ALC-Hospital, Medicaid, & Developmental Disabilities Study Subcommittee
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| Bill | Title | Sponsor | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
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HB1105
Act 1004
· 1 mention in transcript
Matched: “…rce and social services reform. and the second one is a his house bill 1105 and if you look on your page page 15 of your special langua…”
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AN ACT FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES - SECRETARY'S OFFICE APPROPRIATION FOR THE 2025-2026 … | Joint Budget Committee | Notification that HB1105 is now Act 1004 |
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Senator Jane English
Unverified
4:30
and welcome to our hospital medicaid and developmental disability study committee so we have a lot
of things on our agenda on this committee that we'll be looking at in the next few months. So we're glad to have everybody here. Ms. Berry, would you have comments?
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
5:02
Thank you, Senator English. Happy to work with you in this committee. I'm excited, but we have planned before us. We have a very full agenda, two very special pieces of legislation brought to this subcommittee for us to work, and I think we can see some great outcomes from this committee. I'm happy to have
Senator Jane English
Unverified
5:22
everybody here today, and we'll look forward to seeing what we can accomplish in the next
few months. Thank you very much. So as we identified, Representative Bentley identified, we have two major bills here, two pretty separate bills.
One of them is the Act 145 of 2005, which is basically a legislative study of the workforce and social services reform. and the second one is a his house bill 1105 and if you look on your page page 15 of your special language is what tells you about that this this thing so what we've decided is is because we have two distinct topics here that we will
probably try and have two separate meetings and so we will have an opportunity to discuss one the DHS looking at that and the second one looking at the workforce reform so our first date for our first meeting is going to be
the 16th of June and we'll only have that one day kind of talk about this legislation and what we what we hope to see and how we're going to plan for that so we have invited folks today who are part of the governor's
workforce board and to come to the table maybe and just give us a little idea of what you all are doing and we can tell you how we plan to interact with you if you mind coming up to the table here this panel all of you that includes
your mic. Oh, you're on the list, number
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
7:10
six, looking at you right here. Yep, you're on
Senator Jane English
Unverified
7:13
the list. So very good. Maybe I'll ask you to introduce yourselves. Jacob, will you and
Speaker 55
7:33
start with you sure good afternoon Jacob Oliva secretary for Department of Education
Speaker 56
7:39
good afternoon Lindsay Wallace secretary for Corrections happy Monday
Speaker 59
7:44
Christy Putnam Department of Human Services secretary good afternoon Robert McGoo State Chief Data Officer Department
Speaker 60
7:55
of Transformation and Shared Services Mike Rogers chief workforce officer for the
Senator Jane English
Unverified
8:00
governor's office very good so all All of you are
very involved in very important things. I see Hugh McDonald in here today. He obviously had other things on his agenda when able to join us. But each of you has different parts of workforce in your arena.
And I think one of the things that we'd like to do is, while we know everybody's doing great things, we need to figure out what it is, how we coordinate all these efforts. And I think from my perspective, one of the things that I think is so important is some of the things we're doing in early childhood education. It's probably not in my lifetime, but I'm hoping that at some point what the kinds of things we're doing in K through 12 is going to make a major difference in the trajectory of the state and the people who live here.
And those folks that we're talking about today, and we continue to talk about how are we going
to help them to a better place in their lives. Hopefully, the things we're doing are going to lead those children to a better place in their
Speaker 55
9:07
life. So go ahead. Sure. So thank you for that segue, and thank you for our chance to kind of give an overview of some of the work that we've been engaged with, with Mike's leadership and the workforce cabinet. that one is we've kind of established a battle rhythm where we meet each month and we have the leads
from all of our state agencies. And we sit in the room and we go through an agenda and we start asking ourselves that question. How are we making sure that we're aligning our resources? How are we moving the needle on the metric? What metrics matter? How do we make sure we're being efficient and diligent with all of our agency's energies and efforts and kind of come together? And I think some of them will talk maybe a little bit some of the platforms we've recently announced, such as Launch and how everything wants to talk to each other. But kind of when you look at that big picture, we know,
and I work and represent mostly kind of everything from early learning, K-12, post-secondary, we needed our system to be aligned and we needed to make sure that our system was aligned to identifying what the workforce cabinet prioritizes as career opportunities that meet this kind of definition of high skill, high wage, high demand. So some of the work that we've done, and we've started with Arkansas Learns two years ago was re-imagining early learning because we want to make sure that every family
that wants to participate in high quality early learning has an opportunity to do so. And one of the first things that we had to do is do a snapshot and kind of get a state of the state and say, are there places in this state that does not have any high quality childcare programs or high quality early learning environments and there are some deserts and islands. So we've established a program called Local Leads in the early learning area and we now have one local lead assigned to all 75 counties in the state
who is that expert that's gonna work with providers to make sure that we can provide the resources to fill in any gaps and become more sophisticated in making sure that when kids come to kindergarten, they're ready to learn. So we're really excited that we've established a network that's gonna provide childcare for people that are gonna enter into the workforce, but also provide childcare in early learning environments of value to increase the metrics of kindergarten readiness. We've doubled down on our investments
