House Aging Children and Youth Legislative & Military Affairs
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Bills discussed (3)
| Bill | Title | Sponsor | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
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HB1013
· 1 mention in transcript
Matched: “remembers, John Edwards' bill, House Bill 1013, passed in the House yesterday with a unanimous vote and at…”
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Pre-2017 bill | ||
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HB1029
· 1 mention in transcript
Matched: “…xt representative Altus has requested that we take his bill House bill 1029 off”
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Pre-2017 bill | ||
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SB3
· 1 mention in chapter
Matched: “SB3”
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Pre-2017 bill |
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Chair
Unverified
0:00
With Representative Jane English and Representative Alan Kerr, you are recognized to present your bill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, everybody.
Representative Allen Kerr
Unverified
0:16
I want to – she worked really hard for that title, so we're going to call her Senator Jane English this morning. I'm sorry,
Speaker 7
0:25
did I say Representative? You did. I apologize. I apologize, Senator.
So, good morning. If everybody
Representative Allen Kerr
Unverified
0:34
remembers, John Edwards' bill, House Bill 1013, passed in the House yesterday with a unanimous vote and at least 30-second resounding standing ovation. So, that great bill, this one is a companion bill to that. This bill basically creates a task force to look at the Arkansas Veterans Home.
This bill is basically to develop a plan and a recommendation for the creation of that home. So we'll take any questions. Any members have any questions? Representative
Chair
Unverified
1:17
Boehm, you're recognized for a question. my one and only question
is there going to be any conflicts between this bill and mr. Edwards bill
Speaker 12
1:28
none whatsoever it's built to run in companionship
Chair
Unverified
1:34
with it any other questions saying then what is
Chair
Unverified
1:44
right representative Alexander makes a motion that we do pass all those in favor say aye any opposed congratulations representative Kerr and Senator English you have passed your bill thank you very much committee okay next representative Altus has requested that we take his bill House bill 1029 off
Chair
Unverified
2:25
do that okay so he's going to
amend the bill and just be prepared I guess to don't just say it's on the deferred list and say we've got time he does want to run it next committee meeting so make sure that you take a look at it and be ready for any questions that may come out of that so with that said we have all of the bills on our agenda I'm hospital 1002 is not gonna be run again today so we do have some time available and we've asked to have represented or excuse me I'm trying
they'd upgrade them, but Ron Angel and Cecile Blucher with Department of Children and Youth Service, or excuse me, Division of Children and Family Service, I'll get it right here in just a moment, to go over the quarterly performance reports. And you have those in front of you. I guess we can go ahead and I have Ron Angel come on up.
And, Mr. Angel, you're recognized. You can go ahead and go over a summary of a report. And if anybody has any questions, then let us know and we'll take those
Speaker 21
3:45
questions. Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Ron Angel. I'm the director of the Division of Youth Services. I see a hand's
already up if you don't. For the record, are we able to get a PDF copy of this or an electronic copy of this?
Chair
Unverified
4:01
Yes, sir. Document? Yes, sir. I would appreciate that.
MR. Yeah, it's online. So, yeah, Mr. Angel, go
Speaker 27
4:08
ahead and just go over a summary. MR. First of all, in the executive summary,
Speaker 21
4:14
in the first paragraph, I have to say no matter how many times you proof things, you miss them. And it says in the second quarter, the number of juvenile offenders in state custody slightly increased. Actually, it slightly decreased in the second quarter. decrease from 704 reported in the previous quarter where this quarter we're reporting 683 commitments we will amend that report was to reflect
decreased rather than increase as far as the demographics this report reflects a consistent trend in the commitments of youth to our service and where we have have over half of the youth, 55% were committed for misdemeanor and violations offenses. And 68% are 16. We average, our average age of committed is about 16.1.
So as a general rule, we have most of the kids committed to us are at the age of 16. We had, during this quarter, we had 24 reported acts of neglect or abuse. Anytime something, when any youth that reports that they've been neglected or abused, as a mandated reporter, we report these things. Of the 24, only six were taken for investigation, and we do not have the reports back.
Now this abuse, neglect may not only be, it's not only staff. It could be youth on youth. It's not always staff on youth. So I want to make that clear, and we get the report summary from DCFS, and we follow up on the take necessary action. Normally, when we get a report of neglect or abuse, we have enough cameras now that my assistant director for residential services immediately goes to the tapes and looks at
it. And there are instances where before they even finish the investigation, we terminate an employee. We did that a couple of months ago where we had an employee that actually grabbed the youth too roughly, and we went to the tape. We saw that it did happen. We reported it as required, and we went ahead and terminated the employee because, you know, we're not going to tolerate any of our staff abusing the youth in our system. Anytime we can see this, we're proactive.
