Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee - Senate and House
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- October 2, 2026
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
5:20
members will grab a seat we'll go ahead and get started. we'll start first things first uhenra Wallace if you would lead us in prayer Fairwoodwood stand O
Senator Dave Wallace
Unverified
5:34
Lord thank you for this day thank you for our friends and colleagues who have gathered here together give us the strength and the knowledge that we may rule the state of Arkansas in thy will lo rd please watch over our military watch over our loved ones in Jesus' name amen amen thank you senator
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
5:59
Members have a motion to approve the minutes you're approving minutes from August6, September 10th and September 11th. got a
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
6:06
motion have a second. I have a second all those in favor sayy aa I'll opposed as have it we'll move on to item C overview of hiring procedures at the humanman Developmentents if we could get director breeze to the table members I'm gonna let them present. we'll ask them
questions and then we have a number of witnesses in the crowd signed up
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
6:34
so we'll go through those one by one Miss Weatherton
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
6:48
and Miss Breee if you guys would introduce yourself for the record and you're recognized
Chair
Unverified
6:54
to start. thank you jennifer Bur director of the Developmental disabilities division at DHS
Speaker 49
7:01
good morning. Melissa Weatherton. I'm the director for medicaid specialtyulations. I'm not sure we
Chair
Unverified
7:10
prepared an exact presentation but we can definitely speak to the hiring process right now if that is what the committee would like to hear so we with the implementation of the new pay plan we've had to become more aware of our number of budgeted
positions that we have in our budget and we have started I would say we just haven't had this issue before which is a great issue to have with the implementation of the pay plan we've definitely seen the number of applications and people wanting to come work for us andreece and so that's been very positive but with that increase we've had to slow down a little bit and make sure that what we're advertising and
hiring is not going over that number we when a position is vacated today we have to wait for that vacated position to clear our system and then our staff creates a new requisition in AR careers which then goes to our HR committee which reviews those weekly for approval oncece approved that position then goes back to the hiring manager at the humanmanvelopmentalenter for
them to approve and that creates the job posting that is then posted on AR careers. and then I will take questions Representative ladyman you recognize thank
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
8:51
you Mr Chairman. thank y'all for being here you know I feel like we need to have this discussion because there are a lot of people that have called members of this committee about what's going on at the HdCs so my question you talked about
well let me ask you this what is the difference between budgeted positions and unbudgeted positions I mean can you what's the difference there and what changed so before my
Chair
Unverified
9:19
understanding is that with the unbudgeted positions we were still able to put people there but that was more of to keep the process moving a lot quicker. We were still had that we always had that number of
total positions on budgeted but with the unbudgeted positions we were able I think to more quickly advertise and get those positions in our system that we use to manage those with the implementation of the pay plan we had to pause and make sure that all of our people in those unbudgeted positions were put under a budgeted position so it's very weedy but it has to do with our system and how we manage those positions and we had to stop using those
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
10:12
what I'm hearing is that if if someone leaves a position and the process that you just described takes a lot longer and so they can't fill that position as quickly and it might be a position that's like a direct care position that needs to be filled right away almost like an emergency and and that that's causing a problem in them in the HdC's covering the
necessary positions at the site so how long does that process take that you just described
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
10:49
so it takes anywhere around5 business days
Chair
Unverified
10:52
from the team's feedback to for a vacated position to clear out from the system and then as soon as that is clear in our system the HR staff is able to create a new requisition and then those new requisitions go to our weekly HR meeting and so that happens
normally on Tuesdays and then the team looks at at like think agency wide so it's not just ddS they're looking at all positions and then those positions that are approved are approved within 24 hours and then that goes back to the recruiting manager at the Hdc and then they're able to approve that for posting almost immediately. but if you've got direct care people
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
11:37
in the home and they can't fill that position for five days and they
don't have these extra people that they used to have that that that's a problem so are there any positions like direct care that are exempt from this process where a a site superintendent in an emergency situation could could hire someone to be a direct care worker at a house? Is there an exemption for that? there's not an
Chair
Unverified
12:05
exemption but we do have several nursing contracts that the HDCs are still able to use which would
include our CA's our direct care positions and so the superintendents can utilize one of several contracts if we need someone out there AAP. Mrirnight one more and then I'll let someone
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
12:25
else talk but is it true that at the Boonville facility that the work center is shut down due to lack of staff. do believe that we've had to
Chair
Unverified
12:36
shift some of those staff that were doing training into direct care to fill some some needs while we're hiring.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
12:45
do you know what kind of issues that's caused with the clients at Boonville do not directly no. well I think that's something that we really need to look into Mr Chairman, I'll, I'll get on later. thank you you're
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
13:08
welcome. thank you Representative Johnson you recognize thank you Mr Chairman so I'm hearing some things that I don't understand so you're saying there are unbudgeted positions in budgeted positions and you're
trying to now have to convert the unbudgeted positions to budgeted positions help me understand why you would have unbudgeted positions anyway. I thought that all positions would probably be a part of the budget process and if we have unbuted like why is there more now unbudgeted or what how does that how
does that work I guess is my first question. So this
Speaker 82
13:40
is I mean this is not new to this year. So in our appropriations for each
Speaker 84
13:47
one of the divisions there are authorized positions for each one of
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
13:53
our divisions and don't mean to interrupt but now I'm here in a third term so authorized budgeted or is authorized
Speaker 87
14:01
both budgeted and unbudgeted budget and unbudgeted. so we have an authorized position number
Speaker 84
14:07
in each one of our divisions that then each year goes in and based on the budget we budget out of that total number what our
Speaker 89
14:17
salary line item can afford. so there is a series of budgeted positions and then there's a pool of unbudgeted positions that decision as to what's budgeted and
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
14:26
not budgeted is that made within the agency or is that made as a legislative decision . I mean I understand we control the budget we control how much money we put in the space, but I would think that I don't know I guess I'm just trying to understand again the idea of budgeted versus unbudgeted how that how that decision is made
to divide these authorized positions into some centers have budget and unbudgeted. is that again is that an executive decision that's made or is that a legislative decision? I mean it's solely based
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
15:02
do you have a delta between the different facilities so do some facilities have a certain number of unbudgetedig air quotes versus how are you deciding facility to facility what the proportion of budgeted to unbudgeted is how are you deciding how to allocate that finite resource of the money
Speaker 84
15:21
from space to space so do some facilities have a certain number of unbudgetedig air quotes versus how are you deciding facility to facility what the proportion of budgeted to unbudgeted is how are you deciding how to allocate that finite resource of the money from space to space in the ddS budget umddS as a whole gets RSA funding from you guys in our appropriation and so there is no such thing really as a conway HDC position or a boomble position they'reddS positions. So for example, out of our budgeted positions that we have this year we only have 100 people that work at DdS Central
right? Running the waivers and running all of the programs and the rest of our staff are out in the facility. So year over year we've made a conscious decision to continue to do less people in central office and shift more people to the human development centers because that is our priority
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
16:13
how many unfilled , I mean how many unfilled authorized positions you have I guess that's the question I would really ask per facility
Speaker 97
16:25
so not per facility but can give you the theddS numbers in in you can maybe staff can
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
16:30
get that to me I'll step out I know that there's some other questions but I I do think like I'm gonna want to ask more questions about this to understand it better because I don't really understand now how we're I don't have a visual as to how many unbudgeted positions are out there and then how are you changing your allocation of funding and your funding's finite. How are you changing that allocation now to decide you're gonna do some unbudgeted to budgeted
Speaker 84
16:57
we set that in we set that in Pbas each year before the year you're gonna have to help me with that one and wish knew what it stood for and
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
17:05
it is don't know acronyms y'all know people out there that know me the acronyms are my thing like I'm gonna ask if I don't know what it is. So it's the
Speaker 84
17:11
portal that we go in and in all of our budgets across OK what's it called again pea bassbody I'm open to I'm open to members
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
17:20
to help explain there's people who been here longer than me ok go ahead we'll look that up later so in in that system
Speaker 84
17:28
before the new state fiscal year begins. we go in based on the budget and we enter the number of positions that the budget will afford. so in theddS appropriation
Speaker 87
17:44
for example in 2026 we have 2490 authorized positions we have 1965 budgeted so and that that's for all ofddS
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
17:59
that's not broken down by facility that's any position this doesn't really have anything specific to do with the HTCs they're just part of your budgeted, sorry, authorized positions and and we don't micromanage how you decide which ones to fill, which ones not to fill that's right you don't and what
Speaker 84
18:15
we have done and what we are doing right now is we have around 100 staff that are outside of the HDCs running all the rest of the dd programs.