in literacy strategies, numerous strategies, investing in teachers, because we know the more students that we can get to read at or above grade level by third grade, increases their likeliness of a student graduating from high school with their diploma when we expect them to. But also the courses and opportunities that students take while they're in school matter. And one of the things that I think is really exciting about LEARNS and we had to work as a cabinet to do this is every school, every high school, this current school year that we're finishing up now
had to meet a requirement where every high school offered at least three career and technical education programs that led to an industry certification and not only did every high school have to have one of those threes because we had about 65 career clusters that have been identified as a state but every high school had to have one career and technical education program that was on the state's high skill high wage high demand list and we did that right like that's a big deal we had to go
back and and and people from all the different cabinets had to look at resources and dollars and it wasn't that we didn't have career and technical education programs I mean some sometimes we call what we call we see what we call legacy programs where we had some pretty neat things but if it's not leading to workforce readiness not leading to an industry certification how can we make sure that that program does that so as as we work together as a cabinet for making sure that every high school has that ability a lot of the foundation that was built into access
on where do we go next with these students came a lot of those ideas came out of some of the suggestions from the workforce cabinet because we know that we want these certifications to articulate we want to know that we have a common course code numbering system we want to pursue accelerate opportunities see more students taking college credit while they're in high school and that's kind of where we're going with the next phase at least from an education perspective is to make sure those systems are aligned it was a lot sorry it's the
Senator Jane English
Unverified
13:39
beginning it's the basis if we don't have that and we don't have a good system there
we don't have anything else that's right
Speaker 64
13:45
go ahead sure uh thank you committee members
Speaker 69
13:49
i appreciate the opportunity to tell you a little bit about what we've got going on in correction so very early on as the workforce cabinet was developed our correctional school district worked hand in hand with mr rogers on the credential engine so i don't know if you know a lot about our correctional school district we have career technical education courses that we provide for inmates to try to provide opportunities once they leave our incarceration so they could leave
and they have a certificate that indicates they have you know maybe it's some sort of they know how to operate a big truck or they can operate a tractor trailer anything we have cosmetology classes computer science but anyway we worked with the credential engine so that when launch was ready it had that set up we used our inmates there within the school to kind of tailor some of those things along with that we are so in 2021 i don't know if you guys remembered this we consolidated our correctional school district with what used to be our votech school and so with that
they have been assessing all along since then kind of what classes they're offering for technical education trying to provide more opportunity for skills that they're going to be readily able to utilize when they leave and so we continually are assessing that and along with that sort of kind of tailored to what Jacob was talking about with the early education we have a lot of folks that come to us that don't read and write at whatever level you would expect so we provide a lot of remedial education and and hopefully get them to the point where they can pass the GED test
And we also offer higher education opportunities should they get to that point. In terms of programming, so about seven or eight months ago, I asked the Board of Corrections, and they approved the opportunity for us to hire someone that was solely dedicated to programming. Our recidivism rate is not great in the state, and our goal is to reduce that. And so in order to do that, we really, what I felt like, was needed someone who focused solely on programming. We've had programming throughout the state for many, many years,
but it's always kind of been like an additional hat that someone else wore in addition to their other duties. And so for the first time in the entire, I think, history of the state, we have a single person who is devoted to creating a seamless transition from incarceration from the time they walk in the door until the time they go back into community. And so in talking about, like, the social services aspect of this, We want people to leave with a driver's license or some sort of state ID card if they're unable to get a driver's license.
Birth certificates, social security cards. We've always had the ability to do that, but it's never been focused on, I don't think, as much as it should be. And in terms of this cabinet, it's just utilizing our resources to try to collaborate, to get whatever resources we can into prison to help them once they leave us. And it is, for instance, Secretary Putnam and I have been collaborating. We're going to open up a women's facility here in Little Rock. The Protect Arkansas Act required a bonding period for mothers.
And this is going to allow us close to UAMS campus, which is where our females go whenever they have their baby. It's going to allow us moms to have that bonding period with their babies. hopefully to allow us to cut down on breaking the cycle of you know bad outcomes that happen when you have a parent that's incarcerated allow families to come in and visit these folks whenever they're still there and it not be in your traditional behind bars setting and then also we don't have any you know for the the female population that may have more severe issues
things like that it'll allow us to bring resources in from department of human services health um We talked about embedding like a work, what am I looking for, the word I'm looking for? Yeah, it's a family service worker that could come and help with these families that are trying to bridge the gap of getting those services for the baby, because the baby's going to leave at some point, and mom might still be incarcerated. So getting them hooked up with Medicaid and all of those things that they may need to help that individual thrive.