If it's a bad enough accusation for neglect or abuse, we'll put the employee on paid leave. It's our providers. They put them on paid leave until it's determined whether or not there is a basis for the allegation. So sometimes the employees, even though it's not founded, may be out for a month or so waiting for the results of the investigation. But I don't want to take any chances of an employee continuing to work around our youth if they may have committed an offense of abuse.
On page three, I'd like to point out in the first series of demonstration there, we have 78% of our kids are first-time commitments. Now, I do want to caution, and I had to learn this early on from Judge Branton I don't know if you know him, but he's a Pulaski County juvenile judge. But when I look at these kids being committed to us for a misdemeanor offense, for a first-time offense, I made a comment that we don't understand why this is being done.
But when we looked into it, these youth have been dealt with by that judge as many as six to eight times. We found a year and a half ago I ran some statistics on it, And out of all the kids committed in, I think it was 2009, for first-time commitments, there were only three that were committed to DYS for first-time offense, and those three were sex offenders. So I have to caution everyone when we look at these misdemeanor commitments.
A lot of times a misdemeanor commitment is basically the straw that broke Campbell's back. The judge has dealt with the kids, and finally they decide it's time that the youth has more consequences for their behavior. One of the concerns, and I mentioned this in my last briefing, was the number of juveniles committed for felony offenses. It appears this is a statistic that you have is 45%, but it doesn't reflect the seriousness of the offense that some of these youth are committing.
We have kids that's committed to us for very serious and violent offenses, and it has impact on our ability to treat and release the youth back into the community. The reason for this being is if they're committed to us for rape, we have to keep them a lot longer to ensure that we've done everything we can to treat them. Also we have an elevated number of youth that are committed to us with what's called an
EJJ commitment. For the new members, that's extended juvenile justice commitment. That is where the judge retains the decision on release. Unless they're committed to us under that provision, DYS, being myself, makes the final decision to release after we feel like the juvenile has finished the treatment plan. But in the cases of an EJJ commitment, this is where the judge normally is for, like, robbery, aggravated robbery, assault, serious assaults.
The judge may hold that youth to be answerable to them before they release them. And we have to do a monthly report to the judge to inform the judge of the progress of the youth in treatment. On the page five, I'm just going to go through this rather quickly, if you don't mind, and as we go through this, if you have any questions, I'll kind of look up to make sure that I get your questions at the time. As you can see, this reflects our demographics where you have 36 percent of the kids committed
to us are 16 years old. One of the concerns we have is the growing number of 17 and 18-year-olds that are being committed to us. And again, this goes back to the 17 and 18-year-old kids that are being committed to us. I have limited placement for them, and I don't want to mix them in with a 10, 12, 13-year-old youth. So we have to adjust our location of our youth to make sure we try to keep the younger ones
away from the older offenders. And normally, the 18-year-old kids that are sent to us is usually on a, it's either for a rape they committed, we have a lot of sex offenders in that age group. So page six, I don't know if anyone has any, that is a breakdown of number of males committed at what age and race.
page number seven this is the commitments of females and age
Speaker 33
11:42
group of the females just real quick mr. and I just want to make sure everybody's on the
Chair
Unverified
11:50
right page we're not in the we're not in the big packet here we're in the smaller one that's DCFS's report
mine is the small power small reasons isn't a small packet so I'm sorry should have made that more clearer at the beginning. MR. You're welcome. MR.
Speaker 34
12:10
I'll do Cecile Blucher's report at the same time.
Chair
Unverified
12:13
MR. Exactly. I'm sure she might appreciate that. MR. Okay.
