House Aging Children and Youth Legislative & Military Affairs
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Bills discussed (4)
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HR1019
· 3 mentions in chapter, transcript
Matched: “HR1019”
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Pre-2017 bill | ||
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HR1018
· 2 mentions in chapter, transcript
Matched: “HR1018”
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Pre-2017 bill | ||
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HR1020
· 2 mentions in chapter, transcript
Matched: “HR1020”
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Pre-2017 bill | ||
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HR1021
· 1 mention in chapter
Matched: “HR1021”
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Pre-2017 bill |
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Speaker 1
0:00
Good morning. Representative Klemmer, you're recognized to present your
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
0:03
resolutions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for letting me pop in here and run this resolution. This is Representative Hammer and my resolution honoring the national champion cheerleading team from Benton High School and separate resolution for their coach who has done just exceptional work with these girls. I don't want to make – I mean, this is a real big deal. If you're a cheerleader, I mean, this is never – I don't know that this has ever happened
in the state of Arkansas, that we've had a national champion high school cheerleading squad. For all our fun times cheering, we've not really achieved this level. It is – this is – they won the Universal Cheerleader Association competition at Disney World. This is the – it was their broadcast on ESPN. I mean, this is a giant deal for them and really for Saline County. They'll be bragging about this when they're 50, I can assure you.
So we would like to honor them with the resolution, and I would appreciate a good vote on both. I don't have to speak to them separately, but I can if you'd
Speaker 1
1:19
like me to. Okay. Well, since you spoke specifically about the cheerleading squad themselves, we'll take that as House Resolution 1019 first. was there any comments questions on House Resolution 1019 all right representative Junia I'll go ahead and recognize that motion right now motion
do pass any discussion on the motion seeing none all those in favor of passing the resolution say aye all those opposed congratulations representative Klemmer you've passed House Resolution 1019 and I'll let you go ahead and if you want to add anything for 1018 go ahead thank you committee for
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
1:54
that vote 1018 is just honoring separately their coach who spent about 20 years uh with these with different teams in benton high school so it's just a separate for her one for any questions on the house resolution
1018 seeing none representative holcomb oh trust me if i might take a moment of personal privilege we were the first school from the first team from my high school that just won first place at camp which are about 60 squats so i trust you i might break it break a bone trying but i would
Speaker 1
2:34
still like to demonstrate thank you all right uh okay uh representative i'll let you go ahead and make the motion representative holcomb
on that one motions has been made do pass any discussion on the motion seeing none all those All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Congratulations, Representative Klemmer. You have passed House Resolution 1018. Thank you. Thank you again. All right. At this time, we will let Representative Sabin head to the end of the table, and he's going to present House Resolution 1020. Representative Sabin, you recognize and present your
Representative Warwick Sabin
Unverified
3:10
resolution. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, members of the committee.
It's my pleasure to bring to you this resolution to commend Leonard Cooper on winning the national Teen Jeopardy tournament. Leonard is a senior at the E-STEM Charter High School, which is in my district, and I was simply very, very proud of his accomplishment. Obviously, it's tremendous for Little Rock and for this community to have this kind of national recognition and for him to accomplish something on his own at that level.
And, you know, since I've never met Mr. Cooper, actually, but since I've introduced this resolution, I've heard from a lot of his teachers at the school, a lot of his friends, the parents of his friends, people who know his family, and it's very clear that he and his family are really beloved here in Little Rock. And I think his accomplishment is truly the product of, you know, what happens when you have family members involved with, you know, a young person, a community that comes together, an excellent educational opportunity provided by, you know, this school district and that charter school in particular.
So in all of those various ways, I think, you know, Mr. Cooper deserves this recognition, and I think we should deliver it to him through the House of Representatives. Very good.
Speaker 1
4:35
Are you going to challenge him to a jeopardy, game of jeopardy one of these days? I don't think
Representative Warwick Sabin
Unverified
4:40
I'd want to risk that. I think our reputations are in doubt here at the legislature to begin with, and putting them up against a senior in high school is just too risky for me. There we go. Anybody have
Speaker 5
4:51
any other comments or questions? Seeing none, what's the pleasure of the committee?
Speaker 1
4:57
Oh, I'm sorry, Representative Alexander, you're recognized. Move. All right. Representative Alexander made the motion to pass. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none. All those in favor say aye all those opposed Congratulations represent saving you've passed your resolution. We're going to give him time to come up and then we'll change
Representative Warwick Sabin
Unverified
5:35
places Okay, Representative Meeks, you are recognized to present your resolution.
Speaker 1
5:39
Thank you. This resolution is with Corporal Barham, and I think just about everybody in here knows him. the longest, for at least the last couple months anyways, you have walked past him as you came in
Chair
Unverified
5:51
the Capitol, part of the Capitol Police. He served 10 years here in the State Capitol and has done an exemplary job, you know, doing what he does best, and that is making sure that we are secure and, you know, greeting folks as they come in. But also, too, one thing the resolution, or a couple things the resolution did not mention
was that he not only has 10 years with the Capitol Police, but he also served as a police officer in the Conway Police Force and also the UCA Police Department as well. He served a total of 28 years between the Capitol, UCA, and Conway in the police force, so he has a long and exemplary service of serving his community. We're very proud of that, and we wanted to recognize him for that. Terrific, are there any questions for members of the committee?