So we're working on a lot of things. Like I said, it's about eight months in that we've got this person in that position, and so it's sort of assessing where we're at and where we need to go, looking at evidence-based programming, and kind of revamping how we're doing business in terms of programming on corrections. Yes, ma'am. I will
Speaker 74
18:28
try to be brief because I know we have part two of today's agenda, but from the DHS perspective, when the Workforce Cabinet was first announced,
i think mike rogers and i talked very early on and what i told him is dhs has the individuals who stand to benefit the most from workforce services is that better okay um so spoke with chief rogers and just let him know that dhs has just an incredible population of people who could stand to benefit from workforce services but our primary focus at dhs is making sure that their needs are met their hierarchy of needs are met because we have people who are worried about food security, housing, you all know the people we serve at DHS. And so the work that we are doing
in part is to get people ready to get to workforce support services. We are doing a lot of work on the workforce side as well, and we're trying to streamline the approach to that. Part of our challenge in the workforce programs that we focus on in DHS and also in the broader picture, I think you all have a spaghetti graph that we provided to you that shows this myriad of, at the federal level, workforce and social supports or programs for low-income families. The federal government
has a lot of different requirements at their level for different work programs. There are different, and so one of the things that we are trying to do is talk at the state level about what are the things that we can attack and streamline here at the state level and make requirements or reporting more streamlined launch is certainly a big help with that the longitudinal data system is another big help with that where we're capturing data from pre-k all the way through post-secondary and beyond into career so that is something that we are doing but specifically we are currently working to negotiate or we will be working to negotiate our medicaid work
requirements that were part of the new medicaid expansion reauthorization there is definitely hope that at the federal level they are talking about passing universal work requirements that could be streamlined across benefits programs very hopeful that that can happen but in the meantime we're still pursuing how do we implement our work requirements for our Medicaid expansion population and then we also are moving our snap employment and training program from a voluntary approach to a mandatory approach for both Medicaid and snap it's our intention and again we
we've spoken with Robert Magoo and Mike Rogers about this we would like to use the launch platform as the default mechanism for people to use as they seek to acquire skills, short-term stackable credentials, and other education that will lead them to a long-term, not just a job. What we're really concerned with with people at DHS and beyond is that they move from a crisis to a career. And so I think the approach that has been taken across the workforce cabinet that you will hear a little bit more about is an incredible one because it
does have that vision that is informed by job sector, not just by what's offered at different places. How do we keep pace with the industry needs that are being developed as we grow in Arkansas, and how do we make sure that the people who are, who have been struggling and continue to struggle are not left behind by a growing economy in this state. And then again, to that end, we are also working with a number of community partners because we truly believe that empowering our community partners to help support families in their areas is the right way to do it they know what the resources are so we're
working with partners such as our house restore hope the 100 families model Goodwill and other partners across the state to make sure that individuals are connected with meaningful approaches to support both their immediate needs to get them ready to enter the workforce and then support them long-term as they move into a career and our hope is economic
Speaker 76
22:19
and family stability good afternoon for the sake of brevity I think I'm going to absolutely for the there's a lot under the workforce strategy and TSS is really responsible
Speaker 78
22:30
for data which is a data formed strategy and to sort of serve as a connective tissue across all of these things we can all work as one but I think particularly relevant to the Act in Section 1A. Their aspects of the workforce strategy are directly addressing every one of these things. Arkansas needing a skilled workforce, aligned to the growing competencies. That's what the longitudinal data system was designed for. My favorite language in statute is to support continuous alignment
or our programs to the evolving needs of the economy and the state. The credential registry that Secretary Wallace talked about, that's really building out that that asset catalog of all of the education and training programs in the state not just for credit post-secondary but non-credit private career tech ed licensing everything we're starting now on the other side to really kind of get that employer signal demand with something called talent pipeline management where we can provide employers with data data
driven services and get timely signals of demand that we can use to align our programs number three the maze of confusing programs that's where civiform one of the two platforms announced by governor sanders just recently comes in it's a way to with a simple set of questions and data that gets reused to shorten time for residents to apply for multiple programs at once kind of based off of simple eligibility criteria that's something that will continue to expand we've
got it embedded across multiple state strategies and then as we kind of continue adding on to it we can start adding things like digital records, birth certificates things like that that people tend to need income verification to just keep taking friction out of the process of finding and connecting the service and making it easier to navigate that maze so we're doing a lot around integrated service delivery and then on the third page in particular there's an item C about studying the outcomes of workforce programs,
including analysis of the number of common participants enrolled in multiple programs across state agencies. We've got a lengthy report, actually, about 20 different dissertation-grade reports that we'd happy to share with that. We spent the last 18 months facilitating a study with 168 researchers across 27 states working on our longitudinal data across SNAP, TANF, Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, Unemployment Insurance Registered Apprenticeships, Post-Secondary, and more that built a robust body of evidence
showing where co-enrollment in programs and these integrated service delivery practices led to material gains in economic security and mobility. And I think that might be a good resource because it kind of built out a body of evidence to support policy and practice in Arkansas that we can implement to tools like Civiform. How would
Speaker 82
25:45
We've heard so much already. you know prior to some of this work i look at the state and some of the what i call the best kept secrets that we've hidden from arkansas because of bureaucracy and layers of litigation to be able to find out who they are and how they access resources that are in the state part of a cross-agency cabinet in everyone having a common specialty but yet coming back to one workforce strategy allows us to be really phenomenal in our major but then specialize
in our minor and how it works together because there are so many times that we fall into a pitfall of serving pieces and parts of our constituents instead of providing for them a vision hope imagining their lives six weeks six months six years determining where they are and leveraging their strengths, gaining some of the weakness that they have, but be able to offset that in a very strategic career mapping. Based on our industry sectors, the workforce strategy has