Speaker 8
12:18
Go ahead. MR. I just had one question so far. I'm
seeing sections about felonies, misdemeanors, and other. Can you describe what other commitments would be if they were not a felony or misdemeanor the probation violations a revocation of
Speaker 21
12:34
probation there would be a tie there would be
some kind of criminal activity tying in it wouldn't be some kind of
civil commitment or something like that no sir okay I just
Speaker 38
12:48
wanted to make this would be like a youth that is on probation and they
Speaker 21
12:53
violate the mandates of the probation and the judge revokes it and there are some kids that we find are not being doing working their program in the in aftercare which is a form of probation it's just a different name for probation we find the youth not working the program we're looking at these youth and possibly revoking them to bring them back or at least bring them both recommending that they go
before the judge to get attention to their behavior on page 8 this is a what up what we're looking at now I think this is a very important part of the report. What we've done is, for your information, we've broken this out into non-person misdemeanor. This would be like disturbing the peace. It could be a number of offenses where they have not
offended or not a violation. Their offense is not where they have done harm to another person. Non-person felony commitments would be breaking and entering, theft of property, possession of stolen property again this is where there was no violence towards another person we're on the other side where we have felony person commitments this could be like aggravated assault it could be aggravated robbery one of the where there was actually a person harmed and we have if you look at this only
thirty-four percent of the kids that are committed to us are for offenses that or assault on another person. And then we also have looked at the drug and property and public order. We get a lot of kids. I might say that in October and January and about April is our highest committing months. And a lot of these kids are kids that have done something in the school.
it could be that they got into a fight it could be that they had disrespected or disrupted a class and the school has made the decision to put them out of class and charge them with a crime I have some concerns about that because what we do is I'm making a personal comment by the way what I did when I was in high school in junior high and got in trouble for, a lot of our kids are being charged and committed to DYS
or committed to the court for that same behavior. As an example, when boys would get in a fight in high school, the coach would take them down to the gym and make them put on gloves and say, okay, let's do it fair and get it over with. But now the schools are compelled to terminate their
Chair
Unverified
15:47
education, suspend them. We've got a question. Representative Alexander, you recognize? When you say they're
compelled, is that by their own school policy or by state statute?
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
15:59
By their own school policy, sir.
Thank you. Representative Ferguson, you're recognized for a question. I'm wondering if it might also have something to
Speaker 27
16:14
do with benchmark testing coming up right after
Speaker 21
16:18
they expel them. I'd rather not say anything about a fellow executive branch. Of course, benchmark testing is in March and April. That's one of our higher months for commitment. I'm not sure.
Chair
Unverified
16:29
That's what causes it. If you don't mind me not answering your question. Okay, Representative
Alexander, are you recognized? I guess I'm interested in your professional opinion. Are the roles of your division being swelled by transfers of students who in the past would not have even – you wouldn't even know about?
And if the answer to that is yes, I'm curious to what degree and what kinds of violations are causing that to happen because it not only costs us more money, I think it probably has the possibility at least of a very negative effect on a child for doing something that children do.
Speaker 21
17:25
Since you asked for my professional opinions, there's been a lot of research on brain development of youth.
Our brain is continually developing until you're age 25, and we do stupid things when we're young. I've done plenty of them myself, thinking I was invincible. I regret it now when I wake up in the morning and my knee doesn't work and things like that. But I guess to answer your question the best I possibly can, I think a lot of behavior that is not tolerated in schools today, and for whatever reason, I don't want to get into making a determination on why they don't accept it,
but I think that if you'll look at when school starts in September and the behavior, and I have it in my schools in DYS, Kids don't want to go to school, and they'll act out because they'll know from experience if they act out, they'll get sent away from school. The bad thing for our kids is if they act out, they're taken out and walked around and said, okay, you're going back to school. You don't have a choice. I think that that could be an example of that.
And I had a youth committed to us for aggravated assault because he took a, and I don't know the details of the story, I just remember reading the commitment order, that he took a paper clip and straightened it out and said he was going to stab the teacher with it. And this was about a year and a half ago. I found that rather interesting that he would be charged. Now, I'm going to say that some of these kids are constantly disrupting the classroom.
And the schools have to control behavior in the classroom. So I'm not able to give you an answer of how we could prevent that, but I'm giving you a long answer again for I do think some behavior in school is contributing to commitments. Thank you. That's helpful. Mr. Angel,
Chair
Unverified
19:23
I just want to, if you could, go over how you educate the kids that are in your custody, the schoolwork that they may do, or how you keep them from falling even further behind when they're actually in your custody?
Speaker 21
19:39
proud of that. Since I've been there, we were able to get the governor gave DYS. When I first started, I'll tell you, I walked into one of our schoolhouses, and I was just shocked. Kids were sitting around playing cards. I couldn't tell who the teacher was versus who the kids were, and I just couldn't believe that that was an educational facility. We have worked with our providers, and we have really strengthened our education to the
point that we've received ARRA funds, and we've built new schoolhouses at every one of our facilities. We didn't increase the number of kids. We built new schoolhouses, and they have smart boards. We provide Play-Doh to help the youth recover in recovery of their grades. We are expanding our bandwidth so we can get more activity to the net so kids can use the
Internet for their learning process. Every one of our teachers are highly certified. They're highly qualified, I think is what it's called. We check the licensure of every teacher that teaches in our schools. We underwent a general education evaluation last year by the Department of Education. We teach the four core subjects that's required by state law. We meet the same standards that state law requires of a schoolhouse.
