how do we
reach the right people that are overseeing these things so that we can be better informed?
Speaker 132
1:03:09
Well, obviously, you can contact me anytime. But Ms. Cheryl Grape is my assistant director over treatment, and I can get you all of her contact information. As of this week, as of Monday, we hired an attorney because we will be establishing a legal ops unit within DYS to better communicate with the courts and be able to give them information about what's going on with the kids that they've committed from their judicial district and how their progress is going forward. And just basically to have someone other than just any administrative staff communicating with the courts,
we're going to set up a legal operations unit with that attorney, and they will be devoted strictly to DYS. So for now, you can contact me, Ms. Cheryl Grappé. That would be the assistant director over our treatment unit. So it's a radically different approach. We just started this in May of this year, so reviews have just recently started of the first kids that have gone through this process. In the meantime, we're trying to really take a hard look at the kids that were already in our custody
because we don't want them to slip through the cracks either. We want to make sure that we're monitoring how long they've been in our custody so we can review and figure out exactly why someone may have been longer than we expected. But if I could, if you have any questions about that, I guess I can go ahead and answer those now. And then I'd like to let Ms. Stribling just tell you a little bit of her
story and about what she does. Having no question, Ms.
Bonnie Stribling
Unverified
1:04:44
Stribling, please proceed. Yeah. hello good afternoon my name is Bonnie Stribling and I am a peer support peer recovery support
specialist for DYS and Alexander that's where I work and I'm originally from Russellville so really a peer recovery support specialist what that means is I'm a person of sustained recovery and so to tell you a little bit about what that means is that I used to do a whole lot of drugs and I burned my life down and now I have found a way out I found recovery and so peer recovery has actually started within the state probably in the last 18 months and when I'm able to work with peers I'm able to maybe relate to them and identify with them at possibly a different level
than a clinician would because I've been there I understand that feeling of being a youth that's going through an unstable household I know what it feels like to turn to drugs to numb the pain of trauma. I understand what that feels like. So when the youth come to DYS and they're in the intake process and they're in the assessment process, they're there for about 20 days, 14 to 20, and I'm able to meet with them during that time. A lot of the time they come and they have no idea what's going on. They have no idea of what this treatment team looks
like, what this process looks like. Maybe they've even been with us before and it's completely different. So I'm able to meet with them and maybe answer some questions, explain the process, and then we start to dive into that conversation of why they're here. And most of the time, we just go through the story, and we just talk about that. And then they start to identify, well, maybe I do have a problem with drugs, or maybe I do have to go through some grief counseling. Because that stuff, I don't think that they've really talked about it very much. And so that's part of what I've been doing with peer work in DYS.
And then another piece of that is I'm working with following them. So we build this rapport right off the bat. We actually write their story. We put it in their file to identify where they're at when they come in. And then I follow them at the facilities that they go to. And I ask them straight up, and I just say, is this working for you? Are you able to get the treatment that you need? And so we work through that together because if nobody says anything, then what happens after that? So we work together, build that relationship with them. And now I'm calling aftercare and I'm talking with aftercare about the community resources for support groups because that's what works for me.
I need to be in a support group when I'm at my deepest points, when I don't want to talk to somebody, when I'm about to use, what do I do? I need to reach out to somebody. So, you know, I use that. I use my lived experience to relate. I use that to work with aftercare. I've spoken with family a little bit at the treatment team meetings. Most of them have an understanding of it, but the recovery piece is what I really work on with the aftercare partners and the aftercare workers. So I think I'm super grateful.
You know, when they told me that I was going to come share here, it's like my greatest trials and tribulations, the challenges of whenever I was sitting there, you know, strung out with my son and not knowing if I had hope, You know, to know that those are some of my greatest tools to relate to the youth today and to be there and to be here speaking is amazing. So I just wanted to say that. Thank you. And if I could, I'd
Speaker 132
1:08:00
just like to add, having been to just, you know, I've been to one or two of these staffings that they do now with the whole treatment team,
and you can really see that the kids are comfortable with all the people in the room by the time they have this meeting to tell them, you know, to come up with the plan as a group. Um, seeing the kids ask, you know, am I going to be able to get help with this particular school subject, you know, and just ask questions about the, what they're going to experience in their treatment and be honest about what they think they need to work on. It was really, it was a refreshing thing to see, and I think this team has a lot of potential to really change things and maybe help us drive recidivism down at, at, through DYS.
