Children & Youth Committee- Senate & Aging, Children & Youth, and Legislative Affairs- House
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Speaker 9
2:08
quorum thank you for being here for the joint
Speaker 11
2:20
meeting of the senate and house aging children
Chair
Unverified
2:25
youth committee first on our agenda today we need to
approve the september 2025 meeting minutes do i have a motion to approve those have a motion do i have a second thank you all in favor say aye oppose no thank you minutes have been adopted we also need a motion to confirm senator alan clark to the child maltreatment Investigation Oversight Committee as have a motion to have a second yes thank you as one of two members of the General Assembly who are members of the House
Committee on Aging Children and Youth and Legislative Affairs or Senate Interim Committee on Children and Youth all in favor say aye opposed congratulations you have now been appointed again to the child maltreatment investigation oversight committee okay moving right along next we are considering an ISP and I'm going to spare you reading that entire title since you can see it before you representative Bentley you are recognized to present
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
3:36
your ISP thank you chairman thank you committee um i think that all of us are aware of some situations that we've got at our call center and taking care of our abused children is really nothing nothing more important in this state that we take care of the kids in our state that have possibly been abused
and i'm very uh very concerned that we're just kind of tinkering around the edges and i think it's time for us to do a thorough deep dive into what our maltreatment code is, into what we're doing with our call centers, and what we're doing across the board to take care of our kids. I would like to bring, if it's okay, Chairman, someone to come and testify about some concerns I've got that's going on here. I would like Kim and Louise Tafoya and their daughter to come and testify, please.
Kimberly Tafoya
Unverified
4:42
Would you please introduce yourself through the mic for the record? My name is Kimberly Tafoya.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
5:12
luis to foia okay um kim would you just share some some things that happened with um that
Speaker 28
5:23
you'd like to share with the committee please yes back in february we took our daughter freya to her five-year checkup we noticed she had some warts on her hand and there was a bump on her bottom he went ahead and put a referral in at arkansas children's hospital dermatology and while at the first appointment there they treated the warts on her hand said the spot on
her bottom was the molluscum and we did the cryotherapy on her hand went back in six weeks there was the
Speaker 29
5:48
warts had spread up her hand so we'd gone from her nail bed up to the hand i'm sorry
Chair
Unverified
5:54
to interrupt you could you please pull the mic a little closer to you partly i'm old also my ears are very congested today but i don't think i'm the only one that was having difficulty hearing you and we do want to hear what you're saying thank you sorry
Speaker 28
6:08
um went to her second appointment they refroze the warts on her hand
they'd spread from her nail bud up to her finger um we went back in six weeks for her third appointment so this has been about six months from the initial appointment the warts had spread up her hand like from her fingers all the way up to her hand and we had noticed she now had more spots on her bottom took her back to her appointment and we told the doctor this he asked if he could take a look at her bottom and we said yes that's why we're here he took a look at her looked at us and said these look like warts and I said yes that's what we're
here for you're treating her for warts and he left the room abruptly I didn't think anything of it he was gone about 45 minutes he and another nurse came in with a social worker didn't know it's a social worker at the time said the nurse was staying there with Freya we left with him and the social workers in the room, he said, based on that she now has warts on her bottom, we had to call social workers and make a report. And I was like, why would we do that? You're treating her for warts. We brought her to you for warts. And he said, well, these warts don't get there from
skin to skin contact. That's how they spread. But he was very adamant that these warts were not from her own hand as a five-year-old learning to wipe her bottom, that she could have spread the warts on her own body. So that was a Monday. Tuesday morning, I'm sorry, let me back up. That afternoon, the social worker at Children's said it'd be a very quick conversation with Freya. It'd be case closed. We wouldn't go any further. Tuesday, we get the phone call from
the Wade Knox Center. Tanya Cross, I believe, is the lady who called us to set up the appointment for Freya. I found out we had more than one child so then it turned into just a conversation with Freya to all four of our children at the Wade Knox Center. We were there for over four hours being interviewed. At the end of the interview they pulled me and my husband back for ours and we talked maybe 30-ish minutes with them and during that conversation informed them that
everybody in the house that had a wart at some point in time and at that given point in time there were four of us under the care of a dermatology for different issues the cabot police department detective said as far as he was concerned after talking with us case closed there was nothing to indicate that something had happened to our daughter so at that point in time I'm thinking we're done. And then Ms. Cross tells me that Children's is now requesting that Frey undergoes
an SA exam, even though I have the investigators in front of me saying, as far as they're concerned, nothing has happened. I didn't want to agree to the exam because my daughter had never been touched inappropriately or anything has never happened to my daughter. But I felt like I was back into a corner by all the agencies because the Cabot department detective told me that you're going to still want to get your daughter treated correct and I said yes he asked if I
would take them back to children's I said children's will never touch my children ever again he said so you're gonna need to get a new doctor and I said well of course he goes so what's to stop that next dermatologist from making the same phone call and the whole process starting over because you did not consent to having your daughter undergo an essay exam. Even though I have these detectives in front of me telling me they have no reason to believe anything has happened to my daughter, that she spread it from her hand to her own body.
So I agreed to take a phone call from the sane nurse with the TCAR center the next day. And she explained that, you know, this would be the definitive test to approve and, you know, we'd get the letter saying that nothing had happened to our daughter. And that way, if another call was made, they'd be like, nope, this is not what happened with this child and go from there. So I agreed to the test to take her to the TCAR Center. We went, that was Thursday now, we're going to TCAR Center in Searcy, Arkansas.
We get there, and I go back to fill out some paperwork while Freya and my husband are in the family waiting room. And while I'm in there, they inform me not only does children now want the essay exam, they want swabs, they want a urine sample, and they want it videoed. So I have to sit back there while my daughter, who's never been touched inappropriately, has to undergo an essay exam with it being recorded so the doctors at Children's can verify everything. When I thought the purpose of this specially trained nurse at this center, that was her job, to look for anything to happen to my daughter.
And then she comes back and tells me there's no indication of any current, past, healed, any trauma to my daughter. but I had to sit there at the foot of the bed in the very small room away from my daughter while there's a giant screen above the table where she's being examined with the imaging of my daughter's genitalia all over the screen. Can't sit by her, can't hold her hand, can't give my daughter any comfort, and during the examination when she says,
owl mommy that hurts, I'm nowhere nowhere near my daughter. And I have to sit there and watch everything. So I have to let, in essence, my daughter be violated to prove she's never been violated. Because we took her to the doctor to treat her for warts.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
12:14
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I think that I want to make sure
that this does not happen again in our state, that a child, that when there's absolutely no reason, when the investigation has proven that there's no findings, that this should not have ever happened to this little girl, that she's been violated by the very people that are supposed to be protecting her. So that's one of the reasons I wanted to bring forth this interim study today, that we can make sure we have protocols in place. Does anybody here, do you feel free to answer your question? Was chairman I wouldn't open but if the
colleagues won't ask any questions before I go any further are there questions for this witness by the committee
Chair
Unverified
12:56
Are you doing this room, okay Speaker Evans you are
Speaker 41
13:02
recognized Thank you madam chair, and I appreciate the lien C
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
13:06
is not a member of this committee Which is very compelling And as you listen to the testimony, Ms. Tafoya had mentioned that they live in Cabot. His family lives
in my district. And so as they came and visited with me early on about this, I was very moved not only by the story,
but also in the fact that both Mr. and Ms. Tafoya, Mr. Tafoya's works at the Little Rock Air Force Base, And then took off work, came and visited with me, and the first thing that they said was, we're not looking for anything to help benefit us. We're here to tell
our story because we want to make sure that this never happens to another family again. And I believe wholeheartedly that the trauma that they experienced
when she says that my daughter was violated by the same people who were trying to prove
that she had been violated. Mr. Foya, you mentioned that they took her when you went to this TCAR center that you, that they were, they took her into an examination room. You
were not allowed to sit bedside with her. Who all was in the room while this exam was taking place? There
Speaker 28
14:32
was a service animal to the right of her. There was the service animal handler to the left of the bed, and then
there were the two nurses at the foot of the bed,
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
14:46
So two medical professionals, i.e. nurses, who were there to do this inspection of her private parts? Yes, sir. But
also a service animal handler? Yes, sir. So a service animal, I'm assuming that's a dog? Yes, was brought into the room to give comfort to the to
your daughter but yet you were not allowed to give comfort to your
daughter correct it seems like a very interesting concept one by which I
don't know that I approve of this video that
was taken do you know where that video where it is today no I
Speaker 28
15:23
do I do not know where that video was at I don't know if it was destroyed if it's
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
15:36
has access to it? Correct. I have no idea who has access to this. Seems like I recently remember seeing a case somewhere where criminal charges were brought against an employee of a facility very similar to this because they had taken access, taken access
to videos such as this, taking them home and put them out there on the World Wide Web for people to see. That would be very terrifying to a family to know that their daughter was out there like that in the public. So when you, did you feel, I know you said that you did not, you felt like you were very leveraged. You were in between a rock and a hard place. Had you denied, not given consent to this exam,
what do you feel like would have been the consequences of you not doing that? If you had said, no, we're just
not going to do that, we're going home, what
Speaker 28
16:37
do you feel like would have happened next? I feel like we would still be under investigation. It's almost like with this system, you are guilty until you are proved innocent. that's not how it's supposed to be i was put in a corner and felt like i was strong-armed but if i
did not consent to keep letting them have more and more and more that it was going to keep
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
17:03
going was this a verbal consent or did you have to sign some
Speaker 28
17:07
type of consent forms uh verbal consent at the wade knock center for the nurse to call me and then once i got to the t-car center in searcy i had to sign some forms there and why i was signing that is when the two nurses informed me that children's wanted it videoed not just an exam done and i don't what is the purpose of
these nurses that are have this specialized training for these cases if we if what they're saying is not taken as factual like why do we have to go one step further if there was evidence of some kind of trauma to my daughter i could understand like if you needed a picture of it or then you needed some type of video evidence but when the nurses are saying there there's no past present healed there's no trauma to this little girl why do we need a video of it so an investigator
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
17:58
said there's nothing here yes a detective from the cabot police department said there's nothing here yes nurses who looked at her said there's nothing here correct but yet children's hospital made the determination that they wanted this exam on a five-year-old's genitalia. Yes, sir. Videotaped and sent to them for someone else who was not there to take a look at. Correct. Of your five-year-old
daughter. Correct. And when was this? Remind me when this all
Speaker 28
18:33
happened. This started on, I believe her appointment was july 21st was the checkup at children's the 22nd we were at wade knox the 23rd i talked to the nurse to schedule the t-car appointment and in the 20 24th we were at the t-car center in searcy has your home been visited for any type
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
18:51
of inspections no we were told we were going
Speaker 28
18:53
to have to have a home visit and we put our lives on hold waiting for that for
a couple more weeks to make sure the kids were available and they would have access to the house. And we never got that visit. On July 31st, I received the letter from the state saying it was an unsubstantiated claim and the case
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
19:17
was closed. And I believe that you shared with me also when you came for the visit that, and I
think it's important that the committee understands this as well, um, that both you and your husband both carry a, um, probably going to use the wrong medical
term. So forgive me if I'm saying this incorrectly, but you and your husband both carry a genetic disorder that causes these warts and that both you and your husband both have these, correct? Yes. He has them on
Speaker 51
19:48
his hands. Yes. And all of your children, all
Speaker 28
19:51
of our children have had him. Um, our 16 year old had a planter's word on his foot. Our 14 year old had one on his elbow. Our eight-year-old had them on her feet and in her nail beds. So the base treated her feet, sent her to a dermatologist for her hands because she had to get shots into her nail beds, into the warts.