Representative Warwick Sabin
Unverified
6:42
Does anybody in the audience want to speak for or against this resolution? If not, the chair will entertain a motion. Representative Harris? Okay, the motion from Representative Harris is due pass. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor say yay. All opposed say nay. The ayes have it. Congratulations, Representative Meeks. You have passed your resolution.
Speaker 5
7:12
okay at this time we have once again cleared our agenda and we do have some time available so
Chair
Unverified
7:25
I've asked Cecile Blucher to come and to present one of their reports so we will recognize her and the report is being handed out right this is the one that we were going to do a couple of weeks ago but never had the
time to really flesh it out it's a pretty long report so we'll give a moment just to get that handed out Thank you.
We've got everything handed out, so Ms. Blucher, you're ready to recognize to go ahead and present the report.
Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Cecile Blucher, and I'm the director for the Division of Children and Family Services. And what you have before you is the first quarter, quarterly performance report, and
we will be presenting these reports to you on a quarterly basis, and then at the annual, at the end of the state fiscal year, we'll be reporting on this for the annual information. Just to point out, this is one of numerous management reports. It is a point in time, so it actually looks at the information that's entered into our CRIS database at a given point in time when we run the report. So we use this to look at compliance and then we have a lot of other reports too that we use to complement this report to look at the quality of our work.
You'll notice that the report is in three sections and I'm going to try to just summarize but I will reference you to the different pages and then being that this is my first time to present this report to the committee if there is a preference as to how this report is presented to you in the future I'll be happy to accommodate your request on that. But on the executive summary
Cecile Blucher
Unverified
10:09
section, that is actually pages little I through the four. So those are the things that we actually look at from performance indicators.
Chair
Unverified
10:21
And then performance indicators are listed on pages one through seven. The next section of the report is compliance, which looks, that's pages eight through 14. and then we describe the population and the services that we had for that quarter, and that's pages 15 through 55, and then we've got some appendices. We are the agency that handles everything from the time that there is an allegation of child maltreatment through the child abuse hotline, and we follow that all the way through until if we have to remove a child,
until that child is able to either successfully be returned home or another permanency option such as adoption, guardianship. So we will start with during the quarter there were 8,200 investigations that the agency completed, and there's a lot of detail regarding those, more detail found on pages 16 and 17 so that you can see the amount that is priority ones and priority twos and how we look at that is priority ones
are done by the crimes against children's division the state police those are your more severe physical abuse sexual abuse those that tend to lead to criminal charges and then dcfs does more of the priority twos which are like inadequate supervision environmental neglects your more lower risk maltreatment types and you can see our substantiation rate on those is around 22 percent total. During the first quarter we served four
thousand nine hundred and thirty-seven children in foster care those are the children that we did remove from their home and in addition we served another 7,000 children in protective service cases those are cases where we have found the investigation to be true but we felt that we could safely maintain those children in their home and so we work with the family in protecting their children in their home so on any given month our agency in addition to the investigations we're responsible for are responsible for the safety and
well-being of around 12,000 children monthly. As of today, we have around 3,772 children in the foster care system. And again, we're working with another 8,000 children in PS and supportive service cases. We are required on a monthly basis to visit all of the children in their placement so when I talk about the fact that we're responsible for 12,000
children every month 64 percent of our children in foster care received a face-to-face visit with their caseworker and 55 percent of those in protective service received a face-to-face visit and we recognize that those numbers are not where we want them to be and we have actually increased the amount of visits that number continues to increase but when you're charged with 12,000 children plus we've got to go to court we've got all the services I mean we've
got a lot of things that we've got to do in addition to just the monthly visits during the quarter there were a thousand and twenty-one children that actually came into the foster care system and there's information on those found on page 25 so that you can see the age and the race of those children and the sex of those children that is down from 1047 in the previous quarter I would note that 77% of the children who entered care were under the age of 12 the
reasons that they came into care you can see on page 27 which will give you the reasons and um the age and you will note that um there are more reasons than children because there could be multiple reasons that were listed for the children coming into the system but this is predominantly what we see 55 percent are neglect 48 substance abuse and 24 is due to the incarceration of parents when we look at those children that have been in foster care on page 32 you can see
that 56 percent of those children are in care less than one year and 60 percent of the children that are in relative placements stay less than one year we are on those stays less than 30 days we are above the national average and we're working on how we can see if there's more children that we can safely serve in their home so that we're not inflicting the trauma on having them come into the foster care system when we
look at when the children come into care one of the things that Arkansas has an issue with and we're probably we actually are at the bottom tier of the states in the in the United States and that's placement stability once we bring them into care we're not keeping them stable in their placements a lot of that has to do with we do not have enough foster homes and I'll go over the foster home numbers with you we do not have the appropriate placement types for
the children and so unfortunately our children just move from place to place place and so we've got a lot of a lot of things in place to try to address that we're looking at how we can get more foster homes and it not be done by our agency we're going to be putting a group together to look at if we could contract out that function how would that look is that something we want to do we're pulling information from other states as well because the staff positions that I have our FSWs their family service workers direct care workers and so if we
