Children & Youth Committee- Senate & Aging, Children & Youth, & Legislative Affairs- House
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Unknown speaker
0:00
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Chair
Unverified
2:30
You Chair sees a quorum. Good morning. Welcome to the joint meeting of the Senate
house aging children youth and legislative affairs committee thank you for being here today we're gonna start this morning with a little tutorial from bright Blake because this is the first time that we are using you have a hard copy but we also have all of the documents on the tablet so or device I'm not really sure which is the correct term but Blake's gonna tell us about it okay members if
Speaker 7
3:26
you look at your tablet at the top of the screen you're going to see the documents tab this is going to be our first meeting utilizing that like
representative barker said everyone still does have their hard packet copies as well as if you bring your laptop you're going to have multiple options to use going forward but if you hit that document tab it'll have all the exhibits in the packet when you hit on a specific exhibit it'll load it you can zoom in zoom out just whatever your preference is if you
Speaker 4
4:00
have any questions going just let me know thank you very much okay first on our agenda today I need a motion to adopt the May 28th meeting minutes have a motion second thank you
all in favor say aye opposed no thank you
Chair
Unverified
4:17
minutes adopted first in our presentations today will be mr. guess from Arkansas advocates for children and and families if you will introduce yourself then you are recognized for your presentation thank
Speaker 12
4:41
you madam chair Peter guess I'm the economic policy director for
Speaker 13
4:45
Arkansas advocates for children and families thanks for having me this morning I'm very happy to be here to share a tool that I hope you'll find valuable in your work going forward on this committee and generally in the legislature. I think you all are pretty familiar with Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. I'm sure you've interacted with lots of folks from our staff over the years, especially during sessions. What you may not know is we're about to turn 50 years old. This is our 48th year,
So we look forward to celebrating in 2027 with you. I won't read the mission here because, again, I think you're pretty familiar. We're just here to give a voice to kids and youth at the Capitol and beyond. All right, so I'm here to talk about a fiscal map and why we may be interested in a fiscal map. I will say that we are the state representative in a nationwide network run by the Annie Casey Foundation, something called Kids Count.
You probably have seen press releases in the past and stories about the Kids Count data book that comes out every year and ranks us across several domains. We're obviously interested in improving those rankings, not for the sake of rankings, but for the betterment of our children. And the fiscal map is a complement to this ranking. The ranking is like where we are now. The fiscal map is the funding we put behind that. And obviously, it demonstrates the investments we put into programs, state programs, that improve the lives of children.
And here at Advocates, we're very interested in can we actually link the funding to outcomes and what does that look like? So in many ways, it's a way of answering questions. It's also really the first answer to a series of questions. And so where is our level of current funding and how much is going towards those goals of improving the lives of children in the state of Arkansas? Also, moving beyond that is, okay, where's the gap then?
If we want to improve something, what kind of modeling cost estimation can we do to get past this baseline demonstrated by the fiscal map to get us to where we want to be and of course then the next step is thinking through sources for additional funding both governmental and beyond governmental funding to narrow that gap yeah but but mostly a fiscal map is all about fostering dialogue so who's spending what in the state of Arkansas how much what are we spending it
on. And of course, we're very interested in children and, you
Speaker 14
7:36
know, by different age groups and what programs are affecting those age groups and that sort of thing.
Speaker 13
7:47
I should mention that we partnered with this in something called the Children's Funding Project, which is a national nonprofit that really is interested in strategic funding solutions to, again, support children across the entire United States.
And we are just one part of this effort. As of now, the Children Funding Project has completed fiscal maps in just about half of the states in the country. In the next three years, they want to have all states done. In most states, the partner is somebody like us, some sort of advocacy nonprofit organization, but that's not always the case. Notable exceptions are the Children's Funding Project in Maryland partners directly with
the governor's office, and in several states, such as Kentucky, partners with offices of early childhood development because of priorities to understand what's happening in that space in those states. You can see we just completed ours just earlier this year. We were part of Wave 3, and that work continues. Okay, now we get to the fun part to actually demonstrate the fiscal map. The fiscal map is hosted on something called Power BI,
which is Microsoft's platform for doing these kind of dashboards. So if I was to give you that web address, the URL for that, it's really, really complicated. The easy thing to remember is if you go to our website, which is just aradvocates.org, Right on the home page where this red arrow appears at the bottom, there's a link to the fiscal map. That's the easiest way to get there. And so let me show you some of that. Okay, here's our website again.
And there is a blue box here, Arkansas Fiscal Map. And then it will take you to, as I said, this really complicated web address that shows you the actual platform that hosts our fiscal map. Okay. When you click on that link, you end up right on a home screen. And the home screen gives you some background information. Important for you here is the fiscal years that this covers, 2019 through 2023.
So it gets us through sort of the most recent published data. There is an effort every three years to update this, so data will lag a little bit, but we'll keep updating. And also, we call it Children and Youth Fiscal Map because it's ages 0 through 24. So we're tracking funding for that entire age group. And then on the left, you have a table of contents, which is actually buttons to navigate through. That's great, but I also say at the bottom here, you have page one of six.
Those arrows are going to be even easier to navigate through. So if I just go to the second page, you come to the summary page. Lots of data here, kind of the 30,000-foot view, and it tracks overall spending for children and youth across these fiscal years, as I mentioned before, as well as where that funding is coming from, whether it's federal or special relief funding during the pandemic or state general fund or state special revenue.
And then outcome category, things like, are we educating children or are we working on their employability, making them healthy, safe, and supported versus levels of intervention? These may be, you know, unclear is what they mean, but the good thing about this map is when you hover over just about anything, it will tell you. So if I say employable, for instance, let's see, it should pop up.
Okay, it's in the main part of the graph. See, this outgorm category that I'm highlighting here is supported and connected, and it gives you a definition. provide financial, emotional, and social support to help children and youth be more connected to their families and communities. Likewise, if I go to intervention and I say positive development, funds focused on supporting the development needs of children and youth from cradle to career to make sure they're thriving throughout that period.
So you get a lot of definitional information when you click on stuff. You can also click on stuff to actually select it. So if I wanted to just go to state funding, I could click here, and you note that the red becomes highlighted because that's the level of state funding and the graph changes. And you'll see, which I think is really good news, that over the past fiscal years, we've seen this increase in the total state funding for children and youth in the state of Arkansas.
Very good. And so, and I could also say federal, and we see federal relief funding was basically zero and then peaked to about $3 billion in 2021 and then back to zero, because that's specific category, that tracking there. And I can always do control to select multiple. So if I want to go back to select all of them, I get back to where I was before, the original. And what's at the bottom here is a listing of all funds, funding streams, that support children and youth.
And so you can see if I was to scroll down here, there are many, many, many of them, right? So nobody's really going to spend time scrolling through all that. But I can actually search. So if I wanted to say, for example, child care, I can enter it here, I search it. You'll see everything changes because now it's just summarizing stuff that has funding streams that have child care in there. And now if I go through, I can see National School Lunch Program, and I can read a definition of what that is.
Better Chance Program, Head Start, Child Care and Development Block Grant Funding, Child Care Mandatory and Matching Funds of the Child Care and Development Fund. And so we have these different funds that are going to specifically support child care. Okay, so that's sort of the summary page. I go to the next page, and it lists all funding streams. So apparently in Arkansas, there are 413 funding streams that support children. But over here, I can filter through.
So eligible services and programs, right now it has everything checked. I want to take that out. And let's say I just wanted to look at something like nutrition. I can check nutrition support. good and then you see it drops to 25 funding streams and I get the list of all of them and let's say I wanted to say only state funding so I can do both special revenue and general revenue and you see now it drops to six and we've got school food services we've got hunger coalition school for the deaf
cash operations etc and so we can see those state funds that go to support nutrition for this age group so that's really really handy and I can if I wanted to know more say about school food services I can highlight it and click here for more information and it gives you sort of a focus in on that fund and what it's been doing over the past several years and you see it's for example flat appropriations for the past five fiscal years and this gets me back
and then page four we have the age analysis this is kind of similar you get all funding streams but now it's by fiscal year so I can select the year in this case the latest 2023 and it's got these neat slide bars where I can change the age that I'm interested in and you'll see a lot of other things so for age 12 to 15 there actually are 264 funding streams and 7.6 billion dollars
of total funding and so if I'm interested in these funding streams specifically by age I can look there and then finally the the page five of six really is a budget comparison and that is what is spent on youth versus overall spending in the state and so you see the red is children and youth funding what's really handy is this part down here that 4.29k per child and youth funding this
is a summary but if you take out the public school fund we get about two thousand dollars per kid in funding so that and that's you know fiscal year 2023 general and special revenue together and the last page is simply a methodology page that lists how we went about this I will say The Children's Funding Project has done similar methodology across all states so that we can actually do some comparison across the states as they complete them.