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
18:29
I'll get back in the queue and let
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
18:35
other people ask some questions. Some members we'll contact fiscal division to come and answer your questions fromblr they personnel committee, analyst should should know all that information and details for you. we've requested them to come over so they should be here in
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
18:51
a few minutes with thatpresentative Bentley thank you chairman right here. you know our hopes and the
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
19:00
legislature was that when we did the pay plan that we would decrease the number of contract nurses in these facilities that our patients would have more stability and have a long term staff so I'm concerned that we don't see that playing out. can you tell me what the percentage is right now of contract nursing nurses staff, CNA whatever in our HTC facilities. thank you. I
Chair
Unverified
19:20
we don't have a percentage but I can tell you that we have been able to successfully hire some more RNs andlpns so about five additional
Rns and then a handful oflpns we, uh, compared this quarter contracts spend to this time last year and we're about $10,000 less in contract spin for this quarter than we were last year we still have 24 vacant LPN positions that are posted and 11 vacant are in positions that are posted in one AP in position that is posted. and those are those specifically for the HTCs or those across the board
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
20:04
so contrary to things we hear out in the media we're still in desperate need of Lpns in the state of Arkansas, would you agree with that?
Speaker 54
20:10
I would agree and we have seen an increase in applications that's just we we still need more umrector Bries, how
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
20:16
long have you been in this position that you're renowned to not recognizing you one year and four months 1 year and4 months. OK have you in that time how long have you been at each one of our HCCs and toured them and visited with the staff out there so I'm just I'm concerned what we're hearing about in Boonville with the botech shutting down because it is a huge as I've to
the ones in my district it's such a happy place for them to go and have meaningful input each day into really add great value to their lives that concerns me that shutdown do we know when we'll be able to open up the otech to get that up and running to help those
Chair
Unverified
20:51
clients there to enjoy their daily lives again. Hopefully soon we have had over30 positions approved in the last couple of weeks and so we are seeing it the process become a lot smoother now that we've cleared up the budgeted versus unbudgeted and then um, getting requisitions
Speaker 55
21:06
there's things are just happening faster now one more follow up
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
21:10
so that soon maybe30 days,60 days just give us a I just don't know
Speaker 55
21:15
because the training process and the onboarding process does take a while which is so important
Chair
Unverified
21:20
for our staff they're taking care of our individuals and so phase class can last anywhere for two weeks and then to do the additionalcA training that can take another30 days and so it can be a6 to eweek process to get someone fully trained and on boarded to start taking care of folks .
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
21:37
thank you so you guys are overseen by the
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
21:45
office of Longerm Care, correct? We are. so they're they can write you the same tags they write any nursing home or hospital in the state correct sir so under your current staffing levels do you meet the requirements of long
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
21:59
term care off of the residents that you have in your facilities today as far as I'm aware we do and we
Chair
Unverified
22:08
that's what we strive for every shift is to make sure we're fully staffed to meet ratios so that would answer the
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
22:15
question earlier about Booneville that's the reason you closed that particular section down is because you didn't meet that staffing level correct? I'm certain that
Chair
Unverified
22:21
that was part of the reasons is we needed to shift staff to make sure we maintain ratios. p re s ent ative rose you recognize thank you Mr.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
22:32
Chairman over here on your right thank you a couple of questions I want
to go back to a little bit of the discussion we had earlier with regards to the Boonville Center and some other things that you had said so you'd been asked about staffing and being able to to hire people and there was some kind of an answer that was yes we're able to hire people yes we have enough staff to do these things and to cover when I think it was move maybe some nursing and staffing around when a vacancy
takes place that's that I was trying to get back to where we were that you felt competent in we can move people we can fill these vacancies but then just a couple of moments later we were in discussion about the Boonville Center and it was well we had to shut down the vocational training facility to shift staff to fill vacancies so to me it sounds like those were two conflicting answers yes we have enough staff to move in
a vacancy but oh we had to close down this training program to shift staff I kept hearing the word shift shift so can you kind of can you reconcile those two things for me you have enough staff to fill vacancies but then you have to shut something down to fill vacancies which
sounds like you don't have enough staff
Chair
Unverified
24:03
so I think that to it's two things. so to maintain our staff to client ratios. We did have to
move some staff that we're doing the trainings to make sure that we're
Speaker 55
24:16
meeting those client care ratios while we are still advertising and trying to hire folks and get them on board. I would add that I
Speaker 84
24:28
think the chef from no longer being able to put people on unbudgeted positions and we had around 100 people in unbudgeted positions this summer
and so when we we're given the directive to quit using unbudgeted positions. we had to pause because we had to then move those individuals into the same types of grades into budgeted positions and from what I can tell looking back at the time frames and and talking to staff that took around three weeks and when you're not bringing hiring people for three weeks right because we're just moving people that we already had to a
different position and hiring was paused and we're bringing in anywhere from about 20 to25 people every week is what we've been approving we got behind and so what we've been seeing the last I would say3 weeks is we're we're back in business and those requests are coming through and we are approving them in totality as they come through each week but to have that kind of three week kind of pause on
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
25:51
be correct I'm I'm making sure I'm understanding your testimony correctly would it be correct to say that you feel like presently
you have the staff to fill vacancies but it was during the summer that presented an issue where you got behind and that's why the shift took place and had to close the the vocational program at the Boonville facility for
example that was a problem at at a moment during the summer that is not a problem now is that what you're saying? because you don't you don't have this this pause that took place I would not I would not
Speaker 84
26:31
solely place on just that one issue I think there's a been a couple of things that have occurred so is there still
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
26:38
a a a present issue then what I'm trying to figure out is earlier you said you had enough staff to fill the vacancies
that was that was said that hey we've got enough staff to fill these vacancies but then we're closing down programs to fill vacancies which says to me we don't have enough staff so I'm still trying to
figure out because those two answers conflict with
Speaker 84
27:03
one another so I think it's the word vacancy here that that and I'm sorry I don't if I made this more confusing so we have we have vacant positions right now that we are advertising and we have
more vacant positions that we need to be advertising, right? We have not hit our budgeted position cap. so weu I would not say right now like we're staffed to capacity because you're right if we were staffed to capacity we wouldn't be closing down work units. right? What I'm saying is we I think with over the summer with a couple of different systematic changes we lost some ground for a couple of weeks where we would normally have
Speaker 141
27:51
been bringing in 2030 people each week and now we're now we're
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
27:59
playing catch up along the same vene and then I'll hop out after this I don't want to dominate the conversation You you were answering a couple of questions that Representative Bentley had asked and I've got small kids and teenagers and so I'm very comfortable using broad terms that can mean a wide
answer like yes we'll do that sometime or we'll get together soon and so I I kinda want to go back to use the terminology of yes we're going to have that resolved soon but then when pressed it was well onboarding takes a while. This could be6 to8 weeks. I'm curious if you could qualify the timeline still cause when you say soon likepresentative Bentley I'm like30 days,60 days,90 days. I heard well these all these people haven't been hired it's
gonna take at least two months to train them that doesn't sound soon so I'm just curious
can you give us a a ballpark of what soon looks like we
Speaker 84
29:07
can go back and look and see how many positions we have been approving week over week since we fixed the unbudgeted versus budgeted situation but you're right from the moment we bring a staff member in the door I would say it is6 weeks until they hit the floor
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
29:26
because of the training and and I'll jump out after this. would it be more appropriate at this time to say and it's an undetermined when that vocational program will be back up and running in Boonville? we're not sure when I would
Speaker 84
29:45
have to go back and see5 weeks ago how many people we on boarded at Boonville and where they are in the training so
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
29:53
uncertain at this time moving towards it but not sure I think
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
29:56
that's fair OK thank you So before I come to Representative Johnson who is next in the queue the bureau
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
30:13
is here to testify. I would say the bureau's not prepared to testify on the exact numbers at DHS because they didn't know they were going to testify so I think that's important for members to know as you're asking these questions so don't get frustrated if Tony
don't know the exact numbers of each human development center or DHS in general so
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
30:30
with that I'm gonna go to Representative Johnson so it's the staff wanna come and try to answer the questions
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
30:36
that the Tony obinson, Bureau of Legislative Research. thank you tony for coming impromptu to try
to help educate us so well I guess what I'm trying to get around to it sounds like that they have authorized positions for DdS but that's not necessarily broken down into authorized positions specifically for the HDCs no sir in
Speaker 152
31:15
inddS the way I'm gonna break down just the process real quick
Speaker 150
31:22
so during regular session the general assembly establishes an appropriation bill, OK? and
they give an agency like DHS and DdS may have its own individual appropriation bill appropriated positions that's their total authorized number of positions that they can use withinin that following the legislative session the agencies go through an AOP annualation process During that time they take the money or the funding that is given to them and they determine how many positions that they can utilize of their total at any given time
