Senate Children & Youth and House Aging, Children and Youth, & House Education Early Childhood

We do have a very lengthy agenda today a lot of what we're going to be presenting is information we have out of state prisoners who we have the at the miracle of zoom here with us today and be telling you more about them that in order to give them that the needed time we're going to ask members if you have questions if you will just jot those down and give those to staff and we will get those to our present are out of state presenters later and get those answers to use so that we can keep them that meeting going in a timely manner we had planned to have this particular part of our meeting back in March and then PO that hit and everything changed and so we're glad that we get to do this today I would like to give my thanks to Representative Mary Bentley she has done yeoman's work and getting this meeting to gather and bringing these presenters to our attention and helping to organize today's meeting so I'd ask her to join me here today and I'm in. Facilitating this meeting. And senator Hester cannot be with us today so she's taking his state. So the first thing we need to do is consider the minutes of our July ninth twenty twenty meeting if you have had time to look that over there China motion we have one and second all in favor say aye. Opposed say no. So the minutes for of July ninth pass next on our agenda is what we have been excited to hear the presentation on brain science of newborns and the impact of child care on development members if you will look at exhibits D. one through day three this has a lot of good information that you can take with you to look at later we are thrilled to have miss Jennifer Palmer policy associate children and family science national conference of state legislatures and doctor Serra is that lie total. Our little my top. Yes this ladle thank you late I didn't even get it either one of those doctors there a ladle director of at region education institute for learning and brain sciences university of Washington so thank you to both of you for joining us today and we will turn this part of the meeting over to you now. Thank you so much chair can you hear me OK. Yes we're hearing you loud and clear okay let me just share my screen. Thank you so much for having is good I'm Jennifer Palmer I am a policy associate here at the national conference of state legislatures or NCSL for shorts hopefully you are familiar with our work and I'll just to get quick moment to refresh you we are a bipartisan membership organization that serves all legislators and legislative staff from all states commonwealths and territories. Thank you are legislative staffer or legislature for you are automatically you just saw member so we are here to serve and support you I am ensure that legislators legislatures have with the need to be effective we do not advocate for certain policies but and she still does provide research technical assistance and opportunities for cost you makers and staff to exchange ideas with one another learn from experts. I'm as part of the policy research division I am looking here at our Denver office my work is primarily focused on the second bullet you'll see underneath our mission there which is to promote policy innovation and communication on state legislatures I have a few ways. First of all we track legislation from across the country on a wide range of early childhood topics like general care what we'll be discussing today home visiting pre kindergarten and others we house in our database I had which links the original text from each bill within summarize that legislation and assess trends in legislation and annual reports I am we also offer lots of publication so bond post policy briefs our web pages on a host of really childhood issues including hot topics and summaries of federal legislation and how that will affect you at the state level. And lastly we a major component of our work are these convenes switch little difference these days but other learning opportunities include webinars and podcasting which we dive a little bit deeper into the policies and help legislators and status of connect with researchers and experts in the field and facility that peer to peer learning. So with the pleasure of getting to know Representative Mary Bentley one of your colleagues at our last increasing gathering before we all went online that was in January at our criminal to treat policy symposium and that meeting and our ongoing work around each other policies is supported in part by the John prescriptions and the steps so when I think Representative Bentley for inviting yesterday numbers you share a little bit about what we learned in Austin that peeing on the tree policy symposium I'm gonna hear things over in just a moment Sir very qualified intelligence presenter doctors at all who's going to cover a little bit of what we learned in Austin rams really bring developments in the effects of the nurturing relationships. Young children. I just want to quickly introduce you to the rest of the early care and education team here and CSL if you have any questions about anything you learned today or you're curious to learn more about our in depth learning opportunities including our early childhood fellows program which will begin next spring I'm and we discussed a range of early childhood topics naturalistic program please get in touch with us we are here to help and provide you with a much information as possible so with that I will get things over to doctor Lytle I'm from the institute of learning and brain sciences also known as I lives at the university of Washington and excellent all weeds the outreach and education division I lapse and she regularly presents legislative members for us as well as other parents educators policymakers and leaders in the early learning community. You know a doctor. Wonderful thank you so much Jenny would you mind stopping your screen Cher so I can thank you. I'm delighted to be here with you all today I I am coming to you from Seattle and perhaps not surprisingly it's very rainy Seattle day here who were starting to get into that type of year so I hope you all are happy next and we are as Jedi mentioned I am at the institute for learning and brain sciences at the university of Washington and I wanted to take sometime this morning to really give you a sense of what we do at at I. labs that is you learning brain sciences but really to focus more on the importance of a children's early brain development why it matters and what kinds of experiences can really benefit children as our brains are developing. So at I live just give you a sense of who we are and what we do. We're fairly rich unique research institute in the sense that we are a primary research institute based at the university but we not only had an out reach it a whole host about reach sorry research labs at at I labs we also have an in house outreach education team and these are people on my team who are trained scientists you know how to communicate science it to folks who can use it and so that is really what we are taxed tasked with this idea of getting the signs out of the university and into the hands of people who can use it to make a difference in the lives of children and families our core audiences are policy makers early learning providers and hearings we do all of this with the view that that when people are have that information that can best support children when you can make research based decisions on how to support children and families we create a world in which children thrive. So why is it that we are so interested in early learning truth be told we we think about the work of I lapses being interested in human learning but we really do have an emphasis on those first five years of life and in part it's because there's an enormous amount of praying for it that's happening during those early years when children are born the brains already about twenty five percent of what they will eventually be as adults size if using had five years when when children are entering kindergarten the brains already about ninety two percent of what they will eventually be is adult size now knows that this is a size measure this is not a measure of completeness anybody who's ever spent time with a five year old knows that there's a lot of redevelopment that still has to happen but just in terms of your size and weight of the brain is really developing quite rapidly in those early years now why is that and why is that so important. Well the work of early brain development is really making connections between brain cells or neurons that children are born with children board with almost all of the neurons if they will ever have in their life that eighty six billion of them but what's missing or the connections between them so it's almost as the children are born with these telephone poles but not the wires that allow signals and communication to pass between those different telephone poles so ask children are learning new things every time they have a new experience they're building that rich network of neural connections that will allow their pre into to send signals back and forth between different parts of the brain that allows the brain to talk to each other it's makes sense of what's happening in the world. As we like to think of the sometimes we as a forest so you can imagine that children when they're early you know early on when their first board there rain looks a little bit like this image for for us on the left so the saplings are you know. Pretty flimsy the roots are very deep the branches are very long over time however with all these experiences children for miss rich network in their brain much like this dense mature or rest recieve the trunks of the trees are really strong they're going to withstand that wind storm the roots of those trees are really deep they're gonna hold that tree in place the branches of the trees are long they start to overlap with the branches of nearby trees becomes is very dense ecosystem much like children's brains in those early years. No it makes sense that as children of learning new things they're building new connections your brain has to sort of figure out when you're born what kinds of things are important what kinds of experiences you might have over and over again but it's not all about the growth and in fact there's that were important refinement that happens so we start to think of that growth as that early Puritans blooming period of brain development but it's not just about that meeting over time as your brain starts have more and more experiences in a way it's collecting data from the world that children late and so I ask have grain crunch is more data has even more information about the claims experience letter experiences that are ultimately important and likely to be repeated. You start to see the bringeth recruiting process this is very important I think sometimes we hear people say use or lose it as if that the bad thing in fact that's a very good it is a natural part of development and we know that the permitting process that allows the remaining connections to become much stronger and more efficient over time so you can think a brain development largely speaking as this three step process is blue mean pruning and then thriving. So Brady's building lots of new connections every time a child has a new experience also improving those down to really start to think about what are is important experiences that I need to routine and and hang on to for a little bit longer and then thriving over times those remaining connections become stronger and more efficient because the brain isn't able to develop and devote more resources to them now interestingly of the pruning pureed happens at different times and development for different kinds of skills me we start to see that you know the sense repairing these these peaks you can think of them as the windows of opportunity the time in development when the brain is most online to learn certain skills children tend to learn sensory skills first into the windows of opportunity for learning sensory skills happened very early and then you start to see language of voter come online and then ultimately a skills associated with higher cognitive functioning so things like planning recognizing consequences for actions and in fact you these higher cognitive skills don't seem to be fully in place until until that children are in their mid twenties so those that act that process actually goes on for quite some time that's a whole other discussion terms of thinking about the kinds of decisions that in each eighteen year old might be able to make our example so as we start to think about this blooming pruning and thriving process you start to see this pruning happening at different times and development and what that means for for us is that especially early in development children are their brains are most ready to take in a lot of these experiences rains are crying to be able to really soak in the environment learn those new experiences and learn from this new experiences and then build that rating foundation as a result of those experiences. Is when we think about you know how exactly this works you can think about a child going outside in taking the use