brought together different areas of industries that are very unique to Arkansas and places that we have a right to win. A short list could be forestry, the agricultural side, precision agriculture, but also semiconductors and silicon carbide, bromine, and lithium extraction, all the to aerospace separate from defense but also include steel and the skilled trades there's so many different aspects regionally of who we are and what the work of the cabinet has done is to imagine where people are where they want to go and give them the information they need to make
those decisive moves removing the barriers as they progress throughout their lives very good so do i have questions from
Senator Jane English
Unverified
27:36
the committee thank you all for being here today
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
27:43
i'll just ask a few and give off to other members that might want to ask
them so um mike maybe you can tell me or whoever we're going to tell me do what is arkansas's uh labor partition labor participation rate right
now do we know what our participants 57.6 percent where does that put us in the nation do
Speaker 82
28:08
you know might the probably the fourth quartile okay and what about our current job opening right do we know what that is it's growing every day if I mentioned I'd
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
28:16
be out of out of touch we have six open positions for every job seeker okay great um couple more if that's okay chairman I asked a couple more so going back to Corrections so do we have programs available in every every one of
our correctional facilities right now to get people an actual job when they get out uh yes
Speaker 69
28:32
ma'am we have so we have career tech and correctional school classes in every single facility that we have now they may not all have the same program so if you have an inmate that is interested in this program they might have to request a transfer to another unit in order to get into that program but yes ma'am one more before i
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
28:50
slide off here but real quick do we have an overall are you guys working on an overall program
to know um that in every sector of the state we
have workforce training available to our constituents because to me that's one of our our biggest challenges we can come here to central arkansas and there's so much available here but to other parts of the state not so much so do we have something going on at this point to make sure we
Speaker 82
29:15
have things available statewide it's probably a two-part answer i'll start with the first part in terms of our platform at the launch that they can see based on a geographic demographic where they live and where they want to be but also if the stepping stones that might lead them to transferable skills of competency and today within launch released on February
23rd allows for them only to define jobs and careers in their interest but also to navigate their career options through training development it might be through higher education or short-term training that allows him to expedite throughout standardization of what
Speaker 92
29:46
other work that the learns has done and access is doing Thank you, Madam Chair.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
30:07
I have really two questions, but they're sort of the same topic. One's probably more applicable to corrections than the other to DHS. But in terms of the job and the training and things you're doing, is there, and if so, you quantify how much industry input into this and what does it look like right in your program so that I mean you could go so far as to say you're actually matching someone to go to work or maybe you're just matching for a career or giving them a career set but for both of you
to address that issue as to how you're as far as your training matches up with industries are really job opportunities where these individuals will be moving to or going to sure thank you for the question
Speaker 69
30:59
um so we have a superintendent of our correctional school district and she has worked um heavily with mike rogers um i think looking at industry skill set she attends a lot of conferences um we have a board of correctional education that is instrumental and kind of if you
if you want to start a new program you bring information to the board and ask them they kind of put them through their paces like what you guys do for us um i can tell you a few of the programs that we have um it ranges uh all over the place we've got construction technology we have electricians carpentry plumbing pet care office basics like keyboarding some of those more soft skills um we and it all depends on how much time in a lot of cases they have that they can spend or that they are spending with us some of the programs are four to six months before you can
complete that some of them are as few as three weeks i don't have all of the specifics on all of the programs but we have food service cosmetology barbering um we have a lot of various things hvac um all
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
32:06
of those things as well and i'm probably gonna be a little blunt here but But, like, accounting, right? You know, I don't know that I want my accountant to come from corrections, right? And I don't mean that in a negative way.
I guess I did. But my point is this. It's, like, something that more, that gives them a probability of success with the skill sets and an industry that's willing to take these individuals in. and looking for because you know all across construction all across the state there
are people looking for people to go to work and just to make sure that we can align them with with those type of jobs that in most cases are very good paying jobs and we do have a lot of focus
Speaker 69
32:55
on construction and those type but we have some heavy equipment machinery those programs welding is very popular we have that at a couple of different facilities so yes sir we are very aware of that um sometimes hindrance to the job job seekers yes
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
33:11
sir and to tweet my question for dhs it's a little bit i was curious when you were saying i just jotted it down there so you have an individual that that has uh do you do any work as far as
these are the things you like to do you know there are certain positions that you could train people for but they probably wouldn't have jobs and then those are
you know they how do you promote an individual
down a path that increases the chances of that person being successful once we get them trained and put them out there for a job sure
Speaker 74
33:59
to do exactly that kind of thing it's
primarily associated with our TANF program but we do have community providers that I referenced when I spoke the first time through our snap employment and training program and other just community programs that are out there a lot of times we have people come to us directly from Corrections and so they do need some help navigating some of the barriers that is why our community partners are more successful in understanding what the local resources look like we help determine eligibility for support programs but
then there's typically when there is a work requirement or there's some sort of work compliance associated with their benefits we make sure that they are connected to either a snap employment and training provider or to one of the other community providers that do directly work with them to identify, first of all, what are the job sectors that are most needed? Because you can get trained for a job if they're not hiring for it, it doesn't do you any good. So we're definitely leaning in on the growing lithium work that's coming our way, the ag tech industry, CDL and heavy equipment and machinery.