have staff that leave and there's a need for direct care services then we're going to pull away from recruitment to deliver those direct care services which I think is what we want to ensure that those children get served but at the same time we have got to have more appropriate placements and more placements for our children so 54% had two or fewer placements and 32% of our children had three to six and 14% had seven or more placements and if you look on pages 33 through 35 there is more detail in regards to the age the length
of stay in foster care and how it impacts the number of moves and what we see is that the longer you stay in care the more moves that you have when we look at where those children are placed and this is on page 36 through page 37 you will see that 40 percent are with foster homes 15 percent are in relative placements 11 percent are in residential facilities 7 percent are in those therapeutic foster homes who take care of the more behaviorally challenged
children and 5% are on trial home visits with their parents and another thing that we look at is we bring a lot of sibling groups into care it is nothing for us to see a sibling group of five or sibling group of seven have to enter care so to be able to find a home that can accommodate all of those siblings being placed together proves to be problematic at times and so one of the things that we want to ensure that is if those children cannot be placed together that
we're having visits so that we preserve that sibling connection but on page six you will see that 1,975 children in care also had a sibling in care 66 66 percent of those children were placed with at least one sibling and 45 percent of those are placed with all their siblings so we do a pretty good job at trying to do that but I mean there is major room for improvement on
that so of the children that were in the foster care system on page 28 977 of the children during the quarter left foster care that is a decrease from the previous quarter which is not a good thing because that means that more children are staying in the system so that's not a decrease you want to see and then on page 30 if you want to know where those children went and how we compare to the national standard 42% were reunified with their families the
national standard for that is 51% but if you look 34% were with relative custody compared to national standard of 8% so 76% of our children when they leave care they're either going back home or they're going into home of a relative so we're preserving that family connection two percent went to non relative custody fourteen percent were adopted the national standards 21 but we're also very much above the national standard with reunification and relative
custody two percent aged out of the system and five percent elected to leave care on adoptions page 45 through 47 there's a lot of you actually will go through about page 54 but in the system for the quarter there were 440 children legally free for adoption and when I say legally free for adoption that means that the required termination of parental rights on both parents or on
the parent has been received so that they're legally free
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
20:31
they may have a goal of adoption that is a typically higher number than that with
Chair
Unverified
20:38
legally free for adoption so we look at those that are legally free ready that if there is a waiting family or family that matches with that child's preference we could finalize that adoption of the children legally free for adoption 65 percent are white 19 percent are black 5 percent are Hispanic and that pretty
much is the typical if you look at the entry in the exit race numbers that's pretty much those percentages hold true they may bump up and down a percent or two 62 percent of the children were under the age or under the age of 11 28 percent are 12 to 15 and 10 percent are 16 to 18. 60 percent of them are males and 40 are females 40 percent and when we look at those that are free for adoption we have 185 that are in pre-adopt homes that's on page 48 through
page 49 and you can look at the age and then there's 86 of those who meet the special needs definition which you can find on page 51 and what the and those are children Caucasian over the age of nine an African American two years of age or older a member of a sibling group the children who have severe mental a medical and physical logical needs that require ongoing treatment and then
children and high-risk for the development of a serious physical mental emotional condition and those are the the children that are eligible for an adoption subsidy under the state of Arkansas yes sir I'm curious hold on
just a moment I'm representative I'm sorry represent Alex now you're we're gonna hold on I've got representative
Speaker 1
22:27
Justin Harris that wanted to ask a question first and then I'll get to you so representative Harris you're
recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ms. Blucher, I had a question going back to page 22nd, which is
referring to everything you're talking about here. And you're probably aware, Doug Thompson from the Northwest Arkansas Times did an article, and this being my second term and being on this committee for the second time talked about different rules and regulation that you're going to have for removing children and in the foster care system and I wasn't aware of that and I know advocates their total their title advocates for children I should know their title because I work with them
but we're concerned about those rule changes and I I kind of am too but you were looking at maybe keeping the children in the homes longer and I know the concerns I would have is if there is abuse happening
what are going to be some of the rules changes are
Speaker 29
23:39
okay I think what you're referring to is differential response okay
Chair
Unverified
23:43
and what that is is it is exactly that it's a different way to respond to some of
those low-risk child maltreatment types such as environmental neglect your dirty homes, inadequate supervision of some sorts, inadequate food, clothing, shelter, educational neglect, some medical and some lockout, and what we wanted to do is that we went through and we said, because when we look at those children that come into the system and then they go back home very, because what our
data shows is children who come into the system 0 to 30 days they actually return home in 7.7 days so it lets us know that there's probably a better way that we could have served that family and so what we're trying to do with differential response is it is not an investigation it still runs through the hotline but because we have designated certain maltreatment types that would go the differential route the DR route as I will call it then they come