We also are, as we get our bandwidth increased, we're going into expanding our teaching to the virtual high school, where we have some youth that come to us that are advanced and we don't have the need for a trig teacher. But if we have a youth that needs trigonometry to complete their education, we can use the virtual high school for them to get that type of the education last year at the
last evaluation our general education was approved by the Department of Education we had some problems we've been existing problems in special education and getting all of our caps taken care of the Department of Education worked very closely with us in special education and I will tell you for the new members. Our special education runs about 30 percent of our kids have special education needs. I mean, there's no school in this state that has any kind of burden
like that. But we're undergoing right now a special education evaluation right now and general education. I talked to one of the evaluators from special education department yesterday, and she said it's like night and day. She said, I'm so pleased with what your team has accomplished and at some point after that that evaluation is done I'd like to bring my superintendent of schools up here to to brief you on what what we've accomplished we've also expanded our our vocational education
we're using two different types of programs for special education and about three weeks ago we had our first job fair at Alexander that has never been thought of doing where we had Pulaski Academy was there Pulaski school was there community college I mean we had workforce development there in fact I got an email yesterday of a young lady that didn't realize all those things
were available for her services, and she's going to be applying at the Baptist College here in Little Rock. And when she found out she had those kinds of opportunities available to her, we're going to expand that job fair to all of our sites. I know one of our providers, Mr. Walsh, is really wanting to get this going at his three sites that he runs. So, I mean, we've got to give these kids, not all of them are going to be college students. Some of them come to us, they're reading at about fifth grade level.
And if you think of the 16-year average age and they're reading at fifth grade level, and they're, excuse me, third grade level, and their math is at fifth grade level. So we've got a lot of recovery to do for these kids, and that's what we use the Play-Doh for. We have special education programs for these kids. A lot of them have problems with reading and math for special education needs. Does that answer your
Chair
Unverified
24:26
question, sir? Did a great job. Thank you. You can continue now unless there's any other questions on that.
Speaker 21
24:32
Okay. But I would like, if you would, sir, consider inviting my superintendent in a couple of months up here. We would love
Speaker 46
24:43
to do that. I'd like for you to hear what's going on in our schoolhouses. I'd like to
Speaker 21
24:51
skip to page 10. I want to clarify that the first column up above where it shows a steady increase of kids in custody. Now in custody includes not only in our residential, but that's also in aftercare programs.
So there have been an increase because last year we had quite a significant increase in commitments. So as we move these kids out, they're usually on aftercare up to six months after they leave us with treatment programs. So I wanted to clarify why that number has increased. The lower category is a population program type. And as you can see, we maintain about 300 youth in our residential facilities at any
given time. When I first started, we had 343. We had 143 at our larger facility at the Arkansas Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center in Alexander. And I bit the bullet and reduced the amount of youth that are at that facility because to answer further of your question, statistics show that if a youth comes into the system,
judicial system, they're more likely to come back in again, and there's a lot of research out there that says there's harm done for these kids coming into the judicial system because getting back into school, peer relationships, all those are affected. He was in DYS, and it really affects kids getting back in and having a normal life. Not to say they don't. Many of them do.
Representative Mary Broadaway
Unverified
26:47
Representative Broadway, you were recognized for a question. Mr. Angel, to clarify what you just said, you talked about youths
getting into the judicial system, and that's detrimental. They usually re-offend and end up back. Did you actually mean the penal system? Well, actually, just any involvement, because there are so many things that are done in the judicial system, like VINs and things of that
Speaker 21
27:18
nature. Well, the research that one says when they enter into the system, into the courthouse, and then there's another research that says that if they go into a JDC for a timeout, and, you know, that happens a lot, that affects them as well.
Representative Mary Broadaway
Unverified
27:32
Okay. Are there differences in the statistics as far as just, again, being involved in the court system and then actually being remanded into custody at CYS? I have my
Speaker 35
27:45
assistant director here, Dr. Hutchison. She does, she knows, she's up on most research.