so that sets apart your budgeted from your unbudgeted and that that amount of
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
32:05
funding that's concurrent with the appropriation bill is that through RSA? or is that through the separate funding bill that we do now in conjunction with RSA I think it's going to be in conjunction with so it's not the RSA necessarily that describes that finding it's the the new process we kind of have in place where we pass a funding bill that connects the RSA? and I don't want to get out of my bounds
Speaker 150
32:28
because I'm a personnel guy. I'm not a I'm not a budget fiscal guy so I think
it's gonna be in conjunction of both because for the positions whatever you fund them they have to be able to pay for those physicians so they can utilize any of the positions they have within the context of the amount of money that you're giving them if I'm making sense you are now once they set that once the AOP is set and you have a group of unbudgeted positions in a group of budgeted positions they can
utilize some of those unbudgeted positions if they turn around and unuse some of the positions that have been budgeted so they can kind of mix and match as they need to at times but that's a process that the agencies have to go through withdF andA and DTSs. to make that happen. so there is a there's apa a path that they have to follow in each agency is going to be a little bit different in DhS I'm quite sure because of their size is going to be an even bigger path OK I think I understand that so they
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
33:35
there's a after the session each agency has some sort of planning this what what do you call it again sir theo annual operations plan and in that process they decide they have the discretion with in conjunction with DFNA and other people within the executive branch to decide how they're going to utilize the money they have for the position's authorized and in that process they determined that some of the some of the jobs are unbudgeted i e we're not going to fill those. we're not going to pay for those that's correct because we don't have the money to pay for those
unbudgeted positions and and in this process this year the decision was made to create unbudgeted positions at the HTCs and that's a well and if yeah and that's gonna
Speaker 150
34:15
be every agency always that has unbudge positions but is it always at thehDC? so always every year we decide
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
34:21
we some of the people that are working at the HCC we're just gonna lay them off because if they're unbudgeted how are you going to pay for it an unbudgeted position
Speaker 150
34:37
just means that there is no cost to the state at the time for an unbudge position if a position has been budgeted whether or not it's filled OK? the position is budgeted you're going to pay insurance on that position OK? so that's number one you don't pay retirement on a position until the position is actually filled on an unbudgeted position you're not paying insurance or retirement, OK? Now if they switch and use an unbudgeted position it is my understanding that once they fill that position they will then begin paying
insurance and retirement on that position to Ebd OK? so but it's the starting point that unbudgeted and budgeted it's a starting point at the ao at the AOP process then as they move throughout the year they can undo, they can take a position that was budgeted unbudgeted and then take an unbudgeted position and budget it so somehow I
Speaker 164
35:25
think I may have followed that we can have a discussion
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
35:31
offline I don't mean to take up committee time educating us on things that we don't need education I think I can add
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
35:38
something to that so madam director you're not filling any unbudgeted positions right now, correct? that's correct you're not touching that's correct you don't even close to filling your budget positions, correct that's correct so I will make that clear that un is not even that that does
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
35:59
bring up another question like do you have people working currently at the HCC that are working in unbudgeted positions that was part of the pause this
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
36:12
10 people that were cur that were working after your AOP they were working at HTCs that that you made the financial decision to have those positions that were budgeted before become unbudgeted and then you had to move these actual people on hold on hold
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
36:27
onpresentative I think that's where you're missing the boat uit using the word unbudgeted. they're not even touching unbudgeted positions they're not filling all of their budgeting positions and they're using money from budgeted positions to fill the
gap for the new pay plan, correct?
Speaker 84
36:53
so so We have always been able to utilize both unbudgeted and budgeted positions so I think I mentioned earlier our budgeted position number is 1965. OK? as long as we did not go over 1965 bodies regardless of
what type of position we put you in we could move people back and forth right? They got paid. I mean this unbudgeted versus budget is something we do in peebass right to make the to hit our budget so as long as we stayed within budget and we stayed within the budgeted amount of people we were fine. we could put them in unbudgeted or budgeted so it gave us some flexibility to churn faster so to be
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
37:38
clear though you had people in unbudgeted they were being
paid yeah that that was the impression I got they just weren't now to your point you had actual people not just open positions that were unbudgeted they just weren't getting insurance and they were getting everything
Speaker 90
37:54
so it's just like kind of a it's just a designation that we do in our own planning
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
37:59
system it does it does there are people who are working for DHS who are unbudgeted there were but but but but we're fixing that because we're having to move and these are actual people not just openings
Speaker 84
38:15
so regardless of whether we had you in an unbudgeted position or a budget position for our planning purposes did not affect anything about their benefits or their pay. We were just able to put people in open positions as long as we didn't exceed our budgeted cap amount. now they have this summer they said please stop doing that just put people in budgeted positions so you have a position with a position number on it and so you know, I have to put you in
thatc andA position with that position number that's budgeted in our system. I can't put you in anotherc andA position over here even though we haven't hit our cap and we're still under the 1965, I can't put you in one of the unbudgeted I have to put you in a budgeted and because we had to pause and clean that up this summer because that was a shift in how we've always done this. it was about a three week lag where I had to move 100 people into budgetedc andA positions or housekeeping positions or
whatever whatever they do for us at the HdCs we had to take the time to pause so we weren't accidentally hiring new people into the positions we were trying to move these people into and that caused it it's caused a delay in the amount of people we were hiring each week. I think I understand. thank you Representative Lederman thank you Mr. chairir.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
39:45
well this is getting very confusing to me I don't know
about everybody else but yeah uhjennifer I knew you had been here awhi but you and I shared a stage at Jonesboro I didn't think it'd been a year but maybe it has and but maybe one of y'all can answer this question so you have 24 LPN and 11 RN positions not filled and I know you said you didn't have the exact numbers maybe you do but where these are but are most of those in like Arkadelphia and conway or do you know
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
40:26
for you. OK, if you would the work center being closed down at Boonville bothers me a lot. Jennifer when you were in Jonesboro, I don't know whether you had time to tour the work center there or not but if you did you you probably saw how those people really enjoy working you know, I worked in factories. I wish they had some of these people working in the factories I worked in because they like to work and they don't you know
they they're at work every day to them you know these are people we're here talking about things let's talk about those people in those homes they're in this home with I don't know 1012 other people they have no parents no family there they eat their meals and they sit in the cheer room and watched Gunsmoke. you know and and and then they're they're able to go to classes and other things but if they're not able to do work
which to them is one of the most important maybe the most important thing they do in the whole day and these people in Boomville have not been able to do that that's been taken away from them and in some cases these are mentally five year olds that are in a 60 year old body and when that happens they they get upset I'm sure they do but it's so important to them so I I don't understand when you
say you've got budget positions not filled yet we shut down a work center. I don't understand how that can happen why do we not take
some of those positions that are not filled and fill them and
Chair
Unverified
42:10
put them in a work center. we we are definitely working to get that done and I agree 100% Representativeladyman, how important it is to to keep folks active and to give
Speaker 54
42:20
them purpose and that training and those employment activities are so important.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
42:25
I think that's one of the best things we can do for these these
people to give them value and worth so what what can we do as a legislature to help this situation. I mean what can we do to help you make this work better because it needs to work better do you have any suggestions I'd like to answer that
we passed a bill this past session that started an LPN school. Representative Bentley and I were the sponsors of that bill . We have to have more people in the pipeline we
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
43:07
have to have more people that they can hire that are trained to do this job and that is something that we have responded to they worked
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
43:17
with us long term care the office of long term care worked with long term care industry who are here in the audience
with us today and we started they the industry started new LPN schools and we were able to sponsor that legislation sores representative ladyman I that is a really great thing that this legislature has done in the process of trying to get that started but I have a question when you're when you're done finish my question if you don't madam chair that's
not exactly what I was talking about what I'm talking about are the people that super vi se these folks in the working center the people that cook their meals make their beds wash
their clothes, sweep the floor . I mean these are really good dedicated people and and that's the people we're talking about here not the nurses you know we're talking about the the people that are direct care and I don't know whether I can but at the end of this I may make a motion to exempt those folks from this whole process because if they're cooking meals for 16 people and and and they leave and you don't have anybody then they don't eat you know their beds are not made
their clothes are not washed the floor's not swept they're not they don't get baths at night we're not talking about nurses or doctors or physical therapists here we're talking about the dedicated people that work in these houses to take care of these people is there anything we can do to help that situation? I I understand the distinction
Speaker 195
44:54
you're making on this. and I understand but we're we every week we're approving what the HdCs are requesting to be hired