Let me get back to this really quickly. So I'm sure you're thinking through this. There are some of the uses that come to mind as you're sitting there and listening to this. This is just some of the things that we've thought through here. For example, impact analysis. I said before, can we link changes in funding to actual outcomes? So what impact is that funding making? Can we use it for strategic public financing decisions?
So where are those shortfalls? What kind of funding do we need? I really like the idea of cross-state comparisons to see what's happening in Arkansas and other similar states, that sort of thing. And on the comparisons, here's just a quick example that I pulled from comparison data from surrounding nearby, maybe similar states. Just look to see how we're expending TANF funds, right? And there's quite a variability here. So if you look at Texas, it's primarily doing the child welfare services out of TANF funds, where for Arkansas, it's more pre-K head start and basic assistance.
That's not saying there's a right or wrong way of investing TANF funds, just if we're curious what other states are doing as we're thinking about those decisions. Or maybe looking through, as I mentioned before, nutrition support. We're kind of in the range if you look at total per capita across similar states. But Texas really pops, right? Almost, I don't know, 50% more than we invest in nutrition. I haven't had time to investigate this, but I'd be really curious to see what exactly Texas is doing in this area.
so why is it an outlier compared to the other or other surrounding states for example okay that's it i'm happy to take any
Speaker 12
19:02
questions or any thoughts comments about the fiscal map senator sullivan you're recognized yeah thank you very much thank you for
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
19:11
your presentation so you started out by saying you know we're interested in children i'm just wondering who's not yes i i did mean the royal
Speaker 13
19:19
way or the collective way yes i think we're all interested in that's why i'm very happy to be here to share this okay and you know you
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
19:29
talk a lot about funding and comparing different states so when when you
look at the funding streams for arkansas do you compare the same funding streams that other states in other words they may be funding things that we aren't or we're funding things they aren't are to different levels is that so when you show the graph with various
Speaker 13
19:53
levels of spending are the categories the same? As you might imagine, states use very, very different, a broad range of funding streams.
Okay, so how accurate is the graph then? Yeah, it's accurate by broad categories. So the children's funding project is using the same methodology to put these into the broad categories. So if you wanted to, and you had time and maybe a paid undergrad researcher, you could sit through and then break those out and look exactly what those funds look like in Texas versus do you want to uh
Speaker 31
20:28
sometimes that's informative yes you also mentioned so I guess it's a part of that
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
20:34
uh you know Arkansas has really worked hard on school choice and other issues like that is that and DHS
funding per child is all that in our graph yes so we're we're including all of that Yes. And the graphs for similar
questions. So I assume other states have a similar breakdown of how they categorize spending. Absolutely. Okay. Do you all spend, you know, one of the research shows that one of the most highest outcomes for kids is whether they live in a two-parent stable home.
Speaker 34
21:10
Do you collect that data? Yes. We do through the Kids Count database
Speaker 13
21:18
that's available at our website. we do have data on what family households look like. Absolutely. Okay. Can you get
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
21:25
that to the chair, please? Mr. Chair, may I ask that, Ms. Chair, sorry, that we get that data
and get that specifically on two-parent homes and what Arkansas looks like? Since you corrected the
Chair
Unverified
21:44
others in the queue, so if you can. Okay. I'm sorry. Thank you. That's okay. Thank
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
21:53
you. Representative Springer you're recognized Thank you madam chair good morning, and thank you for being here and thank you for this information I heard you say that Arkansas has 413 Funding streams that support children. Can you tell us what that told put that total amount equals to?
Speaker 13
22:12
Yes, I'd have to go back to the map but Yeah,
Speaker 44
22:25
I can do that pretty quickly. So let me clear
Speaker 13
22:58
oh, I see, childcare's still in there, okay, 8.8 billion, and that's,
That would include federal and state dollars.
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
23:11
One more question, Madam Chair. And then over on the page where you talk about nutrition support, and as we look at those numbers, state funding for nutrition support, Arkansas being way at the bottom, we only funded at three. You were kind by saying double. It looks like it's about four or five times the amount, as in Louisiana and Texas.
And I don't want to put you on the spot, but do you think that there's a correlation between the
amount that the state provides compared to the other states as
Speaker 13
23:48
to why we're where we are at this point? Well, obviously, providing nutrition support would move more children and families out of food insecurity in the state. Yeah, I was looking at the total per capita, which includes federal money, right? And so that gets us a little bit closer. But, yes, on the state side, you're right, it's a lot less than, say, Louisiana even.
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
24:11
That's right. So that's something that we need to take, probably need to take a look at Arkansas, our state. Wouldn't you agree? Yes. It never hurts to take
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
24:26
a look. Representative Bentley, you recognize? Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for being here today. just looking at the funding here and when we're looking at 2021 and the big the big increase there was that due to COVID funding is that what it is yes it's federal relief funding that's exactly right all right there's a couple of questions uh chairwoman if that's okay getting back to
senator Sullivan's question which again I support we know that families kids thrive when they have families when they're in with with their family their parents do we are we tracking what we're doing to support families as a
whole anywhere here that you know about so what are states doing to keep families together to support
Speaker 13
25:01
families as a whole is there anything we're doing um not specifically with this fiscal map because it's really targeted towards children and youth there may be some funding streams in there programs that i'm not personally aware of that do
support families in general it would take some further investigation of those funding streams Okay, final question, Chairman, if that's okay.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
25:21
The last one, I'm looking on the nutrition support. Are you looking at there? We do some funding with farm to school, with our child care, to help get some extra food there, fruits and veggies that we get through that funding stream to help the kids that are in child care and kids that are in pre-K. So is that added in there as
Speaker 13
25:44
well? I do know that there were some appropriations through the Department of Agriculture
Speaker 12
25:48
that were included here. because specifically they were targeting children and youth. Off the top of my head, I don't remember exactly what those looked like, but I'll double-check to see that those are included. Yeah,
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
25:59
and then because we do WIC, so are you saying that Texas adds more state funding into WIC? Is that what you're saying on this? I'm really interested in this nutrition support thing, so could we get some more details from you on what they're doing statewide that we're not doing with WIC because I thought those were all federal funds. So thank you.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
26:20
Representative Duke, you're recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, sir, for being here and for your presentation. I've got two quick questions. I think they're quick questions, if that's okay. My first one is in all the different data that you're collecting, are you collecting, and I don't see this very often in places, are you collecting data that
empowers parents to stay home rather than going to get their kids in child care at the pre-K levels? Or is it targeted for what can we do to increase people in daycare?
Speaker 13
26:55
I don't think we really make that distinction. So I don't think, I mean, I think it would be hard to reveal that in this data. And I'm not specifically investigating what
Speaker 12
27:14
the state is doing on one side or the other of that equation. We have looked into the affordability issue, quality issue around early childhood education, things like that.
But I don't know specifically a programming that is targeting keeping children and families instead of going
Speaker 14
27:34
to daycare, for example. Thank you. That's part of the reason why I ask that is I
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
27:40
don't hear a lot of conversations about that when we talk about policy and initiatives to help kids. And oftentimes I hear from constituents and parents that, you know, they would like to have the ability for one of them to stay home, particularly in those early years before kindergarten. But we seem to always focus on how do we get them into pre-K and even lower and lower.
So I hope someone somewhere finds the window of looking at that data, too, because I think finding solutions for that for parents as a state level, ways that we can have policies that help empower them to
stay home, which kind of goes into my next one. When you guys are looking through some of this, when talking about the
food security and different things like that, again, do you guys analyze the policies that are empowering rather than the government coming in and providing the services, trying to find the ways to keep more money in the pockets of the taxpayers so that they're able to provide all of those things?