through the hotline so that we can monitor those and then they go to someone in our central office and we review those to make sure that they do meet the DR criteria and then those go a non-investigative route so we still keep the 72-hour time frame that we have to have gone out and make contact with that family just like we do with the priority two because right now in those priority twos we're only subbing about 20% of those so 80% of those families we're just walking away from in a typical investigation so this allows us
to put some things in place to work with those families so that you're strengthening the family you're providing them with the resources that are available in those local communities you're partnering with your local communities an example that we had on environmental instead of doing a full scale investigation there were there were roaches and different things in the home we got with the local community they donated the things that were needed to kill the roaches in the home we had members come in and help clean all that up so the family was able to get their house back intact and no one had to have
a full-scale investigation they learned kind of where to go we helped them with some things. I mean, we've got numerous examples of how DR is working. But then the provision that we have in there is let's say that the call came in and it really was, the call was the roach is in the home. And we get out there and we see a meth lab. Then there is a provision that that worker calls that. It comes back through the investigative route. Your timeline
does not start back over. It's still that 72 hours. and then it goes through the investigation route and so we're really tracking those that come back in why did they come back in so that we can know was it information at the hotline was it just something that the person didn't know so there are a lot of safeguards and we will be including those we just started that in October and we started it in five counties we're starting small and we've extended it to nine and then this past week we took on two of our
larger counties benton and washington county and we have a plan to roll it out statewide and you will get as a section in your quarterly performance report what we're doing with differential response and i'll be able to provide examples we'll give you the numbers and so that you'll see all the tracking and things that we've done with that and we have protected the youngest of the children the most um i think the youngest that we do right now is like age four so all the rest of them younger come still through the
investigative route but what we're trying to do is serve families better strengthen families who come up with resources that maybe they didn't know about and what the research has shown is that families who go through and with the differential response route they work better with the family work better with the agency because there's not that fear that you're going to remove their child, that they're going to go on the central registry, but you're there to help them versus that accusatory, let me
prove that you did it. And so it's just a way for us to start addressing, you know, so in the past child welfare has been and still is to some extent a very reactive agency. We react once we remove you're a child. And what we've got to do is start being more proactive to see how we can reverse the number of families relying on the child welfare system or coming into the child welfare system. So that's really what we're trying to do with Differential. I
appreciate that and so I don't offend
it's Arkansas advocates for children and families. So thank you. Thank you Representative
Chair
Unverified
28:46
Harris. Representative Alexander, do you recognize for a question? Thank
you Mr. Chair. Sorry I jumped the gun there. I had a question on page 51 the definition of children with special needs
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
28:58
why is there an age difference between Caucasian and African American children because we
Chair
Unverified
29:05
have a difficulty we have a lot of children that come into the foster care system ages 6 to 11 that are very difficult
they're harder to find adoptive families who want to take those the 6 to 11, your 12 to 15 and then on your african-american children two and younger that was another difficult age that we were having trouble finding families that were willing to adopt so that's how we came up with those special needs definitions and we look at these annually just to see if this is where they need to still be about two years ago we actually changed members of the sibling group because it used to be three or more siblings and we said you know why are we doing that it should be all
siblings and so we just said members of a sibling group and took it down to two so but we're constantly looking that at that and comparing that with the population that we have that's available and making sure too that the kids that are coming in the kids are exiting and the kids are available for adoption those race age all those statistics should line up because what you don't want to see is more children of one race coming in and then they're not being adopted at the rate that they're coming into care and so we want to make sure
that all that stays pretty equal and like I said it it fluctuates like a percent or two in a quarter but it's staying very consistent okay thank
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
30:27
you if I could ask one more mr.
chair that'd be fine go ahead I think I heard you mention this but I don't see it is there a chart
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
30:37
in here that shows what the precipitating factor was you know whether it's drug use or that tells why they what brought them into
Speaker 26
30:46
the system that would be found on page 27
Cecile Blucher
Unverified
30:50
thank you on finalized adoptions we've through the first
Chair
Unverified
31:04
quarter we had a hundred and forty six finalized adoptions through January we've had four hundred and forty six finalized adoptions last year we had 674 so we're on target to exceed that number of finalized adoptions and bringing children to permanency now
Cecile Blucher
Unverified
31:25
another issue that the agency has is foster home recruitment during the quarter and this is pound on page 13 and we recruited a hundred and forty six homes and we closed 149 so we had a net loss of three and then it
Chair
Unverified
31:47
was a request of the previous children and youth committee that we attach an appendix that would show why those homes were closed and where those homes were closed
And so that's Appendix 5 that's attached to your report. And so that you can see the reasons. Some, we request that they be closed because we've had abuse allegations in those homes. Oftentimes what we see is foster homes that adopt. Once they adopt, then they want to close their foster home, which is a good thing for the children for permanency. It's a bad thing for all the other children that we lose those availability placements, placement availability.