And that's, that's the conclusion of my report. Thank you, Director Trump. Thank
you. Mr. Director Crump and Ms. Dribbling, are there any questions from the
Representative Vivian Flowers
Unverified
1:08:55
committee? Seeing none, thank you for coming. Oh, sorry, Representative Flowers, you recognize. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just had a question about what DYS has in place for youth in facilities who are aging out and don't have any place to go.
Speaker 132
1:09:13
So we do have some. We have one particular facility that is for our 18 to 21-year-old population, male population. We try to, you know, vocational things. We try to give them vocational opportunities. We've had some kids, you know, get out and be able to go to college and things. But typically, it is a difficult thing. It's one of the things we're working on is where can they go. It's similar to what Ms. Martin said. Our problems in those areas are similar to DCFS. The older kids, it's hard.
So, I mean, we work with a lot of them are dual custody kids. We have some DCFS kids that we try to work with DCFS. We work with those community partners with the aftercare provider because typically they're going to do about six months of aftercare in the community. So we try to find, you know, what we can to help them succeed once they reach that age of majority. You're welcome. Any other questions?
Seeing none. Thank you for coming today.
Thank you. We're going to move on to item G, Gigi's Playhouse. Please come forward. Thank you.
Representative Lanny Fite
Unverified
1:10:44
Representative Fyatt, you're recognized. Members, we had planned to go to Gigi's Playhouse for our meeting. Because I'd like for all of you to get an opportunity to go and visit there. But there really wasn't enough room for us there with all of our members and people in the audience and people needing to come and report to us.
So instead, we brought them to you. But when you get a chance to go over and visit, I hope that you will. They will be happy to have us come. They'll be
telling us more about that. Ms. Sursa, if you'll tell us who you are and what you're about, and you're recognized to present. Thank
Katie Sursa
Unverified
1:11:36
you. Yeah, my name is Katie Sursa, and I appreciate you guys having me here today. It's a privilege to be able to come before your committee and just tell you about a brand new resource that's here in Arkansas.
So Gigi's Playhouse is a Down Syndrome Achievement Center, but don't let the name fool you. We are not only for people with Down Syndrome. We are for embracing the community as a whole and providing resources like Arkansas has never seen and doing it all for free. So let me jump in and tell you guys how we do that. And it may not seem as ambitious as it sounds. So Gigi's Playhouse is the only nationwide network of brick-and-mortar Down Syndrome Achievement Centers,
and we are changing the way that the world sees a Down Syndrome diagnosis. So many parents get a I'm sorry when you get a diagnosis, and we want to change the I'm sorry into a congratulations and welcome to the family. And that's the beauty of Gigi's is that it's very positive. It is not a sad place. It's a beautiful place where people grow and learn and just thrive. And I wish we could be there today, but our room is about half the size, and the only mic we have is set up for karaoke.
So probably won't be very helpful for this meeting. But as I mentioned, we are part of a nationwide network. We are number 46 in the nation. However, we are the only one within 600 miles of Little Rock. So we do service the entire state. And we are strategically providing plans and in the works. We're still in our first quarter of operation, but we are working on how do we reach El Dorado? How do we reach West Memphis?