Is that something that collecting in
the data or looking at or trying to advocate for the children and
Speaker 12
28:44
families? Yeah, I mean, I think there's an appropriate balance there, right? There is a role
Speaker 13
28:50
for government to provide services and programs, and, you know, I know legislative bodies struggle with what is the appropriate amount of taxes and from what sources to support those governmental programs. Off the top of my head, I think I would be super interested in the research design
to think about how tax rates and tax collected affect certain learning and health and educational outcomes that we're really interested in. I'd love to work with you on that if you have
Speaker 12
29:27
some ideas about how to collect that data and think it through. Well, I think that that gives
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
29:36
a kind of a bigger picture because
sometimes we focus, even as a body,
we focus on what can the government can do as a solution where oftentimes, at least I believe, other people can have, if we can return money to them, if we can empower them to have better choices by making what they take home pay and those types of things to stay there or to be able to reduce barriers so that they can make choices that doesn't seem to be part of the conversation anymore, at least not in government, but I hear it a lot at home about, know I want I would like to be able to stay home but I can't I would like to be able to do this but I have to work to pay this and I think we need to hear
those voices of what people are saying on some other options and
not just look at these pieces so yeah I would happy to happy to have further conversation with you about that thank
Speaker 76
30:27
you yeah thank you senator Sullivan I appreciate you getting back in
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
30:29
the queue you're recognized yes sorry just a short question so you
talked a lot about about outcomes in the first one i didn't see a lot of outcomes data in the report i assume that's
on your website is there a direct link between the amount of funding and outcomes so as we see funding go up do your outcomes go up and is that in your charts uh so that's the next step of our
Speaker 13
30:51
work right so this tracks funding levels things like the kids count data book do track outcomes So how that varies with funding levels, I think, is an important question to
Speaker 12
31:01
answer. And I think there's a lot of research out there on that. But that's not on your website or in the report.
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
31:08
So you're asking, you want to relate that we need more
money, but that doesn't necessarily equate to better outcomes. We don't have that data, correct? So let me phrase it a different way.
Speaker 13
31:22
If we are unhappy with educational outcomes, right, and other states are maybe doing better, we could look through these tools and say, all right, something that states that do well are doing is putting more money behind something. And maybe some states are doing other things that's not just
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
31:43
money, right? I don't want to take more of the committee's time. The impact, though, of directly connecting funding to outcomes is important.
And I hope in future testimony before this committee that you'll be able to link that funding to outcomes. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Pilkington, you're recognized. Over here.
Representative Aaron Pilkington
Unverified
32:07
Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. A little bit going off of Representative Duke's question, and I don't see anything about this, But, you know, this has been something we've talked a lot about is the falling birth rate in the United States. And as I'm sure you're well, since 2018, Arkansas has been below replacement rate.
I think we have around 1.8 or 1.76. So I'm curious, too. I mean, we see all this spending on children and trying to have better outcomes for them. But then yet we also see a falling birth rate and people having less and less children. Can you speak to that? And if not, that's okay. I'd just be curious maybe next time you come, you could kind of talk to us about it. But it's something obviously I think, you know, we worry about the family, but also just there's an economic impact as well. If we don't have enough people paying into Social Security and Medicare, that's, you know, it's troubling.
And then, of course, as you have a lot of these communities in Arkansas are fading away because there's not enough children to be born to, you know, basically take up the roles of those who are leaving us. So if you have anything, I'd love to hear it, but if
Speaker 12
33:13
not, maybe that could be a subject for the next meeting. Yes, and Representative, I'd love to talk with you more about that and more specifics that you're interested in. From my own personal world, so some of you know this, I've spent 28 years in higher ed. You can't be around higher ed without talking about the demographic cliff.
And because there are less kids, there are less people going to school. And so what does that mean for our state institutions and funding? So that is a variable that needs to be considered. And, you know, education funding formula for K-12, all of that is based on, you know, per capita kind of numbers, right? And so I think that obviously is a consideration when it comes to funding decisions. Representative Magruder, you're recognized.
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
34:02
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the time, the work that you put in. I appreciate you caring about the youth. My question in regards to the nutrition, in my area, if I'm not mistaken, we only have one summer food program. I'm wondering if you can speak to the issue of is there the funding issue or why the lack of resources in Crittenden County specifically or in the Delta as far as food nutrition programs over the summer and those after school at risk school programs.
Speaker 13
34:37
Yeah, I think, you know, while I can't speak specifically to your county, obviously, increased funding means increased nutrition.
Speaker 12
34:46
And so I think, yes, funding can be paired with educational programs and other opportunities. But I think there's a direct link between
Speaker 14
34:55
the amount of funding that goes into things like summer nutrition programs and lifting children out of food insecurity. Thank you.
Chair
Unverified
35:07
seeing no other questions thank you for
your presentation today thank you appreciate it next on our agenda we have an annual report from director Pulley from the children's advocacy centers and if you will recognize yourself introduce yourself you'll be recognized
Speaker 88
35:37
Elizabeth Pulley, Executive Director of the Children's Advocacy Centers of Arkansas. Children's Advocacy Centers of Arkansas is a non-profit organization that supports the growth, development, and sustainability of Arkansas's network of 32 child advocacy centers and 64 multidisciplinary teams throughout our state.
We provide training, mentorship, technical assistance, and resources to strengthen the coordinated response to child abuse and neglect around the state of Arkansas. What makes this unique is our MDT professionals from Child Welfare, DCFS, Law Enforcement, Crimes Against Children Division, part of Arkansas State Police, prosecutors, medical personnel, mental health professionals, all working together to support child victims and their families.
Arkansas is a part of a national framework where every state has CACs and MDTs. Some of our key accomplishments over the last year are strengthening state partnerships for a more unified child abuse response. I'm going to talk about that a little bit more in a minute. Number two, improved quality of care through defined service models, streamlining our workflows, standardizing our data, and expanding our peer reviews statewide.