you know the looking at them comparing that that's certainly something that happens this time of year maybe you have a child you know on you know writing he background somebody shoulders getting a new perspective on the world it's much different to be six feet tall when you're usually twenty four inches off the ground it gives you new X. perspective a new experience in each one of these things this building that brain building those connections as a child interacts with her parents maybe she's on a scooter all of these pieces continue to build and strengthen those connections and so it really is the the case that our earliest experiences bill the foundational architecture of our brains. Now what I think is really important and interesting here is just a quick note and we'll talk a little bit more about a stress and toxics trust in in a moment but. Just a note here that our earliest experiences you know children are not evaluating the experiences as they have them there simply having the experiences so it you know the experiences we described here looking at leave as you know being close to a parent or caregiver you know being on a bike all of those are relatively positive experiences in the more child has those experiences that kind of foundation that we're giving their parade. But it's not as if the town is evaluating was not a good experience or about experience is almost as if the brain is really taking in that data if a particular experience happens more frequently overtime and becomes or predictable experience and that is the experience that there that children's brains will start to think is is that baseline that normal does it that's the experience that will build that architecture brain. So what does that mean in functional terms it means that if you are a child and and and and and you are crying and somebody reliably comes over to come for you to help you to figure out what you need and take care of you that's the kind experience that that your rate as we build. In contrast if your child and when you get upset and cry you reliably learned over time that people don't really actually come over and take care of you you're gonna learn as a child that you need other mechanisms to draw attention to get what you need to get the support the comfort that you need and those those mechanisms might be perfectly functional in your environment but may not be pop not be as functional when you enter the cage all school system for example. So when you think about the kinds of experiences that children are having those earliest experiences are in fact incredibly important for deter determining not just how the brain is developed what kinds of experiences that brain expects in the world you expect the world to be responsive inclined to you or do you expect that you're going to have to make your own way you're gonna have to figure it out by yourself because people aren't coming to attend you that becomes an incredibly important point as we think about building that foundational architecture of the range we want to give you children obviously as many good quality high quality experiences as possible so they can use those to build that that brain from the bottom up during that time when we have those windows of opportunity when the brain it's most primed to learn new things. So how in the world to be studied us well. And I labs we had a machine called magnet ones off a lot of graffiti and the G. for support you can see it here pictured on the left it looks a little bit like a hair dryer from Mars but it's got this dome and babies toddlers humans adults can put their head in inside this dome and the dome has three hundred and six answers in it and that allows us to measure what and when it is activities happening in the brain so we get we get measures both of with good spatial resolution and with good temporal resolutions we can see exactly where and when things are happening in the brain as a child is engaged in a particular task on the right hand side you can see here this is baby Emma. The BMI is six months old and she's participated and experimented she's listening to sounds the sounds of language through insert your by and in in her ears right now as you can't really see those we use this particular study to see what was happening as as children have experience with language we work we wondered how the language regions of the brain we're developing. As we're looking here at the language production or the speaking area of the brain and a language perception where the listening area of the brain in particular in order to be a conversational human both of those areas both have to be active and they have to be able to talk back and forth to each other communicate back and forth to each other so you can take in what you're hearing and then you make a response alternately enjoyed in that conversation. We tested children as newborns six month olds twelve month olds to see exactly how they're parade was processing use language towns now is new warrants perhaps not very surprising newborn showed us a lot of activity as our listing the sounds and not hearing the listening area of the frame not so much activity in the production or speaking there the brain speaks acted their newborn Sir you know far from speaking first words but this house is that they're hearing the sound and that and testing. If we do my head and look at a twelve month old results here what you see is that one twelve month olds listen to language listen to the sounds of language you see activation and the fact coordinated activity between the speaking and listening areas of the brain you can kind of see that signal bouncing back and forth between those two regions in a way that lets us know that green is really primed to join in that conversation again it does kind of make sense at twelve months of age is are probably speaking or first words or on the cost of their first words this is. Effectively what we what we anticipated. What was really interesting to us is what happened in the six month old brain as six months of age you can really even start to see that there is activity both not only in the listening area frame but also in the speech frame. This is surprising to us because at six months of age children are not speaking first words the really not even babbling yet they're not really producing any language that we would consider speech like never the less as a six month old is hearing the sounds of language your brain is already doing this activation that's almost like a rehearsal kind activation the brain is saying okay what would I need to do to join in this conversation. This is very important because it means that well before you see any behavioral evidence of children actually learning language there's so much activity that's going on under the hood that's important activity that will allow that child to then become that conversational So tell us you know if somebody ever says all start talking to my child when they start talking back to me we've missed it we've missed that opportunity to give children that rehearsal kind of activation to allow those breed networks to really start to activate and figure out what they need to do to be fully functional later on. So again we take this as as very clear evidence that those earliest experiences really matter and in fact oftentimes matter before you ever see any behavioral evidence of that. Just one more quick I as evidence that experiences matter we sometimes think of children's bilingual experience as a kind of experience that kids can have in even by eleven months of age children who are raised in a bilingual environment their brains for have already specialized to hear both Allen's sounded both of the languages that they're exposed to whereas by eleven months of age you kids were born into monolingual English speaking environments have their brains have specialized for that exact experience that they. So the your brains debate the brand to be these are really you're taking in all of this information and specialized in a court so those early experiences matter. That I mentioned we talk about toxic stress a little bit we could spend you know days and days on this this is being that most brief of explanations but the idea is a toxic stress really can affect how tool greens brains develop we think of toxic stress as extract as a type of structure that is extreme on going and in the absence of relationships that can help out for the stress for the child you might think of this as chronic abuse or neglect incarcerated here and those kinds of really a dramatic kinds of stressors that that are consistent over time and when the child does not have the somebody there you know a good relationship with an adult and their life. That can help to buffer the effects of that stress tolerable stress in in and in contrast oftentimes actually could be the same kind of stress or as a toxic stress that kind of stress or but the gene the difference here is that stress is much more or much lesser when children have a strong relationship with a caring adult in their life we can help to buffer the effects of that stress so even if you know you have a parent who is incarcerated if you have another parent whose home able to explain it to you able to give you that emotional support that you need that stress where that might have been toxic now becomes tolerable and that has an enormous impact in terms of children's brain development. Other stressors are structures that we encounter every day you can think of this as you're taking a test of public speaking you know all these kinds of things that really do start to write you know make your cortisol levels rise up a little bit but then you're able to self regulate back down to the user this is actually good for performance good for your you know healthy functioning of the both your brain and body so positive structures are good thing is those toxic stressors we really worry about in terms of children's brain development you can think about toxic stressors as a can to rubbing your car engine constantly over time it's not good for the system you effectively create artificially high levels of cortisol your body's that really messes with your hormones and then you start to see it a presentation in terms of behavior that is is perhaps not optimal for children's environment so that is that is a very quick overview of talks extracts that certainly I'm happy to answer any additional questions about that if you I would like to submit those. So again this idea just coming back to this idea that relationships matter in our earliest experiences are really what bills that foundational architecture of the brain. I want to just focus very very quickly here on what kinds of release experiences you know which I hope it made the case that early experiences matter that high quality is important but what does that mean so I would just take a moment to take a little bit cheaper a UNICEF the World Bank and World Health Organization have put out this this a graph to depict the components of nurturing care all of these are important for children as they develop we of course don't have time to focus on them all day but I want to touch briefly on opportunities for early learning and responsive. Both of which have implications for child care in house support children and families in their community is. So first and foremost I would say connection is key children absolutely are social beings and they learn from human beings and relationships and that relationship can be with care giver it can be with parents and community grandparents extended family and it can be with care provider care providers are an important way that we that we give children access to adults who can be caring adults in their lives you can buy for those attacks a toxic stressed if children are experiencing the stressors but also that you know act of the axe for to get help nurture children and provide those high quality learning experiences. And as important as child care is an is hugely important I also want to recognize that you know if you think about where children are you know the those orange areas are really those areas of formal care that would be okay cage all school system any institute of higher learning but then if you look at that the zero to five space that would include child care children are in our informal care for relatively you know a few hours a day a week a year compared to what we know there other environments those informal learning environments and to see you Lou as we call it. And so as much they want to think about opportunities for increasing the quality of child care and also want us to think about ways that we can start to support children and families in community. In one of the most fundamental things that we know what regardless of whether we're talking about parents and caregivers or child care providers is that children thrive at the very basic level when their basic needs are met and are in the context of relationships with caring in response that all. I parents are best able to support their children when their basic needs are met and they had time to engage with their child and their stress levels lower manageable. And so I think there are a number of ways that we can start to think about you know how old any either how does any kind