How do we reach Fort Smith? And everywhere in between. So that's a very big passion of mine is that Little Rock is great. And I love Little Rock, but I'm also passionate about everybody else that's here in Arkansas. So if you're not familiar with Down syndrome, Down syndrome is the largest chromosomal disability in our country. However, it is the least funded, even beyond that of autism or any other disability that's out there. It does account for only 0.004% of NIH funding,
um so which is why we depend um a hundred percent on donations and grants um the average age to have a child with down syndrome is 28 it is not 35 like people um have assumed for years that oh if you're in your 40s you have a child then that's when it happens the average age is actually 28 um and personally i was 24 when i had my daughter with down syndrome um and she's amazing she's in here I'll show you. Um, but, uh, a recent dramatic increase in lifespan of individuals with Down
syndrome is resulting in a huge influx in population. Um, when Dennis here, and he'll get to speak here in a minute, but when Dennis here was born, um, the life expectancy was in the teens, early twenties. Um, Dennis here is 55, um, and going strong and, and there are many, many more like him. And so we are now learning how to embrace this adult population that has previously in this world never existed and what they need and what their passions are and how to
meet them where they're at and still give them a validated adulthood. So individuals with Down Syndrome do have low muscle tone. They do have typical characteristics. A lot of them might have the same similar facial features, but if you know anyone with Down syndrome and you know another person with Down syndrome, you know two completely different people, and they have different wants, different needs, different desires, different passions, and so we embrace them individually and try not to glump them together. This little guy is from Bryant. His
name is Serio. Here in Arkansas, there are over 800 individuals within a two-hour driving distance from Little Rock that have Down syndrome. If we look at the statistics, then we base it on that. That is individuals. That is not to say that's how many families. I mean, if you think about it, then we have parents and we have siblings and we have other groups inside of that family where the individual has Down syndrome, but we also provide services and support to the family. So the support that we have is, the potential for that is just, I mean, it's through the roof.
So we do provide free, meaning non-billed. We do not bill Medicaid. We do not bill the state. We don't want to know your insurance information. We provide free, non-billable, life-changing programs through prenatal diagnosis all the way through adulthood. Our programs are strategically designed to be educational. We have one-on-one math and literacy tutoring. We're launching literacy tutoring in January. As of right now, I am building a wait list, and I've already got a really long wait list.
We are, they're educationally based in that they address cognitive impairment. Our tutoring programs start at age two and a half and go all the way through adulthood. So those adults that age out of high school and they go into day treatment facilities or they decide that, you know, they're not quite on the edge where they can get a job, but they're not quite on the edge where they need to go into a full-time facility. those people fall through the cracks a lot, and there's not a lot that is out there for them, and GG's can fill that gap. Our programs are also therapeutic and base, meaning that we have
professional licensed occupational physical and speech therapists that come to GG's, and they have a practice outside, and they volunteer maybe one night a month or two nights a month. We have some that volunteer one night a week, and they come, and they provide of their time and their expertise so that we are embracing these families with quality knowledge and not just throwing a high school volunteer at them. These are people that know what they're doing. Then we also are branching out into career development programs. This is something that I'm very passionate about
here in Little Rock and in Arkansas. Partnering, we've already worked on partnering with places like Pathfinder and Civitan and other places that are already doing this here in Arkansas because we don't want to reinvent the wheel, but at the same time, there are ways that we can help them that they need to fill the gaps with. So, like I said, all of our programs are purposeful and progressive. We do keep tracks. We keep data on, you know, when a person enters the system
or the program, then where are they at, where are they midpoint, and where are they at exit point of the program so that we can go back and reevaluate and improve those programs. And the programs, because we are nationwide, these are programs that every other GGs in the United States is already implementing, and they're doing the same things. So collectively, as one mind together, we're able to improve and provide better services. This is a picture of our grand opening.
That's our karaoke stage I was mentioning. Yeah, these
Katie Sursa
Unverified
1:19:05
of us wouldn't fit in there, y'all. He said all of us are not going to fit. So we had over 450 people attending grand opening. I say over 450 because some people didn't get to sign in. Our volunteers didn't sign in. I went back through pictures, tracked it. I think I found 493. It's not a giant space, so it was a big party. In the last 30 days, we have had over 121 unique families,
meaning families that are, that may come to multiple things, but 121 different families have participated in something at Gigi's Playhouse. Community partnerships are already being made, like I said, with Civitan Pathfinder. We have made a partnership with the Arkansas Autism Foundation and recently received a small grant from them to provide educational iPads for sensory library. So we're moving on. This is Beau. He's from Little Rock. And we're not done yet.
So here's what we've been up to at Gigi's Playhouse. This is our LMNOP class. This is for birth to preschool. The focus of it is social skills, attention span, cognitive development, and we teach this through American Sign Language, music, circle time, think like mommy and me class on the floor, that kind of thing, children's books, and a major aspect of this is parent participation. So the parents come in, and they sit with their child. They get to see other parents, and they get to see that, I mean, they say never compare
your child to another child, but it's very natural as a parent to look at other children and say, oh, what's my child doing that yours is not doing, or, you know, whatever. And even people with, especially parents with kids with disabilities, we do that too. And so it's very helpful to fellowship with other parents and to build that bond and be with somebody who knows what you're going through. This is our Fantastic Friends program. The gentleman on the right, left, left. Sorry, the gentleman on the left, his name is Nicholas.