Speaker 61
27:57
Dr. Hutchison? Hi. My name is Dr. Lisa Hutchinson. and I'm Assistant Director of Community-Based Services for DYS.
There actually is a lot of different research. The piece that's probably most substantial that Mr. Angel was referring to is the research that will tell you that if you place a youth in residential, restricted, secure confinement, that that is often, in most cases of our youth, the worst thing that you could do. Not only is it not positive, it does not help. It actually makes things worse. And there's a large body of research. I'm more than happy to share that with you. It's extensive. I can give you some sites that have that. There is also a body of research that will tell you that even when they enter the judicial system,
that there is a need to divert many of those out of the judicial system at the beginning, say in a diversion program when you have a FNZ, a truant, some type of school-related offense, that we often see our youth enter into that system. So there's a body of research that says that's a very good time to really do a true assessment of your youth and match the level of response, i.e. the service, to the risk and protective factors that are exhibited within the youth. But the one that's most crucial probably to what we've been dealing with and our focus on serving the youth within the community that we've had over the last six years
and while we've reduced the residential bed space is that body of literature that says most youth can be treated successfully in the community if you adhere to certain best practices. and there's principles of effective intervention is what they're called in the literature that really dictate what that means, but that if you take those youth and penetrate them into what we call our secure confinement, like our residential facilities, that oftentimes that is much more detrimental to those youth in terms of outcomes.
Thank you so much. Representative Alexander, you're recognized for a question. Are you suggesting that as a state we're behind best practices in research? I would say that I do – I just have to give
Speaker 61
29:52
you a little background. I train nationally, and I've worked with the federal government in many different states on this issue. I wouldn't say we're behind the times much more than any of the other states. What I will tell you – and one of the reasons that I can – I've been at DYS for two months now, two and a half months, and I taught in academia for 10 years, worked in the field for 10 years.
One of the reasons I came back to DYS in this position is because I feel like we're doing the right thing. We're moving in the right direction. Mr. Angel, the various people, our Deputy Director, Mr. Selig, et cetera, our community stakeholders are really behind this idea of community treatment of youth and providing that continuum and the array of services that we need in the communities and successfully addressing the youth in those communities. Because as you know, and Mr. Angel was speaking about our aftercare, which is basically parole, for lack of better words.
We don't like to call that that in the juvenile system. But if we put our youth back in that environment, it is a difficult transition. So most of the times, if you truly match and do a true risk assessment, know your risk and needs of that youth, match them to the appropriate services and have that continuum of services available in the community, that that's where you make the most impact. And that's a research that dictates that and shows that. Many states have made strides in this area. I'm very enthusiastic, if you can't tell, about this
because it's something I see us doing. We've made many great strides in doing that, reducing the bed space, looking at the ways we can increase the services in the community, bringing stakeholders to the table in the communities. A lot of those initiatives have been ongoing for the past six years in this state, and I think that's where we want to go. That's what the best practices would dictate, and I think we're well on our way to achieving that personally. That's my personal opinion. Thank you. Representative Payton, you recognize for a question?
Representative John Payton
Unverified
31:43
MR. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was just curious, as you talk about community treatment, would disciplinary action in the school be considered community treatment? MS. Not under what we
Speaker 68
31:54
currently do. Are you talking about? MR. Well,
Representative John Payton
Unverified
31:58
I mean, best practices and how we're going to correct these children that need correcting. Of course, the first line of defense is usually in the school, and he referred to the fact that it seems like sometimes they are taken out of the school, maybe some disciplinary
action that we can put in the school, would that be considered your community treatment? Absolutely. Yes, sir.
Speaker 61
32:19
That's a very excellent question. As we know, much of our feeder systems, we have a lot of youth that enter the judicial system in general based on school-based referrals, and that's across the nation. I'm not privy to the specific numbers within Arkansas at this point in time, but that's across the nation. And there are a lot of research best practices, proven practices that would tell you that would provide you with a framework for how to address that within the different
school districts. My only caveat there would be that's one of those areas where you need the local support and the local people, community stakeholders at the table to say, and dig through. I'm a data person, too, as well. And you look at the data and say, these are the number. Most of our kids are coming in on a terroristic threatening, which is just they're threatening another student. You know, and what can we put in place? There's a lot of opportunities, a lot of best practices, demonstrated effective programs that have been used throughout the nation that have addressed those things, and we have that information as a resource, but definitely that would be included in the array of services provided
to youth within the community. It really depends on what the needs of that local community are, and that is definitely what I've heard in many communities, one of those, and what Mr. Angel alluded to earlier, what he was discussing, is that need to address that within the community and keep those youth in the community and work it out there and provide them with some type of accountability for their actions, because that's the other piece of it that's really essential, is that you ensure the accountability. It's not just a free pass, that you make sure that the kids are held accountable for their actions. Thank you. You're welcome.