of policy that we're considering affect children and family it is whether it's impacting children directly as is often the case with with child care kinds of policies and that's fantastic there are lots there's a whole host of other kinds of policy decisions that we can make that support parents and thereby support children because we've we've created those conditions and one in which parents can be their best parenting self. So just think about it so the family leave policies of course something that very much impacts parents themselves but children by proxy high quality childcare one of those more child facing policies of course incredibly important as is you know the availability of childcare slots. Affordable housing something that affects that that unity in the family and then there by affects the child things like living wage access to services including medical care libraries and other types of community services transportation you know I I live in Seattle when I went into the office I used to take the bus into the office I was lucky and fortunate that I either had one bus to take to the office but other people have two or three buses that they need to take to get to their destination so thinking about how easy it is for children and to get to child care and then to get to their work for example and then access to services and information and and families preferred language the more more reliving and diverse and adverse environment where we really even need to respect and and provide information to families in a way that they can understand and share and this is of course not exhaustive list but I think that it's a start for us to think about your house any policy we're considering impacts families and and improves parents ability to be parents of whether it's you know having access to high quality child care at an affordable rate or whether it's their ability to be a parent to their child in the home environment I think that can be a very powerful lens through which we view our policy is. And then I just wanted to close by saying that you know I think it's really important to consider that you know as much as we thought about ABC's one two three is and shapes and colors as markers for kindergarten or in your garden ready nest certainly when I was growing up I think we have started to really shift the way we think about what kindergarten ready looks like in a way that's very positive very line with research and in fact are these are the kinds of skills that that emerge through high quality early learning experiences so for example I would much rather have a child entering kindergarten who and he turns and seek help a child can solve problems who can read and follow play who can self regulate control impulses explore the environment a child who understands routines is aware of their own motions and can shift their attention well to me again this is not an exhaustive list but a start of a kind of list that really highlight some of those skills that are potentially hard to test but the kinds of skills that result from high quality early learning experiences that are really going to be the skills that create a successful kindergartners criticized successful student in the cable system and certainly such children up for that late the the lifetime of lifelong learning so the bishop imperfect in perspective but I think that it's important particularly as we as we start to consider what those high quality early learning environments look like. So with that I'm I'm more than happy to answer any questions that you have afterwards but I would also like to point you to our website we have a lot of resources for folks including some new asset of policy briefs that we have just released will be releasing more in that series but hopefully I'll be able to get information on our website. Thank you so much. Thank you this was wonderful and I know that we have all gained a lot of knowledge and probably have some questions members if you will send those questions to staff and then they will get those answers back to you also all of the slides from today Blake will be sending out to all members so you'll be getting all of the slides from today and I know especially that will want to look at this training and resource library again thank you both of you for being with us today this was just very valuable we appreciate your time. Members if you will look on our agenda next we have the presentation on home visits program by Susan under would. And I'm sorry was your question over there. Okay by Susan under would with the Arkansas better chance program Arkansas department of education so if you will come forward and introduce yourself and and the person with you. Sure your Mike is on. It is now hi good afternoon my name is Laurie bridges and I am with the Arkansas department of education and the division of elementary and secondary education as the director of early childhood programs and Susan under would is the manager for our ABC our state funded grant that provides early high quality early childcare preschool and programming for the state of Arkansas. And you are recognized to begin your presentation. This what a wonderful lead in to the high quality early child care that we provide in Arkansas with our ABC grant our main goal for the ABC state funded preschool program is that preparation of young children for kindergarten elementary school in providing all of those rich learning and experiences that Jennifer and Serra just shared with us effective preschool programs they lay a foundation for children subsequent school success by imparting that very knowledge abilities and dispositions children need to succeed in school. And our ABC better Arkansas better chance program has an income requirement for eligibility families gross income must fall at two hundred percent or below the federal poverty level. Children living in homes that have an income greater than two hundred percent of the federal poverty level are in eligible at a hundred percent funding but we they can qualify on a sliding scale fee and or if they meet any other at risk factors. For example if we have a family of four making below fifty two thousand four hundred dollars a year they would qualify for ABC preschool at no additional charge to the family. If you have a single parent with one child making below thirty four thousand four hundred and eighty dollars they would qualify for ABC preschool at no additional charge to their families. We have a couple of different program models in an ABC we have the center based high quality early learning model which is your child care centers we have public schools that have pre K. in their schools and then we have co ops that provide and learning those early learning experiences for children as well but our center based and. We require you know part of our and ABC program model requires staff qualifications we have highly qualified staff working with these young children the teachers have a degree in early childhood or child development our pair professionals they have a minimum of a child development associate degree. they have access to quality learning environments we use quality rating scales to come in and rate arch her early learning environments and they have to rate it a five or higher in their environmental rating scale we have a low student to teacher ratio to help with the and it shows their infants wonder for toddlers one to seven in preschool age one to ten so that provides a lot more one on one and engagement for those children the instructional time we and the minimum a hundred and seventy eight days a year seven days seven hours a day so it really follows the school calendar and the school day hours. The staff professional development in this is very important ABC requires a minimum of thirty hours a year for both licensed teachers and or pair professionals lots of different areas for those professional development requirements we do have Arkansas child development and early learning standards in Arkansas for birth to M. sixty months and just like the presentation earlier and right before us that we're talking about the social emotional and that is the big umbrella that we focus on the social emotional development we also have you know and professional development offered for cognitive development health and physical development language development emergent literacy and math medical thinking. The other program model is our home visiting model and home instruction for parents of preschool youngsters which the acronym is hippie if you hear them referred to hippie it's our Arkansas state funded programming we that's focused on and children ages two to five and then we have parents as teachers the P. A. T. model which is birth to five and in this program model we have the home educators that visit homes to provide support for parents with educational enrichment activities for their children they also provide group connection opportunities once a month for parenting they the children get other social interaction with other children during that time and the parent developing networking system with monks themselves and are able to share resources in that community we have health and developmental screenings that are required that way we can. Look and see if there are any red flags for any developmental issues that we want to pursue to see if we can provide therapies and early interventions. Those home educators provide books and resources learning materials and things that support the parents during those visits and I'm going to show up to minute video of a parent talking about the impact of the home visiting programs here in Arkansas for. While they're working on that I did bring a back up plan I have a script of a parent that talked about back in March when they were they got the news that schools would be shutting down due to the current of virus she said she was lost she had four children that were ages eight six for an eight month old and her hands were full and then she got the news that she needed to take on the role of a teacher for her eight and six year old and she said that they were thrown some and educational package and that was about all she had to provide the education for her her children she was scared she said I really wanted to learn and wanted them to learn and not just completed for truancy sake she took a minute and she reminded herself that you know she's been involved in the hippie program since our children were old enough to sign that I always wanted them to have a great education in with hippie I learned it was so much more than just getting your kid ready for school she was amazed at how much and she learned and was able to bond through those lessons and activities that were provided by the home educator we also have many family memories from hippie monthly meetings and the lessons that she made friends that have been wonderful social supports including the home instructor and she said the lady who enroll the children which are our coordinators are site coordinators she looked we laughed together with each other we cried together but most importantly we have grown with each other the hippie lessons gave me the backbone of teaching that I needed to get through this few months of getting my child my children to the next grade now we have potentially you know not knowing when they were going to be going back to school because of because of it but she felt very supported through the hippie program on learning how and what she needed to do to interact with her children with those lessons I know. How to read through a lesson plan now and I can comprehend it I know how to engage with my children so that they are interested and absorb the information I know how to extend on a lesson if the child is in grasping it right away and I know how to keep Mike home and wait for that light bulb moment and so much more without his be I really would be grasping at straws include lists on how to do all of this. So that was at an excerpt from a parent on how she felt he be supported her through those time. You know home visiting focuses on supporting the parents we really believe that parents are doing the best they can with what knowledge they have one child development and so we feel it's our job is as home educators is to provide them with the knowledge in the learning activities that they can provide for their children to help them be kindergarten and school ready in these difficult times right now home educators they plug play the role in providing these and experiences but they've had to think outside the box they've had to and. Doing a lot of the face to face with these parents their doings zoom in face times they're doing front porch meetings are meeting at the parts where they can be outside and be able to socially distance while they provide these lessons and activities for their families They have drive through pick ups where they can get the materials and supplies or they deliver I'm to their front porches at their homes but these monthly group connections are scheduled to help those social interactions with children and provide that networking for the families. Early intervention is a huge piece of our ABC program in our early childhood programs throughout the state of Arkansas early intervention services can change a child's