The redhead's name is Sam. That's Destination Discovery. So Fantastic Friends is for 18 and over. We staff that with volunteers that are 18 and over because we want to validate your adult experience. We don't want to let you come in and feel like you're in a place that's a daycare for kids. We want you to feel like you're in a place where adults are. We teach life skills like how to do your laundry and how to do the dishes and how to balance a checkbook and, you know, that credit cards are not plastic money, those kind of things. And so it's very important that we do that in an adult setting.
We have been on THV11 with The Vine. We've been very supported by the media. It's very encouraging how we've been kind of adopted by them. And so we are open five days a week for drop-ins. So if we don't have a group program on any given day, anybody is welcome to come in during our open hours and use the Playhouse. And that's where the majority of our participation has actually come from, surprisingly, has not been our planned programs. It's been, oh, I'm at Children's for a 9 o'clock appointment.
I have a one o'clock, but what in the world do I do between 11 and 1? Come to Gigi's. Bring your lunch, let your kid play, and don't worry about have to hang out at Children's Hospital for two hours because that's not fun. We are 99% volunteer-led. I am the only employee at Gigi's. And for every one of me, there's at least 100 volunteers. I was telling Representative Mayberry that we were very, very blessed so far to just be in the first quarter of operation and have over 150 enlisted volunteers.
Not all of them are full-time volunteers. Some of them have done one thing and then never come back because they just decided it wasn't their thing. But we have a large bank, and it's just growing because people are catching the fire of GGs. So I mentioned the parental networks. We are working with the Arkansas Down Syndrome Association as well as a group here called DSAC, which is the Down Syndrome Advancement Coalition, which is a coalition of several different nonprofit Down Syndrome serving organizations that were all previously operating out of their garages,
out of their homes. They all came together to form one coalition nonprofit. They all serve different things. You may have heard dads appreciating Down Syndrome. We have a group, Arkansas Down Syndrome Network that provides baby bags and prenatal packets to genetics clinics and doctor's offices at UAMS and Children's to meet that new parent at that diagnosis and give that congratulations. So we are making partnerships, and we do have all ages being served at Gigi's.
So without further ado, this is our Gigi's ambassador and self-advocate Dennis Dixon, Um, and I'll let him just introduce himself and tell a short bit about his story. Hello, everybody. My
Dennis Dixon
Unverified
1:24:14
name is Dennis Dixon, and I also have Downs. And back in
Speaker 161
1:24:19
my day, they didn't have all this kind of service. Either you got put in a home or you, you was pretty well shunned, you know, or labeled, and you wouldn't, you know, society wasn't too kind to people like me back in my day.
But through all of it, I overcome. and now that this place has come about, now I'm able to help the younger ones now and show them what I had. During my life, I've had to do it on my own because I'm an orphan. So, you know, pretty well everything, I've had help here and there along the way. So, but now, now that this place has come along, I'm able to pass my knowledge on down.
I still have my, you know, stuff that's wrong with me and as I get older, it's just work, you know, because they say people with Down syndrome back in the day wouldn't live that long, but here I am still alive today. And living a full-filled life, you know, so. Anyway, I'm glad this place is here in order to help people because back in my day, it wasn't like this. and I'm glad y'all was glad y'all let us come out here and talk to y'all about it thank y'all
I'm 55 year old 55 year old um I found out officially I got mosaic downs mine is one of the rarest form. They say mine is like a pre-diabetic. I got it and I don't have it. So I'm writing that line on my Down syndrome. A lot of it I haven't grown out of it. A lot of it I haven't.
Mine's different than most people with Down syndrome. When they're younger, you can see they affect them a lot more than they did me. Back in my day, it didn't affect me that bad. Just maybe the looks and the hands and stuff like that. But as I've gotten older, now, you know, like my learning and stuff, and my coordinator's getting real bad, not real, real bad enough to have to use a cane now. And I didn't have to start using the cane
for until two years ago. And also, if y'all don't mind me saying this, I worked the majority of my life, and I didn't have to. I could have sat at home and draw the check, but instead I wanted to do something, not just sit there and let somebody feed me and do like that stuff. Because if I had done that, it would probably be a different situation for me. Because, you know, most of them, the majority of them are in a home or they're in a controlled environment.