and so I am you know we and we have other budgeted vacant positions available that
Speaker 84
45:15
can be pushed forward to us to request to advertise and hire. So it we're not we're not holding up what is being asked of us at each one of the facilities except for I am holding we're holding a psychologist
position because I don't I'm not gonna run it for the seth Tom, right? because we we've got no applicants so back to what Sandra Urvin was talking about we can put positions out there for some of these APRns and psychologists and nurses but doesn't mean they're going to apply and doesn't mean we're going to hire them. I will say to you that I think thecA is a little different that's easier more people are wanting that job but we're we're approving every single position request that's coming through every week tip for advertisement so
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
46:06
it sounds like it's a timing issue that we need to really look at and try to try to fix OK since I've got the mic I wanna ask one quick question. Can I get a timeline on the construction at Jonesboro. I know that it's gone out to bid or the bid packages being prepared. I need a new timeline on when when we're gonna have a groundbreaking on that health center that we sent that toloriri yesterday
Speaker 52
46:32
and she's got that for you today you're welcome
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
46:39
senator love you reckon us thank you
Speaker 199
46:43
Mr chairir. So I I'm trying to put this puzzle
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
46:48
all together . we're talking about short staff shortages we're talking about what we're doing I I heard the number of 24 2411 and one as far as nursing so but let let me go back so I can
understand something you are a proven positions that
the HDCs are asking to actually be filled and then they they are actually they're doing the filling themselves and so in
essence if if the positions are not being filled it's because of the HdCs that are not filling the positions as far as hiring. I'm just talking about is hiring you're looking at mem I'm just'm'm wanting you to help me understand this process. I
think one of the key other changes
Speaker 195
47:41
that occurred over the summer that is affecting this is as director Bri mentioned at the beginning we've always had a budget at Dd we've always had a budgeted position cap that we were staying with under, OK? but we didn't have enough applicants to even worry about it right that we were ever going to exceed it or meet it or get anywhere close to it and so when the pay plan went into effect we were swarmed with applicants so then we had to start looking at
it more carefully so back then before this summer we did continuous advertisement those things were on the on our website they were always open right the positions were always open, people could apply anytime and so we had I think50 or60 people apply right after the pay plan went into effect and we thought oh goodness we can't leave these positions up continuously
advertised because we won't be like we're going to hit that budgeted number really quickly and so now the process has changed where they are having to request as somebody vacates so that also is playing into this. So I think it was just several different system changes at the same time has caused this to drastically slow down
starting July and August that we are now back and have a process going and are approving them as they come in each week. but it doesn't but if you're if you're not hiring because just say we lose 14 people across the HCCs each week, right? they're either terminated or they don't show back up. so we're always 14 people quitting 16 people coming in the door, right? I mean that's just how they've always
operated our turn y'all know this our turnover rates are really high and so it's just constant churn of quitting and hiring and so when we had all those system changes happen over the summer. people were still quitting but we weren't bringing in the same we weren't bringing in the the amount of people that were leaving. and so now we're back on track and so now we're able to approve every week but it's going to take a minute to build it back up OK so in your assessment because
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
50:15
I heard you say it takes6
to8 weeks to get people kind of put in and in your assessment I guess when will we reach that I mean well number one have you done an assessment to to say hey you know within the next six months we will be where we need to be cuz one thing is this this churn that's going on have have you all assessed that as to why we have just so much churn
Speaker 125
50:50
we have the Weheart programme so I think the team recognized several years ago that you know there was a big churn and so we've been implementing several what we call pillars to address the retention and retainment ofpoees. and that's a a report we send in the legislators I think every November December so members if we could silence the cellphones it's a little bit
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
51:18
rude to have those ringing every five
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
51:23
minutes. thank you so here here's the question I have have we done an assessment on that
you said yes but number two is have we done an assessment on when we feel like we're gonna have enough staff to kind of we're stabilized I do think that we'll hit our budgeted number within
Speaker 125
51:44
the next6 months for sure if not sooner.
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
51:49
and that means that there will not be any more contract nurses or you will still have the contract nurses and the staff
Speaker 125
51:57
think our need for contracted nurses should continue to go down but as I think we've shared before that has been those positions have been harder to fill and it's not just
Speaker 195
52:07
on the on the on call contractsent lab it's not just for lpns and RNs it's alsoc andAs so I think we'll keep those contracts in place so if we havec andA's not showing up and we're trying to get coverage we'll have to
utilize those oncall contracts. guess the utilization of
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
52:24
the on contracts is not really my issue is that we we up the pay plan so that we could actually hire nursing or CA's or whatever and then if we're utilizing the same amount of money and we're utilizing it for the budget positions and we actually didn't save any money we're spending more money it is our intention to as we
Speaker 90
52:51
continue to hire Lpns, RNs andc andA's that we will see
Speaker 195
52:54
a drastic decrease of those contracts and so that's what we're watching it's just I don't think it's been enough tom so like what umrector Brise said like right now we're only seeing $10,000 less you than we were at the same time last year but as we continue to hire and we're watching it that should go down as well as our overtime spend should be going down. all right thank you thank
Speaker 220
53:16
you Mr chairir. senator Irvin so I know because
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
53:23
of our federal regulations that dictate a lot of what we do. let me how
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
53:29
much of this is played into this because I know if you have a fire, you know and the fire firemen need to go tend to the fire it leaves limited people maintaining the fire station so with that scenario you, I understand or correct me if I'm wrong, did how much was that a factor where we had to move
people quickly because we had we had to make sure that we were meeting those those very important ratios and so it left us lean and other reasons or in other areas service programs things like that where we didn't have that strict regulation is that am I understanding that correctly or can you elaborate on that I'm I'm specifically speaking about some the work programs and things like that understanding that there's one
area that's highly regulated and dictated where another programme at program area may not be. iss that an am I understanding that correctly Yeah. I I think so we and that's what our
Chair
Unverified
54:37
superintendents are so great about is doing that assessment of what staff is required to meet our federal regs but then there's also the complexity of our individual members and so we have some members that need 1 to 1 staffing. some members that
don't need such a high level of staffing and so they have to take all of that into account not only our federal regulations but then what are just the individual needs of each person and is that a daily assessment? yes like people ' s level could change on a day like someone could be having a behavior and needs more staffing for a short time period until they get more stable and then they
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
55:21
that communication is with you on a daily basis with your superintendents the superintendents in and the house
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
55:27
staff for sure and the nursing staff OK and so a lot of that also played into this when we ran into this pause and hiring and and the shift of all that it just kind of snowballed it was like a snow ba ll effect. OK. I just needed to also understand that but I think it's also very important that we understand we've got to make sure we're meeting critical need as soon as possible and that we are reflective in that decision making process at that
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
55:57
superintendent level and also with the agency level and that is assessed daily and it's communicated back. thank you
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
56:10
Senator Johnson thank you Mister Chairman. appreciate you letting me ask questions as a nonmember of the committee madamrector I appreciate the questions that my colleagues have already asked because many of them were the ones that I was here to learn about but I
guess I wanna s some kind of sew this all up to say today do you see any need that the general assembly needs to work whether by regulation or some other kind of temporary funding or some waiver of some of the processes in training that we need to do to put you in the position where you need to be I I'm very knowledgeable of conway's situation I I grew up there I knew people who live
there and and many of them in those days actually worked in jobs in the city I don't think you do it the same way anymore but is there anything that short term and maybe even going into fiscal session that we need to consider and and get the ball rolling to to get to help y'all solve this at first I just thought it was a workforce problem and we all know that sometimes it's just a shortage of people but is there something we can do collectively as a legislature to to make sure that
these people who are some of our most vulnerable are not left without the care they need ' ll ' ll
Speaker 227
57:37
defer to my boss right thank you for that
Speaker 195
57:42
question we are focused on hiring each week and I'll be I'll be frank we we need to hire you know we need to bring 200 more staff on board statewide at the five hdcs it'll still be within our budgeted number
and so that's our focus is to continue to hire as quickly as we can to deploy 200 additional staff across the fivehTCs and stay within our budgeted number of 1965 and stay within our
Speaker 84
58:14
salaries and we can do it we've just got to move more each week. more people, more hiring
Speaker 231
58:19
phrases each week. well that that's then I trust you you
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
58:26
will get back with us if that situation changes and we need to do something here within
the general assembly especially going into fiscal session which is the time we'll be starting budget hearings before very long thank you thank you Mr chairman Representative Richardson thank you Mr
Speaker 236
58:45
Chair. based on what you just said, I'm I'm right here the
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
58:48
200 positions that you you have left tofield.d what's what's the dollar amount attached to that? Do you know off the top what what those positions equate to in salary
Speaker 97
59:04
No, but I can get that for you because it's mostlyc andA's and their salary just got raised what is that?