And she was in kindergarten during that time also. When I was a teenager, I had a planter's wart, but I also have the strain of it that causes all the cervical issues. And I had enough of those that I was actually able to get the boys vaccinated early because I was having enough issues with it. And then she had warts on her hand at the same time frame
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
20:29
of kindergarten. I remember you saying also that you, it's not like a school nurse had told you, hey, you need to take her to the doctor, something's wrong here. Voluntarily, because she was about to start kindergarten,
you took her back for a follow-up because you did not want her to, you wanted to try to get this cleared up before she started kindergarten because you did not want other kids or teachers to worry about the fact that she had these, and so you were getting that cleared up. Madam Chair, thank you very much for your leniency to the Tafoya family. I applaud your bravery of coming and sharing your story. I know this is very difficult, and I know that your intent is to be a part of the process
to make sure that something like this never happens to another family again. I
Chair
Unverified
21:20
thank you for coming today. Thank you.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
21:26
Thank you. Senator Clark, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. We say this each time that we want to
see that this never happens again, but the zeal, and I appreciate the zeal for wanting to prevent abuse of children. I don't appreciate how it affects families, innocent families, and we keep doing it.
Could you please line out for me the timeline again? And when I was in the timeline, what agencies, I heard the Cabot Police Department, I heard Children's, you went to the doctor. Yes, sir. And he or she called the hotline? Yes, sir. As far as
Speaker 77
22:13
I know, I had to go ahead and request her
Speaker 28
22:18
medical records because they weren't, her clinic notes weren't in her, my chart. That was the only visit missing. I had to request that. It was, I believe, later that evening when they made the phone call.
Who? Children's. Okay. Made the phone call to the hotline. You went to Children's then? To pick up her records because I wanted to see her clinical notes. after the fact okay you went
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
22:44
to the doctor but it would but you when you went after the records children's called the hotline no i'm confused okay so she
Speaker 28
22:53
went we went to children's on july 21st for her checkup okay that's the day that they called the hotline all right by the 22nd is when i had a phone call from tanya
Speaker 81
23:06
cross um cacd yes sir heard that name many times
Speaker 28
23:10
to meet with her at the wade knock center in low note county so we met her the wade knock center low note county and there was from what i remember there was tanya cross with cacd there was another lady i think with state police there was a detective from the cabot police department at this in our room with us for our interview and at that day on the second day that's when cabot came back and said as far as we're concerned nothing has happened case closed on our end
um so i was feeling better but then after he told me that is when miss cross told me that now children's is requesting she undergoes the examination also and so i got the phone call on wednesday from the nurse to schedule her essay exam and then we were there on thursday so it's a four-day period when all this happened and then after that thursday we were left in limbo waiting for the home visit, which never happened, and then until we got that letter on the 31st of
July from the state police saying it was unsubstantiated. Okay,
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
24:17
so the home visit that you were waiting for, I assume... Never happened. Right, I heard you say it never happened, but that was, would have been from DCFS, do you know? I do not know for sure
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
24:31
who it would been from i would have assumed so yeah
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
24:34
the home visit i would think would be from dcfs and i would assume that the fact that they didn't without questioning them yet uh that they didn't come
would say that they didn't see a problem like the cabot police otherwise i think they would have they would have definitely been there for a home visit so the children's from what you said children's or the nurse at children's pretty much insisted that you have uh this examination from what i was told by miss cross yes so you heard from miss cross and not from children's correct okay so miss cross communicated to you with cacd that children's was insisting
so uh so you believe that they insisted correct but uh and the reason for recording this uh was according to what you understand was so that the doctors could examine it at children's could verify okay so your understanding is from cacd that children's and was insisting yes sir that you do this uh so they thought it was important
right if they were assisting that it be done they thought this was very important would that be what you what you assumed from that surely
they wouldn't have forced your daughter to go through this if they didn't
Speaker 28
26:13
think it was very important i mean not necessarily because i have our hard time believing is because they thought it was so necessary when the doctor or the apr and allen at children's who had been seeing my daughter for six months was very adamant that
yes warts spread skin to skin contact but there was absolutely no way that the warts that were on her bottom were a result of the ones that were spreading up her hand as a five-year-old as you're freezing them they're blistering they're rupturing we have a
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
26:45
live virus spreading there's no way that it could have spread our own body yeah i'm familiar with that attitude from children, so with things that are rare, especially. But my question, what I'm trying to dig into is,
you would not have had the examination had they not insisted.
Correct. And so if they insisted, we would assume they thought it was really important. I guess
Speaker 28
27:13
from a medical standpoint, when you're trying to cover all your bases. So if they thought it was
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
27:18
really important, I wonder why it wasn't important enough for a doctor to be there if a doctor was who needed to see it. I would agree
Speaker 28
27:26
with that. I do know Children's was one of the places that they offered for me to go for the exam.
But I told the nurse on the phone, I was like, I will never take my children back to that hospital ever again, which is a huge thing for me because they actually saved one of my children's lives years ago.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
27:47
in a tragic Freak accident. We have an investigative committee that meets behind closed doors that can question all of the people concerned Would you be interested in appearing before that committee? Where we can ask children's and other questions that have come up here. Yes, sir. Thank you
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
28:07
Thank you, madam chair Senator Johnson, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. And Mr. and Ms. DeVoy, we want to apologize to you for anything that could have happened like this that was wrong. I think we tend to trust clinicians, but that's why legislators are here in the committee that Senator Clark referred to as part of that oversight process. I was going to ask if anyone from Children's Hospital is here to respond,
but I think that would be a more appropriate thing in the committee that Senator Clark was referring to that can meet behind closed doors. But on behalf of the state of Arkansas, I want to apologize to all three of you for this, and I want to thank my friend, Representative Bentley, for helping bring this ISP in so we can look a little deeper. We tend to trust these people. And you just mentioned in a previous situation,
they helped one of your children, and that's fine. I mean, we're all dealing with individuals. But I've seen, I've had two friends who, one was a former member of this legislative body, and if I named him, most people in this room, knew him personally uh had a situation with his child uh he and his wife had a situation with his child many it was many years ago but it was a similar situation that they uh and maybe they
were being overly cautious but uh they did mention it at one point that they're uh they made a comment that the clinician made a comment about the particular church that they went to that perhaps was more, and it was about a corporal punishment type issue. So anytime, I mean, you mentioned you and your husband both have a genetic disposition for warts because of something, obviously neither one of you have anything to do with,
but the fact that this kind of thing can happen, we've just got to stay on top of it. So I know it wasn't easy to come. I want to thank you for coming today and also for agreeing to appear before the committee that Senator Clark is a member of. And thank you, and thank you, Madam
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
30:43
Chair. Senator Love, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a very sensitive situation and topic, and so I'm a little reluctant to ask some
questions but i just want to better understand and so um first you this
is a a just a regular doctor's visit with your child to children's hospital it was a referral that we
Speaker 28
31:10
had from her normal pediatrician to have her seen at children's at the dermatology clinic okay so
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
31:17
your pediatrician um referred you to children's and and these are i guess you say warts she had warts on her right
Speaker 28
31:30
index finger okay and then she had well we thought initially we thought she had a mole on her bottom um then i wasn't sure because then there were two bumps and then it went back to one bump and i said maybe it's a molluscum i said i didn't know so her pediatrician looked and he said i'm pretty sure at the Moleskine Contagion, which a lot of children get. It's a very common virus that can cause bumps also. So we wanted to get her treated for it if that's what it was because with her being in school, if that's what it was
and if it would rupture in the bathroom and she used the bathroom on the toilet, like it would spread. So we wanted to get it treated, but because it was on her bottom and the skin is more sensitive, he wasn't comfortable in his office treating it because of how sensitive the skin is in that area. and just the higher risk of infection. He didn't know what Children's would have
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
32:27
in their arsenal of. Okay, so your pediatrician sent you to Children's to get this. So your pediatrician decided that he couldn't treat it,
so he sent you to Children's? Yes. Okay, all right. I'm just
trying to. And so this was your first visit to
Speaker 28
32:44
Children's, correct? No. The phone call was made on her third visit, so it was her second follow-up visit. Children's
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
32:54
had been following her for six
months before they made the phone call. Okay, so, okay. And so, your first visit, they didn't report anything, then your subsequent visits, someone reported.
Speaker 28
33:12
Oh, it was on the third visit. The first two visits, it was just APR and Alan that would come in the room
Speaker 108
33:20
to see us and her. And then on that third visit, it was
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
33:26
APR and Alan, and then there was a student doctor with him. So then tell me this. So I guess I'm trying to think about the progression of things. And so did they report that they saw something the third time that they didn't see the first time? Yes. that and so uh was it what was it these warts on her bottom i guess i'm just trying to okay so they
didn't see that the first time but they saw it the third time correct
Speaker 28
33:52
the first time there was just what ended up being the molluscum he confirmed was the molluscum on her bottom um he didn't check her the second visit and then we went in for the third visit i said you know the warts has spread up now to the top of her hand i was like and also like her bottom broke out really bad is is your child homeschooled uh no now she's in kindergarten okay so
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
34:08
you so but she had never been to daycare so she's
Speaker 28
34:11
never been to daycare correct oh that's interesting i'm a stay-at-home parent
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
34:23
so she was with me from the time she
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
34:28
was born until the time she started school Interesting. Okay. All right. I guess this is an interesting case because now I'm hearing what you're saying in regards to the fact, you know, the facts. It would have been good to have children here. I mean, because I wanted to kind of know the process that they take, and I don't know
if anyone out here, because I see state police,
is the process because here's what I am saying. We, I mean, we have cases on cases to where children have been reported to the hotline and this, the same committee, we say, hey, nothing's being done. And then in this case, we're looking at and we're saying something was done, But I think I can't say whether it was too much or not enough, but a family does feel violated.
And then that's the kind of thing that we want to we want to protect from. But at the same time, I will tell you why I do feel what you're saying. We always tend to err on the side of protecting the child, not saying that the you know. This is just a very complex issue. But I do want to say that I do understand now where you're coming from.
It's just a very sensitive. This is something that's very sensitive because we have to also err on the side of we have to protect that child. And whether the parents are saying, hey, there's nothing going on in our household that would endanger our child, I think we would be on children's back if something did happen and nobody did anything about it.
And so it's just, I don't know. I don't know, Madam Chair, I'll get out of the queue, but this is a very sensitive issue. And I think that we just need to tread carefully because we want to make sure that families are protected, but we also want to make sure that our little ones are protected. And so I would say my heart goes out to this family because I can see both sides. So thank you.
Chair
Unverified
36:56
Well, and you hit a nail on the head when you asked about the processes, and I think that's what this ISP is mainly about.
So Representative Duke, you are recognized for a question. Thank you, Madam Chair,
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
37:09
and thank you all for being here and sharing what I can't even imagine, the pain that
you've been through and that you're going to continue to go through through this. It was very courageous. I just wanted to say I appreciate their proposal at the study and that you're that you brought this to our attention and but When
we investigate We need and we and we do this to a little one
We better be pretty dadgum sure When we ask them to go through a procedure like that That we need to do it because that's a traumatic thing That's a traumatic thing for the mom and dad to have to sit there and know their child's going through that and knowing that their child didn't need to go through that and for her to have to do that. And so I understand we're on this committee. Many of us are we don't pick to be off this committee because our seniority allows us to choose a different committee.
We remain on this committee because we care about kids and we want to make sure they're protected and not just the children but the elderly and all the other pieces of this committee. but we also have to make sure we protect them from people who maybe intend to do right. But this was not right, and this was something that if you're going to make that decision to have that child go through that type of invasive procedure at the age of five, yes, ma'am, holy smokes, you better be certain.
And when you've got enough people saying, hey, we don't think we need to do this. We don't think we need to do this. we don't think we need to do this, then somebody needs to hold up and stop and make sure before you make a child go through something like that at five years old, somebody should have put the brakes on that. It wouldn't have killed anybody to slow it down a little bit and make sure that that needed to happen. And I'm just curious, in all of this process, were you ever told, like, do you want to consult an attorney?