And I left the orphanage when I was like 11 years old, and then I left my so-called adopted people when I was 16, 17-year-old. I've been on my own ever since. But, you know, I've learned a lot of stuff. But anyway, thank y'all for letting me come out and speak.
Katie Sursa
Unverified
1:27:37
He's amazing. Okay. Okay. So as you can see, we are very, very hard working at Gigi's to get our individuals ready for this world, to go out into the community.
The biggest thing that I think Gigi's can provide is a place for the community to get ready for our kids and for our adults. Bullying is a huge problem. And whether you have Down syndrome, whether you have autism, whether you're just the smelly kid or the fat kid or whatever that looks like, bullying is a problem in schools. And that is one of the key components of Gigi's is we have a campaign called Generation G. And in the Generation G, you pledge to be accepting, be generous, and
be kind. And that's Generation G. And we do that through everyday actions. And that's what we encourage every day. Um, we have, I don't know if you, uh, remember it was last year we had the, um, the entire Senate in permanent marker, uh, draw on their, on their hand the heart with the letter G. Um, every single one of them did it. And it was, it was phenomenal. Um, and it, we posted
that on Facebook. It went viral. It went to our national office, our national office called down here and said, we don't
Speaker 171
1:29:02
know what you're doing in Arkansas, but we want to know
Speaker 162
1:29:09
how you got into the Capitol. So I told them that our, our Capitol is awesome.
Katie Sursa
Unverified
1:29:14
And that's, that's what, that's all that we needed. So we do have insiders that are able to get us in on things like this. So Generation G is all about being better together. So this is about how GGs can partner with your
committee and with other committees that are at the Capitol, with your district, with your constituents to be able to offer services to those people like they can't get anywhere else. If you are familiar with the Medicaid billing system at all in regards to therapy, you get X amount of minutes of therapy per week. You can't go over that. However, GG's doesn't count in that. So if the child or if the adult, especially after high school, that drops dramatically, the amount of therapies that you can get, Gigi's can help fill that gap.
We are not in competition with any therapy office. We don't want to know any of your Medicaid billing information. But what we can provide may be supplemental and may give additional services where that gap may be meeting. So how do you help? And why are we here today? We are here, um, honestly begging. That's why we're here. Um, you can come and volunteer your time. Um, you can help Gigi's Little Rock by tutoring. You can attend or lead a program.
Speaker 173
1:30:34
You can teach a class. Uh, we're assembling workshops for, uh, virtual workshops that will be broadcast across the state. Um, if you have any interest in providing a topic and saying people in my district are very interested in hearing about blank. We would love to meet that need. Um, we would love to be able to address that and do that workshop, um, administrative help, or, um, if you have any special gifts and all volunteer hours are tax deductible. Um, you can give to GGs. Uh, we
Katie Sursa
Unverified
1:31:06
are, like I said, 99% volunteer led. We are a hundred percent donation and grant
driven. Um, we do not ask our families to provide anything. There is no membership fee. There is We don't ever want cost to be a barrier for our families to be able to get in our doors. So to the point where I actually,
Speaker 173
1:31:25
not actively, but I do discourage our families from donating because I want them to reach out
Katie Sursa
Unverified
1:31:31
to their communities and their churches and their families and say, this is the need that my family has. Come support us. So you can give securely online at gg'splayhouse.org slash little rock.
um oh and that's that's to also say you have a flyer for our walk that's coming up on october 12th i would be remiss if i didn't plug that so it is an awareness walk but it's more than that it's a complete festival we're taking over lake willestine park for the day and
Speaker 173
1:31:59
we're going to have a petting zoo and a special olympic obstacle course we're going to have a dj and a dance and the walk is very
Katie Sursa
Unverified
1:32:08
short um and then we're going to have lunch provided um the we are doing three team competitions. That is a new aspect this year to the walk that we're very excited
about. Um, the wackiest costume for your team is one category that you could win the most donations per team as a team together or the most members per team. Um, however, there is one office in the state that has already registered the office of Medicaid inspector general who's building a very large team. So you might have some competition. Um, but that is, that is definitely an available option.