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
59:08
Tell me that. do you know where it got raised to? do not but I
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
59:18
can get that for you Representative Ladyman you're I'm not ready for that so you were next in the queue and I'm sorry just get back in Representative rose yes sir thank you Mr Chairman . are there similar to the
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
59:37
vocational program at the Boonville Center are there other programs similar to that or just other programs attached to the work that you guys oversee that have had to be either closed or temporarily postponed due to the system changes from this summer. not that I'm aware of at this time. but we
Speaker 55
59:57
can definitely check into that. Each one of our HDCs
Speaker 243
1:00:02
has its own type of work programme so like what
Speaker 84
1:00:07
uhpresentative Ladydy was talking about they have a really cool greenhouse recycling center at Jonesboro called Greenorks. and then each one of our HCCs they make the clients there make items that they sell at the blue umbrella that we opened about oh56 years ago that's at the base of the DHS building. it's a really cool store if you haven't ever been there and all of the money goes back to the clients that make goods. so they we're still clients from the HCs are still sending
products to the blue umbrella but we will definitely check to see if they're not going as frequently or if they've had to stop one temporarily and we can get that for you
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:00:49
so are there protocols that dictate when to close that because I heard somebody ask earlier if it was pertaining to ratio and I think your response was that that was one aspect of how that decision was made but are there other kind of protocols in place that when xyz happens then we're
gonna close these facilities because xyz no sir I think a
Speaker 84
1:01:15
good example so if there's 8 if there's 8 men clients living in a house and depending on what their
Speaker 195
1:01:21
supervision level is one could be one on 11 could be two on one because it's all based on behaviors and needs and and so so what if that eight bed house for those men in order to meet the ratios of those particular
clients need4 staff and one person wants to go
Speaker 84
1:01:43
to the work program and but one staff can't leave right to walk that one or two people to the work program because we won't be beating ratios in the
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:01:53
house follow that so I would I'm glad to hear that there
are no others to your knowledge that have had to close and so I'd like to request I want to give you the the time to be able to to kind of source this information one can you confirm
that no other programs have had to be closed due to staff shortages or vacancies and then secondly I think you can answer this now just to be clear it is your intent to resttaff that Boonville program and it is your intent to reopen and that you are in the middle of that correct? Yes sir. And so the second question that I want to give you time to answer as well. can you get us an answer back on
an estimated time for that to now that you are resttaffing it and get some timelines but the actual estimated time for that to reopen as well yes sir right thank you thank you Mr chair. Representativejos
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
1:02:58
yeah and I think I understand I just want to restate it to make sure
I'm clear so you're telling us that there are 200 vacant positions that are budgeted that need to be filled at the HDCs you've currently created these budgeted positions now they're
within your 1960 and you're telling me that we have ample applicants for those positions. These are non licensed positions. I'm assuming the workforce issue is I mean not equally divided right you're telling us that we have lots of applicants because the pay plan's working, which is great but I'm assuming that's in the non licensed positions not in the Rn LPn positions is that correct that's correct ok so and you're telling me you have the budgeted money
so to to to fill those positions so as the rate limiting step really just procedural at this point and not workforce or dollars is that correct '
m checking my math really quick. hang on math is really hard
Speaker 97
1:04:00
cause I'm doing it over here on the on paper
Speaker 84
1:04:04
I'm gonna go back on that 200 I think it's probably more about 150 but but conceptually you have you have some of the
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
1:04:15
positions the rate limiting step to filling those open positions is not applicants and it's not you don't have the money you're not going to have to go to some other places where in rearrange the deck chairs and lay people off to hire these people somewhere else withinddS you've got the money you've got the workforce there it's truly just working through the procedure that has been introduced with the new pay plan yes but I will double check that I will say that when somebody
Speaker 84
1:04:46
that's not an HCC employee at DdS leaves we're not backfilling it we're we're focusing all of our efforts on the on filling the HTCs would just echo
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
1:04:55
what Senator Johnson said you know if if like it sounds like it's a good problem which created it sounds like we have historically had unbudgeted positions because we just didn't have anybody applying so why would we change that because we've never had anybody apply. It sounds like the pay plan is working which is great. we're getting the applicants but I would think that we've historically budgeted
the same as you've historically planned for nonbudgeted positions right as a legislative body we've given you enough money that you historically needed based on the rate at which you could fill the job. so it's hard for me to envision that we haven't shortchanged you a little not out of any ill ill will or intent but just because maybe we as a legislative body underestimated the number of jobs the pay plan was going to was going to bring in, right? And so if there is a need to adjust the budget to try to meet
the demand that the pay plan has created appropriately, right? then you know, I would encourage that to be brought out in the in the in the budget hearings so that we can make that accommodation because I think everybody here wants to try to take care of this
population of people. thank you so wait a minute let's that's not what you
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:06:08
just said. So if you had enough money and you had plenty of budget then why are you not filling that position back at DdS and why are you taking that position dollars
and putting it towards the facility because that's what I heard you just say and
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:06:21
am I missing something we still have to we still have to stay within
Speaker 86
1:06:29
our budget true but you don't have enough budget right now
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:06:33
to fill every budgeted position you have in the in the HdCs correct? would have to go back and talk to the CFfo
Speaker 195
1:06:42
and double check that. but you just answered his question and said that if
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:06:49
somebody left DdS you would use that position to fill position in the human development centers or in the facilities is that not what you just told him yeah and that
Speaker 146
1:07:00
is true and that that's how that's we're it's tight we're we're really watching it there ain't enough
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:07:06
money so saying that is an increase incorrect statement and bleeding legislators who believe we put enough money there is
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:07:14
not the way this needs to leave it needs more money to fill those
budgeted positions And and I can't go to bed tonight knowing that we didn't tell the true story and I just can't do it. I'm sorry and if we're taking a position from the department and fill in the positions over at HDCs it's a budget problem and I'm not trying to put you in a bad position but it's true it's a budget problem so saying that we had enough money is not an accurate
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:07:45
statement and and using the questions to say that this is not correct yes
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:07:52
because the pay plan we do have more applicants but having more applicants but not having more positions we can fill it it doesn't it doesn't
matter so p re s ent ative Love you
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:08:12
recognize her Thank you Mr Chair and I get I was actually on the same line as ispresentative Wartlaw so
I I wanna ask you this so you said at just for clarification that
this summer you were actually transitioning to your transitioning people to budgeted positions so are you are you completely done with that so
there's no more unbudgeted positions that you have we are we're caught up now. OK so
so all your positions are budgeted so so again
Speaker 84
1:08:46
we get a we get authorized positions and then we
go in to peebass which Tony kindly told me what it meant on this piece of paper. planning, budgeting and administrative system. we go in every single year and we budget and unbudge based on
Speaker 195
1:09:07
the money that we're awarded for each division. So there's there's still unbudgeted positions in that
Speaker 89
1:09:14
system and there's budgeted positions in that system we're only utilizing the the budgeted side
Speaker 258
1:09:24
how do we pay for the unbudgeed positions
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:09:30
I'm so sorry I did not hear you.
Speaker 195
1:09:32
How do we pay for the unbudgeted positions we deny it when we unbudget then we do not have to pay the
Speaker 262
1:09:39
insurance or the friends on those positions they're they're just kind
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:09:45
of on hold in the system so we guess I'm not asking my question correctly so you have
people that are in budgeted positions unbudgeted positions
you have people that are in unbudgeted positions right now so you don't have any more unbudge positions all of them are
in budget positions now you said there was 150 or so
Speaker 87
1:10:14
positions that need to be filled across the state so we
Speaker 84
1:10:20
have 1965 budgeted positions and we have 1726
staff at the HDCs and we have around 11 nonhTC staff running the waivers and pass and programs and all those programs so we have hold 12. so right now we have 181828 budgeted positions filled and we can go up to 1965.