Do you want to talk to anybody to get some advice? Because it seems very overwhelming. I've sat in those hospital rooms and in those different things just as a patient, and it's scary and it's intimidating. Did you get any kind of guidance as far as what your rights were other than if you don't do this, this is going to prolong the process? Because that's what it seems like it felt like from my perspective for you is the only way you could make it end was to agree.
Speaker 28
39:35
Correct. No, we were never told that we could get any advice from anybody.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
39:42
So, I mean, I agree. We are on here to advocate for kids and protect kids. And I know we're going to go through some
documents right now. They're going to break all of our hearts. We mentioned this before we ever even started. But it also needs to break our hearts whenever a little one has to go through something like this, when there were enough people throwing up red flags saying, hey, maybe we don't need to be doing this because I'm thankful at five, maybe it's not going to retain with her, but it's never going to go out of your mind. And I know that. As a mom, I get it. And so I am so sorry. And thank you, Representative Bentley, for bringing this to our attention, because we do have to do better.
And I know the people that are working in this space are trying really hard to do what's best for kids. But we can't swing the pendulum so far over the other direction that we do this to somebody
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
40:34
either. Thank you. Representative Barnes, you're recognized. Thank you, Chair. I want to first say thank you all for having the courage to
be here. I can imagine how traumatic this is. I have one question, though. You were not allowed in the room while they did the procedure,
and I'm wondering, is that policy, or as far as you know, or they didn't tell you otherwise? They just didn't let you go back?
Speaker 28
40:59
No, I was in the room with her when she had the exam done, but I was not allowed near her. You was not allowed to be near her? Correct. I had to sit in a chair next to the door away from her. I was
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
41:16
back past the nurses, back past the table, everything. Okay. Is that policy or did they tell you that's policy or what?
Speaker 28
41:23
I don't remember if they said it was policy or if it was just because they had the service animal area set up and there weren't very big rooms and it just was a size of the room issue. And I was across the room from her when she was being examined. Well, thanks again. I hope that you all will
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
41:43
heal from this and that whatever needs to come out of it, we'll do better in the future as a result of you all coming in and sharing with us today. Thank you.
Chair
Unverified
41:53
Thank you. I thank you for being here as well. And I have a question on that
service animal. So you weren't allowed near your daughter, but a service animal was. Did you request the service animal for comfort? No, ma'am. So what if your daughter was terrified of dogs? But you can't be with her, but the service animal is there. So that wasn't addressed at all about how she would
feel about the... Nope, it was the service animals are there to provide comfort for whoever's there.
Speaker 132
42:23
Whether she liked it or not, huh? Yes.
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
42:30
Thank you. Representative Brown, you recognize? Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not a member of the committee, so I appreciate being allowed to ask a question. madam were you ever did you ever have the feeling or were you ever told that you were under
Speaker 28
42:49
investigation for child abuse they wouldn't say first like that we were under it but they were very adamant that something had happened to
her and when I tried to argue with them I was like well she's never in a daycare doesn't have a babysitter she's always with us then they were still something has still happened to her and it didn't matter that we told that nothing has happened to her but like she had to spread
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
43:12
them from herself on her own from her own body um thank you appreciate your answer representative rose you're recognized
thank you madam chair uh thank you for your your courage to come before this committee today and share your story. I know the sentiment of many of my colleagues just from sitting in the room, and I don't know
if you've heard it. You certainly haven't heard it enough, but I just want to extend such great sympathy, and I am so sorry that this happened to you, and I'm so grateful to Representative Bentley for her work on this, and it is our hope. I'm certain that it never happens
to anybody again, but again, I am sorry. If you haven't heard it enough, at least you're hearing it in a public forum today this
Chair
Unverified
44:09
shouldn't have happened and we're very sorry
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
44:12
thank you representative gonzalez-worthin you're recognized thank you madam chair i too want to thank you for your bravery um this must have been an extremely extremely difficult traumatic time for not only your daughter but your entire family and it kind of puzzles me um knowing that all of your children have this genetic disorder and it's the and now the youngest
one does too and that should have been taken into account immediately you know this is not anything new to our family but um but that also shows why we need to have those procedures a little bit more strict and standardized and I have an overall general question since the study your study I'm representative Bentley is is on the procedures and and all about the child abuse hotline and I wanted to know about language access on the hotline for
example if somebody calls in and they speak Spanish or Marshallese Vietnamese how that's handled in the hotline if it's okay we'll hold that question when I get
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
45:14
I'm gonna bring a director right up here and just okay well we'll bring you back I'm gonna ask that question thank you okay thank you I don't want just guess i want you to hear it directly from her
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
45:27
thank you thank you representative vaught you're recognized mr thank you ma'am um especially since i'm not on the committee i want to
add i mean i want to go back to what senator love said how many people had already told y'all that there was
no reason to go any further because i think there was enough no there's no reason to go any furthers that children should have taken that into the equation of whether they wanted to do it or not. I want to say you said Cabot Police, the two nurses, I remember that, so that's three. Every step of the way,
Speaker 28
46:02
everybody that we had talked to, except for at Children's, the dermatology clinic, when they got done talking to us, they said, as far as we're concerned, case closed, nothing has happened to your daughter.
And then when we're at the TCAR Center, I'm talking to nurses. Before we even go into the exam, the two nurses both there were like, it really sounds like she spread it on her own body. And they were, you know, you can consent, you know, under duress. Right. Because you feel like you're backed into a corner, that you have to say yes to all these things to prove nothing's happened to your daughter. Right. But then as a parent, you feel like you're failing to protect your child from the agencies. They're supposed to protect your family. But when it comes down to it, at that point in time, I'm just a mom with my daughter trying to protect her, but I'm going up against state police.
I'm going up against a children's hospital, and at that point in time, it's like you feel like you have to consent to whatever they're asking for just so you can clear the name, clear everything, and get the letter saying nothing has happened to your child so you can get your daughter treatment for the initial issue. you took her to the doctor for. So did anyone from those agencies reach out to
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
47:14
you and apologize what they put your child through? No, ma'am. And how is she doing? She's doing good. Good. I'm
Speaker 28
47:27
really hoping that she's not going to remember what happened, but the mind is a very mysterious thing, so I don't know how it'll affect her later in life. Right. Right.
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
47:39
Well, I appreciate y'all being here. And again, I'm like everybody else. I am so sorry because I feel like the state failed y'all through agencies. And then I'm even more aggravated that after they put your child through something that she should have never gone through to begin with, no one has reached out to you and apologized for what they did to your child.
And that's heartbreaking as someone who sits here in these chairs to know that our state agencies didn't step up and do what was right and apologize to y'all. So I apologize. Thank you. Senator
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
48:16
Love, you recognize? I just want to, I'm speaking merely now on the process. are we going to have someone come up and present the process because i think um as we go through this we need to know all the checks and the balances so we're not we're not
Chair
Unverified
48:35
addressing the processes today because that's what the isp does so that will be a process to examine the processes okay because i
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
48:43
would be interested to see if i mean because we're saying that all these checks all these we're saying that all of these like the cabot police department said no if if everybody signs off on this then i guess i'm just trying to get a feel of the process i understand and i think
Speaker 156
49:03
that's what needs to be examined the most because i'm not sure anybody's
Chair
Unverified
49:07
truly clear on the exact process and that's that's what why we're addressing just passing or
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
49:16
and then and then let me clarify something because because it was uh representative vault just attributed to me that that i
was saying that now i didn't say i didn't say that you know what i'm saying is that we need to check on the process of it and and i would like i said my heart goes out to this family but if we actually know the processes and what was checked
off on this case then and then if if they weren't moving forward then these checks need to be in place but i would be interested to see even if if state police has a part of this what their what their take is not on this case per se but on the process of in and of itself so that we are no and so um if we can get state police uh to come up and even just speak to no all right so you're not gonna have anybody speak
on the process period no not today because that's what
Chair
Unverified
50:13
the ISP is gonna start to do and we'll do it in a very organized
Speaker 15
50:19
process everyone in here is as interested in that is as you are
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
50:25
okay all right thank you representative Rye you're recognized yes thank you madam chairman let me ask y'all this step one I guess you noticed that this was going on and you took your child to the to a pharmacist I'm not pharmacist but to a doctor and then once that's done and they refer that child to someone that's a professional on that
particular subject did they send that child to the right doctor I assume she was sent to the
Speaker 28
51:02
right doctor since it was a skin issue and they sent her to dermatology um i mean the person that saw her wasn't a doctor per se he was an aprn um i don't know if that would have played a difference if she would have seen an actual dermatologist and not just an
aprn um i just i'm not sure about that well
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
51:29
it's important because the people who actually check that need to be professional within that particular area and if that wasn't done that's not good thank you okay seeing no further questions represented Bentley would you like to close for your ISP
Kimberly Tafoya
Unverified
51:48
if it's okay I'd like to bring one of the I like let them go
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
51:54
and bring one other person up real quick and I will close I'm sorry I appreciate your lenience but
thank you guys it's okay I'd like to bring Tiffany right our director up here for
just a moment colleagues the other part of this interim study is going to be on our hotline so I just wanted to discuss a couple of things with director right about the hotline and then we'll ask for a vote on the ISP so thank you for your
lineage stay on this so I'm director right I know that we've had numerous conversations the committee and our our whole house and our whole legislature's been concerned about what happened in mountain home but after that incident i i called you the incident in my own district um because i had an individual a constituent call me they had a young boy that they'd kept in their house over the weekend because his mom was they were homeless mom and the younger kids were homeless there was a situation with with a boyfriend that was abusive and um so my constituent called me because he had the young boy there and they called the hotline
and i called you to check on that um to make sure that that call had been received and to make sure that those that family was getting the care they needed that those kids are being taken care of and um can you just kind of tell me what what the phone call was like if you
Speaker 15
53:15
remember when i called you on that situation and i know you know the drill but would
Speaker 170
53:22
you recognize yourself please yes ma'am and i'm sorry i'm also dealing with an illness today as well um i'm
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
53:27
tiffany wright i'm director for the division of children and family services and so yes
representative Bentley called me about a concern with the constituent in our community and I got the information and looked at look that information up to see which agency was involved if I needed to coordinate getting my staff involved if they had already been involved kind of what was occurring and that's when I was able to see that the report had not been accepted at the hotline so I made contact with Major Drew and Dan Mack at the hotline to ask
for re-review of that report and upon re-review of that report it was accepted at the hotline so that DCFS could be assigned to get involved to review the to work the child maltreatment investigation thank you so um anyway I I
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
54:22
what happened at Mountain Home, I had a constituent that was homeless, and his mom was homeless. They had no food. There was an abusive boyfriend, and yet the call was dropped,
and they said there was no sign of abuse and neglect. So I just want to say that somehow the system is broken. We can expect perfection every time, but we've got to do better. So I just appreciate you sharing that testimony. So, again, I'm not sure what route we need to go, but I want to do this interim study so we can do a deep dive and say do we need to move the call center what do we need to do because other states are doing a better job than we are and their kids in Arkansas deserve better than I appreciate you correcting that because once you once they received the call that family received the help that they needed and
they were taken care of and my constituent who was a young boy terrified of abusive boyfriend and not having food and not knowing what the world to do that you guys took care of that family so I just want to say thank you that once the right thing was done but we cannot be expected to call you and have you to correct it so i just want to give that as one example i'm not just pulling things out of thin air that we do have a situation that we need to fix i guess with that chairman i'm closed and i would appreciate a good vote on doing this isp so we can get some things fixed in our state and would
Chair
Unverified
55:33
you like to make a motion i make a motion do pass okay i have a motion do pass on
isp and need a house member motion for adoption and i have second several seconds on the house side so all in favor of adopting the isp say aye opposed no thank you your isp has passed okay moving on director right you get to come back we have several reports from DHS DCFS and I'm gonna leave it up to you as to like I know that
for example number two annual report probably takes in the quarterly report so you tell us where
Speaker 178
56:27
you're presenting and we will follow okay good afternoon again tiffany wright director for the division of children and family services The first
Speaker 170
56:37
report I wanted to start with was the Exhibit Overturned Investigations Report.