developmental path and improve outcomes for children families and communities we provide health screenings vision hearing dental screenings we have provide developmental screenings to see if there are any developmental delays a lot of time those of the first times parents realize that their children. Need glasses or you know have that hearing impediment so these screenings are important to help them get those early interventions we provide those meaningful parent and community engagement activities we have. Approved research based curriculum that aligns with Arkansas child development and early learning standards birth through sixty months we provide formative child development assessments to make sure that they are progressing on those milestones that we expect for them to see throughout birth to five and we provide early childhood special education services if they are if they qualify for speech language occupational therapy physical therapy or any of those Services they are provided either through the school district special education programming or through the co ops. Or they can be have private providers if they choose to. Now I'm gonna turn it over to Susan under would and she's going to talk a little bit about what this funding and how it is ex you know put out in the state of Arkansas and the locations of these programs. I apologize for the technical difficulties here maybe we need some of those four year olds to coming here and help us out here for the program you're twenty twenty one you can see on your on your hand out we have awarded twenty three thousand four hundred twenty seats within that that is Senator based and home visiting and you can see that there are two hundred thirty nine agencies some of these agencies have both center based and home visiting opportunities from those two hundred thirty nine Thank agencies you have school districts you have educational cooperatives you have the community based early childhood education programs which is the private Private programs and also the family care homes you have the home visiting and you also have the higher education institutes. The internet and then you can see also on the map where it is dispersed in the different counties. Now these numbers in each of the counties represent the awarded center based on this slide. the the agencies have the flexibility to have the seeds and they're able to move them into the sites where the needs are for those communities so you may have a say like a call while. And they oversee and they run several different programs throughout the year Cooper region well one year they may need several seats for for euros the next year they don't need so many so they can they can move them around and it's flexible in that way. We a I want you to also knows that are programs have They utilized several different funding sources not only just ABC but they also have the child care development funds the CCDS and that's out of the DHS there is also we have head start programs that provide head start a services and ABC services we have programs that do tuition it could be a parent pay or it could be that the program has a tuition that will allow other children to come even though that they may not qualify. title funds many the school district's use it utilize title funds to support the programs the national school lunch the child nutrition all of these support additional educational opportunities to for children. There are next slide shows the home visiting seats and you can see and you think well wait a minute you don't have any seats in my county that I oversee well it could be it it it again it depends on the family's needs so we may have a concentrated in one area but then we have through four families this is we really want to do home visiting so our home visitors will also pick those up so what we show you today may change tomorrow so they have that flexibility in that bill it to to move it wherever the children and the family's needs are in the community. And then we wanted to show you also Lori mentioned the bitter beginnings this is something that our partners from DHS the division of elementary and skews me on on the Long my. You can you know that there's no child care and early childhood education we also all of our programs are licensed through DHS and they also have the better beginning scales so what Laurie was saying our programs are of quality and we strive to be the at least the highest quality that we can. And then you see there that there is a link that says find childcare that is also on the DHS websites so families throughout the state or providers throughout the state grandparents throughout the state can click on that and find programs within their community where there is there county or their city or their zip code and I can also look and see what level of quality the programs are. And I would like to also let you know that through is been founded that in spite of risk factors and economic academic achievement gap students who attend a B. C. programs often perform better on state assessments have a lower retention rates than children who have not been able to participate in pre K. programs throughout the this state. These results are sustaining through late elementary school level and this was founded by research through the university of central Arkansas of the Arkansas research center. So I would we really appreciate you allowing us to come and share a little bit more about the Arkansas better chance program by senator based and home visiting. Thank you so much this was very helpful and brought back lots of happy memories of my time is when I worked for Fort Smith public schools and work with their children in the ABC programs to the special ed services so we appreciate this and again members if you have any questions please send those to Blake it staff and we will get those answers to you I'm sorry we can't take a lot of time for questions today because we do have such a long agenda but if you do have something feel free to take advantage of that thank you again and our next presentation is Sam on childhood facilities and early childhood education Arkansas during co that nineteen this a exit exit that act in your packet and we will hear from Tonya Williams director of Arkansas department of Human Services and any others who are with her today I think your lan I thank you so much. Thank you members I appreciate so much being here thank you I think Mike's going to help me get the navigation for my power point I really wanted to talk to a little bit about I think it's really important for you to see where we were back in March before co that hit with relationship to child care and early childhood education and then where we are today and I can kind of talk about what's happened in between so prior to hope it hitting we license about two thirty a little over two thousand programs in Arkansas child care centers and bam family childcare homes who care for children birth through school age thanks bye. Like I'm gonna make sure and I had it how do I of forward on your computer. Okay all right good deal these are different I have a test right now in the office of changed everything so we have the capacity serve over in hundred ninety four thousand children back in March. At about thirteen hundred of those programs participated in our quality writing and improvement system Arkansas better beginning switch season was just talking about that's levels of quality and our programs. And about eighteen thousand six hundred fifty one children are funded through the division of child care on our federal talk here development block grant in two thousand nineteen we are also one of three states that administers an early head start program many of you probably have an early head start program in your community administered by a local entity that as a state Arkansas chose to ride for a grant several years ago so we serve a hundred sixty eight infants and toddlers through partnerships with local programs in addition to what's available within the communities. Currently there are one thousand nine hundred eleven programs. With the capacity to serve a hundred sixty three thousand children and I just want to talk for a moment this changes almost daily and here's why. If a facility has the case they're generally going to be overly cautious and close even though they don't have too many times. Sometimes they will close a classroom. But many times the facility will close the entire facility for a short period of time and quarantine those children for a two week period so these numbers fluctuate daily we are tracking that daily. And we have twenty programs that have closed permanently thirteen Mar centers. Really all over the state there's no particular rhyme or reason to it and I have a list I can get you a list of those that have indicated to us that there permanently closing and seven more family childcare homes in the state of Arkansas the capacity of those programs with a thousand fifty three they started about a thousand children between those twenty facilities. They're also facilities at the mention that or intermittently closing and then there are some head start programs and other programs that are doing virtual learning that are allowed to do that so they still have a license and I may open back up at some point but they're doing virtual learning. And we have about thirteen hundred seventy one programs participating in better beginnings that's increase which is a good thing. and we're serving about sixteen thousand seven hundred fifty four children. From July one three today so that number will be bigger this year because the number that I shared with you for last year was through the whole year so just from July through October we've served at you now almost as many as we did last year so it will it will be much bigger and it will be bigger because we have funding to do self and I'll talk a little bit more about the funding. and then we have our children in early head start we are at full enrollment we do have one or two programs they're doing virtual. In that. And some of you I think I came over presented earlier this year about the childcare development block grant that we receive to the cares that that was about forty one million dollars that funding was utilized the feds had actually set up the federal government at an administration for children and families had actually delineated how that should be used for programs so I just wanted to kind of give you a break down we can hi all of our license programs and and we've tried we've attempted to do that and who have remained open or who have re opened during the pandemic so we paid about two point nine million two programs that were open from March through today. And we've also put funding and paid about six point three million for programs to meet the pandemic requirements the wearing of masked by staff screening children before they enter the building screening staff before they enter the building at cleaning cost and supplies so we've provided about six point three million dollars across the state to programs for that. We reimburse programs for actual deep cleaning so this is when there's an actual pay and I need to close a classroom or just claim that facility and we've reimbursed about it's actually a little bit higher I looked at it today it's about forty thousand little over forty thousand but when I did the report last week for Senate over to black with thirty one thousand nine hundred seventy eight. And. And we will continue to pay for that deep cleaning as long as we have funding available. We have also provided additional funding for programs because I mentioned to you in March ahead and over two thousand programs by about the middle of a parole we had about half of those programs close right it's the middle of April about a thousand programs were open. We put into place the ability to pay a little bit extra because what's happening out there is families are not we're not taking their children and so providers are really struggling financially so we were able to get additional money to pay for about for children that we already pay for and a little bit extra to those programs to help offset that so we've continued to provide that supplemental funding for children who do receive our federal chopper block grant funding we also which is brand new with the forty one million are able to pay for families who are essential workers and that's very broad categories individuals who work in the healthcare profession so nurses doctors but anybody who works in a hospital or medical clinic would be eligible for that regardless of income we can pay for individuals who work in childcare and education A sanitation public health food supply chain manufacturing so we've added a little over six thousand families and and we are at the capacity to add anymore families with their funding and will be able to serve these families through the end of the year but and less more funding is available we will not be able to add more families and we've notified families are programs about that we free up any money because someone doesn't utilize it we will be able to add more and we'll take those that we have applications on so we're continuing to do that but we're really at our capacity there and when I sent over the report