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:11:03
so would would by completing that to 1965 you will have enough funding but is that enough? do you have enough is that gonna meet your capacity your need I guess so when you when you feel all those positions is that gonna meet your capacity? do you do you get what I'm asking? I think
we will still have to utilize some of the I think
Speaker 195
1:11:30
we'll still be utilizing the contracts.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:11:34
so define the 1965 is not just HDcs, correct? It'sdDS it's ddS. OK? So1965 is all employees at DdS So so they have that is your authorized number that you have to stay within 1965. so you're trying to shift people to higher at HTCs and not hire
at DdS because you're trying to maintain that cap of 1965 but also you're trying to maintain the budgeted amount of money that you have to pay all those people under the new pay plan and so it it's do you see what I'm saying? I didn't mean to interrupt you I just wanted to make sure that we were clear about 1965 isn't just athTC but that's fine but the and so it it's do you see what I'm saying?
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:12:29
I didn't mean to interrupt you I just wanted to make sure that we were clear
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:12:35
about 1965 isn't just athTC but that's fine
but but that's that that's where my question was leading will you have the capacity as an agency as anhdCs where you have the capacity that you need to actually under this pay plan under this 1965 number does that capacity meet what you need I mean I think it's gonna substantially
Speaker 97
1:12:59
help and I think we can reevaluate when we hit that. and and several of y'all have
Speaker 84
1:13:06
offered you know to have further discussions about this which I appreciate. but I think if we can get to that number, we
Chair
Unverified
1:13:15
would then reevaluate all right thank
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:13:21
you Members just remember we still have two members of the public that want to testify on this subject uhpresentative barnes you're recognized thank
you chair considering y'all your turnover rate that you're having is that the first
question is that nor has that's been normal that you have this turnover rate is this normal for you all? It is unfortunately. OK. are you all putting in in the systems in place maybe to find a way to
Speaker 82
1:13:54
retain people and keep them longer so actually several years ago
Speaker 84
1:13:59
you guys at the general assembly passed a bill that mandated that we do a360 umre
review on the HDCs to determine if we could pinpoint what exactly was going on that was causing the turnover right? iss it more than pay right because we were hearing a lot of it has to do with your direct supervisor. So we had a contractor come in and do a full evaluation and they at the end of it set up this retention recruitment campaign called Weheart and so the ivehCCs have been utilizing this recruitment
retention platform, I would say for the last two years and that's whatrector Bri was saying we send a report to you guys think quarterly on how that is going annually thank you. The turnover is high but I mean this is kind of hard to believe before we put weheart in it was higher. So I think with the with the campaign it's a big employee recognition campaign and the staff really like it. so I'm
hopeful that with the recognition campaign that we have been utilizing plus the increase in pay thanks to the pay plan that we
Speaker 87
1:15:19
will see those numbers go down do we have access to that plan we can get it for you if you'd like to see it thank you thank you
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:15:35
and so if you're a legislator have you you could raise your hand if you've ever been to the bloom umbrella?
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:15:45
raise your hand or if you've bought gifts from the blue umbrella. Good. so it's a wonderful place. um, our we're going to go to our witnessese yes Representativeightdymann you're recognized thank you madam chairpresentative Barnes that's a
good question you asked and this program that they're talking about you can go to an HDc and I would I would recommend that some of y'all go there and and and tour and there's a form that you can fill out this is just common
sense in the business industry and one of the things that they've implemented a few years ago is you know you can fill out a sheet of paper and comment on how good a person is doing their job at the HDC they get recognition they have employee of the month those kind of things it's a really good program but if you're around an HDc and want to go in there and see it and fill out a form I would recommend it thank you for that we're gonna move thank you ladies
KatrinaRobertson is Katrina Robinson robertson if you'll come up Anderry Johnson I think do you want to do individually or come together? I'll let you choose. whatever you would like if you'll just both want to come up at the same time that'll be fine and then if you'll just state your names please and who you're with or who you're
representing then we'll let you guys proceed. So we have Katrina robertson and Terry Johnson. I have you both listed as parents and then I'll let you describe the organization that you have listed here. thank you. one second d H S department don't run off.
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:17:35
I do have a question for you guys when the witnesses are done. my name's Katrina robertson. I'm
Katrina Robertson
Unverified
1:17:47
mom to Noah. he's 22 years old and he's been a resident at the Boonville Human Development Center for3.5 years now. I'm also president of the FFC off our friends and family of care facility residents for the Boonville chapter, Terry hears the president for the the state and we just work to advocate for the needs of the profoundly disabled. uh, I can tell you that Boonville Human Development Center has been a godsend to Noah and our family lifegiving
in every sense of the word. some of the most dedicated and compassionate passionate people that I've ever met work there and I'm here today because I'm deeply concerned about the staffing and hiring challenges, all of the HDCs are facing but you've heard Booneville mentioned many times. I'm going to deviate just slightly from and and my testimony is short but ontate slightly and because I just I
have to say that I I was just making me crazy that we've beat a dead horse for over an hour talking about all this confusing budgeted unbudgeted authorized and didn't break it down to the simple terms and that if you raise salaries but don't raise the budget, you can't pay your employees. I mean it's really I mean we we're making something confusing that is not confusing. you know the HDC budgets have
been flat for I I don't want to give a number of years but I wanna say a decade. so we had a we are trying to pay the same number of people a higher amount of pay based on last year's budget. anyway that's don't I don't know why that has not been addressed more specifically now so Noah he's got a he's intellectually disabled. He functions at about
a 3 to 4 year old level but he's very very verbal and he keeps up with all gossip on the hill as we affectionately call Boonville. and he calls me with the latest gossip all the time. and he called two weeks ago and he said momma I don't have a job anymore and I said what do you mean you don't have a job? He says I don't have a job and I I said well I know there's I said well why do you not have a job and he says they don't have workers for
us and there's been several times where you know you have multiple employees call in there's sicknesses that go around and they've got to kind of rearrange daily schedules and I said well I bet you'll go to work next week. he says no, no there's no more work, mamma. I, I must stay in my room and watch TV and sometimes go play games but I need more of my word searches. He can do word searches all day. so obviously I was concerned so I reached out to an administrator who confirmed that the vocational and training areas had been
closed indefinitely so staff could be reassigned to the direct care roles and it was due to the ongoing difficulty and delays in filling the open positions. you know many of y'all have know that I'm a strong advocate for HDCs not just on the state level but on the federal level. In two weeks I'll be back in Washington DC meeting with all of our federal delegates . As I stated noah's job, his job at Boonville is making rugs. I was in Dc in May and I had
brought all six of our delegates a a rug as a gift. Senator Tom Cotton loved the rug so much that he had his legislative assistant reach out to me here recently and he she said cotton would like to purchase55 of your largest rugs in red and green that he wants to gift to the other senators too as kind of a to showcase work done by a 14C program. however, when I tried to coordinate the order last week,
I learned that the vocational programs closure meant there was no way to fulfill this order. The staff member I spoke with was thrilled about this request of course but disheartened to explain that the only way to to fill it would be just to use rugs that are in stocks she wouldn't be able to accommodate the specific request. but she she also shared the even more exac exasperated
the the problem is that many of those workers who had been transitioned to other areas have since left Boonville Human Development Center because of their frustration with the situation which created an even more severe problem. I will speak I will make the statement that you know the statement was made that all requested positions are being approved that is not what I hear. I'm not going to speak
as far as names and statements and numbers of requests versus what's approved because it would be hearsay really who you would need to speak with are the people requesting positions and how that's working you know, friends this situation's dire. our CA's in direct care workers absolutely deserved this pay raise. but overall budgets must increase to sustain those
pay raises and to have proper support and staffing levels and the the question was asked are we meeting licensure requirements that really I don't think has ever been anything they've even gotten close to but as already has been addressed are these individuals require much more care than the the bare minimum. many of them one on one. you know this vulnerable population, they depend on us and we can't allow them to go
without appropriate staff, or the ability to have a things like a job that make them make
Speaker 279
1:24:11
them proud and I'm Terry Johnson I'm the president of our parent guardian advocacy group
Speaker 281
1:24:17
for the state of Arkansas and Katrina covered a lot of the of the main items but in my position as the president I get the most unbelievable
phone calls and texts all the time from parents who say my kid you know needs more staff in there you know there's nobody there they didn't pack his bag correctly when I came to to pick him up to really more serious things that I don't even want to go into here but I got an outrageously serious call this week but it's these houses that we're talking about here where my son lives where
her son lives can't go without staff people my friend back here has a hotel he likened it the other day he said you know when my house cleaner on the fourth floor of my hotel quits it's not like I can close down the fourth floor. I have to get somebody in there no matter what I have to do I have to get somebody in there to clean that floor. Well when staff people leave a house and you're under
license requirements and so forth you have to have somebody qualified and with the patients to deal with the folks that are in there because nobody could possibly love their son more than me but he got to the point where I couldn't handle him on a regular basis but the HDC has been a miracle they handle him very very well. he loves it there he calls it his college I would do anything for those hDCs and I also say I would do almost anything for the two ladies that
spoke up here earlier. both of them have helped me in past years with outrageous problems so I have nothing against them but I must say I have the feeling no proof not under testimony here but I bet they are under some restrictions that that we could not possibly imagine because if you really talk to these people if you talk to the caseworkers and the staff people and the superintendents