Speaker 173
1:32:42
Um, the competition winners get a trophy and you also get a reception at
your choosing when you choose it, where you choose it. And we will, um, we will bring people with Down syndrome and maybe a board member to come and thank you for just for your contributions to GGs. Um, and then you can also take
Katie Sursa
Unverified
1:33:01
the generation G pledge today, uh, like our Senate did last year. Um, and it was just drawing a heart in the G, hashtagging it generation G and putting it on your Facebook. Um, if you do that, please also hashtag it Gigi's little rock or Gigi's L R. Um, that way it goes on our Facebook page and, and our Twitter as well.
Um, I, I really appreciate you guys giving me the time to come and speak today. I know I've covered fast and furious, everything that we have and everything that we offer. I do invite you, please, to come by and see our facility. It's beautiful, and all that we offer, we have a sensory library. We've got two tutoring rooms. We have a family room. We have a learning kitchen that is a fully equipped residential-style kitchen to be able to teach cooking classes and life skills classes. We've got a gymnasium-type area that, I mean, think yoga studio with, like,
giant wall mirrors, ballet studio without the bar. Anyway, I would love to be able to show you the facility and get you plugged in and figure out how you and your constituents can can get plugged in with GGs and how we can help you. Okay, any questions from
the committee? Seeing none. Thank you both for coming. So we do Senator Mark Johnson, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Mark Johnson
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1:34:25
I'll be very brief. First of all, I just wanted to say, Ms. Erso and Mr. Dixon, thank you so much for your presentation. I was blessed to grow up in Conway, where the Human Development Center is. In those days, they called it the Children's Colony. And I guess that was because, as you mentioned, that people with Down syndrome didn't live that long in the 50s and 60s. But in that time, I was able to meet and interact with many people that lived there.
And unlike maybe a lot of people in the world in that period of time that didn't have that opportunity, I came to learn what wonderful people they were and just came to love them. So I assume you were probably there at
Dennis Dixon
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1:35:14
one time, Mr. Dixon. No, I wasn't there, but I came from Louisiana. I've been alone. The last
Speaker 179
1:35:20
time I was in one of them places was right before I came
Speaker 180
1:35:26
to Arkansas. Okay. And as you both know, we've been blessed.
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:35:31
Senator Davis' daughter, Everly, has been a blessing to not just the Senate, I think to the entire legislature. And if we ever needed that little reminder of God's love, she has been it for us. But I want to thank you for everything you're doing. You mentioned Lake Willestine. It is in my district, Maumelle, and so if you would get in touch with me later, I'd be glad to help with the event there. And thank you so very much for everything you do.
Chair
Unverified
1:35:59
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Hammer, you're recognized.
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:36:02
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Regarding the distance, I'm amazed that you're able to do what you do, but you don't receive any state or federal funding. Is that correct? That's correct, sir. Is that because why is that that you don't
Speaker 157
1:36:21
want to receive any state or federal funding? So to be completely honest,
Katie Sursa
Unverified
1:36:26
government grants have a lot of deliverables that are sometimes difficult to meet when we are 99% volunteer led.
Speaker 173
1:36:32
For example, if we write a grant and we say we're going to have X amount of people providing services for X amount of time and halfway through the program, the volunteer moves out of state. something like that. I don't want us to get into a grant situation where we can't honor it. So we choose to provide and go through private foundations and other options
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:36:57
for funding. And with regards to, I heard you say 600 miles or the distance being the only one in the state
of Arkansas, correct? So do you find that the, is it a matter of financial inability for people to be able to come to your facility to receive services, just sheer geographic distance? It wouldn't matter if they had a travel voucher or not, just the sheer distance prohibits them, or do you have anything to enlighten us in that area? So
Speaker 157
1:37:28
I think as of right now, the biggest barrier
Katie Sursa
Unverified
1:37:30
that we have to be able to reach the rural Arkansas, if I'm understanding your question correctly, is word of mouth.