on ten five we'd spent twenty four point five million we're really about twenty six million roughly twenty six million and as of this week and and the book of that will be now in the essential worker category as well as the deep cleaning and sanitation that's really where I remaining fans will be. I just a list of the pandemic requirements those have been after we presented those back in may but they're on the agency's website they really haven't changed significantly really since may and but it's really that wearing of mass screening and keeping the group size of children down to ten and that way we can help contain the spread of the illness I wanted you all to be aware and about two hundred and seventy three children as of October fifth this has increased and have been have been reported to us that were in child care and early childhood settings at having hope it and FOR hundred sixteen staff it's almost double for children and staff it's for everyone child it's almost to staff that have it so just to have a sense of the impact that it's having and that number unfortunately continues to increase we are collecting that data and continue to monitor that and but I wanted to be aware of what's been reported to the agency. I want to talk a little bit about challenges and I certainly don't want to pretend to know all of them we do have a bi weekly call with providers I think that's been really important to communicate to provide updates to them we do record those now put those on the agency website and I think it's been a big shift in the funding model for these programs many programs probably about four hundred did not take any funding from our agency and very respectful of that nobody should have to take funding for mass that's a choice that people make but what happened when code hit is many families that were generally going to pay for services stop going and so those programs were really deeply impacted by that lack of funding so some of the programs that didn't participate in funding with the agency have not called into high would really like to maybe serve some families that are essential workers or that or might be low income families so we've been working and really been able to get it several hundred programs in that key which is a great thing I think for us to expand our ability to serve all families in Arkansas and again many families are not taking their children if they have that ability to do remote work that might not be taking them so that does impact the finances for these programs and then We have I'm starting to hear and I I am very concerned about this I would want you to be aware that there programs really struggling with hiring staff or having staff available at the more people who get have would the more impact that has on think that's probably true of everything that we do every job every sort of situation that I'm starting to see more of that and that you know just wanted to raise that as something that we're continuing to monitor at but I think that's probably one or more programs are closing even shortly for short periods of time interment periods of time I'm gonna shift gears for just a second I'm so delighted I didn't know the guest speakers we're going to be here but I've used this brain development slide for the past probably decade because I think it's really important people now that everything that we do at the division of child care and early childhood education is driven by the science and so it it just goes right in sync with what they're saying about how children's brains develop and for quality early care and education is important we cannot just put children in places without thinking about the quality art impacts the education and the work in Los success in the economics of the state so I just kind of underscore that and then lastly I have two slides and you'll have these handout and there are many many things to talk about but I think the contrast of what's available for infants and toddlers when you think about brain development and what's available for pre school is really important and so I'm just going to kind of summarize it for you you can look at it very carefully it we have it by your county but quite frankly for almost every county it's about double for preschool for you have about half the supply for babies many of you have grandchildren are again people in your after having babies and looking for a job here well now this it is really really hard for young people to fund infant toddler care. and then throwing high quality and is a whole other level but it's just really difficult and it's very cost prohibitive for programs quite frankly the ratios are lower you want to be to be able to have that brain development and relationship building that the guest speakers talked about that responsible here giving is very critical and but I just wanted to for you all to have that information and then just resources from the division shop here and and where we use that so I will stop there and I know that like knows how to reach me and I know you guys have a full agenda but it's always a lot and I appreciate you all for your work. Thank you so much thank you for being with us. Next we have presentation on tax credits for child here in Arkansas this is exhibit G. I saw Charlie Collins commissioner revenue come in with D. F. and A. And call hearing assistant commissioner revenue with D. F. and I. so gentleman welcome to the committee glad to have both of you with this today thank thank you very much madam chairman name is Charlie Collins on the commissioner of revenue with D. F. and A. Thank you madam chair Paul gearing sister revenue commissioner for DFA. And at the madam I think up. Paul gearing sent some information without response and he's actually prepared that in the form of a power point so that's what's getting set up now and have be able to walk through that fairly quickly I think and then if you're into the other members have any questions will be happy to answer. Okay so much and that's exhibit G. members. Madam chair members of the committee we are going to be talking about the there is childcare credits for and they're available as a credit against Arkansas income tax bill under Arkansas law. the first credit is just know generally as a child care credit it's an income tax credit that's available to individuals for expenses for household independent care services and there necessary for gainful employment the child care credit that's available under twenty six fifty one five oh two A and B. it piggy backs on the federal dependent care and child care credit under twenty six USC twenty one. What is available under the federal credit and in Arkansas is is twenty percent there is a a new there are numerous iris publications that talk about and explain how the taxpayer can claim the federal credit. there is a publication five oh three as well as publications except to. The child care credit under Arkansas law that were speaking under twenty six fifty one five oh to a in the it's taken on line thirty five of the taxpayer's individual income tax return this is a non refundable credit. A DFA was asked to look at the past two years of returns to see AJ the amount of utilization of the credit in Arkansas in twenty eighteen for the child care credit we identified fifty four thousand and seven returns that were filed with approximately six point three million credits that were claimed. Twenty nineteen no of course we are still receiving returns to route two thousand twenty for the twenty nineteen tax year but we have process fifty one thousand two hundred fifty four returns that claimed as roughly six million dollars and credits. The second child cry A care credit that will be discussing is the early childhood program credit this credit it also piggy backs off of the federal tax credit for dependent child care expenses. It is also a twenty percent credit based upon the amount of the available federal credit that is taken on the taxpayer's federal tax return as well as iris form twenty four forty one how this credit differs from the first child credit is that this is a refundable tax credit. But the requirement of this credit is that the The credit requires that the child care expenses be paid to an approved childcare facility that provides a appropriate early childhood program and that is approved under Arkansas law. It's taken under line forty three the tax payers individual income tax return. A what's also noted that does under Arkansas law you cannot claim both the child care credit in the early childhood program credit. And the third credit is I'd in twenty six fifty one five zero eight. I'm sorry for skip ahead the returned information for the early childhood program credit for two thousand nineteen we had one thousand seventy six returns filed four hundred thirty seven thousand dollars in credits taken twenty eighteen we had nine hundred fifteen returns filed claiming the early childhood program quick credit with a hundred fourteen thousand dollars in credit is claimed. And then the third credit that we were asked to provide information on which the employer provided childcare credit A this is a credit that is available for a business that operates or contract OPC operated childcare facility for providing child care services to its employees. The credit is calculated at three point nine percent of the annual salary of the employees that are employed in providing child care or a five thousand dollar credit for the first year the business provides employees with the child care facility. The facility must be licensed under the child care facility licensing act and also must have an appropriate early childhood program under Arkansas law. the credit may be carried forward for the first year and if it's the can if they cannot be utilized in the first year for an additional two years. The employer provided childcare credit may be two more businesses may decide to participate in the program together if they chose to do so that each business is allowed a credit in the amount of the three point nine percent of the salary of those employees. Who's that business payroll are dedicated for providing child care services. The first year five thousand dollar credit is pro rated among the business is based upon the costs paid by each business for the initial construction and equipping the facility. A we did look at the last two years of returns for eighteen and nineteen to see if any taxpayers claim the benefit of the employer provided childcare credit under twenty six fifty one five zero eight we were unable to locate any returns that claim the benefits of this credit. I would be happy to answer any questions. I am seeing one question. I am now at one of wine. Is to. Are there employee is qualified to receive money from twenty million set aside for teachers if they have to miss work due to cope it. I'm so sorry I'm sure could you repeat that you know I'm thinking this question may have been I may have not seen this in time they were asking if employees are qualified to receive money from twenty million set aside for teachers if they have to miss work due to cope ID. That question probably was not for you I'll try to get an answer from an earlier witness on that one and did you say we had another question. Representative Slape. Okay we we will get answers to those thank you both so much for being with us thank you madam chair thank you committee thank you. Jennifer levo with the bureau of legal research. Is also here with us today and had some information to share with the committee. Thanks for being with us. You hear me or. Used to being up here. Me assure that your green light is on. my name is Jennifer Lee well I work for the bureau of legislative research in the tract infection I have been asked to provide information to this committee on the differences between Arkansas and Missouri childcare facility laws and regulations and season members you will see this as a separate packet it says Arkansas versus Missouri differences in childcare facility licensing laws so that's what we're gonna be talking about. the bureau of legislative research is the general assembly's nonpartisan impartial staff services agency as an employee of the bureau nothing I say should be interpreted as advocating either for or against an issue. so looking at Arkansas visit at versus Missouri and child care facility. laws I think that what. I spotted as some differences between the two I'll start with Arkansas and Missouri differ on the definition of child care facility under Missouri law a house or other places a child care facility of more than six children are provided with care or three children under two years of age are provided with care in Arkansas and child care facility is a facility that provides care training education or supervision for any unrelated minor child. However under Arkansas law there is a presumption of the places a child care facility if at least ten or more minors are under the guardianship of the owner or operator of the facility. Missouri requires child care facilities to disclose their licensure status to parents and guardians parents and guardians must sign and notice of being advice of the licensing status of the facility child care facilities miss owes a provide parents and guardians with the written explanation