Speaker 178
56:43
This report is for child maltreatment investigations from January 1st, 2024 to December 31st, 2024. and what you have here is a summary of the number of hauling reports accepted for investigation and then as you follow along the spreadsheet the percentage of those reports that are um overturned uh when when they are appealed
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
57:15
and really quick was that number seven
Speaker 180
57:22
is that oh mine doesn't have a number i'm sorry it's overturned investigations okay yes sir
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
57:27
all right thank you for that presentation do we have any
Speaker 170
57:40
questions from the committee all right seeing none let you move on okay thank you um i'm not going to present quarterly
Speaker 178
57:46
performance report first quarter sfy 2026 because we can see that
the upcoming quarterly report that I'll present as another exhibit wait did I get my purports out order sorry hold on I'm sorry wrong one I am not going to present fourth quarter state fiscal year 25 report because we will see that in the first quarter state fiscal year presentation but next I'm going to go to the first I'm going to go to the annual report card which is from state fiscal year 2025. And I'm starting on page one. So in state fiscal year 2025 there were a total of 32,574
child maltreatment reports accepted at the child abuse hotline. 26,407 of those were assigned to the Division of Children and Family Services for investigation. And further from there you can see the breakdown of those that were assigned to investigation versus those assigned to differential response. As a reminder, the blue ribbon on the side will tell you the definition of what a differential response is. On page two, the middle chart, you will see that the number of true
investigations for the year involves 6,922 children in our state and that on the bottom chart on bottom of page two that 64% of our reports were found it true for neglect. However, I also want to point out that a child can have more than one allegation. On moving to page four, the top of page four is the timeliness of investigations of initiating investigations you can see
the breakdown between a priority one a priority two and then the combined below that you will see the timeliness of completing those investigations and at the end of state fiscal year 25 that rate of completion was 75% which is less than the prior state fiscal year however when I get to the quarterly report I'm going to show you something else related to that. The timeliness of closures
around differential responses on the bottom of page five was how to continue increase to 73% focusing in and making concerted efforts around that as well as around investigations which you will also see. On the top of page six you'll will see the reoccurrence of maltreatment both compared from 6 and 12 months. The national average remains at 9.1 and Arkansas continues to be steady
in the reoccurrence of maltreatment and remaining underneath the national average. On the top of page 7 you will find that those are the number of in-home cases that were opened at the end of the year and the number in children that involved at the end of the year so three thousand three thousand five hundred and two children were involved in in-home cases at the end of our at the end
Speaker 186
1:01:15
of the state fiscal year at the bottom of page eight monthly required
Speaker 178
1:01:24
visits of caseworkers to on our in-home cases we ended the year at 81% on page 10 number of children in foster care we ended the year at 3,390 children in foster care we also continue to look at our entries and discharges at the bottom of page 10 for the state fiscal year about 2,100 children entered and 2,200
exited foster care in the year and you can see the historical information there At the top of page 11, the reasons for entry into foster care, neglect 51%, substance abuse is 41%, and again, just a reminder that children can enter foster care for more than one reason. And then the reasons for discharge from foster care, 42% for reunification, 24% for adoption, and then overall, 91% of children in foster care did exit permanency by going to returning home to their parents or relatives' adoption or another permanent arrangement.
Speaker 186
1:02:49
At the middle of page 12, it'll show
Speaker 178
1:02:54
you the placement types for children in foster care. 35% of children were placed with a relative, 24% were placed with a non-relative home, but overall 77% of our children are placed in some type of family setting. On page 13, monthly visits to children in foster care for caseworker, monthly visits, 83%, but contact by any DCFS staff, 91%.
And then siblings placed together, we are at 74% at the end of the state fiscal year. On the bottom of page 14 is information around placement stability, which we still do have work around placement stability. So this would be maintaining children in their foster placements when we do remove them and put them into foster care. 37% of children achieve permanency within 12 months.
That was a slight decline from the year before, and reentries into foster care after we had discharged them to their families was at 5.4%, which means they reentered foster care after we reunified. On the top of page 16, number of children available for adoption, 197. However, we do a percentage of that because we know that a percentage of kids will be adopted by family members.
And so our number of children that we're currently doing active recruitment for
Speaker 186
1:04:42
is 178. On the bottom of page 17, the length of
Speaker 178
1:04:48
time from TPR to finalization, how to increase, we do have some strategic work going on around that through a hyper-focus and continuing to figure out which systems barriers are preventing us from ensuring timely permanency after termination of parental rights.
On the top of page 18, 36% of adoptions finalized during the state fiscal year were with relatives. We finalized 546 adoptions. In overall total in the state fiscal year, we served 7,916 children with their parents through in-home cases when the year ended for the whole state fiscal year.
Speaker 186
1:05:37
And then on the bottom of page 20, and I'll show you again in the quarterly report,
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:05:49
gain in foster homes after having a loss at the end of SFY 24. And that's what I have for this report.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:06:01
Thank you. And it looks like we have a couple of questions on this report.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:06:05
Going first to House Majority Leader Beatty. You're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My question
goes back, I guess, on page one, right where you started, talking about the total reports of maltreatment received during the year. Can you tell us
how many of those were multiple reports that involved the same child? Because I know that past discussions we've had
that, that there were multiple reports on the same child. Can you break that out for us?
Speaker 178
1:06:33
um i actually um can but i i need to look it up i need someone to give me that number i
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:06:40
i know the numbers so can you can i ask someone to help me and give me the numbers i don't have it you can ask for all the help
Speaker 196
1:06:49
you want actually hold on i might actually have it up here give
Speaker 186
1:07:12
me one second i'm sorry Hey, can I get an assist, please?
Speaker 200
1:07:16
Amber, come here. give me just one second and she's going to come back and tell me because I don't have that on the top of my head even though I should
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:07:37
can I come back to you perfect if and if represent if you're finished can I move on to someone else like you
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:07:42
move on I'll get back in the queue when I go ahead
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:07:45
and go ahead and get back in if you would all right representative Bentley you're
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:07:48
recognized. Thank you, Chairman. Thanks. I just want to say thank great, great job. I see some really good results and I really like what we're seeing
in the face-to-face. I know you've worked really hard to make sure that children are being seen face-to-face and you've seen a big increase on that, but do we just see a little bit of increase on the length of time that it's taken for our kids to get out on page 17? Is there anything that happened this past year that you think about that maybe on page 17 at the bottom with the length of time for them to get to um permanency do we just see a little bit of
Speaker 170
1:08:21
uptake this year just any yeah and so um we have
done significant work on like making some things electronic
Speaker 178
1:08:26
but also in this number of means finalizations and so we actually did this year finalize several children who've been waiting for a long time and so that can also impact this number as well um and so we have a hyper focus going on right now with children that we know are in the placement that are going to adopt them last month we were able to move uh 30 of those kids to adoption and so um we know we just keep
trying to fine-tune that process just as much as we can but last year we did finalize several kids who had been waiting for thousands of days um and so that will also impact that number as well
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:09:04
all right that's that explains that for sure thanks and the other quick thing is just on page 14 we just talk about um 74 percent of kids that have siblings are placed together it seems to be a number that we're kind of stuck at not able to rise above any i know you know we have second chance ranch in my district doing a great job trying to provide sibling homes but is there anything that we think we can do to maybe add to that number or what are your thoughts on that
Speaker 178
1:09:27
tiffany what we could do to um i think that um continuing to work closely with our partners to be strategic about homes that will take those larger sibling groups um yes like your partner second chance ranch we also have arkansas baptist who does help with our large sibling groups um so continuing to work with them but also one thing that could um impact this number as well is are they separated but with family members and so that could go into that as well because they wouldn't show they're not placed together right um but then just continuing to focus on foster
parent recruitment and sharing what our need is but sometimes asking foster parents for room rooms for nine kids is a lot right like when you have a similar group of seven eight and nine that's pretty impossible to do i mean it's not that it doesn't happen but
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:10:15
it is so that's why we have to be strategic in the work we do with our partners in the state for that recruitment okay thank you thank you chairman
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:10:24
thank you representative uh representative vought you're recognized thank
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
1:10:27
you mr chair how many uh how many children do we have in foster care right now
Speaker 209
1:10:33
can you tell me um it's uh like 30 um it was like 33 90 i think when i got the last number and do
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
1:10:42
we have children that are waiting to go to a foster home and if yes how many is
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:10:49
there um waiting to go to a foster home um can you clarify that question like what do
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
1:10:55
you mean by that um well like i know like when children are picked up there's not always somebody immediately ready where they can take
Speaker 178
1:11:04
a child oh yes ma'am okay so um we have so when kids come
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:11:09
a foster care you know first we're looking for safe and appropriate relatives then we're looking for foster homes um we do have limited ability for to utilize emergency shelters based on age um and then but those are not typically the kids that we're getting um stuck in the dhs office with um typically we're getting stuck with our older youth who have more complex behavioral issues who have some significant needs that are are kind of scary to be honest and so we don't like we
track kids who get stuck in the office and we have teams who meet to try to treat us those situations so no kids are just sitting forever waiting in the DHS office and then that's why placement stability doesn't look great because we find foster homes that can help us for one night or two nights and then we move the kids according to what needs to happen next or maybe we find a relative that we weren't able to
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
1:12:06
find days later so that you answered the second part of my question with this with the children that are needing
more therapy a lot more services and they are
kind of scary I know we ran a bill during session representative Kavanaugh did that opened up prft beds for those type children who are a lot more difficult um has that helped y'all with those that are waiting because we know the list was long for beds but i know that we tried to make it where it's arkansas first so i'm just wondering has that helped if it hasn't can you tell me why it hasn't
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:12:49
So to go to a psychiatric residential treatment facility, PRTF, you have
to qualify, which means that the PASS has to approve you to go to that placement based on recommendations. And so some of these kids do not need that level of care. They have maybe completed that treatment or they were treatment failures at that. And so we're navigating that, and so those will be the kids we're getting stuck with in the office.
And then, to be honest, some of our kids are really complex that some of these places won't even consider them because of their complexities. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, Representative Rose, you're
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:13:35
recognized. And, members, I'll just keep in mind the time. We've been here a little bit, and
I know that Director Wright's voice is not as strong as it normally is. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:13:50
Director Wright, thank you for taking the time to go through these
reports page by page with us. Just a couple of quick questions. I was looking at a side-by-side of the numbers of finalized adoptions, which is on page 18, and the number of children available for adoption on page 16. And I think in response to
Representative Vought's question, you said there are roughly, correct me, was it 3,200, 3,300 children that were in foster care?