This past year, we've launched a statewide effort for CAC's best practices, ensuring that services are equal across the state, promoting innovation and supporting growth. A child that has been abused in Ashley County should have the same top quality services as a child that has been abused in Pulaski County. so we have been looking at that and ensuring that our services are equal across the state
we've onboarded and mentored five new executive directors in the last year and we've delivered 221 trainings in 2024 reaching professionals from arkansas state police dcfs prosecutors and many many more all focused on child abuse response in the healing our CACs are a child friendly trauma-informed facility that provides free direct services to children and families
affected by abuse they're referred from law enforcement DCFS and CACD and just a reminder of our core services forensic interviews advocacy medical exams and mental health therapy many of our centers also provide prevention services where they go out to schools to do body safety also teach administrators the mandated reporter laws and understand what they need to do to call the
hotline. And just some of the impact our CACs have made in the last year, we served 10,707 children statewide through our CAC services. We opened a new CAC in Polk County, so it serves Polk and Scott. And our El Dorado CAC achieved full national accreditation. And so that's a big deal in the state of arkansas that all of our centers except our new centers are fully accredited
by a national organization just moving on to our multidisciplinary team our it's a collaborative team to ensure a coordinated trauma-informed focus to child abuse cases the mdt's meet regularly to review cases share information and plan interventions together some of our highlights for the past year for our multidisciplinary team is we developed a first statewide mdt protocol
we gathered all the partners from dcfs state police prosecutors medical and mental health and created our first statewide protocol with input from every partner this is a standout achievement few other states have an extensive an extensive guide like this and it's a hundred and forty pages so I just kind of brought to show you what we have worked on collectively and collaboratively with all of the different partnering agencies to actually this is the state of Arkansas
response to child abuse guide with every agency involved in this first time ever and something to be very proud of as a state of Arkansas and again not every state has something like this so at the national level they're even looking to see what we are doing in Arkansas so very proud of that accomplishment in the last year our MDT's reviewed over 10,000 cases of child abuse in the state of Arkansas to protect to protect children if it's okay I would like to invite
director Tiffany Wright to come join me she knows
Speaker 88
41:30
to give you a perspective of our partnership and working together a nonprofit working with state agencies DCFS state police prosecutors across the state and how effective that collective response we've worked really hard on
this in the last few years and this is the first time ever I really feel like we have very strong partnerships we work together we review data together and look at target areas what's going on in a specific area to provide feedback and then we compare our notes like what can we do better to ensure that we have a a better response of child abuse in that specific area and we are also in the process of coordinated
trainings together so that there's a consistent messaging from our staff of what how we respond to child abuse by agency and how we can do that collectively with our partnerships across the state hi good morning tiffany wright
Speaker 96
42:37
director for the division of children and family services so like elizabeth
Speaker 98
42:41
said we have been working really hard as a team to ensure that children are making it children and youth are making it to the child advocacy centers to be interviewed
and obtain that high quality forensic interview that they may need so we have a good understanding of what's going on with that family and then in the bigger picture getting that involvement from the MDT team which allows some collaborative decision making on how we're responding to that family and what services that they may or
Speaker 99
43:14
may not need even if the investigation is unfounded so how do we wrap them in prevention
Speaker 98
43:21
services within the community to still meet their needs in case
there's something else going on with the family this
Speaker 100
43:28
is definitely not uh easy but it's worth it and we're trying to figure out how we do that together thank you ready for questions okay i didn't want
Chair
Unverified
43:37
to rush you uh representative bentley you recognize thank you chairman thank you ladies for being here and thank
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
43:44
you for all you're doing for our kids i can't tell you how much i appreciate your hard work um just a real quick question so when we're looking at i know one of the biggest one of the big goals that we've got is right when those kids get done that
when they get to court they're able to get through court and get some results for them do you do you track that to say or do you do it after you know so we got to court and this happened or that didn't happen do we see what we're doing to improve that
Speaker 88
44:12
in the future or i'm just curious on that and we don't really track that we have some ways that we can pull that data but sometimes you know the court system is a slow process and so having it perfectly tracked would be a goal to really work with the prosecutors to come back to see how our data works with their data and what that looks
like but I definitely think that's a goal for the
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
44:34
future great thank you and one quick follow-up just um I know we've done a lot with the Hope Hub in Sebastian County were you guys included in that when we were um yes okay yes great thank you I was really excited about what's going on there and hope we can spread it across
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
44:53
the state. Thank you. Representative Springer, you're recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning. Good to see you all here. You spoke about the Arkansas MDT program, and I see Major Drew is here with the Arkansas State Police.
Can you tell us what his role is with this committee? Because
I see him here, and he's here, and he's not at the table to tell us what part
Speaker 88
45:14
does he play within this. We sure can invite him up here. I didn't want to scare him off before
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
45:21
his presentation, too. Oh, no. We know Major
Speaker 88
45:24
Drew. He does good. So we want to hear from him, too. Well, we have a great relationship with Major Drew and Crimes Against Children Division. Also, a lot of their investigators across the state bring their children to our centers.
And some of them are even housed at our centers. And so that provides a great relationship that we have. You know, his team sees the really bad child abuse in the state, the sexual abuse. And a lot of those kids, over 50% are brought to our centers so that they can receive those direct services. So Major Drew sits on our MDT Oversight Committee and played a role in developing this protocol.
So we definitely value CACD and DCFS and all others that were involved in this process. I guess after all that, I don't have
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
46:26
anything to say. We've been working with them from the beginning. We've always tried to use them as much as possible. definitely helps with the court portion of it because we get those interviews recorded and we can present those and not put that type of pressure on on the victim it also reduces how many times they get get interviewed being a part of
the CAC and MDT also helps us with because we're more concerned with I don't want to say we're not concerned about the well-being of the kids but the investigators the CACD get their enjoyment from making sure that the person that's violated those kids gets what's coming to them that's real big to us and being in that environment in the CAC we can make sure that those kids get the follow-up care and the things that they need to get to make sure that they're okay and that comes it plays a big role
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
47:17
in us being a part of that. Madam Chair I just want to follow I just want to follow up and say Mr. Pulley nothing
against you we see them very often almost on a monthly basis and you don't come before us very often so thank
Chair
Unverified
47:34
you too for your services thank you very much any other questions by committee representative henley you
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
47:42
recognize thank you and good morning glad to see you i was curious about the map it's page eight in my folder when i look at services provided in southwest
arkansas is that just because you are not located in southwest arkansas are
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
48:05
uh yes i i can speak to uh uh hempstead howard uh severe there's nothing little river there's nothing pike there's
Speaker 91
48:17
we do have a cac in nevada county we also have a cac nevada nevada sorry
Speaker 88
48:24
i'm from pulaski county so i'm sorry and uh but this is an area of interest to us of how to best help coordinate the response especially Hempstead, Howard Pike, Severe, Little River. A lot of times some of those counties, those rural areas will drive to Texarkana or to our Arkadelphia Center in Clark County but we are looking here and then also in other parts of the state that need some
help and have a better access to services so those are some questions and things that we're working on internally of to ensure that kids have access if and we don't want them to drive i mean a lot of times that they don't have transportation we can provide gas cards as needed but this is an area of interest to us of what can we do is there services needed every day is it services once a week what would that look like and so really working with the communities to figure that out
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
49:35
thank you I would appreciate you taking a serious look at that and access from rural counties to Texarkana and Miller County is not easy from those rural counties just to let you know thank you very much thank you thank you
Chair
Unverified
49:52
all for your report today we're going to take just a little veer from the agenda, and I'm going to recognize Representative Gramlich for a point of personal privilege. Thank you very
Speaker 121
50:04
much, Madam Chair. Thank you, committee, for your
Speaker 123
50:07
time. Just a moment of personal privilege today. Today we have the Executive Director of Region 8 Senior Centers, Deanna Rice, in the audience today. She's here today just to advocate for the funding for our senior centers in the state. I spoke with her a few weeks ago just talking about the dire straits that some of our senior centers are are in um i hear reports all the time not of individuals like having a paper on the window saying we can only feed x number of people today and you know so um i i spoke with her a
couple weeks ago and she made the point that they had the same funding uh today that they did in 2014 um and somehow are we're able to survive but it's definitely tough so um just as a comment something we look forward to in the future is we need to figure out how to continue to fund these organizations to, um, help our seniors. So, uh, Deanna, thank you so much for your work. And I just want to acknowledge that
Speaker 4
51:02
you're here today. Thank you. Our next report on the agenda is from the infant and child death
Chair
Unverified
51:06
review, their annual report. We believe we have a panel coming.
If you will all introduce yourself yourselves, then you will be recognized. good
Speaker 127
51:29
morning Laura Taylor Arkansas Children's good morning
Speaker 129
51:33
Sherry Williamson I'm here as the state ICDR panel member good morning Kevin Kleghorn
Speaker 131
51:40
I am the chairman for the state panel for the
infant and child death review so you are recognized for your report thank you madam chair thank you committee. The mission
Speaker 132
51:55
of the Arkansas Infant Child Death Review, known as the ICDR, is to review all unexpected infant and child deaths in the state of Arkansas. Established in 2010, the ICDR consists of 11 regional teams of volunteers that cover all 75 counties in the state. The team reviews unexpected deaths of Arkansas children ages 0 to 17 years as required by Act 18-18 of
2005. Each year an annual report is compiled by the ICDR team coordinated by Arkansas Children's which is contracted through the Arkansas Department of Health. Contributors to this report include coroners, law enforcement, first responders, forensic pathologists, death scene investigators, regional ICDR teams, and members of the ICDR state panel. So the annual report was completed in December of 2024 and includes deaths that occurred in 2022. So the total number of
deaths in 2022 from 0 to 17 years of age was 453 deaths. However, 255 of those deaths were ruled as natural deaths, so did not fall under the purview of the ICDR's reviews. There were a total of 198 deaths that met the criteria for the ICDR review 26 of those deaths were either under
Speaker 131
53:11
criminal investigation and being prosecuted at the time and therefore could not be reviewed under act 1818 any of those deaths that are under adjudication cannot be reviewed so
Speaker 132
53:24
the ICDR teams reviewed the remaining 172 deaths and are reflected in this annual report these deaths will include 87 accidents that include motor vehicle accidents overdoses poisoning or rather accidental drownings poisonings and overdoses asphyxias fires and other related injuries 13 suicides which were including the poisonings and overdoses again asphyxia and firearms nine homicides there were a total of 26 homicides in the state of Arkansas however
only nine of those were able to be reviewed and reported by firearms 63 undetermined causes of death and sudden unexpected infant death infants under one year of age account for the most deaths in those in all age groups representing more than one-third of the deaths reviewed in 2022 the majority of infant deaths were due to unsafe sleep environment this includes co-sleeping in an adult bed or the infant being placed to sleep on their side or their stomach in another unsafe
fashion among motor vehicle accidents or motor vehicle related death injuries all groups safety restraints seat belts boosters car seats were not used in more than half of these cases in 2022 a total of 19 infants and children in arkansas died from unintentional drownings This is almost twice as many as the
Speaker 131
54:55
previous year, and in our reviews, it was determined the lack of adequate supervision was noted in many of those cases.