of the disciplinary philosophy in policies of the child care facility. Arkansas does not have a similar statute. Missouri codified the right of a parent or guardian of a child who attends A license chair childcare facility to have access to the care facility and the providers of care in the child care facility there is an exception of course for parents or guardians who are subject to a court order restricting access to the child. In Arkansas. We don't have a similar statute however the access rights of the parent or interest in the Arkansas regulations parents cannot be denied access to their child at any time during a child care facilities hours of operation. Under Missouri law any person planning to offer daycare for more than four unrelated children must apply for a license. In Arkansas any person desiring to operate a facility must apply for a license. under Missouri law family day care home is required to have a license when there are four or more. Unrelated children being cared for in the home. in Arkansas license is required for a family daycare the care home when one or more persons care for six or more children. in Missouri childcare facility must be licensed to provide nighttime care Arkansas does not have the same requirement of Missouri in Arkansas have different additional requirements for night time care for example. Missouri requires the provider in the family day care home to be in close proximity to the sleeping child whereas in the group child care home or child care center at least one care provider must be awake at all times they don't have alternative compliance for these requirements in Arkansas. Of the care giver staff members must be awake at all times childcare family homes may request an alternative compliance. Missouri regulations provide that licenses are granted for two year terms and then renewal of the license is required Arkansas law does not have renewal provisions for licensing here in licenses licenses remain in effect until suspended or revoked. Missouri codify the C. sleep policy child care facilities must implement and maintain a written face the policy. Arkansas has not codify the cease the policy however Arkansas regulations require care givers to receive training and safe sleep practices. Missouri law requires religious organizations that operate a facility to provide parents and guardians with a notice of parental responsibility. Arkansas does not have a similar statute. This label I think we're going to leave off there and let people just look at this at their leisure and get with you for any questions that they have we can see that there are some significant differences between the two states but many similarities as well so let me give members a chance to look at this on their own and then they can contact you here at the bureau if they have specific questions if that's alright that's fine thank you so much for being with us today thank you. Next we have the Arkansas department of Human Services rules for review we have the minimum licensing requirements for child care centers license check your family homes out of school time facilities and rest your child care family homes that's exhibit H. one. If you would just introduce yourselves to the committee. Thank you madam chair more quiet with DHS. Kelly held or with the division of child care and early childhood education. Thank you you're recognized. Good afternoon we have proposed changes this afternoon to the minimum licensing requirements for child care centers out of school time programs licensed childcare family homes and registered family homes. The first change were proposing it is to comply with the DHS policy ten eighty eight regarding individuals who are excluded from doing business with the department of Human Services. This change would mean that these individuals and related parties who are excluded from doing business with the department of Human Services would not be eligible to apply for a child care license. The second change states that submission of false information to the division of child care and early childhood education is grounds for revocation of the child care license. And that third change removes language that's no longer applicables so for example in twenty fourteen we made changes to the staff to child ratios. There was language in there stating that. Providers that were licensed at that time had five years to comply those five years are now up so that language is no longer necessary. And then the last change is only for the out of school time facilities. And it would require them to have immunization records or an exemption by the department of health for the children that they have enrolled in their programs and this changes to comply with the federal block grant required requirements. Thank you members did you have any questions about this rule changes. Then without objection the real has been reviewed thank you thank you thank you. Next we have department of Human Services division of children and family services. Mister Martin the director is here to present the report. And that director Martin if you would so chooses I think instead of doing the quarterly performance report we could put that together with the annual report card for July first through June thirtieth twenty twenty that's exhibit J. two. Thank you Matt thank you madam chair I'm Mr Martin on the director of children and family services and you may want to go back and look at the corner just because that was the first quarter of the pandemic and so there's some interesting numbers and you can kind of see how DCFS was impacted in that first quarter but for the most part you know the all of it is covered in the annual report so I'll start with the annual report also known as I'm going through the annual report that there's several appendixes in the back of the report that are broken down by county so if you're really interested and what's happening in the county that you cover the you might want to flip to the back and look at the appendix related to specific county so I'll just jump right in if that's okay madam chair. Thank you all start on page one AM which again this is our annual report card by state fiscal year so July twenty nineteen through Jan of twenty twenty you can see our volumes of calls that went to the child abuse hotline I accepted calls is thirty one thousand one hundred and forty two you I once those ARE accepted there broke down and assigned to either crimes against children division which you'll hear from later or division of children and family services where we ate we were responsible for twenty five thousand five hundred and forty seven either investigations or difference response which you can see further broken down on the bottom of page one. Moving on to page two you can see the percentage of the calls that were accepted where trees so DCFS found about twenty two Total of twenty four percent. Moving I'm not going to cover everything because I know I go through this pretty regularly with you also I I guess I will take questions at the injured during madam chair which would yes we will save all the questions for at the end because some might be answered as we go through the presentation thank you madam. Serve moving on the page three you will see reports involving fatalities in near fatality is the specific those specific cases are in the back in the appendix different a response which is our lower level maltreatment that we receive or we go out and training gauge with the family and serve this family some of those are educational neglect with their older years you can also see on the bottom of page three the types of educational neglect that we received and and environmental neglect to being our highest number of differential response cases that we received. I'm on page four is timeliness of investigations we stayed about similar to the law to the prior two years of twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen we had a slight increase in timeliness of initiation to eighty eight percent on party one AM a party ones are are more severe amount treatments and require a response within twenty four hours and party tease for the most part response time within seventy two hours on the bottom of page for you can see timely completion of child maltreatment investigations and we stayed in line with the prior two years but we have seen improvements going back to twenty seventeen which is the first year covered in the report. Moving on the page five again back to different to response you can see timeliness of initiations as well as timely closure on different response I'll just let you look at those and then I'll move on to page six which is re occurrence of maltreatment this is one measure of of how we gauge how well we're doing our children coming back in the system are they having repeat calls and investigations were at maltreatment we did go up one percent from the I have prior three years but we've held about study on reoccurrence of mount treatment and then you can see reoccurrence amount treatment among families who had different response cases on the bottom of page six again we went one percent but it held pretty steady. And then moving on the page seven which is our in home cases in just as a reminder we serve more children and home than we do in foster care so the bulk of our in home cases are when there is a true finding that children remain in the home are not placed in foster care and at the end of twenty nineteen twenty twenty I should say at the end of twenty twenty or June of twenty twenty we were serving five thousand seven hundred and twenty four children at that point in time you will see later on in the port report a total of how many children we serve throughout the year and I can probably just go ahead and jump to that really quick because I think that's more telling as far as how many total children we serve over the course of twenty twenty and our in home cases we served eleven thousand four hundred and ninety children and that's on page nineteen you can see there on the bottom of page seven the average number that those cases are open and we don't have a set number that they're open or what we're targeting towards it's working with the family engaging and seeing when they no longer need S. to be involved in their lives. Moving on the page eight you can see at the types are ages of children that are involved in our in home cases and then the bottom of page eight you can see our monthly visits and we have been pushing and promoting among our culture and our staff that in home visits are important those that those kids are actually are of a most vulnerable population because they remain in the home they have a tree maltreatment so having those monthly visit to sometimes even more than monthly is really important to ensure the safety and see we made that a priority even that we went down in a percentage from last year you can see that we have had a pretty substantial over the past four years. Moving on the page nine which talks about victimization rates among children who received a protective in support of services of the children who began receiving and home protective services one year prior to SF wire state fiscal year twenty twenty seven percent experienced a true finding later so of the children he began receiving supportive services those are the cases where the families come to us at DHS and ask for help three percent were involved in a tree report within one year. Moving on to foster care. M. pages ten foster care you can see our numbers have been increasing in foster care I'm sad to say since the became pandemic has started we have started to see and up up tick in our cases in foster care Esau slight uptick like what is it less than fifty sixty from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty most of that really started at the beginning of the pandemic and has continued we have continued to CS light up take and kids in foster care I will talk more about that in just a minute and which you can see our age as well as characteristics of children in foster care in the middle of page ten and then what super important to note on the bottom of page in which bottom of page ten is really how it how we should be talking about number of children in foster care and what's happening and we've actually broken that down by county about mine it compared to prior years we are not seeing an increase in entries in the foster care we're seeing a decrease in the discharges so we did have that three month period of time where we are in phase one and we work closely with our judicial partners with our staff to try and make sure that services in court or hearing but like everything else thing shut down and so when things that down parents don't get services court hearings don't happen so orders don't get any entered I'm really proud of the work that and the partnership that we have with the judiciary that things are back running and that our service providers are back providing services but there is a window where a lot was not happening in is going to cause a delay in discharges which can subsequently cause an increase in the number of children in foster care. Page eleven reasons for injury in foster care there's really remain steady as to prior years with substance abuse and neglect continuing to be