So we are very tied into the workforce strategies that have been developed by the entire workforce
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
35:23
cabinet are there are there any there are a lot of skill
sets that are paid very well that require apprenticeships and those type of deals are there any activities with either you guys to where you know someone could at least start an
an apprenticeship type program within the department of corrections are utilizing a program in dhs so we we do
Speaker 107
35:46
we have a new partnership with the saline technical institution that will allow
Speaker 74
35:52
our dys our youth to attend part-time after the normal course of of their day is done and to get into some apprenticeship programs for hvac for um for other journeymen electrician that sort of thing we also have some health tech pathways that may not be apprenticeships
but are going to be the stackable credentials where you maybe first get your phlebotomy certificate and then move on into a cna lpn rn and that is the progression into a much higher paying sustaining wage so yes sir we do have some of those programs
Speaker 69
36:27
in use and and i'll if i'll answer that i'll have to follow up to find out if we have anything outside of the prison walls but i will say you know in terms of hvac and construction maintenance things type activities that we perform day to day i mean they're almost getting their apprenticeship while they're
incarcerated with us too if it's something that they're interested in we have maintenance crews that also help the day-to-day operations of the facility so i think they're getting their hands-on experience in those areas if it's something that they're interested in pursuing a credential or certificate so they're getting some of that while they're with us but i'll
Speaker 105
37:07
have to find out the answer to that if there's anything outside of corrections
Speaker 114
37:17
follow-up to that two-thirds of the credentials that came through the correctional school district are NCCR which is the front-loaded RTI for a pre-apprenticeship into apprenticeship that allows them to make that transition smoothly and then within launch employers can say that they have a desire to first hire special populations it may be someone who has a military background military veterans family spouse it could be second chance re-entry maybe a lot of underserved dislocated or disadvantaged sometimes senior development however that might go and they can
pick those populations that they would hire first as they are interviewing that would bring them into an area and I saw I met an electrical contractor that works out of Conway and she came to me about a year ago and she said I only hire felons and I said well who do you know she said my my nephew came out of the correctional institution and they're the the best workers that I can find because their attention they're loyal they have a lot of background they come to us ready to go into apprenticeship programs and that emotional connection that she had with a family
member it could be the same thing across any of this the populations of employers to hire not just for skills but for background to be able to meet their cultures
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
38:43
senator sullivan thank you madam chair mr rogers i think you mentioned a lot of good data is that data available you talked about the unemployment rate is that on your website you can find it
Speaker 82
38:55
in a couple of different places uh one of the best is through commerce workforce connections they
have a lot of the it's lagging based on quarter but you can see some of the labor force participation rate unemployment and open positions and is that on here no it's not no i'm sorry i mean i can send that to you
Speaker 116
39:12
or to kate however you would like can you send some of that data done to the staff and we look
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
39:18
at i think one of the important things is going forward is to educate our communities and what those numbers are. People want to know, especially as other cuts come down and how are we justifying this.
And so how do you at Workforce Services navigate the K-12 higher ed to workforce? That's a difficult area. How do we navigate that? So I'll speak for Secretary McDonald and Cody
Speaker 82
39:47
White, our workforce connections even though i'm not personally in that space i work with them closely whether it's through signature career centers pre-apprenticeships and the apprenticeship office there's a lot of work through office skills development for the higher ed side of certificate
and associate degrees in the different industry sectors that are required so i know that stephanie who leads that part of osd and then eddie thomas that works with the wioa side that they have a lot lot of interactions with the eligible training provider list and the higher ed partners and the facilitation of state resources and agencies to make those connections for arkansans yeah i think one of the things we're just going
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
40:25
to have to get down that road a ways and see how it's working the proof is not going to be in the charts and graphs proof is
going to be in how our workforce is actually trained in getting there thank you thank you madam chair yes
Speaker 123
40:38
um representative brown thank you madam chair
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
40:45
um thank you all for being here um anybody can answer that would like to i was thinking maybe mr rogers or miss putnam but um i've just pulled up the launch site um and i haven't had a chance to research it but i know we have a lot of able-bodied men out there who aren't working and they probably have some sort of a substance abuse
background or just being chronically unemployed um would are the are there services here at the launch site that they could maybe tap into to get the kind of services they need to get their head on straight or whatever it is they need to do that is
Speaker 92
41:31
absolutely the goal utilizing civiform we've reduced what was 170 questions and 85
Speaker 82
41:36
minutes worth of eligibility into 14 questions. They can go in and fill that out and then find out using some generative AI of different
resources that may be available to help them in either scholarships or in funding for school training apprenticeships and how to go back to school. Some of the really neat things that's come through the legislation recently and access that bridges those gaps of first to pay and some common enrollment in applications to two and four year colleges a lot of those individuals that do want to work that can't find a job in a place where they have interest that's certainly a plethora of options through launch for the people that don't have the drive or work ethic I haven't figured that one out yet
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
42:17
okay that that is a challenge um well I think you answered
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
42:37
all my questions thank you you representative Crawford first for corrections secretary Putnam mentioned restore hope you did not do they work inside the walls of the prison with you
Speaker 69
42:49
no ma'am not that I'm aware of inside
but they do have partnerships with our local area offices, so probation and parole offices that are out in community. I'm trying to remember which one it was. I know I've seen it in White County. Yes, we do have partnerships in community,
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
43:09
Sebastian County, but not within the prison walls, ma'am. Okay, thank you. And Mr. Rogers, my son Miles works. he is the feet and ground in fort smith with workforce and the story that you told
is heartwarming that someone only hires felons but he has a program where he is training and these people are not felons or misdemeanors and he cannot get them hired he will go to the to the work sites and they say yes we want to help we want to be the second chance but then when he goes to get the people to apply for the job they ghost won't return calls just not available so I was just wondering
on their applications do they have to list now misdemeanor probably not but then do they have to list that they have a felony still in arkansas and then my next question is what can we as a state do to make it more desirable for employers to hire these second chance people i spent a lot of time
Speaker 92
44:30
with miles and he is a wonderful thought partner and advocate
beyond sebastian county by the way the
Speaker 114
44:36
individual company's applicant tracking system and enterprise resource planning in which they post their jobs are very unique and it's hard to know what they ask in terms of criminal background absolutely fell on level but lower than that i'm not sure because each nuance has a different selection the second part of your question is we're hoping that once we find the companies that will self-attest and say i want to hire veterans i want to hire
a disability i want to hire for a second chance that that will start to show success in their profit generation of retention so that's a big piece and i've been collecting information in neighboring states like louisiana oklahoma that have a clean slate expungement of certain level of offenses i would love to see brought back in the next legislative session to help resolve some those issues that would allow for people to have a new chance of hope and direction in their employment
Speaker 133
45:31
thank you I'd like to help you with that thank you senator Petty thank you madam
Senator Jim Petty
Unverified
45:47
president and this can be from whoever but I suspect it's going to be on this end of the table with the data guys I'm assuming that all of these programs track the number of participants and then in some form or fashion, the results. And so is there a place where you can see all of them combined or at least by program where you can say, all right, we've got an 80% success rate or an 80% placement rate
Speaker 76
46:17
or something like that? Yes, thank you for your question. All of the workforce
Speaker 78
46:26
development programs under the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act have consistent measures and increasingly SNAP employment and training and other ones are moving to have consistent measures at the federal level of the WIOA measures. They all track second and fourth quarter employment and earnings, credential attainment, and measurable skills gains. This information is available on discoverarkansas.gov.