Of the children who died from unintentional poisonings and overdoses, five of the nine were due to fentanyl, which is an increase from one the previous year. Beginning on page 32 of your report,
Speaker 132
55:15
you will find a list of recommendations from the ICDR state panel and the regional teams. this report is meant to serve as a resource for organizations and agencies working to reduce the number of injury related deaths across the state and it is the hopes of everyone involved in the infant and child or the child death review process that these findings help that guide work
so in closing icdr data are collected from multiple disciplines at a case review and entered into the national center for fatality review and prevention database the data is analyzed to generate an overview and an in-depth annual report on the cases reviewed by the local ICDR teams. Key data entered into the NCFRP database are derived from death and birth certificates, child health records, autopsy reports, coroner's reports, sudden unexplained infant death investigation reports, toxicology reports, witness interviews, on-scene investigation
reports, and any other documentation that teams may identify as helpful in a review in order to make effective preventative recommendations so that our children have a better chance for survival in the future. Thank
Speaker 131
56:25
you. Thank you. Are there any questions?
Chair
Unverified
56:31
Representative Bentley, you're recognized. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you all for being here today. And I'm just,
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
56:37
I'm really concerned about the increase in drowning in our state. You know, I've passed legislation to require
parents to know where we can get swimming lessons and to just encourage them to be more safe about swimming but a vast majority of arkansans themselves don't know how to swim and they can't teach their children if they don't so i want you guys to be aware there is a group called every child a swimmer they're based out of florida but that mom lost her child at 18 months age and so they give scholarships to folks that are doing swimming instruction so those folks are low income cannot pay it but it's a ridiculously high amount for swimming lessons in arkansas i just want you to know that i'm going to work and see what we can do with a public private partnership to make sure we can get some lower i mean when i was a child red cross
went everywhere and taught children to swim. They don't do that anymore. And we had lifeguards at every, all of our state parks had lifeguards because teenagers would need a job for the summer and they were trained, but we no longer do that. So maybe you can help me push for that to get the Red Cross to do that once again because things are really needed in our state. We want everybody to get outside, right? We're a state that's too sedentary. We're not kids that get off their games and get outside and swim, but we need them to do some lessons. So if you guys would check in to that with me, I would really appreciate your help to push that moving forward. And the other quick thing is when we're talking about SIDS, data shows that children that are breastfed 100% of the time have 80% less chance of SIDS.
So that's another area that I think we really need to push in our state. We're kind of at a standstill with that. So there's been a lot of advances with breast pumps and all those things to help it easier for moms that go back to work. But I think it's something we really, really need to continue to focus on because that's a huge amount to me. 80% of those kids will not die of SIDS if we can get them breastfeeding. So, again, a push on that would be appreciated. Thank you all for being here today. I know it's not the best topic, but it's really important for us to do what we can on the state level to make things better. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that information.
Speaker 131
58:26
That is an agency we were not aware of. Thank you
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
58:37
very much. Representative Duke, you're recognized. All right, there we go. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all for the information and for the work that you do. I have just a couple of questions. Just have a little bit more information on when you say in this report, inadequate supervision, if it is related to drugs or alcohol, would that fall into the criminal or would that be listed here in inadequate supervision if the parents are incapacitated for one of those reasons?
Speaker 131
59:00
It would actually, it could actually fall under either one of those categories. And if it was a criminal case that was being adjudicated, we would not have that data in this report. So for this report, it would actually fall under the ones that were considered accidental lack of supervision as far as, you know, with the pools of the overdoses. It would fall under that different category. But
Speaker 139
59:29
Laura or Sherry may. Also, the Division of Children and Family Services has an external death and near-death statewide panel that would review that death.
They review any of the child deaths that are the calls that come into the hotline, and all child deaths are supposed to be called into the hotline. So Director Wright would likely be able to speak to that if you had questions specific to it. But those deaths are reviewed. They're just reviewed by a different
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
59:56
group than this group. Yeah, I just was curious because I know one of the things that I'm hearing from school people and personnel is they are seeing the impacts of parents even just dropping their kids off and smelling the marijuana as they get out of the car and stuff.
And so I'm just curious if that's contributing to some of this in a way differently than what it had in the past. So maybe we can visit about that. The other question that I had on the improperly, and again, I don't know if you have this information or not, but the improperly
restrained on the car seats, can you tell a little bit more about what it is? Is it they aren't buckling them up, they're putting them in the car seat, or are they just not doing it tight enough? What's the issue, or is there anything that's a prevailing issue on that one?
Chair
Unverified
1:00:41
It's a combination of all of those, and many of these deaths were also in our teenage age group. In the report, it will break down whether or not the passenger was a passenger or a driver. So it's a combination of children not being properly restrained in a car seat, not using a booster when they need one, not using a seatbelt, not using a seatbelt correctly, where maybe they put the strap behind them. There's just a wide range of things that are not being done correctly. But having a proper car seat installed, using it correctly every single time,
and then those older children being able to stay in the back seat as
Speaker 147
1:01:19
long as they can, but always wearing their seatbelts too. So it really has just been a
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:01:24
combination of everything. the one to two the one to four year old range is there are the issues
that are occurring there is it people not putting them in car seats or is it people not you know tightening them up enough or having them adequately installed it seems like it's a
little bit easier than it used to be but i also um you know i i don't i wonder if they're tightening them up as much as they should be
the little one cries right and and again with all
Speaker 144
1:01:52
of the cases we we've really seen both both yeah thank you
Chair
Unverified
1:01:58
representative Springer you're recognized thank you
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:02:03
madam chair I guess my question is probably for you and thank you all for this report very good information I guess I'm inquiring about I've been here since 2020 this seems like I don't recall us having received this type of information before and it's good information is this something that it's going to
happen every I see that the data goes back to 2022 and so there this review is in 2024 so is this something new of have I missed something maybe I've not been on the meeting I guess it's not new okay all right annual report okay I'm not sure how to answer that any other way
all right maybe I missed the meeting then thank you but it's good information thank
Representative Aaron Pilkington
Unverified
1:02:49
you good representative Pilkington you're recognized. Thank you Madam Chair. Is there any way to get this data broken down by race and socioeconomic status
Chair
Unverified
1:03:00
and income? Many of the data is broken down by race and gender
however we when we have small numbers we cannot disclose for example some of the small numbers of suicides by region, we cannot disclose that information. As far as socioeconomic status, that has not been included in this report. We do have oftentimes some background information from the local teams as they go through the investigations, but that is not included in this report. Yeah, I think it would be helpful
Representative Aaron Pilkington
Unverified
1:03:32
to include it in this report. You know, even the
issue with like co-sleeping, I think a lot of people see that as that's something that simply happens to lower income families that's kind of a stigma I've heard whereas you know we know that there are well-to-do families that have had children die from co-sleeping and so I think you know showing the data I think that helps kind of show that that's not true and that they should take it seriously but I just I think for us and trying to you know especially when you try to drill down to fix some of these issues some of them may be you know there's also you know cultural
issues as well that i think that we need to to drill down and so just this overarching brush of just you know maybe they live in this county maybe live in this part i think we'd have a better understanding of maybe some of the issues if we did have it broken down by some of these demographic um details so i just i maybe that's just a note that the next report i'd like to
Chair
Unverified
1:04:32
see that thank you. Thank you. Representative Gonzalez Worthen you're
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:04:35
recognized. Thank you. Thank you for the
report and I wanted to ask about in particular the infant deaths that you described co-sleeping or sleeping on the side or stomach and not seat belt safety being in a car seat proper usage and i got to thinking about we have um i've heard on the radio and all of you i probably have heard you know the race car driver from arkansas that talks about wearing your seat belt