Can you tell us whether that number is less or more than in previous years, the total number that are in foster
Speaker 223
1:14:36
care? If you look at the top of page
Speaker 207
1:14:41
10, you'll see state fiscal year 22, 23, 24, and 25. So it's a decline. Okay, that answers kind
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:14:49
of one of my questions. I assume there's just a ratio. No matter how good the work you do is, at some point,
you're only going to be able to get a certain percentage of the kids that you have in foster care to be adoption ready or into adopted homes. And so I was wondering if we're seeing, which looks like good numbers, the decrease, if that matched the number of children in foster care. And so that's correct. I had one other question. On page 20, there's a note in the upper left corner about the average caseload is at 17 cases per worker and that you guys had a goal to have them at 20 or fewer.
could you talk a little bit about that kind of achieving that goal and what that means for
Speaker 178
1:15:42
the caseworkers in your division yes um so for us so this is everybody who could carry a caseload
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:15:49
within the division that's assigned cases when we pull the data and so what you're going to see in the quarterly report is that it's higher again but because that's based on workforce so retaining staff providing good services discharging children from foster care supporting children in their home
working investigations timely like it's a plug for all of the work that happens and so while we did achieve it and it is an average so some of my counties would tell you that's not right I have more than 20 but it's an average for the whole state it's watching the ability to do the different Layers of work and be strategic about it does help retain the workforce
Speaker 200
1:16:26
and that's a critical factor to the workloads All right, I appreciate the analysis. Thank you
Chair
Unverified
1:16:35
Thank you representative and representative Barnes you're recognized. Thank you chair
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:16:40
My question is how is the effective key in catalog? How do you can log in a catalog
Speaker 186
1:16:48
as a relative or non relative? fictive kin is cataloged into
Speaker 178
1:16:54
The first red Chart line you see there. So it breaks it down. It says Relative fictive can foster home 21% so that it's all
Speaker 217
1:17:03
concluded. We include relative as fictive kin. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome
Chair
Unverified
1:17:13
Representative Springer you're recognized Good
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:17:17
afternoon. Thank you chair for the opportunity to address Miss right Once again, we
have these reports every year and I've been on this committee I guess since I've been in the legislature and I've as you recall I've always asked about Workloads of employees because I still receive concerns from them regarding the massive workloads that they have and so
Have we come up with a report similar to this to tell us what the workloads are of each one of these individuals working in your department and how effective assistance is being given to ensure that their workloads are manageable? I guess that's my question. I think I've been asking this question for the past several years now about overall workloads. They have a lot of responsibilities in each one of these reports, And I think that individuals who have these responsibilities, we don't know exactly how they're doing with respect to all the things that they're having to do.
So if we could have some type of disaggregated data with respect to that, I think we would have some improvement with respect to what's going on
within the Department of Children and Family Services. I guess that's a long question, so am I communicating? Do you follow me, what
Speaker 178
1:18:42
I'm saying here? Yes, ma'am. And I would remind everyone that online on the DCFS, on the DHS website, on the DCFS tab, there are the reports that we put out every month that are all the way down to the county level. And there is a breakdown of each county level's workload down to that specific county.
So those are on the public-facing site. monthly charts are that can show you each county offices workloads now it's not gonna have the workers name
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:19:13
but it's gonna tell you what's going on in that county also in
Speaker 178
1:19:20
the back somewhere in the back of here is a area map that also shows which report the
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:19:33
workload I'm on the annual report card on page 41 that's
based on this county by county as
Speaker 207
1:19:42
well but to see it real time each month it's online on the website so which
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:19:52
page are we referring to in
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:20:04
right I have it I'm trying to get to 41 so so though okay so that
So are you saying that, okay, for instance, Pulaski County, so you're saying that 23.3 cases are being held individually
by each person within that DFO,
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:20:24
DCO? It's an average of the county, of the whole county. So everybody who carries a type of caseload in the
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:20:35
county, that's the number that they have compared to other portions of the state, say for instance like venton county so theirs is 17.34 yes and then if we go over to uh eastern
arkansas mississippi county so that one is 21.57 is that right yeah it's an yeah it's an average for
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:20:57
everyone in that county who's carrying a caseload and a caseload can be any anything that we have assigned staff to oh
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:21:08
anything okay so i guess that's my point i'm sorry mr chair follow
up okay um so i'm just trying to understand and i can see why now that you know i i receive the complaints that i do because it appears that pulaski county has the highest case workload
Speaker 238
1:21:26
poor per employee is that correct actually there's two counties that are at 33 and 32 and where are
Speaker 186
1:21:33
those Cleveland and Lafayette Lafayette okay so I guess I have the same question for them I don't hear
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:21:42
from them but it appears that that appears to be the same type of problem that they're having there too that though we are so we have three counties where there's a a focus of greater workloads than other parts of the state then correct and that would be that's
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:21:59
going to be um due to staffing turnover and having to move cases and staff and try to balance out the work and then i guess
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:22:07
that follows up my question before we've had this same conversation and then the question is what are we doing in order to address that
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:22:16
to everything we can do every single day which is continue to hire and retain our staff um provide them what they need train them appropriately to do the work and just continue managing it through leadership and supervision and what's going on in the county offices all right thank you
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:22:32
thank you representative uh represent the baby you're recognized
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:22:39
i just following up to see if we had a number yet
uh because then i do have other questions after we get this
Speaker 178
1:22:53
and if not, I'll let you get to your other questions. Of the 32,000 maltreatment reports, 1,831
Speaker 200
1:22:59
had multiple reports to the hotline.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:23:03
So 1,831 out of that. And do you have the follow-up on that where it breaks down into the other categories from page
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:23:16
can get that. because then that that my question goes in are these multiple reports consolidated into one case when they when they are they are sent for review or is each one a separate case so as you get these reports coming in if you get a report today for John Doe and then on Friday you get two more
reports on John Doe, because a lot of times, you know, mandatory reporting on a lot of institutions and providers in the state that would have access or have knowledge. So you get all these multiple reports in. How do you consolidate that in? Are those consolidated? Does that start a separate, I know it's going to be a separate report, but does that then flow to the worker that has that caseload to follow your metrics and policies within the department?
does that get routed to the same caseworkers that go to another
Speaker 223
1:24:17
another person um loaded question uh lots to unpack there um but um it can be merged in the two
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:24:25
reports could be merged in together but we'd
Speaker 178
1:24:29
have to look at the allegations um and what's going on with those allegations um as well as and then making sure it's do we have multiple counties involved There's a lot of things that have to go into that, so we can
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:24:43
merge them together and not lose any information along
Speaker 217
1:24:47
the way so that we're not assigning multiple people to investigate one family, if that answers your question.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:24:53
That's part of my concern, and then also if that's not the case, then a lot of your metrics and other statistics that you report in here would be skewed. I don't think it would skew it that much for 2,000 unless all 1,800 of those were, say, assigned to CACD. are are confined within one category
then it could have an effect especially in in in that small population there so that just some concerns there uh follow up to um representative springer's line
of questioning uh where you were talking
uh about what you're doing to because you you stated turnover and trying to hire and that that's still an issue and going to be an ongoing issue I think the last time that you and I spoke in committee, we talked about surveys and what you were doing within the department for employee morale and to see what your division could
do a better job of to make certain that we have happy employees.
I mean, I can't imagine doing what y'all have to deal with. I think it's something that would tear at your heart every day. And so how is that working, and can you
enlighten us on some of that just briefly?
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:26:11
Yeah, so we've been doing – we did a – this year we did, again, our staff appreciation banquet and picked area-wide winners and then a statewide overall winner to build morale and highlight good work that our staff had done in the year.
We try to continue to do our gem award, which is going the extra mile, So staff, we're going above and beyond. We also have them doing Everyday Champions, so people who just get called out by a stakeholder or someone who's done something well to acknowledge that work. We also have rolled out across the states, it's called C-CERT. It's another acronym, but it's a trauma-informed kind of secondary training response
and how do you manage the work and the stress and the balance it all out, right? Like how do I balance my personal life plus with everything I see going on? And we were able to do that with a mixed bucket of staff across the state, and then we did it in one specific area last month, and we're getting ready to go to another part of the state and do it again, so we've got that going on. And then Representative, I think I told you that I had a goal to change new staff training, And we're getting very close to that coming in the coming year.
We're starting with our supervisor training. And so looking forward to that as well as changing what our frontline workers get, how we make it more about competency and not just checkboxing and making sure they're actually learning what they need to learn when they're sitting in training. So I'm looking forward to getting that going and sharing with you all some of that as we progress into 2026. And that was one thing we heard from them loud and clear was that that training was not working.
And so we've been doing that as well as trying to encourage and bridge the gap between what we call central office or our main office downtown, where a lot of the program managers and assistant directors are, to the staff that are out across the state and getting them out in the county offices and just supporting something critical that might be going on in the county office. And so we've been doing that as well. So just trying to come at it from every angle to support them through this work.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:28:32
Well, I appreciate your answers, and I know sometimes my questions may be pointed and hard. I don't envy
the job that you and your division have to perform, but I do think that out of this committee, not just the committee, but legislators at the state, the most vulnerable part of our state and population, our children, that's what you're entrusted with. that's
right and so we're going to make certain and i know you take that very seriously but it's one thing that will impassion this group and and have a lot of us hooping and hollering so
continue the good work and keep your people happy and thank you again
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:29:14
for your answers thank you thank you representative representative gonzalez word
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:29:18
then you're recognized thank you chairman yes i wanted to ask this question while you were here i asked it earlier and I have a follow-up question if I may they're related so I wanted to know what what the language access services that the hotline might provide if somebody wants to report
an incident child maltreatment etc if they speak another language other than English and they want to report Spanish and Marshallese Vietnamese etc so I feel really bad because I don't know the answer
to that because I don't I'm not in the day-to-day operations of the Arkansas child
abuse hotline state polices and I know they get to come to the table after me so we're both going to learn that I would assume they use an interpretation service that they have just like DCFS does for
Speaker 217
1:30:10
serving families but I don't want to speak for them so I'm going to let
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:30:16
them answer that question if that's okay yes may I ask my follow-up to that yes so once we know that and I was wondering if we have adequate staff to handle cases with these multiple languages do
Speaker 178
1:30:35
you have adequate staff so DHS does allow for pay incentive for staff who are bilingual and then we also DHS
also has a contract that DCFS gets to utilize that we can utilize if we don't have staff? So I think the answer is yes,
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:30:55
but obviously we always need more. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Representative Nick
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:31:05
Burks, not to be confused with Rebecca. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Speaker 259
1:31:13
So we talked about staff retention and training as a way of improving our quality of service. Another issue that was brought up in the Mountain Home incident was lack of documentation. Have the documentation methods for each report changed specifically because of that incident? Or are there plans to change that? As it relates to history? or just document like
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:31:40
we are always asking we always tell them if you don't document it it
Speaker 178
1:31:44
doesn't happen and so we just keep saying that one thing that they do experience though in all of the things that they have going on transporting a kid making sure a child is safe
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:31:58
documentation is sometimes the last thing that happens we have to ensure that they're doing thorough documentation so we are working on that we've been messaging that and making sure that documentation is happening and giving them protected time to do that that's the strategy is like when you're in
your office you could get pulled into other crisis going on and so how do we manage uh giving them protected time and so we've been working on that okay so you're
Speaker 258
1:32:25
telling me that specifically you're changing the way in which you're going to document the process as
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:32:32
a result of this incident well we have we have to enter documentation to move cases forward
within our system so it's not a choice it's just making sure that it's thorough in nature okay thank you
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:32:43
all right back to you representative Springer thank you mr. chair I just
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:32:52
want to point out in going over this report I just wanted to bring to your attention, Madam Secretary, that we indicated earlier that Lafayette, Cleveland County had caseloads of 32.5 and 33. As I look at the services that are being provided in Clebron County and Lafayette, 33 cases in Lafayette looks like total and 32 in Cleveland County.