at these places that's where you get the real story and I'm gonna get in huge trouble for saying this but this is just the way that I have to do it if you all wanted to get the absolute bona fide true answers to everything that you're asking cause I'm an MBA and I had a hard time following all of the budgeted and unbudgeted stuff that we had I couldn't follow but if you ever want the true answers call in the five
superintendents that run these five centers and have them in a position where they don't have to worry about their job they are petrified to talk about how bad the problems really are because they're scared for their job and I think that is wrong they should be able to and and again it's not their they're doing their job you know they are doing what they're being told to do but here you guys have the
link to people even above where where they're reporting to and that's what I'm getting at if these handicap folks that are citizens of this state there's not that many we're talking 850 or so that's a very small percentage you know of the population they need the help they need the budget talk to the superintendents let them tell you this is how we've tried to make you know s lemons lemonade out of lemons for a long time. Their budgets have
been flat like Katrina said they do need more money but nobody everybody's been trained God don't ask for more money. don't ever ask for more money. well but you when this new hiring policy came and said well we're gonna give you this the raid you can now hire these nurses that are going to work for hospitals and other places because it's more competitive well now they got a lot of applicants yeah man now you've raised the price I think $11 an hour to $18 or something they
got a lot but then there's no money to pay them with and if they do come in they have to go through a five weekk approval process and then and and then I mean a training process and then the approvals unlike what what they seem to indicate the approvals are not coming. people are on vacation well we'll get to you in a couple of weeks I go back to my buddy with the hotel when you have staff people leave these house and you've got 1520 highrisk individuals in there
you can't sit there and say well we'll just you know all y'all go home when we get the the right staff you can come back we got to have somebody right then to take that place it that's an emergency situation we have to have that I don't know anything about the when she said the 200 people or the 150 I don't know what that means but if you ask the five superintendents they wouldn't have any clue what that means because they're sitting there waiting on resources to come and it's
and that they're not coming and and it's a problem and it's finally gotten to the problem where they didn't even care if they risked their job they they had so we got to get some help so if y'all are advocating for us please go down there to littlettleRock and tell the powers that be that somebody need I mean we've always lived on the very lowest of budget and we still will if we have to but we've gone beyond that now now we've gotten to where we it might jeopardize the license requirements of some of these homes and some of the things that have to happen even these
superintendents have licenses that are at risk if they allow stuff like this to happen so god bless I mean those five superintendents have wings on them they're the most wonderful people in in the world and so are these two ladies back here they're trying to do something that's almost impossible but if you really want real answers then ask those five people and they would probably they wouldn't give you a wish list of everything under the sun they would just give you a wish list
of just enough to get by what I need to have and they you could get straight answers there. I don't know if that will ever happen but that's where all the answers lie so forgive me if I went off and I probably was not allowed to even say that but so please ask them because they they they have it you thank you for your testimony
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:31:05
you're allowed to say whatever you want to say. You you are a citizen of the state of Arkansas a year before the Arkansas legislature, you have a right to say whatever you want to say under the constitution of
Speaker 281
1:31:18
the United States with those five superintendents because if they weren't taking care of my son I'd I wouldn't have a life you know and my family wouldn't have a lot they are doing an impossible job just walk into one of those places one time you have to be half angel to work there it's a tough job and when one or two leave because they can't take it anymore or don't have the money theyd we'd have to get them replaced and so they are wonderful people these
are wonderful but this is a hard job we're trying to do. The answer comes from above way above me probably way above them. This comes from the people that y'all work with I guess and how important is it how these HdCs and the folks that are in there is that where we need to put our money maybe we need to put it in a highway instead or maybe we need to do something else. I don't know that's up to the people a lot smarter than me but I hope that we will see the importance of these 850 people in these HdCs
and God bless y'all for letting parents like us come in front of you and and talk talk openly and we'll do anything we can to help to our group we're unpaid we're volunteers we've been doing this for about since since 212 or yeah 2011 or something like that and we're we're here to to help in any way we can thank you
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:32:51
lady you have something for the witnesses Yeah I'd like to ask some questions if that's ok
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:32:57
you're welcome to Am I on here? Yeah thank you Mr Chairman Terry good to see you hadn't seen you in a while talked to you on the phone you thank you for being here Katrina. Carol, thank you for being here you're not at the table but appreciate you being here. yeah Terry's watching virtually Terry just want to let you know family day was Saturday in Jonesboro I had lunch with your son
he ate his barbecue didn't drop any of it he was
Speaker 281
1:33:27
good he did a great job the first one
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:33:29
I've missed in 15 years you couldn't be there but he did good. but you talk about the superintendents and I think you're absolutely right and Mr Chairman, I would like to recommend that we have the superintendents at our next meeting and talk to them most people know I'm a boots on the ground guy and I want to know what's going on boots on the ground and I I think it would be a good idea to talk to those
folks and also I talked to one superintendent I won't say which one but that superintendent got called in and had to work on third shift in a house because somebody quit I mean when you've got the highest the
Speaker 281
1:34:06
staff can't go to classes because they have to go man the house now and several have been working 18hour days but when you have the highest paid person at that site working third
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:34:18
shift whatever needs to be done in a
house there's something wrong so Mr Chairman I have a motion at the proper time and again thank you all for being here thank you
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:34:34
seeing no further questions thank you for your testimony. can I get the DHS personnel back to the table please
So one quick question before we move on on the agenda can you walk me through the DdS RSa amounts from 2017 to today and you don't have to go through every one of them but just kind of highlight it from where I'm at and and I've looked into the RSA amounts you were short before the pay plan and before we even came into this year if I'm correct and I
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:35:32
just want to hear it from y'all's mouth where the RSA amounts were from
Speaker 251
1:35:40
2017 to today. I'm happy to go through that.
Speaker 84
1:35:44
I have actually have it with me OK, so fordds the division again is not broken down byhTCs but as you could hear that's where most of our money goes. So for 217 our DDS RSa amount was
65 million 87000969 I'll shoot up here to 21
Speaker 84
1:36:20
amount was67 million 782 and last year in 2025 it was6
5 million603,0057 and in 2026 it's the same65 million603,057 so what you're telling me is is in 217 we were at68 million in change.
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:36:49
I'm not even going to try to say that big number but we're basically3 million dollars less today than we were almost 10 years ago. 9 years ago if you want to be technical
Speaker 84
1:37:07
no sir I'm sorry so in 2017 it was65870969 so it's only about what 270,270,000 we we received270,000 more in se7 than 26 that's crazy and so
Speaker 87
1:37:19
when it went up to67 million and that was just through COVID
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:37:31
yes sir Was that due to any
federal programs that enhanced your funding or was that just due to filling gaps on staffing you guys filled gaps on staffing because
Speaker 84
1:37:45
everything was costing so much money thank you all right seeing no questions
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:37:52
from committee members thank you for that info oh hold on p re s ent ative Woolridge
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
1:37:57
thank you Mr Chair and that kind of made me think of a question. So when that COVID bump took your budget up to67 what what changes took place
that we then had to try to either cut or did we are we trying to maintain those? Was there expanded positions what happened with that additional
Speaker 84
1:38:19
funding we just had to so heavily move towards contracts at that time and then of course we were getting all of the the required PE to try to keep people healthy. so there was it was just a lot of added expenses back then that I think the general assembly recognized and
knew that we needed more state general revenue to meet those needs back then. OK I
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
1:38:45
guess didn't ask my question well I'm sorry so did we address one time fixes with the bump in
COVID funds or did we increase pay or do things that were going to be a residual reoccurring expense so
Speaker 84
1:39:00
I will say overp probably the last 10 years we have implemented two pretty extensive pay plans at the HDCs that many of y'all probably
remember where we the last one being we actually require nowc andA's and we set upc andA schools so that we could pay people more so yeah we have been year over year we've been very successful of using the money that we've been given. we've started a C andA school. we opened a store we've been building on our campuses we have absorbed at Dd as we were able to absorb merit increases right year over year
and and pa pay increases for thecAs and Lpns on our own accord within our own budget. I just
Speaker 87
1:39:51
think we've gotten to the point now where we can't we can't absorb
Speaker 303
1:39:58
everything anymorere thank you for your time you of that
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:40:03
of your total funding is it state general revenue or federal funding mix? the numbers umen Urvin that I
Speaker 84
1:40:14
just went through was just the SGR that's in the dd that y'all give us stern budget hearings each year so that's just the state general revenue. there's a there's a very high federal match at the humanman Development centers because of the the nature of the work the other thing that's occurring right now is because our state is doing really well our federal match rate is
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:40:44
inoctober so that every percentage so I just think that members of this committee need to understand it's always about a decision and I think that Mr Johnson a adequately described it. We have decisions that are being made. And so with state general revenue it's critically important that we understand that state general revenue has actually decreased since 2017 for DdS budget. OK?
