Children & Youth Committee - Senate & Aging, Children & Youth, and Legislative Affairs- House
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Unknown speaker
0:00
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
2:30
all right colleagues we'll go ahead and get this meeting started ready to get to their seats appreciate your patience i just uh
had a little bit long in a physical therapy session so thank y'all for being here today i appreciate y'all coming in and it's a very important committee thank y'all for showing up today um our first order of business we need to if you guys have had a chance to look at our minutes i need a vote to approve the minutes from our last meeting get a motion get a second second okay all those approved say aye thank you all very much we'll
move forward okay so we have some great discussions today that i've been looking forward to for a bit so i hope that you all
as well so we're going to kind of jump out of order just a little bit we've been asked to have mr derrick brown and christian butler come and give their presentation first so if they want to come to the table we'll be happy to take them first thank you all
so much for being here and thank you so much what you do for our children across the state so when you get to the table if you please recognize yourselves and then we'll let
Speaker 9
3:36
you begin with your presentation good morning my name is kristen butler i'm honored to serve as the executive director for the call and the answer foster care. Good afternoon, Dr. Derek
Derek Brown
Unverified
3:51
Brown, Arkansas Baptist Children and Family Ministries. I'm glad to be here with you today. Thank you both for being here, and you may begin. I'm
Speaker 9
3:59
so appreciative of your time and your advocacy. So before we get started today in sharing about the work that we're so blessed to be a part of,
Speaker 16
4:07
I just want to give a sincere thank you to each of you. You have a continued advocacy role, and you're speaking up for our children and families who are so greatly impacted by foster care and it truly makes a difference across our state with our partners at dcfs so i just want to give a sincere thank you to each of you for this opportunity um as we begin i would love
Speaker 9
4:28
to share make sure we're working um first of course this is a map and we recognize this right this is a map of our state this is my home state i'm a native arkansas
Speaker 16
4:38
but as we look within this we see our local counties and then with each local county there is a number and of course within this number it represents each child or youth that is in foster care as of today that impacts each of our own
Speaker 9
4:56
home local communities so within this of course this number does fluctuate day by day but on average we're seeing around 3 400 children and youth in foster care in our state on average around 835 traditional foster homes that are
Speaker 16
5:09
equipped to be able to stand up and support them. And this is where we at the call and the answer lean into is the traditional foster homes. These are homes just probably like yours and mine, your neighbors, that raise their hand to open their home and care for children that they most likely do not know but want to serve within their home community.
Speaker 9
5:27
We also currently across our state are seeing an average of 60 to 65 percent of our kids in foster care that are being placed outside of their
Speaker 16
5:33
home county. I'm going to share some statistics about that here in just a moment but do want to highlight that as it's on this screen. As we go throughout this
presentation you're going to see real pictures, real faces, real places, and these are all pictures of our local families, of support centers across our state, and real kids whose lives have been impacted by foster care, including these three kiddos that are on this screen that you see now. I would love to share with you a very brief video that will help share some of the real stories from these children that have been impacted in their own words. Thank you.
Speaker 24
6:20
What would you do if someone told you that you had to leave your home?
Speaker 28
6:28
Maybe for a long time. Maybe for just a little while. You don't know where you're going. You don't know who you'd be
Speaker 28
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leave. That's what happens to kids like me every
Speaker 30
6:41
day. We leave behind our bedrooms, our schools, our
Speaker 28
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friends, our favorite toys. Everything that feels familiar.
And suddenly, we're walking into a season we never chose. It's scary not knowing what comes next. Not knowing where you'll see. Not knowing
Speaker 31
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who will be there when you wake up. Not knowing if anyone understands
Speaker 32
7:02
what you're feeling. But what if we didn't have to enter
Speaker 31
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that season alone? What if someone chose to stand with us? To welcome us, to care for
Speaker 32
7:12
us. To remind us that we're not forgotten.
Speaker 24
7:17
That's where people like you can make all the difference.
Speaker 30
7:21
You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have all the answers. You just have to be willing to show up. Sometimes that means opening your home to a child that needs a safe place to stay. sometimes that means fostering for a season a few months a year long enough to provide safety love and hope while family heals and sometimes that means supporting the families that do
Speaker 36
7:45
because when the church stands together kids like me don't have to face foster
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care alone right now more than 3,400 children in
Arkansas are walking through a season of uncertainty children who
Speaker 32
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need someone to stand beside them, someone to believe in them, someone to remind them they matter. Today we're asking you to do
Speaker 30
8:05
more than just see the need. We're inviting you
Speaker 31
8:15
me, like me, to serve for a season, and to help change a story of a child who just needs someone to walk beside them.