something is I don't understand that something is wrong there compared to Pulaski County that has like over 600 so they're not as many cases being handled that's why their caseload averages is about the same as Pulaski County they got fewer cases and I guess fewer people they're working thank you I just want to point that
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:33:54
out yes ma'am thank you representative representative hope Duke you're recognized okay thank
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:34:03
you mr. chair just a real quick question
that represent Burks maybe I'm just bring to mind
when you are talking about we need to do a better job of documenting our I don't want to assume this are y'all spot-checking them to make sure that you know that the documentation is happening is somebody actually actively going back periodically and checking the
Speaker 267
1:34:24
files and making sure that it is happening so documentation is how we get this data
Speaker 178
1:34:29
so like for example if you all asked me why foster care visits go down like we would see that we would
know they weren't documenting or it wasn't happening and so that's how we can when we use data analysis we can say like what's going on in this county like the their in-home visits have decreased or like what is happening and so is
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:34:50
it a documentation issue is a workforce issue to have a practice issue are they documenting wrong but also on everything we enter a supervisor has to click approve um so like if i enter in a
Speaker 178
1:35:00
contact for a family today a supervisor has to approve that contact so because what brought
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:35:06
it to mind was when you were saying there's a lot of
moving parts whenever they're having a case and and that sometimes can be the last the last thing getting done is they're trying to get a kid transported and so forth so my question i guess is when that person is coming in and they've got the child at a place that they're a safe place and they've done all those different things is someone making sure at that juncture right there that the document because obviously somewhere the documentation didn't happen if that's been an issue so who's going back now to make sure that that documentation is taking place before you have
to file a report right and then you have maybe 10 that you're having to go back and make sure that
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:35:47
you got all the pieces back together I think it's a balance I wouldn't say right at
Speaker 178
1:35:52
that moment it's probably happening which is why we have to be strategic about giving them protected time to get the documentation in but then you also will see it in doing case reviews and looking at like their specific assignments in our system to know that like this kid hasn't been seen why didn't this kid get seen did you get your documentation in did you do it we
Speaker 196
1:36:08
can ask those questions that way I don't know if I'm making sense I mean you are I guess I understand what
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:36:16
you're saying it just seems like some of that happens whenever you get to like a deadline and my question is as a suit someone who's the supervisor of those workers are do they periodically just I want to see what you did not you just to check them because it's like taking a pop quiz rather than taking the test is someone doing the pop quiz with them to make sure there's that accountability on a more regular basis than whenever the report may actually be due or something like that I would say probably not a hundred percent of the time but I think
Speaker 178
1:36:48
we have supervisors who historically do that instead of waiting until the last minute when something is due I think it's something we could continue to work on I mean I
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:36:57
understand that I think we also this many of us have
said this several times I think it's the hardest job in the state in my opinion dealing with what you guys have to deal with on a day to day basis and so I try to keep that in mind when I ask the questions because we all go home and all the ways on us in different ways stays with you every day and I understand that it just
if we are able to maybe from the outside sometimes give some perspectives and if they're not periodically checking that like a pop quiz I think that always makes make students better it makes teachers better when they get just the not I'm not I'm coming to observe your class without a warning you know if that accountability helps and if there's not that little piece of the puzzle there which I get is another thing for someone to do but I think that if documentation is such the lifeblood of what you're doing here and protecting whether
they're doing it right or doing it wrong then that periodic accountability of it of checking it might be something to help improve a little bit more of
their documentation if they never know for sure when someone's going to check yeah and I think we we
Speaker 243
1:38:06
do that but probably just not as consistent
Speaker 276
1:38:08
as we need to do that instead of waiting until the last minute all right thank
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:38:17
you representative I see no other questions on on this particular item I will remind the committee we have a
few more to go through so take a sip of water everybody if
you got more questions we can
be here a while but I know that you know which
Speaker 178
1:38:37
we need to be expeditious on this so director you're recognized okay thank you I'm going now to the
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:38:48
quarterly performance report for the first quarter SFY 26 and I'm going to
Speaker 178
1:38:54
do the same thing I did before and just go through a few of the pages and then we can do questions is that okay okay thank you So in first quarter of SFY 26, 8,589 reports were accepted at the child abuse hotline, 6,954 of those were assigned to DCFS, 5,300 were assigned to investigation, and then 1,500 to differential response.
If you go to page two, same information, just a little different because it's only the quarter, but 1,692 of those reports, true reports involved 1,692 victim children. 66% of those reports were true for neglect. on page four um timeliness of initiate um of initiating investigations um again total combined
at 76 percent um what i wanted to point out from the annual report card to this quarter is at the bottom of page four uh timeliness of closure we were able to increase to 80 percent um with some strategic work and so I just wanted to point that out from the annual report card. Timely closures of differential response reports increased to 84% in the quarter. On page six at the top of page six and then the bottom again you also
see your reoccurrence of the amount of maltreatment within six and twelve months. At the top of page 7, again, at the end of the quarter, we had open in-home cases that involved 3,500 children. At the bottom of page 8, required home visits to in-home cases at 82%.
Page 10, the number of children at the end of the quarter, 3,352. At the bottom of page 10, there's your admissions and discharges by the quarter, your entries and discharges by the quarter. Again, and I would also tell and share with you all that on our monthly charts that we have online, you all can access, you can see this by the county as well. And then at the top of page 11, neglect at 52% was the reason why children entered into foster care.
Substance abuse following with 32%. And again, as a reminder, every child may have more than one entry into foster care. 45% of the children reunified this quarter, and then 19% were adoption at the bottom of page 11. On page 12 in the middle, you can see the placements where children are placed in foster care. Top of page 13 is the caseworker visits at 83% and then 89% by any DCFS staff.
Siblings placed together, 75% at the end of the quarter. And then you see the permanency within 12 months at the top of page 15. And then on page 16, the number of children available for adoption. When you take 10%, it's about 175. And then on the top of page 18, 35% of adoptions were finalized by relatives in this quarter.
And then also wanted to just point out that children ages 10 to 17 made up 34% of the adoptions that occurred. So our older children are getting adopted, which has been a goal of the agency. And then on page 20, you'll see the workload information again. And at the bottom of 20, again, first quarter, we had the net gain of foster homes open.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:43:39
All right, seeing no questions, I will ask
Speaker 223
1:43:50
you to move to the next one. Okay. Unless you'd rather sit here and wait for some. No, that's
Speaker 178
1:43:56
okay. Okay. Next, I'm going to move to the Garrett's Law Report. So you have two exhibits as it relates to that. You have the summary of the referrals, but then you also have the actual data that goes with that. I'm going to focus on the summary and walk through the pages of that with you.
Page one of this document just provides you what the oversight of Garrett's law and the numbers of reports received. The top of page two provides you an actual chart since the start of Garrett's law legislation from 2006 until 2025. So that was 1,224 Garrett's law reports accepted in the state fiscal year. the bottom of page two is the characteristics of garrett's law reports and how those reports are
accepted page three you will see a chart table one the top of page three it just provides you an age breakdown of the mothers in the garrett's law reports The table two on page three is the percentage of Garrett's Hall reports and which drugs were cited. So marijuana at 81% was the number one drug cited for these reports in our state.
page four uh that chart the table three the gestational age of newborns in garrett's law report it gives you a summary as well as a breakdown from 20 um the past state fiscal years for you to compare to see um full term versus premature and then uh table four will provide you um whether or not the infants had health problems um and if that was cited in the report, so no health problems on 72% of the Garrett's Law reports this year, this past
fiscal year, and there is a summary about the mothers cited in the Garrett's Law report at the bottom for
Speaker 207
1:46:17
you all to read around the use of opioids
Speaker 178
1:46:28
and benzos during pregnancy. Page 5 provides you our DCFS response to Garrett's Law reports based on substantiation after investigation, cases being opened, as well as removal from custody.
So those will be what the following charts are. So table five is the substantiation rate by area in the state. And if you need a reminder of the areas, the front of your report cards have the areas broken down so you know which area of the state by county. Okay, page six is table six, the case opening rate on Garrett's Law. And so we've been having our staff and central office review Garrett's Law reports
and do strategic coaching with our areas that we felt like were struggling in the state. You can see we have two areas that were, area one was low in 2024. We've been focused in doing some strategic coaching. We also had Area 4, who was at 95% substantiation rate and had a decline. And
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:47:46
so we've been evaluating those reports and getting on calls and coaching with staff
Speaker 178
1:47:52
and reviewing to see kind of what's happened and how we can continue to engage with them around these critical reports. And then table 7 on the top of page 7 is, I'm sorry, table 7 starts at the bottom of page 6. It's the child removal rate. And then there's on the very last bottom of page 7 moving into page 8 is a summary of this entire report.
I would say that we have been strategically working through the Garrett's Law reports and really all
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:48:31
of our reports that when we become involved with families, that should be a trigger with our investigation team to immediately start providing and offering services, not waiting through the course of an investigation to complete and then assigning it to someone else at DCFS to provide services. so we've been working through that how to navigate that we're giving services to parents and opening cases and supporting them along the
Speaker 178
1:48:55
way even when there's an investigation going on
and connecting them to resources because if we don't you know these are our most vulnerable population they're our younger kids so how do we keep supporting our staff to engage these families appropriately and we've seen staff improvement around their practice engaging in safe sleep conversations engaging with PCPs of these infants and talking with them and kind of seeing what's going on with that and then the last appendix is breakdown by the
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:49:34
question from represent Johnny going to you yes thank you
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
1:49:42
mr. chairman it's probably mentioned here somewhere but I'd just like to ask you a question ma'am from the time that a lady becomes pregnant until the time that baby is is born are we testing the mothers each time that they're checked at the doctor DCFS is not no
Speaker 207
1:50:04
would it be hard to do that probably so yes I can't get involved until
Speaker 200
1:50:16
there's an actual child and there's been a report to
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
1:50:19
the hotline ma'am reason I asked you that is because the development of the child from the time zero all
the way to nine months. Any time that there's some kind of foul drug that is thrown into that has a chance of giving that baby some type of a premature or else either brain damage, you know, things can
happen. Just wondering if we could go that direction.
Speaker 200
1:50:42
Yeah, I can't. I don't think that's a question that I can answer. My agency doesn't get to be involved until the child is actually born. And so I can't actually do anything until the child is born. It might
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:50:57
be someone else that can answer that. Well, thank you.
Speaker 284
1:51:02
Sorry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you. Thank
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:51:06
you, Representative. All right. I see no additional questions.
Speaker 178
1:51:12
Okay. I have one more. But I did have a question on this one. um so this information is calendar year uh 2024 and so i wasn't sure how deep you wanted me to go in through all of this information
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:51:28
i think without objection give us an
Speaker 178
1:51:32
executive summary okay um high level
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:51:36
uh what you will see in this report is the family preservation report it is calendar year 2024 it buckets our work at DCFS into three buckets safety permanency and
Speaker 178
1:51:47
well-being and it breaks it down for you by areas of the state to review that data and then it gives you a historical look back from 2022 forward in most of the charts on the very end of each subsection there is a strengths and areas for improvement around each one
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:52:09
and so I can read the strengths and improvements I can I think they're all things that we've talked about
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:52:18
today it looks like we already have questions in the queue are you ready for questions sure let's go to
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:52:28
questions representative rose you were recognized thank you mr. chairman thank you director, um, for walking us through these, uh, past several reports. Um, starting on page two of, uh, this report, I just kind of wanted to walk through a couple of numbers and then see if you could expound upon the, the rationales. Maybe we see from 22, 23 to 24, uh, that we've accepted
roughly 22 or 2300 less maltreatment reports statewide from 22 to 24 if you turn to page 5 we see of those reports we've gone from 22% of those being substantiated down to 19% of those being substantiated additionally on page 6 we have a significantly lower recurrence rate within 12 months than the national standard.