state general reven and the match of the federal match has because the state of Arkansas has done better economically our FMapp has changed and every one per every percentage change equates to $90 million hit to state general revenue. right so that's $90 million more in
state general revenue that we have to put up pay our portion increases by 90 m at current existing service that's not adding anything new that's just the price of groceries have gone up. we're still buying milk but the price of groceries have gone up basically. so I say all that because medicaid and DHS DDS the funding is critical for us to
understand it in the perspective of everything else that is coming our way so when a program that is being federally funded by 100% because of COVID loses federal money you have to understand what you're asking of everybody else when you're asking for state general revenue now to fill the gap of a
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:42:41
federal deficit of federal funding the people that suffer are these people
you got winners and losers not by our own choosing ok but federal money has gone away because of COVID money, federal money went away so we as a legislature have to make a decision about who's gonna be the winners and who's gonna be losers. So when you lose federal funding for programs that are very good programs. you always have to have the perspective as a legislator to understand well the state general revenue for this DdS agency
has remained not just flat but actually decreased so now we're way behind the buck and I'm sorry I'm on a soapbox but I am very passionate about public health in the state of Arkansas. I'm passionate about everything else too but at one point at some point you as a legislator, me as well we all have to look at this as a perspective and understand our funding and understand state general revenue versus federal revenue and where we're going to actually backfill and if we do
backfill a completely 100% federal program with new state GR and we're already behind the behind in this area more suffering takes place for these people. These people may win, but these people are going to lose . It's a decision and I just I just think it's very very important that we understand the mechanisms of budgeting and state money and federal money the federal match for this program particularly is what what's the percentage?
so we put in this amount of money what is the current federal
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:44:39
money for for this particular DdS. 6923 federal so69.23% is paid for by federal funding OK. and so I I just and that's going to67 or we're it's at69. it was at701 and now
it's gone down to69. OK, thank you. thank you senator seeing no further questions Representative
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:45:06
Ladyman. want to hear your motion. I'm not saying I'm taking it yet but go ahead thank you Mr Chairman .
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:45:14
Well it's been a good discussion and I have to say because we're getting less federal money it means that our economy is doing better and we're paying our own way I don't think that's a bad thing
I think it's good that we're able to take care of our own people and not take people from money from California but anyway that's another subject Mr chairirman I believe with all this discussion that there's an issue here that we need to make a motion to correct I I believe there's a timing issue with these direct care individuals and I think if we can speed that process up even a little bit it will help
these HDCs so here's my motion I move to exempt direct care vacant positions at the human development centers from the new hiring procedure that's my motion gettingting an answer from legal and then I'll
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:46:26
come back to you so you members
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:46:33
yeah go ahead so as we're asking for more information on his motion if if I'd like to know yes or no if this public joint public health committee has the authority to to do that
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:46:47
if we do not does that authority exist at another committee level perhaps through ALc or budget iss that
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:46:54
OK? OK thank you. Representativeladyman we're going to move on through the
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:47:03
agenda while we're waiting to hear back from legal but we'll come back to your question so I'm gonna table it at the moment without objection and as we get that determination from legal we'll come back and take it up. so with
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:47:15
that will recognize oh you're at the table you guys are good. so we'll go ahead and recognize y'all for the substance abuse and mental health rule. would have the new team members
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
1:47:34
introduced themselves for the record sir Good morning. Martina
Speaker 310
1:47:49
Smith, director for the division of provider services and quality assurance. Paula Stone director of the office of substance
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:47:57
abuse and mental healthalth DHS. and Melissa Weatherton,
Speaker 243
1:48:05
director for Medicaid specialtyulations. OK thank you
Speaker 84
1:48:24
So we are here on this topic so act636 which was an act that was passed in this last legislative session that made several changes to psychiatric residential
treatment facilities and it at the time that bill had an emergency clause on it so the three of us went and ran a set of emergency rules that went into effect on June 20th and what we have before you today is the permanent rules that we are seeking to put in place to regulate psychiatric residential treatment facilities which are called PRTFs so
we have Miss Marttina Smith as she introduced herself she is over our division that does all licensure certification and our office of long term care and then of course, Miss Stone is our umhaal healthal commissioner for the state of Arkansas she's over the office subsidies in mental health so out of both of these divisions came Emanuel so we have a office of long term care license your manual for pRTFs that will be regulated
underneath Mssmith's OltC unit and then we have the corresponding medicaid manual that sets out what we think is the standard of care that's being provided that falls under Miss Stone's unit. so that's why we're all three up here today. I'll hit on some high notes we feel like we have made some good changes we actually got two public comments back that we were happy to see where pretty pretty complimentary like they're not happy with everything but you know we agree
this is a good start we also responded back that we had committed to putting these rules in place for six months and then reevaluating if we need to do stuff differently and so that's what we responded to on the public comments so we appreciate that feedback we also just to know we got really good feedback fromblr on things that we had missed and so we were able to go in and make some of those changes too so we appreciate that I think the high notes are
prior to this law the psychiatric residential treatment facilities were being licensed by a board and it was called the board's called child welfare aggencyview Board and at that time that board this was the only program that was paid for by medicaid that they were licensing so they are primarily they do our foster care homes or adoption homes but PRT I previously was
being licensed by this board and so now they are licensed as a long term care facility just like a human development center or ICF just like a nursing home highly regulated required to have an administrator we changed the age of admission previously you could go to a PRTF viewer5. we were it's now raised to 10 so there's no new admissions after age 10 we put restrictions in place that you cannot share a bedroom if you're
outside of a three year age range. and so that is now in here we banned any type of seclusion we have banned any type of mechanical restraint and we are requiring monthly reports so we can see what's going on we are requiring a psychotropic drug report each month discharge reporting each month we want reports on out of state children each month and then any type of restraint we're getting restraint reports on a monthly basis
The pR there the pRTF providers have been very engaged with us over the last several months on this work. we might not have always agreed but we collaborated and it has been a I think a very good working relationship and we look forward to you guys approving these roles and let us know if you have any questions. seeing no questions without objection they stand reviewed. thanks it te
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:52:42
e the other item on the agenda was pulled by the
Unknown speaker
1:52:49
department seeing no other business we stand adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration to Approve the August 6, 2025, July 10, 2025, and July 11, 2025, Meeting Minutes [Exhibits B1-B3]
C. Overview of Hiring Procedures at Human Development Centers
D. DHS, Office of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, Review of Rule, Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility Services for Under Age 21 [Exhibit D]
E. DHS, Division of Medical Services, Review of Rule, Urgent Care Clinics [Exhibit E] − Elizabeth Pitman, Director, Division of Medical Services, DHS
F. Other Business
G. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
Senator Dave Wallace
Unverified
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Speaker 49
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
Speaker 60
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
Speaker 82
Speaker 84
Speaker 87
Speaker 89
Speaker 90
Speaker 94
Speaker 97
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
Speaker 54
Speaker 55
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
Speaker 104
Speaker 141
Speaker 152
Speaker 150
Speaker 164
Speaker 195
Speaker 52
Speaker 199
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
Speaker 173
Speaker 125
Speaker 220
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
Speaker 227
Speaker 231
Speaker 236
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
Speaker 243
Speaker 86
Speaker 146
Speaker 258
Speaker 262
Katrina Robertson
Unverified
Speaker 279
Speaker 281
Speaker 251
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
Speaker 303
Speaker 310