Speaker 173
1:37:39
We're so new. We're so new. And because we are the only one, I mean, the closest one is in Nashville, Tennessee, and South Texas. And so it's just a lot
Katie Sursa
Unverified
1:37:51
of the times when we tell people that we provide free services or we provide therapeutic services, there are
Speaker 173
1:37:56
automatic thoughts of, oh, well, they're going to bill something in the background or they're going to do something. We're going to require a membership or something like that. And so there's hesitations. There's flags that go up. And so it's getting over that, and it's also getting the word out that we're out here.
Because we are 100% donation-driven, we have a very small marketing budget. So we are trying to utilize all of the marketing avenues that we can that are available to us at low cost. And sometimes reaching the corners of the state requires getting on TV, requires getting commercials out or radio commercials, and those are often the most expensive forms of marketing. So people visiting, we do have a pretty good representation from around the state
simply because we have Arkansas Children's Hospital here. And so a lot of people from El Dorado, from Camden, from South Arkansas, and especially South Arkansas now that we have ACH up in Fayetteville, Bentonville area, but especially South Arkansas do have to come up here periodically for appointments When they do, we have people, representatives inside Arkansas Children's Hospital, in the genetics clinic, in the endocrine clinic, in all of the clinics that do affect our kids that have spread our information.
But I think the barrier right
Senator Kim Hammer
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1:39:25
now is just word of mouth and time. Okay, last one. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the latitude. As far as results-driven, do you have anything that shows that the way that you go about servicing the needs has greater return on results than, say, a government-funded program that has the limitations attached to the dollars?
Katie Sursa
Unverified
1:39:53
Not at this time because we're still in the first quarter of operation. However, there are other states, but as you're aware, Medicaid is a state-based, and so Medicaid in Oklahoma looks completely different than Medicaid
Speaker 173
1:40:07
in Arkansas, so it's very hard to transpose those numbers. What I do know is that in states like Illinois that have a fairly generous Medicaid budget and a fairly generous policy around that, that is where Gigi's is actually the largest.
We have five GGs around the Chicago area. We've got, I believe, one in Springfield and several throughout Illinois. So even though Medicaid is generous in Illinois, GGs is still thriving. That tells me that we have a valid and a valuable resource that even the state can't necessarily supplement. Not a member of the committee, but it would be interesting
Senator Kim Hammer
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1:40:48
to drill down on that deeper to do some comparisons on those states. Thank you for the latitude, Mr. Chair.
Any further questions? Seeing none, thank you both for coming. And seeing no other items on the agenda, we are adjourned.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Comments by the Chairs 1. Senator Bart Hester 2. Representative Charlene Fite
C. Consideration to Approve the Minutes of the July 9, 2019 [EXHIBIT C]
D. Consideration to Adopt Interim Study Proposal (ISP) - ISP 2019-134: To Amend the Law Concerning Adoptions – Representative Jason Kelly [EXHIBIT D]
E. Department of Human Services (DHS), Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS), Mischa Martin, Director - 4th Quarter Performance Report, SFY 2019, April 1, 2019 – June 31, 2019 [EXHIBIT E]
F. DHS – Division of Youth Services (DYS), Quarterly Performance Report (QPR), Michael Crump, Director and Bonnie Stribling 1. Third Quarter, SFY 2019, January 1 , 2019 – March 31, 2019 [EXHIBIT F] 2. Fourth Quarter, SFY 2019, April 1, 2019 – June 30, 2019 [EXHIBIT F1]
G. GiGi’s Playhouse Little Rock – Down Syndrome Achievement Centers, Katy Sursa, Web Director [EXHIBIT G]
H. Other Business
I. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Senator Bart Hester Chair
Unverified
Representative Lanny Fite
Unverified
Speaker 18
Speaker 21
Delaney Thomas
Unverified
Speaker 33
Speaker 34
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
Speaker 42
Speaker 44
Speaker 47
Representative Jay Richardson
Unverified
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
Speaker 49
Speaker 71
Speaker 65
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
Speaker 60
Representative Danny Watson
Unverified
Speaker 122
Speaker 132
Bonnie Stribling
Unverified
Representative Vivian Flowers
Unverified
Katie Sursa
Unverified
Speaker 161
Dennis Dixon
Unverified
Speaker 171
Speaker 162
Speaker 173
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
Speaker 179
Speaker 180
Speaker 157