About 68% of our adoptions are by foster parents. So, but
Cecile Blucher
Unverified
32:35
you'll have the reason and you can look at those. So that is a big issue and that's why
Chair
Unverified
32:42
I mentioned about having to look at that and think outside the box on the ways that we can recruit more foster homes. We have partnered with the faith-based communities, the call Children of Arkansas Love for a Lifetime. We now have that in 22 counties, and they have been a tremendous help
because they have recruited a lot of foster parents for us. And then there's been a lot of those foster parents who have adopted our children. But we are working with them. I'm an ex-officio member of their board, and so we're looking at how we can roll the call-out statewide and other ways that they can help. And then the other thing that we're also
Cecile Blucher
Unverified
33:27
doing is looking at our foster home process to see how we can quicken that process. And one of the things that I will mention
that the agency, Arkansas was one of
Chair
Unverified
33:39
nine states granted approval to participate in a 4E waiver demonstration project. and so that that is offered through the federal government and 4E right now is a very it's a big funding source for the state for child welfare but with it comes some very strict eligibility criteria and it also has some very restrictive use it's about 64 million of our budget and so what we wanted to do
with these waivers is it weighs all that eligibility criteria waves all that restriction of use and there's three goals that they want an agency to look at and one is to safely reduce the number of children entering your system we are about five the national standard is 3.3 Arkansas's rate is 5.4 so I think there's some opportunity there to safely reduce the number of children coming to the system the second is placement stability if you bring them in they need to be stable they need to come in and stay and not move around and then
And the third is that children should not languish in the foster care system. They should not grow up in the foster care system. They should only be in care the time that's needed to address the family's needs. So we actually have, through our waiver application, we had things that addressed all three of those goals. And Arkansas was one of the nine states that was awarded that demonstration grant. Or it's not really a grant because it's not new money. It just allows you to use your money very differently. And so it will give us a lot of flexibility that we've not had in the past.
One of the things that we've had to do in the past is cut out prevention services, which is one of the worst things that we could do, but it was one of the things that we had to do from a financial impact. So we will be able to put back those prevention services. It will give us some flexibility to perhaps hire more staff and put some programs in place that we think are needed to help us reach these goals. It's a five-year project. We're in the process. We actually just had the federal group in here Monday and Tuesday of this week,
and we're walking through our implementation design. But we have one of the most aggressive applications with the feds. They're very much watching Arkansas to see how we do this, and they're offering a lot of support. And of the applications submitted, we received the highest score of all the applications. And so we're very proud of that. It's going to be a tremendous amount of work. It's going to require a lot of thinking out of the box, a lot of stakeholder and community involvement.
So we'll be periodically updating you on all of the things that we've got going on with that. And I'd be happy to send to Venaria our application. And if you want to read that, you're welcome to do that. It's quite a large document. But another thing that I would like to talk about is foster parent maltreatment. And
Cecile Blucher
Unverified
36:46
on page 60 to 62, because this is something that we take, that we watch very closely,
Chair
Unverified
36:54
is, and then you've got an appendix D as well that go with this. But during the quarter, there were 41 reports received that involved 67 children. So 41 reports where the foster parents were the alleged offenders. That involved 67 children. Five of those were found to be true. So the last thing we want to do is bring children into the foster care system and have them abused in our foster homes. And we do not tolerate that.
It's very black and white. You're closed. we just that's the way we deal with that so and then you will find on appendix D where those number where those reports are by county and then the last thing is we're required through Senate bill 493 of the 87th assembly to report on child fatalities and near fatalities and I want to explain we look at so the Senate
bill requires that all child fatalities and near fatalities where there's maltreatment and what the agency we kind of take that a step further and we look at any time there's a child death or near fatality we look and say do we have any involvement with that family in the last 12 months maybe it was we had investigation we unsubbed it maybe there was a screen out you know various things and so that is what we look at as well and we bring on all the style for an
internal death review so that we can look at our practice we can look at what did we do right where were some opportunities for improvement what are some things we need to follow up are there some training those type things and so there's an intense review that we do on our child fatalities and their fatalities and so during the quarter there were 15 child fatalities and one near fatality and you will find the information on page 56 through 59 and
Speaker 56
39:04
then and that's appendix a And then from the compliance standpoint, there are certain things that
Chair
Unverified
39:30
we look at within this executive summary so if we went to little lie to we look at the timely
initiation of our child maltreatment investigations there is more detail about this on page nine but what we're wanting to make sure is that we're initiating those child maltreatment types on a priority one there's a 24 hour initiation requirement and on a priority to 72 hours and so that you can see our compliance on that we were at 84% now the thing that I would mention on page 9 actually it's on page 10 of those the other thing that we also look at is
the timely completion of those child maltreatment investigations so by law we've got 30 days to close an investigation so being that this is a point-in-time report it reflects what is entered in the system it's not always a reflection of what is actually done so I have in a cup in Washington County we've had some staffing difficulties being able to retain staff we've got some pretty