And then if you go over to page 10, the report lists that the number of investigations accepted decreased by 6%. And the last thing I'll say here is on page 11, we see the children in foster care from 22 to 24 is 700 less roughly than it was at that time. I don't believe that there are
indicators broadly that there is less child abuse taking place in our state, unfortunately, but it does look like this report indicates that we are accepting fewer maltreatment reports uh and we are seeing fewer substantiated investigations can you explain what is contributing to that trend in our
reporting in report and i don't i
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:54:29
don't think i can answer for reporting um i will i do know that
Speaker 178
1:54:35
we did experience less reporting as we were coming out of uh covid and then as things were
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:54:41
have started to return to normal we've seen reporting increase again so I I know 22 23 was where we really started feeling like things were back kids were all like all back
Speaker 178
1:54:51
in school things were happening right like we were getting back to more normal life than what we had been prior I don't but I don't I
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:55:02
can't just say it's just that like I can't give you just that but I would
say um maybe this is something we might glean from the isp that was approved today as well i
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:55:13
guess the sense that i'm getting at is i think if we were seeing broadly like there is
less child abuse right something's working and we're seeing less child abuse we would be celebrating that in some ways but i'm not really hearing it but when we look at the reports we are seeing we have less substantiated cases and we're accepting less maltreatment reports and i'm just wondering if there's any any other indication for why that's taking place i would think that's a metric we'd
Speaker 217
1:55:40
want to know yes i would say yes and um i think that there's probably different things that are happening that's there's not just one significant thing that's impacting that if that makes sense sure and i'm guessing maybe you're still
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:55:55
calling some data and maybe developing and why is this happening and are
there good things happening or are we missing things is that yes sir okay all right thank you all right seeing no
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:56:11
further questions i'm good all right okay dismissed
thank you director okay looks like we have our friends from the uh state police miss
rogers you would please come to the table and without objection we will hear
Speaker 299
1:56:45
the july through september report good afternoon my name is kalika rogers i am the child abuse investigations program
administrator for crimes against children division with state police and before i present this july through september report i do want to answer representatives question regarding the child abuse hotline they do use an interpretation service you're welcome we will be going over the quarterly report for july through september of this year you can find the hotline call volume on page two. Our child abuse hotline received 17,335 contacts. 9,559 of those were accepted,
and CACD handled 1,766 of those. DCFS handled 5,881, while 1912 were differential responses to DCFS. On page three, it shows the allegations by the type that were investigated by CACD, and that's in a monthly breakdown. On page four, it will
show the cases reported by mandated reporters. On page five, you will see the monthly breakdown of the investigations that were open and closed. Within this three-month period, there were 1,703 cases opened and 1,421 closed. Of the 1,421 that were closed, 419 of those were found to be true, and that gave us a substantiation rate of 30%. There were 3,077
investigations active at the end of this um quarter that were over with 472 of those being open over 45 days on pages six and seven there's a breakdown of the cases by county on pages nine and ten that will reflect the reported allegation types and the alleged victim age groups on pages 11 through 20 that's going to show the relationships
between the alleged offender and the alleged victim with the age groups of the alleged offenders and then on pages 21 through 29 will be a breakdown by judicial districts for our prosecuting attorneys and the cases that we submit to the prosecutors, and that's broken down by the number declined, the number filed, and the total that were still pending. On the bottom of
page 29, it's going to show you that we had 684 cases submitted to our prosecutors. 68 of those were declined 442 of those had charges filed and then 175 of those were still pending criminally and that's the end of our quarterly report okay thank you looks like we've got some questions so starting with uh resident baity thank
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:00:16
you mr chair i'm i'm over here yes sir uh my question
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:00:26
more is uh related to the staff or your division uh how many
Speaker 305
2:00:32
employees do you have in the division we currently have 72 of 73 investigator positions
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:00:41
field are you just investigators i mean are there other folks in this
Speaker 299
2:00:46
division who mans your hotline we do have our child abuse hotline has one administrator it
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:00:55
35 operators so 35 operators uh looking back at
this the the number you had in here for that three-month period you had 17,000 calls and and 30 operators yes sir all right um I'll get back in I've got some other questions
on that but I'll get I'll get back in the queue thank you
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:01:22
representative Duke you're recognized thank you mr. chair um thank you for being here and for this information um my questions kind of
um go around what you do with with this data
so what we can do with this data i guess as part of it so
on the crimes against children that are sexual in nature are you can are you all compiling the data in any more um comprehensive i guess maybe fashion than just a foster parent great grandparent mother i mean i guess what i would like to see is How many of these children who are being violated is by a biological parent? Do you – is it – I mean, I know you have the data. Right. Is there a way that we can –
Speaker 299
2:02:02
Break it down further? Yes. I can get back with you on that. Okay.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:02:08
We can check to see if we can do that. Thank you. And along those lines, on
these crimes against the children that are sexual in nature, have they – do you have the information, I guess, as far as I would like to know, maybe other members would, the technology pieces that may be a part of this crime with a child and also if that crime against a child, drug-related as well.
How often are those together, hand in hand? We've got a child being abused sexually in some fashion and there's alcohol, drugs of some nature that are also in place with that as well. I'm assuming that data is there. I don't know if it's in a place where you can easily get it together, but I would like to see that. I think that would be helpful for us as far as policy goes forward or conversations that take place in the future in regards to other policies,
whether how much those are hand-in-hand and those things. And can you also see, like, the trends in the past? Because, well, obviously, technology is a new piece that wasn't part of our lives years ago. But also there's been a lot of changes just in our society and culture. So can you see if there are trends that are happening with our children and with our families and with our culture in relationship to the sexual crimes? It seems to me that it just seems to be exploding.
Every time I open up the paper, there's another crime against a child that's involving sex. And I can't even lead the conversations that I'm having, you know, but that's the reality we're living in. And so I would just like to know what are factors that are contributing to this that maybe we as a society need to address or maybe we as legislators need to address. So if you could get that data to us, I think that that would be helpful. If you don't know it, I mean, I'm
Speaker 312
2:04:05
going to guess you don't know that offhand.
Speaker 313
2:04:08
No, no, ma'am. Could you just speculate? Do you see from your all's work with this,
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:04:14
and you nodded your head when I said it seems like the sex crimes against children seem to be rising. I don't think it's just a matter of they're being reported more. I know that COVID had an impact on it. Is there anything that just you guys are catching your eye of, wow, these seem to
Speaker 299
2:04:32
go hand in hand? Well, approximately 80% of what CACD investigates is sexual abuse. So the majority of the things that we investigate is sexual abuse.
And so I can't really pinpoint that technology or any one thing has, you know, a bigger factor, you know, on these cases that we're seeing. But that's something that can be looked into. Well, I guess what I'm wondering is whenever this is being reported
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:04:57
is, and I realize it depends on the nature of it and those types of things and where the reporter is, what's happened at school, or whether it's at a doctor or whatever, but I guess I'm curious if sometimes some of this abuse is taking place
because we've got parents who also have or family members or people that have been brought into the home for a variety of different reasons that are also have a drug addiction that is part of the problem or have a, I mean, I think the pornography addiction goes hand in hand, right? But that's, I guess, I feel like the conversations, besides just having the data, knowing what else is going on whenever that accusation is being made and then it's being investigated does this person also have an alcohol problem that is contributing to poor judgment and
things like that that's that's what I'm trying to see because I'm not just looking for solutions policy-wise I'm looking for solutions I can take back home as a community and what can we work on to better support and help and make a difference so these kids
Speaker 315
2:05:59
are not being you know the numbers actually go down for
Speaker 317
2:06:05
real legitimate reasons. Right. Major, excuse me, Major Jeff Drew, Commander CCD. Right now, there's nothing present in our reporting system where we could separate that data. If it's included, it would be included in the narrative part of it,
which we would not be able to extract
Speaker 318
2:06:20
from the system like that because it's not reported separately. So if there was, if
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:06:28
those were contributing factors maybe or something, if a parent is under the influence of something and then they're also committing, or not just a parent, because that's one of the things I'm curious about is how much of this is family, and I'm also curious how far back did the family members' crimes against their children, is it rising, or is that staying the same from what it used to be in past years?
Are we seeing a higher number of actual biological parents committing crimes against their children? Or is this kind of just staying, you know, level in the years going back? But there's no way for you to see or know, for us to know, if a kid under the influence of cocaine did something against
Speaker 317
2:07:10
this child. Right now, the reporting system does not show a contributing factor.
Speaker 318
2:07:14
It's a little bit different. Let's say like an accident report is going to show all those different things,
contributing factors, whether they were sleep under the influence and all that. that particular information is not captured on our reports so
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:07:29
if it's not captured on the reports as it's being investigated
can our parents or I don't want to say most parents because a lot of these are not parents
is there a way to extract I guess that there is another issue going on here as well there's a really big one here and I don't know that fixing this issue fix this this issue that's a deviant issue here but is that something that is pursued and okay
well they've got an addiction as well as this behavior here that is got them and reported
Speaker 299
2:08:04
I think that information may come out during the investigation that may be gathered but it's not in our reporting system it's not a checkbox or anything that will separate or create data to where we can pull it and say okay this many investigations involved drug abuse or this many investigations involved certain things so that information may come out in that
investigation and be documented in the narrative but not necessarily where it can be extracted in our reporting system okay and I understand that and I appreciate it
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:08:39
I guess where my mind is going on this is how is weak how can we warn people of the slippery slope that
you may find yourself going down when you engage in certain behaviors, that it can take you further than you ever wanted to go. I mean, and that's, I guess, what I'm trying to look for is as leaders in different ways in our communities, how do we
warn young people, young adults, older adults, or whatever, that this can take you into darker places than you could possibly imagine,
which I think are conversations people have around pornography as well, but it doesn't seem like we're having them as boldly as we need to probably be having them, especially when you look at these reports and knowing that that is an impact from sometimes some of their choices in private. So thank you. That was helpful, even if it doesn't you did help me with the answers, even if
Speaker 322
2:09:32
you couldn't give me specifics. Thank you.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:09:37
Okay, we have several in the queue. So going first to Representative Bentley. You're recognized. Thank you, Chairman. Thank
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
2:09:43
you guys for being here today. So I want to ask the same question that Representative Rose asked Director Wright. So we've seen a decrease in the number of cases that have been accepted. Once a report comes and a call comes in, we have 6% decrease in those that have been accepted. Any idea why, any thoughts on your end, why we've seen a decrease of calls that have been accepted? I
Speaker 317
2:10:05
couldn't attribute it to any type of pattern or trend.
know sometimes we'll have uh say the reports that come out of a school system we may have four or five seven reports of the same uh allegation coming from from that because everybody wants to report as a mandated reporter they want to be protected uh the only trend that i saw i know we did have a decrease uh during the covet time period but we are catching up now uh i think think we're on pace to pass last year's numbers as of now, but to credit it to a trend, I
don't know if that would be possible. I don't know if that would be education or people
Chair
Unverified
2:10:49
being more aware of what's taking place. Thank you,
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
2:10:53
Chairman. Thank you, Representative. Representative Carolyn Brown, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This question could be answered by
either of you, if you could contribute some information. I know you don't keep the data, but amongst your officers and the conversations that you have, is child sexual abuse material, typically referred to as child pornography,
is that found in these locations where children are being abused sexually? Go ahead. Is
Speaker 328
2:11:22
the question you're referring to, the way it's referred to as pornography or CSAM? What we
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
2:11:29
typically call child pornography, which I think is a misnomer, it should be like child sexual abuse material, are these kinds of materials found when someone is arrested for sexually abusing a child?
Or could these children also be being exploited? In some cases, there
Speaker 317
2:11:52
will be. Our ICAC, which is over the Internet stuff, normally handles the CSAM information. But there have been relations to both as far as what's actually happening and what they have in their possession. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Representative Beatty, it looks like you're back. You're recognized.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:12:15
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Major, since you came to the table, I feel like I'd like to ask you the question.
You sat through this meeting at the beginning, and you heard Representative Bentley present her ISP. You heard the discussion. You heard the parents talk about the treatment of their daughter. Do you have an opinion or a position on that that you'd like to share with this committee since this involves your area of expertise? Not confirming or denying that that
Speaker 317
2:12:41
report came in. We're going to do what we need to do to find out the truth to protect these children. Sometimes that's going to make people uncomfortable, but we're going to do what we need to do to make sure that we protect the ones that need to be protected.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:12:55
Well, I think listening to the testimony of those
parents made a lot of us in the legislature uncomfortable. So we appreciate the job you do, and we hope that you will be involved in this ISP and be a partner in making certain that we move forward with taking care of some procedures that protect our children and our parents in this
state. Yes, sir. Just to jump on a
Speaker 318
2:13:21
little bit more, I probably should leave it alone.