at the top reasons and just remember you can have more than one reason for entering foster care. On the bottom of page eleven looking at reasons for discharge I think it's always interested and interesting to note that forty two percent of our children who we're in foster care did reunite with their families and and many others went with relatives so you can do relatives are categorized in multiple different categories because you can have relative adoptions you can have relative custody that have relative guardianship but also many of our children this did did discharge to relatives that that particular number is not captured in that chart I'm moving on to page twelve you can see in the length of time link of stay in foster care broken down by number of days and we do you have thirteen percent of our kids who are in foster care for thirty six months or longer and which is not a good thing but we work to find permanency for those kids whether through adoption or whatever their goal is and but we don't believe that children should be raised in foster care and placement of children in foster care this is just a breakdown of the types of placement that we have on that that thirty one percent of our children are placed in relatives we have different types of relative placements which you can see in the red box above the thirty one percent thirty four percent and foster homes and then broken down on the different types of placement that kids can be and there in the middle of the page twelve and you can see on the bottom of page twelve the different types of goals in the percentage of the kids most of our kids do you have a goal of reunification which means they're working with the person from whom custody was removed which is typically the parent. Moving on a page thirteen you can see we break down case work visits for foster care not only from the family service worker I which is the first are at that at the big a beginning which we've you can see we focused on making sure that our kids are seen as you can see the increase in the percentage of of those visits monthly but also our program assistance which are really a cornerstone of our our and program a lot of our kids see program assistance pretty regularly so we wanted to include that number to show that our kids are being seen by an employee at DCFS moving on the page fourteen siblings being placed together is that he's initiative for us and why we saw a slight decrease in the number of siblings place together and it is still something that we're focused on and really committed team. Placement stability on the bottom of page fourteen and we continue to be much above the national standard which is not a good thing but as you can see from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty we are focusing continue to reduce the placement stability number which means we are decreasing the number of meals from children in foster care from foster home to foster home facility to facility and so forth but we still have a lot of work to do and it's still a struggle for our staff in the children in foster care. You can see on page fifteen permanency within twelve months so we want our children to move through the system safely right the longer children are in foster care the harder it is to move them to permit city so one of the federal standards that we monitor is permanency within twelve months of entering foster care now as you can see we are now above the national standard at forty seven percent and and this and this measure it's a good thing we are above the national standard that forty seven percent of our children are moving to permanency within twelve months but on the negative of that we have seen a slight decrease from the prior year's and I do think it's very much related to the last few months of the pandemic that we solid decrease so permanency and safety are our focus going into the next year you can see on the bottom the re entries in the foster care so you were in the foster care you went home or you went anywhere you went to you were adopted you went home you with the relative this re entry is as re entries back in the foster care and we're right at the national standard for re entries in the foster care. Moving to page sixteen looking at children available for adoption as you can see we have continued to decrease the the number of children available for adoption you can see the characteristics of those children on the bottom of page sixteen you can see on the top of page seventeen the placements that those children currently and thirty percent of those are in foster homes thirty two percent are and therapeutic foster care and so on and so forth am one of our major priorities with with permanency is at the length of time from termination of parental rights to adoption we've seen a substantial increase you can see that on the bottom of page seventeen and that is definitely a priority for us in the next year I can talk in more detail if any of your interested but we've put together work groups on processing maps we've asked for some technical assistance we have strength in our partnerships with entities nonprofits like project zero but really it comes down to ask in our ability to move children from termination to adoption with an appropriate time period. You can see on page eighteen I'm really proud of the last three years that the number of adoptions finalized and we did have a slight decrease this year again we saw a significant drop in the fourth quarter of state fiscal year I'm I have full I have a fully certain that with our partnerships with the core and are non profits that we will be a be back on track and this state fiscal year and the pandemic will not slow us down. You can see on the bottom of eighteen AM subsidize the adoptions so adoptions that our children who are eligible for for easy federal funding and meet certain criteria at the the the adoptive parents do receive a subsidy if the child is not for each eligible that meets other criteria at the adoption can be subsidizes state general revenue and that is a very simplified explanation of that process but the child does have to be special needs and that special needs definition is on the right on the left believe riven F. page eighteen if you're interested in that. I reference page nineteen and our total number of cases so the top chart is all of our different types of cases that I've gone through and the point of time at the end of state fiscal year twenty twenty the bottom chart is the types of cases for the entire year and total volume so over the whole period of state fiscal year twenty twenty we serve seven thousand five hundred and sixty eight children in foster care whereas on the last day of the fiscal year we serve four thousand we were starving four thousand three hundred and ninety one children as of yesterday we were serving forty six hundred children give or take a few so as I mentioned we have are seeing an increase in the number of children in foster care. An average case leads our average case load did did down in the summer like it always does in and Jean at the end of the state fiscal year was eighteen point three and one school comes back in and we get at a higher increase of investigations are case let's go up because our case load is calculated by the total number of cases so that includes investigations foster care in home supportive services at the whole gamut of cases on page nineteen and so we do regularly see an increase of those calm school time because we get increased volume of investigations and as of last month we are running about twenty twenty for average case load you can see information related to our foster homes on the bottom of page twenty that continues on a twenty one with bad to child ratio how many kids do we have how many beds do we have that's our budget child ratio and then the bottom of twenty one percentage of tree reports related to foster homes we saw a slight increase from last year but it's down from twenty seventeen and more in line with twenty eighteen and I don't like maltreatment anywhere foster homes but it is a relatively rate low rate and then moving on to page twenty three again I will not go through all these but there's several appendixes that are broken down by county where you can see what is happening in your local jurisdiction. Thank you so much if we have questions from members. Seeing none thank you. Of he's the Senator Clark. Director on page fifteen. The permanency within twelve months of entering foster care. Yes a lot of numbers were. She would like this but this one was of. Down thirteen percent. It is a pretty serious number. Of. And lots of things going on with the pandemic how much of this. Of that is due of to the slow downs of the slowdown of the court. Well I mean the definitely the first three months there was slow down of the courts but let me just say the court's really very quickly work closely with that and started same hearings and holding in person so I cannot blame thirteen percent of this on the court there there's also another big factor which is the courts can't issue I can't roll on kids going back home if the services aren't there said there was I mean I think just equally important is if if a parent get it can't get in the substance abuse treatment if they can't see their therapist and we had a lot of that going on in the first three months of the pandemic as well really being able to gauge and services so I think both are equally critical to moving towards permanency have. Services resume that this at the same level as before the pendant. I don't have data to show me that so that's why I'm hesitant to answer it's like we don't have one database that I can go and just be like okay but in working closely with the providers the message that we're getting from the providers and the staff is that services have redeem so do I feel like probably the honest answer is there has been some providers who are still hesitant to go in person and are using technology yes that there might be a slight decrease but the providers have contracts with that are back in the home providing services in working with families and the other part of this services are back up. Or use from what you're saying or the courts back up to speed they are they are any like I always tell you there might there might be an out liar here and there but we we have really worked closely with the judiciary they have been partners to **** and they're back having hearings now there are some that are having still using technology but I don't have a problem with that they're having hearing in making decisions and we're gonna see I think we'll see the correction of that first three minds but the problem is going to be at that twelve month mark many of the courts are rightfully so gonna give parents an additional three minds because which is the law allows because they didn't have their level of services and to take some ownership for it we weren't doing in person visits so we were doing virtual visit and there's just not the same level of quality of a virtual visit as a in person visit between a parent and child I will say that we were one of the first child welfare states that said visits are important and so we're going back to in person we're using PP or hold we're gonna trying courage outdoors or other locations but if there's no where else we're going to have is it's between parents and kids at the local office sure and. You know lots of things you know perfect and never part of what you know happened throughout the pain to make an if we need to get families more time although it affects our numbers then of course we need your families more time but expressly where we have failed but we will see our numbers go back up I care at yeah that's what I'm saying absolutely and I agree with you it's not fair to me of towards termination if the system was not able to provide a partner with that peer it to me toward reunification so the department will be asking the judges and many of the cases to give parents three three more my sis to make up for what happened at the beginning of the pandemic good thank you director thank you madam chair. Senator Stubblefield. Thank you madam chair of the show I was looking at the. The child maltreatment or Chalabi stats from two thousand twenty. But I don't see anything. From two thousand nineteen is to compare it to which pager hand center several phone well I'm on page One we can put yeah at we are child abuse cases up compared to nineteen okay so. Their radically I can't answer that question like are more people abusing their children I can't answer that question because this number is didn't where they're more calls made to the hotline and there were less calls and I can pull it up probably pretty quickly there were less cost mated the hotline and twenty twenty than twenty nineteen because when our kids went home you lost a substantial number of mandated reporters at the beginning of the pandemic so if you compare those first three minus which we've done I just can't remember like I don't want to give you the exact run numbers but we have that at I can share it with you so the numbers went down to the hotline specially and March April may because kids went home they're not having interaction with teachers so our number of accepted calls is down