high caseloads it is the area that we probably have the most investigations come in and I've got investigators that have today a caseload of 92 so what we want to make sure is and we look at these on every Tuesday have all investigation has been initiated because if it becomes between doing paperwork to get them closed versus ensuring the safety of a child I always have my staff
defer to ensuring the safety of a child so what you will see on page 10 is that 61% of the overdue investigations were actually completed within 15 days so they were completed within 45 days so we do monitor that we take that very serious we know on like I said we pull reports on Tuesday we know by investigator how many overdues are out there so that we can follow up and we
we definitely watch that trend to make sure that we're seeing a downward spike but my main concern is ensuring that they've all been initiated and we do asked for in writing that all investigations have been initiated on page little 3 24 and 72 hour initial health screen and there's more information on that detail page 11 but when children come into the system
priority ones that they have to have a initial health screen in the first 24 hours and party to within 72 and then the comprehensive health assessment found on I4 or I guess before is if you've been in care 60 days then you have a comprehensive health assessment which is done through UMS the PACE exam and so that we really look at everything there and then again that foster home
recruitment and the visits we've gone over but that is kind of a high-level summary of all the data I know it's a lot of data these are our we live by these reports and we use these in our decision making these along with other reports and like I said if there is information that you would like to have reported that is not in here we're definitely open to that or if you would like the information presented to you in a totally different format I respect that in it and kind of accommodate your wishes on that and I would be happy to
Speaker 60
43:32
answer any questions that you have regarding this
Chair
Unverified
43:37
bringing that report as you can see that you know we do have needs in our system both foster care and adoption especially and I can tell you you know I've started to work with the call had reports with them they are a wonderful organization and I'm glad that they're out there you know they've you know kind of briefed me on some of the things that they're doing to try to help the system
out and I appreciate and her agency open to working with them and working with other organizations to help us solve some of these problems that we're having in our foster care and our adoption agency as well. So with that said, we do have several questions. Representative Scott you're recognized to go ahead and ask your questions. Thank you,
Representative Sue Scott
Unverified
44:29
Mr. Chair. And I do have a couple, if that's okay. In just looking through this
quarterly report, and I do appreciate all the hard work that was put into it,
and I do like to have it in hard copy form, so thank you for that very much. I noticed that you used the word maltreatment an awful lot throughout this report. Why not use the word abuse? To me, maltreatment almost softens it just a little. And I think if children are not being fed, if they are not clean, if they are not cared for, then that is abuse. But the reason that we use this
Chair
Unverified
45:11
is because in the child maltreatment code it's listed as child maltreatment,
but if we all would like to see the word abuse, I'll be
Representative Sue Scott
Unverified
45:20
happy to put that in here. That would not be a problem to substitute the word abuse. Personally, I would love to see the word abuse. And then when it involves sexual abuse, I would like to see the words sexual
Chair
Unverified
45:36
abuse. So when you look, just so that I'll make sure, when you look at the reasons children enter this system, you would like to have those broken down? I sure would.
Representative Sue Scott
Unverified
45:46
Okay. And you might want to check with everyone else. That's truly just my opinion. I think if it's abuse it needs to be stated as abuse everyone understands what that says I just think it's stronger Representative Scott I
Chair
Unverified
46:02
think again it was just in keeping with the code as far as the maltreatment is concerned so I think because that's the way it's mentioned in code I think we can do that but I also like your suggestion that if it can be broken down
and it may be I may have dismissed it But if it's not,
you know, it might be a good thing that we can get
Speaker 23
46:27
that information to you. I think that on page 27 on the
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
46:31
neglect, I think we can put the detail of those neglect categories because that's a lot of things
Representative Sue Scott
Unverified
46:40
under neglect. So we can do that. Okay. Thank you. May I have one more? Go ahead. My second question is, you stated that 66% of the children receive home visits from someone employed by you all.
And I just wanted to know, how do you plan to get those numbers up? To me, 66% is just not acceptable. And I know you need more people. I know you'd have to have more money. Have you asked for more money to get those people in and to get this number up to a
Chair
Unverified
47:16
satisfactory number? We have, and what I would like to clarify on this particular standard, it is by the caseworker. So our children are seen more often with – so this standard just looks at caseworker face-to-face visits with a child.
So we have, our children are seen by program assistants, what's referred to, people would know them as social service aides. And so it raises,
Speaker 56
47:41
when you look at all of that, we're probably up to like almost 80% when you
Chair
Unverified
47:51
factor in everyone that's in that home or is with those children. Is that information in here?
Speaker 46
48:01
No, ma'am, and I think what I will do is I can add that as a supplement. Okay. So
Chair
Unverified
48:08
we look at it in a couple different ways because the FED standard is very interesting. It says that you've got to have 12 consecutive visits. And so let's say you had 11 and you missed that one month, then none of the 11 count. Okay. So we look at it differently, because my thing is, is I want to make sure that the children are being seen. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 22
48:32
But I can show you that information. Thank you. Next is Representative Smith.
Chair
Unverified
48:40
You're recognized. No question? Okay. Representative Harris, you're recognized for
a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ms. Blucher, do we have a shortage of
therapeutic foster care homes? Yes. Okay. I talked Tuesday evening.