Speaker 21
33:51
Any other questions? I didn't mean to take up this much time, and I apologize for that, but I hope we answered some questions and gave you
Speaker 27
34:00
an idea of our philosophy on treating kids and saving as many as we can. I'm sorry, Representative Holcomb, you're
Chair
Unverified
34:06
recognized. Are you through with your report, or are you going to do
Representative Mike Holcomb
Unverified
34:10
a little bit more? I want to ask you about page 11, if you don't mind. I was looking at your
Speaker 78
34:16
facility expenditures, and I was just wondering how you determine what detention facilities you're going to use in the state.
And then I'll have another question, if that's all right,
Speaker 21
34:28
Mr. Chair. Yeah, that's fine. The way we determine where we place a youth is we try to put the youth in a facility as close to the family as we possibly can. Except, you know, if we've got an 18-year-old, we usually have to put them down at Dermott because it's more secure confinement. But as a general rule, if a youth is from, like, the west and northwest, we will put them over at Mansfield. If they're from the east and the southeast, there's Colt and Harrisburg.
So that's how we determine placement, as best we can.
Speaker 78
35:02
But are the detention facilities, I guess I can refer to them as that, is there quite a difference in what they charge? Are they all basically the same? Or is there a standard rate that you all are allowed to pay the detention facility? How does that work? Well, first of all,
Speaker 32
35:19
I want everyone to understand that we do not run the juvenile detention centers in the state. You send them there, right?
Speaker 21
35:27
We do keep some there, but we do not run them. We have MOUs with these five juvenile detention centers, and we pay them
Speaker 27
35:37
$75 a day. One more question, Mr. Chair, and I'll be through.
Speaker 78
35:44
Do you send your special needs children? Do they go to other facilities, or do you keep those generally in your facility? I mean, and I'm not talking about impaired mentally in some way, but physically.
Would they go to another facility, or would you generally keep those there in your facility?
Speaker 21
36:04
How does that work? One of the things that we do is the university, UAMS, we have a contract with them that when a youth is committed to DYS, every youth goes through a full battery of evaluation mental health. They are evaluated physical, vision, dental. they do a full battery of tests to see where they are in school so we have a complete snapshot of a youth
that's coming into our facility if they have special needs that the evaluators feel that the youth needs we will send them immediately if they need to go to the state hospital if a youth is demonstrating suicidal ideations we send them to the state hospital We also have other specialty placements because we do have one youth right now that has spina bifida. And he was in the state hospital, but they said that he was well enough to be placed at our Alexander campus,
Speaker 32
37:06
which we have medical people there, I think, 18 hours a day. But he was
Representative Mike Holcomb
Unverified
37:14
well enough to get around in a wheelchair. Well, thank you. I know it's a job that weighs on you a lot and continue,
Speaker 21
37:23
and we appreciate what you do. Thank you for your report. Thank you, sir. We also have youth, to follow on, we had one recently that was a hemophiliac. And this is a problem we have. Sometimes we get youth that have very expensive needs, medical needs.
And once they're committed, especially for the new members, when they're committed to us, they have to come off the Medicaid rolls. They have to be paid for with general revenue, SGR. So I have to use my budget. I have one right now that's deaf that needs a signer, and it's costing us $3,000 a week to have the signer there to work with that youth. But those all impact our budget. And I think the hemophilia act that was with us cost us $150,000 in medication.
So that's a balancing act that we have to guess about how much we would spend for medical cost. What we do, though, another thing we do is if they're Medicaid eligible coming in, we have Lisa has a staff member that turns them off in compliance with federal law. But we also have a mechanism that is when they leave, they're turned back on immediately. And if they've lost their eligibility, we have staff that goes to the family and helps them get re-enrolled so there's no break in their treatment.
Because some of them are on very expensive medication, very expensive. I did want to say, sir, the last two pages is commitment by judicial district. If anyone wants to know, I have a map of judicial districts. If they want to look at my map, I probably should give that to you for reference. These are commitments by judicial district. There's an example. The sixth judicial district is Pulaski County.