That's the site that Chief Rogers was referring to that has all of the labor market information. Also, currently in Arkansas JobLink, it has the Eligible Training Providers list, at least for WIOA. And so for every training provider, it has their outcomes posted there. There could probably be a more concise, easy way to do that, and I think that's something we can work on together. i think that probably as we move along
Senator Jane English
Unverified
47:20
this is kind of a base meeting here today but as we move
along i think we'll probably spend a lot more time trying to gather this information that we all need to look at i guess one of the questions i have about the department of corrections is so do we have a starting place for all of this and do we have some numbers of people who what the certificates are that they've gotten and the skills and did they get a job when they get out or do we have that kind of information? I don't have that information with me. I know you don't today, but I'm wondering if you have that.
And that's the kind of thing we need to, and sometimes it's just how many people pass through. I found that from working in government myself. Yes, ma'am. It's not what are the real results, but how many people walked through the door and walked out the other side. I will see what information I have, and I can get it for you. Okay, well, that's all right. And I think that as a group, these are the kinds of things we're probably going to be looking at. And Mike will probably ask you sometime to come and make a presentation and show us launch so everybody has a chance to get on there and figure out where we are
so everybody knows how that works. And, Robert, you've got all kinds of data for us. I know we're going to use that. So do we have any other questions here? Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, Denise, I'm sorry. Representative Garner. Go ahead. Thank you
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
48:51
very much. I'm excited to hear about some of these programs. I'm really excited about the bonding and the corrections. That's awesome.
And I'm trying to keep up with local leads. We've got every state in the, I mean, every county in Arkansas covered with local leads now, right? I come from this, for those of you I haven't talked to before, I come to this work from neurodevelopment and brain development, and I feel like we're doing some great things post, but we need to be doing things for prevention. And the first three years of a child's life is when their brain is developed 85%
and executive function and social, emotional, those interaction, transitional interactions all that happens by the time they're three years old so I hope that as we talk about all of these things that we're doing post some of these issues that we talk about what I think is the silver bullet if we take care of prenatal to three and we're doing the same thing for all of our constituents that we're doing for those moms in prison so we're educating people about how to
raise their children and how to get the best child care they could get whether that's home or or a classroom or whatever if we can do some of those kinds of things then we won't have to deal with workforce my dad was a corporate psychologist he worked with a lot of chambers and he used to say workforce starts in the womb and it does and even more so now because we can't get parents back to work And so we're leaving kids with people we may not want to be leaving them with.
But I just hope that as we talk about some of this stuff and certainly anything I can do to help early childhood, I think is the key to some of these issues long-term. And so I hope we don't forget about that as we're talking about some of the other things that are going on. And thank you guys. Certainly I've talked to DHS and to education about all of this. But Department of Health is not here. And a lot of the programs for visitation at the beginning, which are just as important, yeah.
Speaker 107
51:04
So thank you for pointing that out. Department of Health is not officially part of the
Speaker 74
51:09
workforce cabinet, so to speak. They don't necessarily have any workforce programming. But through the maternal health work that we're doing in the transforming maternal health, that includes corrections, health, DHS, workforce. And so we're pulling in sister agencies on that piece of it. And I think focusing on the intersection between maternal and mental health from prenatal all the way through with infant mental health as part of that is what our teams are working on through that Transforming Maternal Health grant and through the maternal health.
I mean, Medicaid covers, as you know, more than 50 percent of the births in Arkansas. So that's certainly a focus
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
51:41
for us. Great. Thank you very much. Representative Bentley.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
51:48
Thank you. Just one more quick question before
we end this segment. So Mike and Secretary Putnam both, is there a way for us, do you think, to develop a one-stop shop so that our constituents can go and they can reach SNAP and all these things together without having to fill out a program together? We can be really focused on workforce because that's really what our constituents need to get out of poverty.
So is there a way to develop launch at one point to be a one-stop shop like some other states have done to make that
Speaker 82
52:18
possible here in Arkansas? I don't want to compare to other states because they can't quite fathom the vision of what this cabinet wants to do with the support from legislatures and the governor's office. So I think she's been reading her mail, Secretary Putnam, in some of the work of brainstorming of how do we utilize those resources. If you want to share your chart.