I talked with, I'm not sure, is it Tom? I can't, I'm not sure if it's the CEO of Ozark Guidance Center. And, you know, they were, I think they have 18, contract with DHS for 18 homes. There was an issue, and so I was talking with him. And then I was also talking with another representative, and they said there was a, and correct me, if I'm wrong, a stay on TFC homes in Arkansas because they were able to maintain the level
of children that are coming in. Is that correct? I'm
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
49:37
not familiar with a stay. There is a limit to the number of, you know, to stay within, you know, the challenging thing for child
Chair
Unverified
49:46
welfare is we're the agency that cannot turn a child away, but yet we've got a set budget so we have the responsibility of the state mandates to serve all children who come through the door but do it with a balanced budget and so we have to be very
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
50:06
careful about and we have to be very creative in the ways that we have contracts for placements so in those
Chair
Unverified
50:15
therapeutic so we're not at a point where we can go in and add a lot of beds for the need so that's one of the reasons that you're seeing if we can safely keep children in their home then that's a better thing for the children better thing for the family and then we're not bouncing them around it's
really less traumatic do you shop around as far
as for contracts like in Northwest Arkansas other than is there other places other than Ozark Guidance Center that maybe we could look at spreading that 18 because I would like
to see us kind of spread around other than just one entity well you know we put out
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
51:03
our emergency shelters are actually out on the website for RFPs that close on Friday we usually let those contracts out
every four years and so emergent residential is coming up in 2015 and then I'd have to look at therapeutic but we just have the people who respond now the way those we pay the master provider which would be your
Chair
Unverified
51:26
Ozark guidance and then they recruit their own families okay it's how that works so each those families work for individual providers it's the way that works would you give that information
to me I certainly will all right thank you okay
Speaker 62
51:44
Representative Holcomb you're next go ahead and recognize to ask your
Representative Mike Holcomb
Unverified
51:50
question okay thank you mr. speaker actually I have two questions and mr. Blucher thank
you for a good and thorough and an in-depth report I was looking on page 27 at reason for placement and number one neglect number two substance abuse parent incarceration physical abuse and inadequate housing could we be safe in Assuming that most of these are actually the reason of they come about because of number two substance abuse
Do you find that to be the reason for most of these and also if you don't mind? Do how many of these children and I know what you don't have to be specific in it But when we when we talk about we pick them up these how many of
these children are affected by this substance abuse Maybe the cooking of meth in the home or something like that that if you
Chair
Unverified
52:39
could. Okay, let me answer your first question. You're correct that
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
52:42
substance abuse often is associated with neglect. They're so strung out on drugs they can't keep their home clean.
We see that often with inadequate supervision, that they're just not able to supervise their children. So those are the two
Chair
Unverified
52:58
things that we see substance abuse hooked with a lot. in regards to the substance abuse and the children affected I don't have the exact number as to how many like from a meth related but meth is probably our fourth drug of choice. Marijuana is our
first drug of choice and one of the things that this committee gets and I can make sure Venaria that this is seen, it's the Garrett's Law, so it explains those children that are born that are impacted with drugs at the time that they're born, but one of the things that we're seeing is a high, it's marijuana, then it's opiates, and then you'll see meth, but it's about the fourth, and it also depends on, and cocaine is in there,
and what's interesting about the drug use is it's very county specific you know meth is very much an issue in Fort Smith cocaine is an issue in Jefferson County so it's depending on where you're at in the state depends on the drug of choice in that county thank you representative Alexander
Speaker 1
54:11
you're recognized thank you mr. speaker miss Blucher
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
54:16
first of all you told us a minute ago how many caseworkers you had on staff what was
Speaker 73
54:24
that number again I have nine hundred and sixteen today nine hundred when you say caseworkers I have nine
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
54:32
hundred and sixteen staff in the host state probably about four hundred of those
are caseworkers okay that's what I was getting at the ones
Chair
Unverified
54:50
that actually do the home visits actually that would be between investigators, which we have on any given day, probably about 130 investigators,
and so that would leave about 220 staff to do the caseworker visits. Okay. And you
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
55:04
had mentioned that it was a goal to visit every child in the home once per month, but you're not able to do that because of the caseload. Have you estimated how many additional caseworkers you would need in order to achieve that goal of one visit per
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
55:22
month? What I've looked at is if we got caseloads down to like 22 instead of an average of 29 per worker.
That's kind of how I looked at it because, you know, it's like I said, there's more than just seeing those children on that monthly visit that they've got to do. And I don't have those numbers with me. It is like 200 and some odd staff. I don't have the exact number with me, but I have looked at that and how many investigators we would need as well. because I have to look at investigators, differential response workers, and caseworkers, kind of all three, and I'll be happy to provide you with that information if you need that. Yes, I'd like that, and I'd also like to
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
56:02
know what the average cost per additional worker is, including salary benefits, whatever other incidental costs there are associated with hiring another person. And I've got that as well.
Speaker 22
56:13
Okay, thank you. And I would like to kind of ask a follow-up to Representative
Chair
Unverified
56:18
Alexander, because one of the things that when I was talking with the call, you know, they mentioned travel time. They mentioned the fact that, you know, you may have a kid from Faulkner County. They don't have a foster home in Faulkner County available, so they may have to put them in Washington or Benton County.
You know, if we solve the problem of, you know, if Faulkner County, let's say, needed 100 foster homes for their kids and we were able to get 100 foster homes, you know, that potentially, and I don't know, you may want to expouse on that, if we get more foster homes in the right areas to balance that out, how would that help to be able to do the visits because you've got them in the correct areas? Would that help out? Yes, sir.