this year but in theory is there more child abuse there could be but I don't have a number to show just no way of knowing that FOR factually that's right. Will we ever know that. I mean is that lost forever. Well I mean because of. I can't say that I I can say that kids kids are back in school for the most part or they're virtually they're having contact with teachers so if there is a chronic issue of abuse or neglect happen to a child I hope that they're having contact with A mandated reporter he's now calling the hotline is there a possibility that we missed being involved with families or abuse or neglect was happening in March April may and Jean yes but there's probably that that happens probably you know in our society now. Thank you madam chair. Thank you director Martin I have another report that I'm sorry I see that now yes that you're it's log please please continue yes ma'am the carrots are of poor is a very interesting report but this summary really does do a good job of summarizing this whole report so if you don't mind I'm just going to skip to the back of ten and go through that the summary but let me first start with what is care it's law I'm just to make sure that we're all talking about the same thing so Garretts law is a just the definition of neglect as it relates to the child maltreatment ACT and it was originally put into place in two thousand and five that pretty significantly changed in two thousand and seven so it is the press it's neglect is the presence of an illegal substance and the mothers bodily fluids or bodily substance the presence of an illegal substance including prescription drugs in either the newborn or them not or the mother so basically the hotline will accept the call if at the time of birth a mother or baby test positive for an illegal substance which could include a prescription drug if elit illegally taken said this report relates to those calls accepted and investigated related to that definition of neglect so I'm gonna just how that on page ten the number of Garrett's law reports accepted for an ink at investigation has steadily increased since the law's inception fifteen years ago during state fiscal year twenty twenty one thousand three hundred and fifty Garrett saw reports were accepted for investigation that's a three percent increase there is a really good chart showing that increase on page two a as you can see every almost within I think one or two exceptions increase every year since care it's law was originally enacted marijuana was the most commonly mentioned illegal substance and and Garrett far reports for state fiscal year twenty twenty seventy three. A percent side and marijuana use either separately or in combination with other drags followed by and feta means and methamphetamines of twenty seven percent and then opioid at eleven percent benzodiazepines recited six percent of the cases for cocaine was cited and FOR which is really interesting I really thought even four and a half years ago we would start we would I thought we would continue to see marijuana as number one but I really thought that we we did see opioids coming up closer to the top and amphetamines and methamphetamines continue to be number T. even as of this last state fiscal year. Ninety six ninety four percent of the gear it's far reports state wide were substantiated that does not surprise me because it's pretty easy to prove against law report so if you call the hotline and it's usually a healthcare professional somebody at the hospitals of the hospital Clausen says the baby was born PAS ever calls and says the mother was positive at the time of the buyer she was given a drug screen pretty easy substantiate you call the hospital you get the medical records and you see if there's a positive drug screens so it doesn't surprise me that ninety four percent was positive some of you might be thinking well why when the other six percent well this also does include illegal use of prescription drugs so sometimes we get involved and there was a prescription like the hospital didn't think there was a there was a miscommunication also there is a percentage of false positives that later they call at the time of the initial screen hospital since the lab lab gets it back it's false unsubstantiated. And the rate of that children and family services case workers open that a child protective service case in response to substantiate Garrett law was ninety four percent now no that one babies are almost one of our population and to the law says that we should open a case if there's a true finding we can make exceptions to that it is the may not a shell but we do train our staff on opening cases after a tree finding and again this is our most vulnerable population compared to recent years DCFS demonstrate demonstrated greater restraint during state fiscal year twenty twenty with respect to removing newborns from the mother's casting in response to a tree Garrett's law report among the ten DCFS service areas would you like to look at a service area map it's on the it's on the very cover of the annual report card and exhibited area ten exhibit that the lowest rate ever removal followed by six and eight conversely area nine exhibited the highest rate of removals in response to your law driven by cross Jackson and White County at let me also say that we are we have implemented a program called safe here um and safe here as a home visiting program and we we target it's kind of multiple populations it's under five but one of the specific populations that we targeted was gear it's law report so our staff if they go out and assess the family they can refer to that home visiting program somebody's going to be in the home checking on that family offering parenting skills assessing safety and so I think it's a good thing that we have seen every piece removal rate when we have a service that is targeted to working with families with the specific issues. Of the children removed in response to substantiate a gear at law during state fiscal year twenty nineteen thirty one entered thirty one percent either return home or with where discharge relatives within within twelve months among those who were made to initially six percent were removed within twelve months four percent recited in subsequent substantiated out treatments and just because represent Burch is here I just wanna make one it just on that because see always ask about this and or makes this particular is she said and so of there is a finding and that's not included in that summary related to subsequent eight top of page four I just wanna make sure you see represent birds and. A very think you've got how at any okay well is it said she saw that I tell everybody have that one thousand three hundred and fifty mom sided and Garrett saw reports and twenty percent or prior offenders of child maltreatment so if you're a mom you've had some other child you've had a call to the hotline related to your other two children you have a tree finding of maltreatment of those same one thousand three hundred and fifteen mothers one hundred and seventy two you are thirteen percent were prior offenders of carrots law so they've had another baby born positive first absence and they're not having another baby born positive first cool baby or mom can be positive at the time of ours and I know that she always asks I just wanna make sure to point that out. Representative Burch did you have a question. Yes I'll. Go ahead and thank you thank you for pointing that out so my first question is yes the test takes like that for prior years with regard to whether the statistics are going up with mom's the re offending arc with with children reoffending I'm first court we can pull it if we don't have it I do think we added it to this report because we have continued to have conversations about this so if it's not in the prior year reports we can pull and look at it and just to be clear could to make sure that the committee understands what the current situation is with regard to the registry when a mother has a child is born with drugs in their system right so I'm to give you just a little bit of understanding if we go out and investigate and make a true finding that to finding is against the offender and the case and then. The easiest way for me to say it there are some exceptions is that that the offender then goes on what we call the central registry and so if you're applying to work at a daycare and school children and family services you contact us at DCFS and run a central registry check our child maltreatment check probably heard it called multiple things when Garrett flower was established the idea was that we really wanted to intervene with these mothers and work with these mothers an offer mother services and protect the children and so Garrett flaw is exempt from going on the central registry so if you have a baby born out with this substance why we do investigate and we make make a true finding that ninety four percent you were exempt from going on the central registry followed manager. So at the time I understand that multiple physicians were interested in in doing that that they thought working with the family is that still the case or have you. Looked into that any further there is always conversations among stakeholders and physicians about Garrett saw and there still is that there is there still is a group of individuals he's feel strongly about if we are going to you like we we had children and family services we do want to serve these families right we want moms to go to the hospital give birth at the hospital the hospital call as and then S. either protect the child by bringing in foster care which is only small percent which you saw are really engage with those families because honestly I can keep this baby safe if we're in the home working with them so if we start to have penalize are punished the moms as some people see it by putting them on the center registry there is fear that those moms won't continue to get prenatal care one the well go to the hospital I have have the in thing it you know said there there's the that side of the fence as well around whether these mom should be put on the central registry or not and we need these moms to get jobs right like we we need them to get clean and we need them to get jobs and one of that you when you heard from I'm Jeff Williams one of the industries that a lot of young females work and is child care so if if you get clean we and you need to support that if it is in your home are you a good fit to work in it and I daycare maybe maybe not it depends on the situation but then there's the other side of do we put them on the center registry impede them from working as a janitor at the school are in a child care setting. Thank you thank you madam chairman. Thank you so much director Martin our final report for today is from major drew from the Arkansas state police. J. members names may to Jeff through the. Arkansas state police crimes against children division we're going to call a report for April through June. This is exhibit K. E.. Okay we'll start with page three with the hotline call. volume. See for the the. Those three months the calls with ten thousand eight hundred sixty two six thousand two hundred and forty nine of those were accepted see ACT handle one thousand one hundred and thirty one of those with DCF handling four thousand three hundred and fifty three and seven sixty five war differential responses. On page four. You see those allegations by type of investigated by CCD a monthly break down. Thank you go to page six you'll see the monthly break down the case is open and close within a three month period. One thousand two hundred three cases open one thousand one hundred ninety were closed of those a. One thousand one hundred ninety case is closed four engine forty three of those were found true which was a thirty eight percent substantiation rate. And present have one thousand five entrance and active Cases on the time one thirty five been open longer than forty five days. Go to pages seven eight would have a breakdown by county of the the case is a sign. Page nine will be a break down of the calls received from mandated reporters. I'm pasty pages ten through twelve reflect the allegation tapes and the alleged. Victim. Age groups. And one one question came up. I believe it was a. It was asking about the substantiation race if you look at from all pages ten through twelve initial you I'm was allegation types came up doing that time period along with which ones were actually in the percent of those found true. I will go to face page thirteen thirteen through twenty seven which show the relationship between alleged offenders and victims and age groups of the offenders. Page twenty eight to thirty five will give you a break down of the judicial districts prosecuted turns the case is submitted the case with a decline filed intending. And on page thirty five we show you. We had to under thirty eight cases submitted. With the thirty seven were declined a hundred forty six were filed and fifty five with pending. And Mister quarterly report I'll take any questions if you have any. Members did you have any questions from major drew. Okay seeing none thank you major trip for being with us today. But seeing no other business before us we are adjourned.