We carry charts with us on these ideas of what we
Speaker 74
52:44
want in the future. I've only been carrying this around for a little more than two years and people behind me know what it is too we have a vision for a technology ecosystem a connected community of care if you will that includes launch from the state service perspective it also includes a coordinated case management platform that we already have in existence it's Hope Hub that Restore Hope has it's also trying to pull in Care Portal which is the faith based
portion of that that is a portal technology platform that allows churches and faith organizations to meet the needs of individuals in their communities and then tying all of those together with the help of civiform so that there is a one point of entry with some ai in there responsible ai that is used to help on transactional items so that it frees up the humans for the relational piece of that because it really starts with people having hope and seeing that there's actually a path forward so yes we do have a vision
FOR HOW THIS ALL TIES TOGETHER, AND I THINK THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A PLANTED
Speaker 82
53:49
QUESTION. ONE OF THE THINGS THAT, I LOVE THAT QUESTION, BY THE WAY, BECAUSE WE GIVE US A LOT OF THOUGHT OF WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE THAT DON'T HAVE READING COMPREHENSION, LANGUAGE OR LITERACY AND EVEN DIGITAL LITERACY, SO THE WAY WE'RE TRYING TO STREAMLINE THAT PROCESS IS UTILIZING ASSIST WE CALL TRUSTED IMMEDIARY SO THAT OUR ARKANSANS THAT HAVE A NEED OF BARRIER, LIKE I MENTIONED, ONE OF THE 13 SOCIAL DETERMINENTS OF HEALTH OR HOWEVER THAT WOULD BE, THEY COULD GO TO a trusted partner that would be a community-based organization, non-governmental office, and
I think the best state government resource for workforce is one they don't even realize exists and how they come in and get these matters resolved without even coming into a state office. So that one-stop shop, based on our special populations, but I anticipate in the next 12 months that every public school computer will have the launch icon, state libraries, will a lot of our organizations with CBOs as well as community development centers and we could get to a point where even the the inmates coming out of
incarceration had a DHS and we owe a type exit program that could help with career counseling and direct those are all grandiose ideas that we have in serving our population skills bridge military that's transitioning or people that are in the community but being very available and we've written some of that into the bead funding and the digital literacy and getting resources out because sometimes we don't have the hotspots or availability of an agnostic device that they can access and once they do they might not know how to
utilize that system so we've been doing a lot of train the trainer events with our governmental and non-governmental offices whether it be CTE teachers high school counselors Goodwill ambassadors and other career coaches that would allow for them to have that trust intermediary kind of career type host that could walk them through the system and get them resources and serve that population based on where they are thank
Senator Jane English
Unverified
55:46
you very much so when do you think the
city forum will be ready for people to
use or is it it's been going
Speaker 133
55:56
for two years it started off with unemployment which I prefer the phrase reemployment And is it a
Speaker 82
56:03
Launch is that host site. We don't want to confuse people with all the different partners and our innovation of how we've API'd it. They go into one system, and they can start to utilize state resources based on different drill downs they can use within the system. But it's been up and running since January the 6th of 24.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
56:24
And so how many people do we
Speaker 114
56:28
have already on that? Last number I heard was 30,000-plus with work search history. Robert, is that
Speaker 78
56:37
right? We have over 100,000 work search activities to go to pull the distinct number of individuals on launch and the number of applications on Civiform. If you just want to see Civiform itself, it's myarciviform.arkansas.gov. I've just kind of said we get a
Senator Jane English
Unverified
56:53
picture of what the time frame is because we got a lot of things going
and what is activated right now that actually everybody can get on and use right now. So probably, as I said, this next time maybe we'll ask you to come and bring that presentation so that we can all see what we're talking about. Sounds like a good idea. Do we have any more questions? Do you all
have some more? Thanks. Do you have any thoughts yourselves? I do, and I don't know what protocol is,
Speaker 82
57:29
but I want to thank Senator Boyd for sponsoring the legislation because it's important to bring visibility and accountability to Arkansas and resources that we have. So thank you and co-sponsor for writing that together. Is there anything specific that hasn't
Speaker 81
57:40
been addressed today that you would like us to be ready for the next time that we meet? Oh, this is going to be a long-term
Senator Jane English
Unverified
57:47
thing. This is not two meetings. So I want to be ready for it. Yes, this is not two meetings. excuse me go
ahead oh what sorry got the wrong person thank you madam chair wait wait wait just
a minute are you on okay go ahead thank
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
58:06
you madam chair so i think y'all are doing great i mean this is what i want to hear uh or what i'd hope to hear and certainly that there's a plan that there's a vision there's even got it down to one page on what we we can accomplish so this is certainly moving in the
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
58:28
direction i'd hoped senator bryant thank you madam chair just to go back one page if i was doing a google search it looks like there's a lot of different attempts over the
years of different contracts to get different platforms up and running to serve all these questions launch is available I've seen it our job link is available I've seen it there's different things within Department of Health that coalesce with other departments in education who's steering that boat to get them finally into the same channel to where we can start dropping off the different systems into one comprehensive it is the workforce cabinet so I
Speaker 82
59:03
would say it's my fault if it doesn't happen by the time reelection comes up for my boss in the
very beginning we were able to pull the plug in about 15 million dollars of non-value-added spend of people that were trying to sell us a product what's unique about launch is it state-owned state-designed state-stored and it is Arkansas's platform a lot of it's been a hundred percent has been donated through philanthropy and different federal grants that have been made available so it's a no cost to the state and that gets us to value proposition where we are working to phase out some of the pay for services that currently exist it be case management or some of the other resources so they have one place to get to
and they can discover their options without having to pay for a subscription again go ahead
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:00:01
oh thank you thank you and just to tie into about a couple hours ago we had the meeting next door department ed was up there a lot Greg was up there a lot talking about college readiness funding for these separate contracts to company out of Oregon
company out of out of Pennsylvania I believe or is that part of this conversation or is that college and career readiness under the department of ed gonna stay separate because that typically happens with inside
Speaker 55
1:00:27