are you i think some of you probably have heard that um and i'm just wondering if there's a way that we can inform the public through uh public service announcements is just on these very specific things that you we already know that are happening and and we need to try to close the gap and having that available for the public so when we're you know listening to the radio we hear this announcement and it triggers something maybe we tell a neighbor that we that we love and and dear
you know and dear uh have a very good relationship with and maybe their child is sleeping you know incorrectly or you know they're co-sleeping and so just having that those conversations through public service announcements and then also on top of that having those available in in multiple languages because sometimes it's just that's all it takes is oh I didn't know that and by having that available, I think we can help reduce that gap. Anyway, just some questions and wanted to
Chair
Unverified
1:06:16
get your thoughts on that. Thank you, and I agree. As far as some of the education that is happening around the state related to safe sleep, it is available in English, Spanish, and Marshallese currently um there are still a lot of gaps to fill i think what's helpful about this report is that it really shines a light on infants who are otherwise healthy went to sleep healthy and did not wake up
and what we can really help the public understand is that this is a very high risk situation um so i couldn't agree with you
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
1:07:00
more and i thank you representative tosh you're recognized thank Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to go back to your explanation or your answer a while ago, and let's talk about your review of these incidents or when this occurs. I understand that if it's a criminal investigation, and obviously there's some suspicion of foul play, that law enforcement would handle it for there,
and I understand that you'd probably not be privy to that information. But what I am concerned about or curious about is once it's not being conducted, as a criminal investigation so then i guess it would come under your review and that's what you've been discussing with this committee today during that review if you see something in there that maybe would indicate to you or red flags would go up that there was something uh amiss about this
or maybe there should have been uh it should have fallen under a criminal investigation i've got to believe that at some point that has happened and and you saw something that says hey you know this should be being handled by law enforcement i'm just curious i've never heard i didn't hear any testimony today when that occurs what what is your course of action what steps do you take or how do you handle that thank
Speaker 131
1:08:18
you representative toss in inside the committees
everything that happens inside one of the reviews is a confidential we have to sign confidentiality clauses so anything that is that is reviewed inside the committee cannot be taken out except for this report right here um in that's why the the multi-disciplines the way that the way the the reviews work it's coroners law enforcement prosecutors when we can get a prosecutor or law enforcement at the committee meetings and and those reviews when when we're reviewing it
and the prosecutor states stop he has the authority to stop that stop the review at that point in time and we can close that out no more review that review is stopped he can go back and and and have law enforcement reopen the case he cannot disclose anything that happened in that review but he can stop it and say we need to have this reopened and at that point law enforcement can go back and hopefully they'll find what we what we saw we just cannot legally release that
because of the confidentiality the way the law
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
1:09:27
is written and i understand that and that explanation makes sense but while ago i was under the impression that the review was being made by individuals from within your organization that law enforcement and prosecutors were not in that room when that review is being made I would not ask that question had I understood that they were present and obviously could take the necessary action they felt appropriate at that time so I appreciate your explanation that helps me to understand it thank you yes sir thank
Chair
Unverified
1:09:57
you seeing no further questions thank you for your report today next on the agenda we have the biannual overturned investigations report by Director Wright.
If you'll introduce yourself again, you'll be recognized. Good
Speaker 163
1:10:23
morning, Tiffany Wright, Director for the Division of Children and Family Services.
Speaker 99
1:10:28
Today I have the overturned investigations report. This one is the most recent from the one I presented I think a couple weeks ago but just to walk you through this one more time what this report means is we'll just go from Benton County there were 5,000 I'm sorry 5,300 reports called into the hotline 1,985 of those were accepted for investigation 311 were found true that was 15 percent the 18 of those were appealed which is five percent a number of appeals
of appealed investigations overturned was three which is 16 percent and percentage of true investigations overturned was one percent and you can go line by line through each county in the state this is pretty consistent with the same report that I presented last month Any questions by committee? Representative
Chair
Unverified
1:11:29
Bentley, you recognize? Chairman. Thank you, Tiffany, for being here today.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:11:38
So, of course, I immediately go to my district and look at some counties and see we had a pretty high percentage of overturned appeals that were overturned. So is that, and I'm just looking at Area 2 with Perry County and
Speaker 165
1:11:53
there in Saline County. Let me go to Perry. Yeah,
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:11:57
so that's an area, too. I'm going to look at the whole area
Speaker 99
1:12:02
because I've got two counties in there. Yeah, so 1.5% of all the investigations that came in were overturned.
Sorry, 1.5% of all the investigations found true were overturned for that county. Okay, I guess
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:12:15
I was just looking at the percentage of appealed investigations overturned, which is 32%. Is that correct for the whole area put together? So the 31.8% of
Speaker 169
1:12:25
what we found true was appealed, yes, but then what was upheld, I'm sorry, what was overturned was only 1.5. Okay, all right, great. Thank you for
Speaker 170
1:12:35
explaining that for me. I appreciate it. You're welcome.
Chair
Unverified
1:12:41
Any other questions? Seeing none. Oh, sorry. Representative Wardlaw, you recognize? Thank
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:12:53
you. So the reason that we filter the hotline is to help these percentages, correct?
Speaker 175
1:12:59
I don't know what you mean by filter the hotline. So if I call the
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:13:05
hotline and I've got a case that I'm reporting on a kid and then y'all deem that not to be a real call or not to be a real case
and you don't do anything with it, it doesn't go into these numbers, correct? That's correct.
Speaker 98
1:13:20
that's called a screen out. So if the report is called into the child abuse hotline. I figured you'd use the right
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:13:25
legal term in a minute. Sorry. I'm just a dumb old farmer, but I'm trying to catch on here. I've got some cases in Bradley County that I'm following. Yes, sir. So
Speaker 98
1:13:36
if a report is called into the child abuse hotline and it does not meet criteria to be accepted, it is then what we call a screened out report. So the
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:13:43
screened out reports, how many of those did you have for each county?
Speaker 180
1:13:46
Do you have a report with those on it? I do not have that with me today, but Major Drew is here, and he may. I
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:13:53
noticed that. He may. I missed him at the table. I'm sorry. You want to bring him up, Madam
Speaker 122
1:14:00
Chair, and see if he can answer that? Sure. Major
Speaker 182
1:14:12
Drew, would you come introduce yourself again? Major Jeff Drew, Commander, CACD, Arkansas State Police. What's the question,
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:14:16
sir? Can you walk me through how many screen outs we had for each county?
Speaker 182
1:14:19
Is there a way you could get me that info? Here's the funny part about that. All that information is going to be maintained inside of the CRS system, which DHS is responsible for. So they would actually
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:14:31
have to pull the data. You know what's weird about that? I wanted you to say that. So what's weird about that is when I went over to DHS, they blamed it on you. Now that I got you at the table, you're blaming it on them. And this ain't the first
time this has happened to me. I've done this with the health department and now here. So where can I get that information, how many screen outs we've had for each county?
Speaker 182
1:14:52
So to be perfectly clear, we're responsible for deciding if it will be screened in or accepted or screened out. But it's put into that CRIS system, which we operate, which DHS is responsible for that system. We can't request anything out of that system without the approval of them. So DHS could put this report together, correct?
Speaker 98
1:15:16
of the screenouts, but I can't answer how many today screened out in every part of the state.
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:15:23
Okay, so can you get that to the chairman so the committee could have a look at how
Speaker 96
1:15:29
many screenouts we've had for each county in the state? Yes, I just didn't know if Major Drew had it with him
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:15:35
because I know he's presenting a quarterly report is what I was meaning this morning. If a caller reports a case multiple times within a month's time, would that be reported in that report as multiple screenouts, or would that just be one screenout because it's from the same area
Speaker 178
1:15:49
and the same family? That would be each screenout is counted separately. Okay.