I know these by heart. The tenth judicial district is Jefferson Lincoln County. Oh, no, that's Chico County in the southeast corner. and the 18 east is Jefferson Lincoln County 13th I think is Sebastian I know those I can always look at the numbers and tell you who they are but I have to say Judge Branton I sing his praises when I first started he was committing on average
116 kids a year last year he was at 12 and was struggling not to commit anymore And his statement, he said it many times, I drank the Kool-Aid, I realized I was doing more danger, more damage to the youth than I was doing benefit to them. So he thinks of all different options he can use to expand treatment to that youth in the community. And with
Chair
Unverified
40:17
that, sir, that's all I have. Okay. Representative Bain,
you're recognized. Thank you. I'm looking at page 15, and it strikes my curiosity when I see some judicial districts
have no commitments and others have double-digit commitments so is that because we have different types of judges in different judicial districts are taking different attitudes toward commitments are we saying that there is no commitment where the activity in certain parts of Arkansas I'm just trying to in trying to interpret that page as best I can there's one judge
Speaker 21
40:48
that does not like DYS and I like that he does all kinds of things in his community to keep kids from coming to us a lot of this is reflected on population
that's a that's a big driving factor if you'll if you recall the areas I was speaking of were areas that have more population than others some areas have more involvement with local community people to support kids and that's what we wanted to happen now we're trying to work up we're trying to work to build a consortium of people in the community that recognizes there's kids that need help and but most of these are higher population sir represent Alexander you
recognized you're kind of getting into my what my question was and that was do you see a difference that cannot be explained by population between commitments from urban districts versus rural districts I think a lot
Speaker 21
41:51
of it has to do with the community involvement I think that if you get out of judge looney I forget where he's from there's a judge in the southwest part of the state I
forget which judicial district that very rarely commits anyone and there's a lot of factors he I know his probation officer and when that youth is placed under probation of that probation officer it's a small it's a rural area he said that's my kids and if they don't go to school if they don't show up for school I go get them and I take them to school I make sure they do what they're supposed to do I mean there's a lot of varying factors that that affects this and we have another judge in the north central part of the state that has built
built a community-involved treatment plan in that community, and he doesn't commit either. Some of the judges, you know, we were fortunate enough in the last three years to go around and talk to a lot of judges and stakeholders in trying to build the recognition that many of these kids come from very very bad backgrounds and support is what they need more than in some
cases more than putting them in jail you get kids that have a parents that don't care if they get up and go to school you get kids that have been sexually abused within the home you get and I never I never knew until six years ago when I started reading commitment reports some of the problems we have with and what drives some of these kids to us and that's why
Representative Bill Gossage
Unverified
43:34
I believe in treatment representative Gossett you
recognized thank you mr. chair I have a couple of questions the first one I know in some states they have developed an
interagency juvenile task force that in each county all the different organizations both non-governmental and governmental they meet monthly and they work on these kinds of issues to develop resources when each county is that Is that something that we're looking to do, or is that something we're already doing? Well, we received
Speaker 32
44:04
some funding a couple of years ago from Public Welfare Foundation to do not
Speaker 21
44:10
a task force, but to bring people from regions of the state to the table to
talk about what the needs of the youth are. We're also, and you'll be hearing about this, I'm sure you already have, we're trying to develop Senator Irving is going to be running a bill that we wrote along with the administrative office of the court where we're trying to bring the major players in a community to the table to think about what's best for the kids and to use state funds that we have now
give it to that community organization and there's a lot of controls on this I mean we're We're going to protect state funds, but to build this consortium like faith-based organizations. And you know, there's a lot of churches out there that want to help kids, but they don't know how to go about helping. When I travel the state and talk to groups, I invariably have a pastor of a church says, you know, we've got members of our church that would love to mentor some of these kids, but they don't know how to go about doing it.
And that's what we're trying to do in developing this bill, because if you get local people working with the kids, they're going to build relationships that won't go away, like when they leave us. Most kids that come to us, when they leave us, the judges say they do great, because they've had structure, they've been fed, they've been people there that care about them. But when they get back into that same environment they left, that's when they start messing up again. And what we need to do as a community is build that, strengthen that environment that these kids are in through recognition of their needs.
Representative Bill Gossage
Unverified
45:57
I think that's the right way to go. As I looked at this one model program in Texas County, it was incredible. Once you pulled them all together, the resources that were available, and they actually met once a month to talk about how they could work together and coordinate activities and build a plan for those students. The other question goes back to your point, though, about handling these things in school. Everybody here knows I'm an assistant school superintendent. In the Ozark Public Schools, we had a human service worker program, and you all are probably aware of this.