our secondary no in excellent question excellent point so the plan is is as we're looking at all middle school students to start filling out that career service inventory that that's all going to be built into launch which is why as mr. Rogers explained and we're going to start phasing out those contracts because it takes a little bit of time for a transition and then as we
have our career coaches that are employed in all of our counties working with our school districts they're going to work off that launch platform so that it will be a built-in career service in or career readiness inventory system that's going to give data that's going to help farm school counselors career coaches parents the types of courses that kids should be taken while they're in middle school while they're in high school what's going to prepare them for kind of hitting their goals so there were a lot of those other different contracts and we're trying to slowly phase them out and then create a one-stop
shop so everything's organized and streamlined and
Speaker 74
1:01:30
madam chair if that's okay certainly we also are the reason we are looking at launch is because it's able to create the student success plans individual success plans we envision that that can be the same thing for those in Medicaid and snap who have those work requirements to create their success plan as well so that it's all streamlined it all ties into the same system and it all has the same outcome
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:01:55
measure of capabilities I have further questions the crowd okay
secretary Putnam we had one other thing here and that was the other of the bill that we have not talked about which was
at 104 one 104 and that folks for you our information that that information is in this um on page 15 of the uh house bill 1105
thank you folks and we will look forward to seeing you a lot more
so we talked a little bit about where you see this might
Speaker 165
1:02:54
be going you would might might elaborate a little bit for
Speaker 74
1:02:58
us yes absolutely so what we went back and did after we had an organizational meeting I believe it was two weeks ago with some of the committee members and some folks from governor's office and some other folks from dhs just to put together
what we thought would be the right approach for a comprehensive review of arkansas dhs we provided that to you all this afternoon or at least i think we have it it should have blue writing at the top and it says comprehensive review of arkansas dhs what we've done is outline our what we think is an appropriate structure the key objectives methodologies and how we would propose going about this timelines and then responsible parties for evaluating each of our major major divisions prioritizing to start with shared services and then division of children and family services and division of
county operations because those were the three that were prior prioritized in in the bill we I won't go through line by line but we certainly incorporated the key focus areas that were identified as administrative policies and functions looking at personnel and staffing evaluations and looking at revenues and expenditures of not just the department but also the divisions and of our providers and so we have put together for this committee this subcommittee to review it is draft we also
have our division directors and our chiefs looking at it in draft form so that they can provide some additional input on on perhaps some we've incorporated field visits stakeholder interviews certainly looking at existing audits and reports that are out there so that we can go division by division again starting with the first three that were identified and then this subcommittee you know we will defer to the subcommittee to identify any further divisions for review so i'll pause there thank you very much so i think you
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:04:51
all can see we have our work cut out for us and that's
why we need two days, because we've got two separate topics here to talk about. So does anybody have any questions about this at all, this legislation? Anybody? Okay. Well, we will probably be August, and we'll have a one-day meeting in June and kind of look a little bit about where we're going to be going. And then, but probably our first meeting on this topic would be
in August. Okay. Okay. That sounds good. Thank you
very much. Oh, you have this one
thing you have the update on the reimbursement rates under the living choices. I
Speaker 107
1:05:33
do. You just give us a little overview of that. Absolutely. I will not read it
Speaker 74
1:05:39
line for line, but if you have questions, I will certainly be happy to answer them. We are just presenting again as directed by Section 15 and Act 213 of 2022, we're required to report to the Arkansas Legislative Council and now to this subcommittee the status of our efforts regarding reimbursement rates
under the Living Choices Assisted Living Waiver, and I would just like to note that annual cost reporting as required by Act 198 of 2023 is now underway. That process started this year. we conducted a provider webinar in December of 2024 and then we opened the reporting period for eight for organizations assisted living facilities to submit their cost reports in January we currently have data that's being analyzed by our contracted reviewer Myers and Stauffer
we do anticipate that they will have results of this data analysis by the end of May 2025 and if there are any recommendations for rate adjustments based on that data We will bring them before this body and to the governor's office for consideration Anybody have questions
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:06:47
Seeing none, thank you very much appreciate your presentation appreciate you being here today and everybody for being here today And seeing no
further business or do you have something else you'd like to say?
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:07:02
I just thank everybody for being is be definitely a working group that we're gonna get some things done this session So be prepared for extra meetings and keep a lookout for your emails and when we'll be meeting. But thank you all for being here today. Secretary Putnam, thank you so much. We look forward to working together with you as well.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:07:18
Thank you all. Thank you. Thanks very much. We are adjourned.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Discussion of Act 145 of 2025 and Act 1004 of 2025, Section 13 [Exhibits B1-B3]
1. Kristi Putnam, Secretary, Department of Human Services
2. Lindsay Wallace, Secretary, Department of Corrections
3. Hugh McDonald, Secretary, Department of Commerce
4. Jacob Oliva, Secretary, Department of Education
5. Robert McGough, Chief Data Officer, Department of Transformation and Share Services
6. Mike Rogers, Chief Workforce Officer, Arkansas Governor’s Office
C. Discussion of Recommendations by Committee
D. Update on Reimbursement Rates Under the Living Choices Assisted Living Waiver Pursuant to Act 213 of 2022, Section 15 [Exhibit D]
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Speaker 2
Speaker 1
Speaker 7
Speaker 9
Speaker 26
Speaker 12
Speaker 14
Senator Jane English
Unverified
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
Speaker 55
Speaker 56
Speaker 59
Speaker 60
Speaker 64
Speaker 69
Speaker 74
Speaker 76
Speaker 78
Speaker 81
Speaker 82
Speaker 85
Speaker 92
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
Speaker 107
Speaker 105
Speaker 112
Speaker 114
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
Speaker 116
Speaker 123
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
Speaker 133
Senator Jim Petty
Unverified
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 149
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
Speaker 165