Speaker 107
1:15:53
I need to know that before I see the report. Thank you. If you have something that you want to look into
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:16:11
specifically, I'd be more than glad to go over it with you. Representative love you're recognized Senator, oh Thank you, madam chair that that that doesn't bother me So on the same lines as representative warlock Major true, can you walk
us through lost? Why kind of how you all
decide if there's a screen out and And because I think that is an interesting case where he says there's been multiple screenouts. So can you walk us through that process of kind of deciding how you all come to the conclusion that
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:16:44
something is going to be screened out? It's probably one of the easiest ways I could explain one. And in a lot of the sexual stuff, gratification has to be implied. Some of it's forcible compulsion.
And when we don't have those things revealed at the beginning, that may cause it to be screened out. Let's say, for instance, if you see a coach slap a kid on the behind. Technically, that's one of those areas that we would take it, but that was more of a congrats to them as opposed to a sexual gratification for that person that done it. That would play a part
Speaker 182
1:17:19
in it. And we'll take all those factors into that allegation to see if it meets it or if we believe that that outcome would be found true and we could accept it from that.
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:17:31
Okay, so there's a number of factors that actually weigh into you all, but you all do
an investigation of every screen or every call that comes in in order to screen it out? I mean, you know. So there's a tiered program.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:17:44
What takes place? That call will come in until the operator, and then they'll look at it, and they'll say, well, I don't think this meets the criteria to be
Speaker 182
1:17:52
accepted, it and it has to be uh approved by a supervisor before it can be screened out okay so more
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:17:59
than more than one person is just looking at it to decide that it should be screened out yes sir
Speaker 182
1:18:05
it's easier to be accepted than it is to
Chair
Unverified
1:18:11
be screened out yes sir okay all
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:18:19
are there any other questions on the overturned chairman gilmore you recognize Thank you, Co-Chair. So just following up on that, do you track, straight in front of you, easiest spot to miss. So when you're looking at screened, and you rule something, so you screen a call out, right, do you track maybe a reoccurrence with that same individual?
So I guess my point would be, if you screened something out, ruled it not needing to be investigated or whatever, and then something else comes back in, do you track tiebacks to those screens that were ruled not needing an investigation? I'm not doing a great job of explaining that, but I don't know if that makes sense. Does it flag the earlier one? It doesn't flag, but
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:19:08
the benefit of the screen out is once it's accepted, law enforcement had access to those,
so they'll be able to receive additional information that way. But we will not, we don't, I'm sorry, we won't combine. Let's say if we get one, two, three, we won't combine those. Now, if we can see something that directly relates that we can pick up right from the beginning, because we'll do a, what's the word, we'll check the system prior to, If we've got enough stuff going on there, then we'll accept it from that. But
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:19:40
as far as tracking it, no, sir. Okay, and then just a follow-up to that. So I guess what may concern me is you may have instances where you've got indicators, right?
And maybe it didn't rise to the level that you said it was a tiered system. I don't know what those tiers are, but let's assume it didn't rise to a level for it then to be investigated. But yet you've got potentially things that indicate certain behaviors that have then led to, you know, something major. And maybe there were two or three other instances. Is there a way to see that in the system of like, hey, this person's getting repeated calls, but maybe it doesn't rise to the level and the tier.
But after so many, maybe we should go and have a conversation or do an investigation. Does that make sense? Yes, sir. That doesn't exist. that doesn't exist interesting okay thank you representative Beatty
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:20:38
you recognized thank you madam chair I'm over here
to your right this right over here my question is that initial where you screen these out and you make that determination is there any secondary review on that or is it a one one time you're out you're done we're not going to investigate that like so it's
initially reviewed by that operator and then they'll take it to a supervisor at that point then it screened out that's where it
would end so you've got the the initial operator that takes the call uh they decide yeah and and then it moves on to uh a supervisor reviews that that same information listens to that call makes that determination yes sir is there anything beyond that and how soon after that initial call does the supervisor review that and make a determination uh immediately it's done immediately it's done immediately yes sir all right and then
just one one follow-up could y'all restate exactly what information representative Wardlaw asked you to provide to the committee the number of
Speaker 98
1:21:41
screenouts by county for the entire state thank you very much representative
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:21:52
Wardlaw you're recognized thank you so you've you answered representative or senator Gilmore's question where that doesn't exist but he alluded to these tears and
madam chair this may be out of place because i'm new
to this committee i've came two months for this purpose but and probably come again probably again until i figure out what's going on here do you are the committee understand the tears have they ever laid that out for the committee
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:22:23
so thank you for that representative ward law as you probably figured up on my line of questioning i was not aware that that was
the process at all so i think this is very helpful information and i i didn't i wasn't aware of the tiers so i have a suggestion
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
1:22:37
yeah maybe next quarter or next month i don't know how this committee works i know some of these reports are quarterly reports and so that's the reason i'm saying that maybe they could come the two of them and explain to the committee in the world how the screen out works how the tier system works and what meets certain definition of criteria for call-ins i'm all for the screen out okay i've seen cases in my 15 years of being here that should have been screened out and didn't get screened out okay so i'm not telling you or advocating to do away with a screen out
but i've just went through a major disruption in my community because a call got screened out numerous times and it was real and it was founded and I don't want to do that again and I felt guilty because the first three months they called me I didn't call you I didn't call DHS because it didn't feel like it was my place to intervene in one of those cases and maybe I should have called on the beginning so I think it's important that we all understand how that works how the tiers work
and then maybe we would know how to ask the right questions when we do get those calls from UAMS or the school or whoever's calling us so thank you representative
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:23:55
and one thing that I'll add to that because I I think this is important
committee that what we are hearing and again nothing against the folks at the table we appreciate the job you do but I think it's important that we have an understanding of what's going on I think it's important that we understand how the process works. It concerns me that when I ask that question of, are we tracking, if there's
multiple calls on one person, are we tracking that? Because those are all indicators of a pattern of behavior, potentially. Maybe not, but potentially it is. And so Representative, I think it's a great question. I would hope that maybe at a later date for this committee, but also in the Medicaid subcommittee of alc where there is going to be a review of dhs and dcfs that perhaps that would be for the committee members that are a part of both i know we have the co-chair here mary bentley uh representative bentley if you would make a note of that to also be discussed there because
i think it would be helpful again this is not an admonishment necessarily and it's not any sort of you know casting aspersions on on the work that you do i think it's important though that that the information we just heard that we understand it better so i appreciate that representative and i'll turn it back
Speaker 182
1:25:10
to my co-chair if i could be i don't please respond yes i don't want to mess up the tracking part of
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:25:17
it but doing that screen out there's a history check that that occurs to where we'll be able to see it then but as far as to say i've got three screen outs on person a
There's that way of tracking, no. But if we have a call that comes in on person A again and we look at that history and we say, okay, we've got some stuff going on here. Maybe we need to go ahead and accept this one and at least get investigated out to take care of it instead of it
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:25:45
ending there at the hotline. Okay. So then what you just said, if I may, Madam Chair, what you just said then perhaps does answer my question. So I
guess we either are or we aren't. either looking at the history or we aren't we're either we're either knowing that we got x number
of calls on one individual or we aren't so you're telling me that you are looking at that the history plays a part yes sir we do a
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:26:09
history check of those calls yes sir okay so but i guess i misunderstood by saying if we're looking at three calls on person a and then we'll go ahead and and go at one we'll use that history look and see we can see what pieces are missing and what pieces are filled in, and we
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:26:25
can get it going from there. Okay. I'm still not quite clear, but I think probably for a discussion at a later time.
Chair
Unverified
1:26:31
Thank you, sir. Right. Just further proof that we need a little more information. Okay.