And it started out many years ago, funded almost entirely by a grant from the federal government to DHS. it was one of the best things that had ever happened in our school and he was doing the exact duties that you referred to he was going making home visits he was going picking up kids bring them to school take them to doctor's appointments accompanying them when they were referred to court working with families all these things and then last year that funding was stopped for for our human
service worker in schools after a long period of time you probably don't want get into that today. But that was a great program, and I would strongly urge you to find a way to continue that program because it did exactly what you were talking
Speaker 21
47:23
about. And may I tout this bill that I was talking about that Senator Irving is going to run? And there's a lot of controversy. There's some people that don't want us to run this. But what this will do is this consortium, we're going to give the funding that I currently
give to one provider. What we propose is give it to this consortium who has fiduciary obligations. They will be monitored by leg audit. And this consortium will decide what your community needs. And if it's a human resource officer, they will have that flexibility to use that money just for that purpose because that community needs that resource officer in the schools. And I encourage you when this bill, it hasn't been filed yet, but I encourage you to please
Speaker 27
48:12
read it with an open mind. And I'm not going to say any more about that bill until later. Thank you.
Representative Patti Julian
Unverified
48:30
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Julian, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was just looking at, I guess I kind of jumped ahead, but I was looking at the commitments by charge and sort of looking at the number of what I would call violent commitments against persons and then relating it back to what you said perhaps about the number of investigations
of suspected abuse or neglect that got referred to the state police, the more violent offenders in your care, do they tend to be congregated at one facility facility that perhaps is more secure than the facilities, or are they spread amongst
the other, all the facilities rather evenly? I mean, I noticed, I mean, there's some battery charges and some assault charges. There's one rape, some sexual assault. I have concerns about, you know, where are they with regard to the people who, you know, are there for disorderly conduct. Normally,
Speaker 21
49:50
it's based upon their behavior when they come in.
You'll be surprised. Some of these kids that are committed for really serious crimes when they get there are not so bad. Right. But anyway, we have a facility down at Durham. I have two facilities at Durham. One of them is an 18-to-21 program, and the other one is a 13-to-17 program. And I will say that the more disruptive ones either go there or they go to Alexander, or Ajax, as we call it, which is more secure. But every one of our facilities, we have a contractual requirement that the staff be 8-to-1, at least one staff member to every eight kids.
and that's part of the contract and at night it's 10 to 1 when they're sleeping but if we have one that's constantly disrupting and assaulting they end up going to Dermott Thank you Okay, I
Chair
Unverified
50:53
don't see any more questions so thank you Mr. Angel Legislators, this is a wonderful thing about being a legislator we have a lot of opportunities to look at those community resources that are in your district
and to use your influence, use your networking capabilities to let people know that those community resources are available, maybe to come alongside them, support them, get your community leaders together, and maybe say we need to take a look and see what we can do in our district to add resources that may be missing as well. And so I hope that you will take this opportunity as a legislator
to do those types of things in your community to maybe help bring your community together to support those community resources because, you know, we are talking about our children. So you have a wonderful opportunity to do that. Because of the time, now we're 11 o'clock, and I know that at least one member has to be back in rules I think at noon we are going to go ahead and at this point adjourn the committee and we will because
we've got a huge thick report here and I want to make sure that we have plenty of time to go over and to answer any questions I didn't want to shortchange it at all because of the time crunch so we're going to do this one at a later date if you would please leave your copy on the desk there is a PDF copy available but we just if you would just leave this on the desk so that we'll have it a hard copy next time in front of you if you do need an electronic copy we can make sure that you get it there
so with that said if there's nothing else I'll go ahead and say the meeting
Agenda
Call To Order
SB3
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Chair
Unverified
Representative Allen Kerr
Unverified
Speaker 7
Representative John Baine Chair
Unverified
Speaker 12
Speaker 14
Speaker 16
Speaker 21
Speaker 27
Speaker 33
Speaker 34
Speaker 8
Speaker 38
Representative Randy Alexander Chair
Unverified
Representative Deborah Ferguson
Unverified
Speaker 46
Representative Mary Broadaway
Unverified
Speaker 35
Speaker 58
Speaker 61
Representative John Payton
Unverified
Speaker 68
Representative Mike Holcomb
Unverified
Speaker 78
Speaker 32
Representative Bill Gossage
Unverified
Representative Patti Julian
Unverified