And if you look at the reports, sometimes, quite often, when you see the numbers there, I think we're trying to
Speaker 317
2:13:32
separate early, biological and all that, the parents are the ones that's violating on these kids. And I'm not speaking of the family that was just here. But, of course, if you are the one that's violating against that child, you're going to protect yourself as much as possible. And if you've got to say that you weren't doing anything, this shouldn't have been happening and all that, you're going to do it. We're not taking anybody for their word. If we can look into it and find out what's going on, we're going to do that.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:14:00
That's what we're responsible for. Follow-up, Mr. Chair. Follow-up, granted. Since we went down that path, based on
your experience and expertise, parents that are innocent, that are not conducting these heinous acts against their children, are they as willing to go through the hoops and to be as forthcoming with the information and follow the procedures and schedule appointments and do the things that those two parents did with their daughter?
Or do they try to back away
Speaker 317
2:14:36
from it? You will have the illusion, oftentimes, of a cooperative parent. I'm not asking
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:14:41
about an illusion. I'm asking are they as willing to move through the process and do all the things that these parents were
doing or that they back away and try to resist and become angry. I didn't hear anger out of that testimony from those two parents.
Speaker 318
2:15:03
Sir, I don't feel comfortable saying how somebody will react in particular situations because everybody reacts differently. I'm not
Speaker 317
2:15:12
saying that this family will not be forthcoming. We've seen deception in that form as well. well I appreciate
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:15:23
your answers thank you okay representative Rose you're recognized thank
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:15:29
you mr. chairman just to follow up on that same line of questioning I guess I
was a little caught off guard by what you just said I
understand the importance of investigating thoroughly but it almost sounded as if there is no presumption of innocence from what you just said that we have to treat I don't want to misquote you but I'm summarizing paraphrasing we have to treat everybody like they're offenders in order to find out if they're offenders and in this particular case it resulted in the violation of a five-year-old child so I would assume that there is some room to improve
the approach but it sounded like the approach is we're going to treat everybody
like they're the worst kind of bad guys out there until we know that they're not am i mischaracterizing your statement yes sir you are we if
Speaker 332
2:16:26
there is a road that we need to go down we're going to go down it we
Speaker 317
2:16:30
are going to talk to each person professionally and provide a courtesy to them we don't go into anything accusatory but if we have something that comes into it comes to
Speaker 332
2:16:38
our attention we're going going to look into it could you
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:16:49
expound upon if there's a road we're going to go down we're going
to go down it I'm not exactly
Speaker 317
2:16:55
sure what that meant if I receive information that you are involved with something I'm going to inquire about it once I ask you about it I'm not going in blaming you for anything or saying you've done it, but I'm going to speak to you about it. We've cleared it up and I can move on to the next phase if that makes sense. But we want to check and see what's taking place with a child, especially when there's a unknown offender in this particular situation.
We had what was presented to us as something that took place. If something is printed presented to us, uh, of a certain nature, we're going to look, look into any unknown offender where
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:17:46
it could have came from. All right. Um, maybe difficult because of semantics. Um, I'm still not, I'm still not certain that I understand the, the position, uh,
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:17:57
that you guys are holding here. I'll be glad to speak. I know there's some others in line, so I'm gonna hop out
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
2:18:17
for now, Mr. chair thank you get back in if you need to representative representative Dolly Henley you're recognized there we go
you're recognized thank you mr. chair I just want to know some more information about the hotline employees are they in office there at headquarters are they at their home answering these calls no
everybody's house at state police headquarters and when i look at that number 17 000 i mean that seems like a large number to me but when i break it down by per month or per week or per day boy when i get down to that bottom line it's it's not a lot of calls and i understand that it's not going to happen systematically or evenly for each day can you tell me the average number of calls your hotline operators
Speaker 317
2:19:02
have that data? I believe on average
each operator handle over it varies I'm looking I've seen operators take as many as 300 calls a month some as little as 150 and would we assume that
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
2:19:23
some operators answer zero calls no they all should be answering calls ma'am can you just provide you know an example or just a spreadsheet
sheet of, of how, you know, like one through 30 employees, how many calls they're taken because my math just doesn't work. I can, I can
Speaker 317
2:19:50
get that number to you, ma'am. An actual
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:19:57
number. Thank you so much. Okay. Representative, uh, Hope Duke, you're
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:20:01
working nice. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, um, I want to follow up on this line of conversation we just had. um
so did did did your division ask for the child to have the exam or was it children's hospital
Speaker 317
2:20:14
that asked for the child to have the exam
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:20:19
ma'am i can't answer the question directly in this form
okay okay let me try this then um should it be at the discretion of a hospital to push the parents into that or should it be a law enforcement issue i mean i i don't There's a difference to me on a hospital and a doctor asking for something and a law enforcement officer asking for and
asking for something and my understanding and this is that the officer at that time said We don't think there's an issue here and the two nurses that worked at the Children's Advocacy Center said we don't think there's an issue here But Children's Hospital Pushed the issue am I misunderstanding that because there's a difference to me in a medical professional asking for something a law enforcement officer asking me for something. Colonel, if you'd like to
Speaker 283
2:21:07
answer, please recognize yourself for the record. Lieutenant Colonel Jason Aaron with
Speaker 344
2:21:10
the Arkansas State Police. Without getting too specific on it, I can tell you that
information was disclosed in that hotline call of a diagnosis that was made by a medical professional, which triggered events to follow that. And so as far as a determination to be made for further medical exam, that decision is made from a medical professional and I would say on that same token for just for for example a rape investigation that police officer or that investigator does not make that determination of that rape that a medical professional the crime
lab medical examiner makes that determination after conducting their examination in their area of expertise so in this instance it
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:22:02
sounds like there was conflicting opinions from the nurses and from children's who had not examined I don't guess other than just the exam of the these warts no they're not this is something more or whatever it was so what happens if there's a conflict between the two medical professionals because it seems
like there was in this one. And I think as a result of that investigation
Speaker 344
2:22:28
in that conflict, the untrue or unsubstantiated finding was determined. After she had the exam. Correct. And was videoed. And that's either CAC's procedure or that medical facility's procedure that was in place. That is not the Arkansas State Police's or DCFS's procedures to take place. That's not our decision to make or procedures to put in place so whose
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:22:54
authority would have been to say no we're not going to video it we can make we can do
Speaker 344
2:23:00
this it would be that provider who is conducting that evaluation i would
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
2:23:04
assume and then i guess the question that no one i haven't heard anyone say when we talked about and you weren't here i mean it it troubled me a little bit that the um that we had the um service animal in there and we talked about with the comfort and all that but I was also troubled by the fact that there was some other adult in there watching this child's exam who under my understanding is not a medical professional and not a law enforcement officer but is a
the guide or whatever the terminology is for this service animal and is there anything policy-wise that deals with that because i'm sitting here thinking of my kid and i told one of my colleagues a few minutes ago that when they first put
the metal the detectors in the hot in the airports where you scandal i cried when my little five-year-old went
through it i'd never seen anything like it and i could not believe that was happening i mean not a crazy cry but it it hurt my heart that my daughter was doing that and i cannot imagine that parent and what she felt and what
she went through and and it the we have to have some pause on what's going on here and then the fact that now there's a video out there and there's this other person that she didn't know from adam that was in there watching the whole thing too i understand that you're wanting to protect kids and i understand you all see the ugly all the time and maybe there's a jaded there that happens a little bit, that you just can't not investigate it. But there's so much that's troubling about this.
I hope it troubles you guys in the way this went down and what happened and what this family is dealing with because there's a lot here, and it really concerns me if a medical provider has that much authority in these types of situations because parents, I mean, We're all pretty much trained to, okay, what do you want us to do? Law enforcement, we want to agree, and we sure don't want to lose our kid. And there's just something wrong here.
And I hope this study helps figure some of this out. But I hope as you wait for this study and changes to happen, there's conversations that happen internally to make some changes too. Because something like this, in my opinion, shouldn't ever happen like
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:25:27
this again. Thank you. Representative, if I may, and to those in the queue, I appreciate your concerns, your comments. and they're, I think, appropriate. However, I will say we're going to have far more conversations about this issue with the ISP, and I would ask if we have something specific to this report, let's do it.
I've given some leeway, but I will give some more if it's pressing, but I would ask that we hold those for the ISP than the study. So, Colonel, I'll let you respond to the representative's statement and question if you wish, or just for just like a minute.
Speaker 344
2:26:03
Colonel Hager and I spoke with Representative Bentley and we welcome this study. We are always welcome to this for a constant review and we continually monitor the system that we have in place.
We also encourage that we look at the Child and My Treatment Act. I ask that we have the different entities that are involved. I think we need to look at the Child and My Treatment Act first before we look at procedures to take place as far as the hotline and investigative procedures because we need to make sure the statute is correct before we implement procedures operation-wise that are gonna conflict. 'Cause the changes need to be made to the Child Mild Treatment Act. It hasn't been touched in years and we need to look at it. And I think that obviously that time is now because of 2027, we'll be here before you know it. So we welcome the study.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:26:50
- Okay, any other questions? All right, saying none, I think this conversation will continue. uh just quick question i meant to ask this of director wright and i will ask her to come back to the table just briefly and i will be the only one asking this question so don't worry um and really quick major jury before you leave how much time goes into compiling this report the ones that were presented your report hit your mic if you would
Speaker 317
2:27:25
it doesn't take too long once i get the monthly reports that involve with it i can only get the report done pretty quick there's a lot of data within our our report that we'll have to receive from dcfs first because
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:27:42
they are the owners of the system i understand so director same same question you how much time that's in the stack reports how much time is
Speaker 207
2:27:51
that So I have a contractor, I contract, I have a person who pulls out all the data and puts them together into those reports.
Speaker 178
2:28:00
And then obviously pulls out the data for that. So I can ask him an estimated amount of time to pull
Speaker 243
2:28:05
it all together if you would like and give that back to you. But I would guess a significant amount
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:28:11
of time. But so no one dedicated to DHS or DCFS is compiling that it's a contract that through a vendor. Okay, perfect. Thank you very
much. You're welcome. Uh, see another business. I think we are adjourned. Thank you for your time.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration to Approve the September 19, 2025, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Appointment to the Child Maltreatment Investigations Oversight Committee
D. Consideration for Adoption of Interim Study Proposal 2025-087 by Representative Mary Bentley –Study the Revision of Existing Procedures Governing the Child Abuse Hotline and Subsequent Investigations of Alleged Child Maltreatment; and the Creation of a More Standardized Procedure for the Acceptance or Non-acceptance of a Report of Alleged Child Maltreatment to the Child Abuse Hotline, Mandatory Reporting of Suspected Child Maltreatment to the Child Abuse Hotline, and Subsequent Investigations of Alleged Child Maltreatment [Exhibit D]
E. Department of Human Services, Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS) – Tiffany Wright, Director, DCFS [Exhibits E1- E7]
F. Arkansas State Police, Crimes Against Children Division (CACD) – Kalika Rogers, Investigations Administrator, CACD [Exhibits F1- F2]
G. Other Business
H. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
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Chair
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Representative Mary Bentley
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Kimberly Tafoya
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Representative Brian S. Evans
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Senator Alan Clark
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Representative Ryan A. Rose
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Senator Mark Johnson
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Senator Fredrick J. Love
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Representative Hope Duke
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Representative Glenn Barnes
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Representative Matt Brown
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Representative DeAnn Vaught
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Representative Johnny Rye
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Senator Ben Gilmore
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Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
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Representative Joy Springer
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Representative Dolly Henley
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