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:26:38
Senator Love, you're recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I think that would be good to understand the tier
system better. But, Major Drew, I'm going to go back to the conversation that we're having because we're thinking as as well I can just I'm gonna just speak for myself I'm not gonna say all legislators but we're thinking intuitively in regards to the process and when you have one call two calls three
calls it's showing um and I think what Senator Gilmore is saying is it's showing a progressive nature you know it's it's like all right I have a one call then I have another call and it seems like it's like a progressive going it may be getting worse and I think that's what we're try to get at and so in your presentation if you could explain it could explain kind of how if you do have multiple calls and they've all been screened out because it would just stand to
reason to us now and it may be a reason why you're not doing something and it just needs to be explain to us but I would just think that if you got multiple calls from from one instance or from one area from one person or somebody just continues to call that that's a progressive intuitively that's progressive it's like our it's either getting worse or it's getting and so if you can kind of explain that in your presentation I think that that would be helpful because
Because, I mean, explaining the tier system is one thing, but also explaining the screenouts and having multiple screenouts to one location, that's something that's totally different. Because I would be thinking intuitively now, I would be thinking this is progressive in nature and it might be getting worse. So those are two different issues, but I guess in your presentation you can explain that as as to why one call wouldn't be, why it may be cataloged,
it may be not associated with the next call and
the next call, because that's what I kind of understood what you said. And
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:28:51
I could be hearing something wrong, but. Right. Some of
those calls can be, I guess, like a better way to put it, repetitive. They're really only offering the same information. And if I have the same person, going back to the sexual gratification part of it, If I have that call three or four times and that hasn't been included, but if I get that call to where they'll call in and say, yeah, he was touching so-and-so on the buttocks and I notice an erection occur, I notice a moan that that person did when they was touching them, that would push us to the next level of accepting it.
And sometimes some of those screenouts are from something that we may be investigating already. It's a duplicate report, so it's screened out because we've already had it going. Sometimes those screenouts may occur if something is in a smaller community, not necessarily a smaller community, but a group where it's rumored that these things are occurring. then you've got multiple people calling in that do not have direct information to what what's occurring they're just reporting what they've heard no type of disclosure from the kid no type
of disclosure from the uh the offender they're just taking i'm sorry alleged offender they're just bringing something that they've heard and they're trying to move on it because they're trying to be safe for the kids but in some of those situations we're not going to have enough information to where we can proceed with a report just like we want to want to protect the children we just can't take something and go after an alleged offender off a bunch of you know stuff that they don't want to say it the
Speaker 182
1:30:34
wrong way but grabbing out the air we need to have something to proceed with okay I
Speaker 210
1:30:42
can understand that all right thank you madam
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:30:48
chair representative Springer you recognized Thank You madam chair madam chair to you so that I'm responding to representative war law and senator love similar convert we've had similar conversations in our committee meeting similar to the question about how do you determine what is a real call or not a call or are you going to investigate
it we've had these discussions before so I would suggest that you all if you have
additional questions that and commander drew has indicated that he's willing to have a discussion with those persons if you have some concerns about anything that's taking place in your particular area so I would suggest representative Warlow make contact with commander drew so that he can get his concerns addressed because we've had these discussions before and commander drew has done a great job in explaining this process to us so I've heard this before So thank you
very for for me allowing me to make that comment. Thank you
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:31:45
And just so is known the door is wide open if you want to come up to state police headquarters and have a look at
Chair
Unverified
1:31:51
what's going on up there Thank you representative Duke you recognize Thank you,
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
1:31:55
madam chair. Thank you all I just want to make the comment that although you may have heard it before and I know I've been on here for one term But it takes a while for some of this stuff to sink in and we have lots of new members So I don't think it ever hurts to have you know another little mini boot camp on on all the different um procedures and everything that they do every year i think it's helpful to have that review for all of us so i appreciate your comment
but um i would request that we go ahead and have that because it just it just helps us helps me at least do my job
Chair
Unverified
1:32:27
better the more i understand thank you okay
seeing no further questions on the report we are going to move to the next report thank you director wright and that is major drew so if you'll just introduce yourself
Speaker 182
1:32:41
before your report you may begin yes ma'am excuse me major jeff drew commander crimes against children arkansas state police today we'll be reviewing our quarterly report from january to march
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:32:52
if you go to page two it will show the hotline received 16,480 calls with 9,042 of those were accepted. CACD handled 1,593 of those, with DCFS handling 5,423, while 2,026 were for differential response. On page three, it will reflect the priority one allegations by type investigated
for those months of January, February, and March. And if I'm going too fast, feel free to slow me down on page four shows the cases reported by the mandated reporters page five will show you the monthly breakdown the cases open and close with a three month time period there was 1,518 cases that were open 1,542 were closed of that
About 1,542 closed, 422 were found true, which was a substantiation rate of 27%. There are 2,530 active cases, with 133 of those being open for 45 days. On pages 6 and 7, we'll give you a breakdown by county. Page 9 will reflect the reported allegation types and the victim age groups.
Pages 10 through 17 will show the relationship of the offender and the victim. And page 19 through 26 will give you the breakdown of the prosecuting attorney districts, cases submitted, broken down. And if you look on the bottom of page 26, you will see where there was 508 cases submitted, 237 of those were filed, 179 were still pending, with 92 of those being declined by the prosecutor.
Speaker 4
1:35:10
Any questions, if you have any? Are there questions by the committee? Seeing none. Thank you for your report Okay, the
Chair
Unverified
1:35:28
last item on our agenda is from representative Torres If you will introduce yourself you are recognized to present your ISP proposal
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified
1:35:46
Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee. I'm Randy Torres, State Representative, District 17. And I am here to gain committee support for further study and policy development based on formerly House Bill 1997. In short, it extends zoning exemptions for licensed child care family homes. As you may know, Arkansas families, especially in rural and small town areas, are facing growing child care crisis.
uh child care uh deserts exist in over half of arkansas counties uh existing providers are full and many working families are stuck on wait list or forced to drive long distances home-based child care providers want open uh want to open but cities can deny them zoning approval especially in residential neighborhoods licensed family child care homes are one of the fastest most cost-effective ways to expand access and we know this because we started a pilot program in western
Benton County that includes two cities Gentry and Gravit and they've already been supporting the flexibility of zoning and they've seen positive results. Over a year now they have I think 60 to 80 children placed in great child care there and there are two more homes coming online on july 1. there's been no complaints from neighbors or strain on public services and it's been a boost to local small business development so there's a lot of pluses to it
unfortunately local zoning ordinances can prevent many of these providers from operating even when they meet all state licensing requirements so hey hb 1997 pros proposes a Targeted exemption from those local zoning restrictions and we're here today to request an interim study to explore this further We can get key stakeholders and so forth here to develop a broader strategy for statewide child care accessibility
Chair
Unverified
1:37:56
through family homes Thank you are there questions by committee? Okay, um I This is a house interim studies. So we'll we will vote on it by the house. But first I need a motion to adopt the study I have a motion to adopt the study all in favor say aye. Oh Sorry need a second as well Going once go it. No seriously. Thank you. Have a second all in favor say aye
opposed no The ayes have it congratulations. You've passed your interim study proposal. Thank you so much. Appreciate it Thank you committee for your work today Have a few other things now to put on the agenda, but as far as today we have no further business and we are adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration to Approve the May 28, 2025, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Presentation of the Arkansas Children’s Fiscal Map [Exhibit C]
D. Children’s Advocacy Centers of Arkansas Annual Report [Exhibit D]
E. Arkansas Infant and Child Death Review (ICDR) Program Annual Report [Exhibit E]
F. Review of Department of Human Services, Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS), Biannual Overturned Investigations Report [Exhibit F]
G. Review of Arkansas State Police, Crimes Against Children Division (CACD), Quarterly Oversight Report, January – March, 2025 [Exhibit G]
H. Adoption of ISP 2025-054 by Representative Randy Torres – An act to create a zoning exemption for childcare family homes; to declare an emergency; and for other purposes [Exhibit H]
I. Other Business
J. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Chair
Unverified
Speaker 7
Speaker 4
Speaker 12
Speaker 13
Speaker 14
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
Speaker 31
Speaker 34
Speaker 38
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
Speaker 44
Speaker 45
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
Speaker 76
Representative Aaron Pilkington
Unverified
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
Speaker 88
Speaker 96
Speaker 98
Speaker 99
Speaker 100
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
Speaker 115
Speaker 91
Speaker 121
Speaker 123
Speaker 127
Speaker 129
Speaker 131
Speaker 132
Speaker 139
Speaker 147
Speaker 144
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
Speaker 163
Speaker 165
Speaker 169
Speaker 170
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
Speaker 175
Speaker 180
Speaker 122
Speaker 182
Speaker 188
Speaker 178
Speaker 107
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
Speaker 41
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
Speaker 210
Representative Randy Torres
Unverified