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
57:07
Approximately around $4 million of our budget is travel
Chair
Unverified
57:11
of just kids going from place to place, and that doesn't count that medical travel that's probably another million and that doesn't count what foster parents just do that never charges we have some foster parents who never submit their travel and that does not
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
57:27
include the use of the state cars that we have I think we have 60 state cars across the
Chair
Unverified
57:35
state and so you're right Representative Meeks that the administrative savings
it would be huge that if we had children I mean there's many facets to that so we had those homes in the removal counties number one the children get to maintain their friends their relationships with their families it would increase their chances of a more timely reunification with their family and then the benefit to the agency from a staffing component and all the things that we're required
to do, it would have a tremendous help, and then it would allow us to use those resources that
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
58:15
we're currently spending on travel to be used
Speaker 60
58:18
for service provision. So you're right. Is
Chair
Unverified
58:20
there a possibility that we could get a report of the counties that may have the greatest need for foster homes that would allow us to maybe drill down, we can get that information to maybe some legislators in those particular counties or senators in those particular counties, you know, so we can maybe take a look at focusing in
Speaker 1
58:38
on the counties with the greatest needs?
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
58:40
Right. I've got a report that will show that I will send that has the children by
Chair
Unverified
58:46
age, by county, and then I can give you the foster homes that we currently have by county, and we'll do a comparison because we also need to
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
58:54
make sure that we've got the homes that will take the age children of that county.
Chair
Unverified
59:00
I mean, it's got to be specific. True. Okay. Well, I appreciate that. Okay. Representative Feit, you're recognized for
a question. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. in my former job with
Fort Smith schools all the reports from UAMS filtered through our office and they were very thorough very helpful thank you so much for those reports in fact they saved us a lot of time of doing unnecessary testing because we could reference some of the testing that's been done but one question I always had if a child leaves foster care maybe within a year and comes back do you have to do an entire new set of testing, a report from UAMS on
that child or does it follow the same guidelines that public schools do of perhaps every three years, a complete evaluation? No, ma'am. We would do another comprehensive assessment. May I ask a follow-up question? You may. Go ahead. Would that be because the chance that something had changed in that child that would be of significance? We would need to know that. Correct. Okay. That makes total sense that if they came back into the system something significant it happened to that child right thank you for those reports
Speaker 1
1:00:12
thank you thank you representative scott you're recognized
Representative Sue Scott
Unverified
1:00:14
thank you mr. chairman i just think that i do
well i know i speak for everyone on this
committee hats off to the dear families who make the choice to take in these sweet sweet children and i just think we cannot thank those who do a good job enough and I just wish we could help you get more and more good families to take in these dear children. Thank you for your
Speaker 95
1:00:40
work. Thank you and we do appreciate the foster families and I think that just the awareness that this
Chair
Unverified
1:00:47
committee will have about the needs and sharing that in your local
groups is huge. It's just making sure that people understand the need and I think that these children are just like any other child that you
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
1:00:59
see you shouldn't know that they're a foster child oftentimes people are scared of our foster children and they shouldn't be they're just they didn't choose to be in our foster care system and so there's just a lot of opportunity for education and community awareness thank you and I agree
Chair
Unverified
1:01:17
and that's kind of one of my goals is to use this
committee to reach out to help in any way that we can I do appreciate miss Blucher and her agency for for doing a lot to improve the system you know we've you know we've had some problems we've identified them and she has been very open to making the changes to improving the things and we've we've seen that improvement but as you can tell with the report there are still needs and
there are still things that we need to do and so this is a great opportunity to be able to come alongside them and to help them in any way that we can use our influence as legislators to get out in the community
bring awareness to this issue and to bring awareness to the needs so I hope that as we
Representative Patti Julian
Unverified
1:02:19
go forward you know we'll continue to be able to do that
Speaker 100
1:02:25
representative Julian you are recognized for the reports
Representative Patti Julian
Unverified
1:02:28
I kind of get lost in the acronyms sometimes and I
guess I was specifically looking at the child fatality reports and the columns regarding agencies conducting investigations and the legal action and the service provided. Some of them are acronyms and so if we could just put a little guide down there as to what those are. I will do that. I'll really
understand who was working on it.
Chair
Unverified
1:03:05
I agree. Thank you. Okay. It looks like all the questions have been asked, at least
Speaker 1
1:03:14
on the list here. So again, I appreciate that. If you have any follow-up questions, by all means, get with Ms. Blucher, and I'm sure she'll be glad to try to get you that information. With that said, committee is adjourned.
Agenda
HR1019
HR1018
HR1020
HR1021
Children & Family Services Report
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Speaker 1
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
Representative Warwick Sabin
Unverified
Speaker 5
Chair
Unverified
Cecile Blucher
Unverified
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
Representative Justin T. Harris Chair
Unverified
Speaker 29
Representative Randy Alexander
Unverified
Speaker 26
Speaker 56
Speaker 60
Representative Sue Scott
Unverified
Speaker 23
Speaker 46
Speaker 22
Speaker 62
Representative Mike Holcomb
Unverified
Speaker 73
Representative Charlene Fite Chair
Unverified
Speaker 95
Representative Patti Julian
Unverified
Speaker 100