Speaker 16
8:29
We recently made this video, and it includes lots of images from our direct support centers all across our state, from kiddos and families that have gone through foster care, those who've been adopted. And to me, it's impactful because it's these kids in their own words sharing their story. But what I love most is all it takes is a simple yes, and it can change the trajectory of a child's life. And that's why we do what we do at the call. What we do is important, how we do is important, but ultimately it is why we do this, it's
to help support these kiddos. Blake, can I help? Thank you, sir. Thank you. As Blake shares and gets us set up for our next piece, the call began in 2007 really out of a heart to raise more foster
Speaker 9
9:20
families here in Pulaski County. We began kind of a new partnership with the state, with the Division of Children and Family services and began a partnership of recruiting foster families and then dcfs thank you with license and certify those homes the call then steps in and offers wraparound support services
so that those families have a reason and an opportunity to
Speaker 16
9:39
continue to say yes we've now expanded to all 75 counties offering local support and services to each county still 100 donor funded through the generosity
Speaker 9
9:48
of fellow arkansans and also still as partners with dcfs us. So this slide is very busy and I
Speaker 16
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think it represents how busy Derek and his group, myself and other partners in our state try to be as we work within the world of foster care. So what we do at the call, the first thing we do is we recruit, we raise awareness. It is amazing to me how we in
the state of Arkansas and in our own home local communities, often our people are unaware of the need of foster care and unaware how they can step in and partake in this local mission field. So our role is really to raise up awareness. There are 70 local staff members all across the state. We engage our local communities. If you go to Cleburne County you're probably going to know Jamie Wilson. If you go to Monticello you're going to know Betsy Anderson and that's because our local staff are locally invested in their community and raising awareness. We also work to equip our
families. We shepherd them throughout the required certification process, offering the trauma-informed education and also helping them throughout all of the requirements that they may need. We work to meet the immediate needs both of our foster families and also those of these precious kiddos that come into care. As you can imagine if you received a phone call and you're taking in an eight-year-old boy and his 10-year-old sister you're probably going to need a few things at your house to be able to take care of them. We never want a need like that to stand in the way for a family to be able to say yes. So our goal is to provide bedding
tangible needs that that family would have to be able to say yes to those placements. We also know that when kiddos come into care, many times they come with little to no belongings of their own. So through our support centers across the state, they can come in and get a new pair of shoes. They can get a backpack for school. They can get clothing, pajamas, new underwear, hygiene products, anything that that child needs to have a new safe place in their foster home. We also work to walk alongside our foster families. On average, we see our call families be able to stay open as a foster family twice as long as a traditionally recruited foster
family. And we believe that's because of the local support services that are offered. We offer mental health services to these families. Many times our kiddos in care receive mental health services through their PASS program or through their Medicaid, but our foster mom and dads and their biological children do not unless they go through the private sector. So we have a mental health coordinator on staff that can meet with them, offer trauma-informed education, help them as they're navigating through hard goodbyes, and as they're working towards reunification with their
kiddos in their placement. And that's all offered at no cost to our families at any time. We try to stabilize adoptions. A lot of times we see post-adopt families begin to struggle five, ten years down the road, so we offer those same mental health services for our post-adopt families. We also are a strong advocate for our partners at DCFS. We could not do what we do without our partners at DCFS. They are on the front lines, towing this hard work every single day. And so we work with them. We have collaborative meetings, we share resources. When they come to our support centers
for biological visits, we offer friendly workspaces for them. So while the call continues to recruit, train, support families, we still partner like we did in 2007 with DCFS to provide the background check and the licensing of our foster families. The impact of the call, this is not because of one person, this is because the outpouring of
Speaker 9
13:18
love from our state and people who stood up to say yes. Since we began in 2007, over 4,600 families have been trained through the call
Speaker 16
13:26
who have gone on to serve over 35,000 Arkansan children impacted by foster care. That is a stat that we are proud to say that we've been able to be a part of throughout
Speaker 9
13:40
our support services we also have 38 support centers all across our state we've provided a map with
Speaker 16
13:45
that i hope that you see one close to your home county a core value that we hold deeply both in heart and in action at the call and the answer is being relational and we believe that foster care is not transactional
it is 100% relational and that requires local connections. Families respond to answer the call to be a foster parent out of that local trusted relationship. They're able to continue to say yes because of that local supportive relationship, because we can meet families in a time of need and we can engage the local community to wrap around them. So these 38 support centers, if you haven't been to one, I would love to walk you through one and introduce you to that in your home community, we offer what we call the call mall. This is the tangible resources where foster
families and the kids that they serve can come in and get the items they need at no cost
Speaker 9
14:39
at any point. We also offer within this our support center and our family time visit spaces. So children
Speaker 16
14:44
in care have the opportunity to have up to a four-hour visit with their biological families. We know that this is a key indicator and one of the strongest pieces for reunification for these families. So before they would often go to a DCFS office, but since 2007 they've been able to come into our call support centers and have a family-like visit where they can sit on the floor and play a game. They can
play basketball in the backyard. They can make a meal together, eat popcorn. One of my favorites recently was a mom working towards reunification was able to move her visit to the afternoon evening time so they could practice meal preparation, how to help give the kids a bath while keeping the baby safe, read a story to them, change them into their pajamas, and
Speaker 9
15:28
practice that bedtime routine before they went back home for reunification. We're also, in our support centers,
Speaker 16
15:33
able to meet the needs of our foster families. We offer support groups, one-on-one therapy sessions,
and sometimes just sit over a cup of coffee and cry, and that's totally fine as well. So we're really excited to be able to offer these support centers all across our state. Just last year, we were able to host over 4,900 biological family visits in our centers. Sometimes that includes cleaning applesauce off the ceiling. You never really know what you're going to get. But when you walk in and you hear those families laughing and being together, it is such a heartwarming, worthwhile piece that we get to serve in.
Since 2017, we have been able to host over 15,000 biological family visits in these home-like settings. In 2023, DCFS approached us at the call and said that they were working towards a heart of moving towards privatized foster care with the private license agency piece. Of course, as a main partner with DCFS, that was a big adjustment for us at the call. So after much prayer, strategy, and looking at our resources, we decided that the call was really gifted to continue the work in which we
excel at, those local relationships, equipping, launching families, and supporting them well. And so in order to meet the need and the request of DCFS, we launched our partner organization, The Answer Foster Care. As you can see by this graph, the call continues to work on recruitment, the pre-certification paperwork, training, and then the answer in the counties where we are currently at, which is 7, moving to 11 soon, they handle the licensure and then they help assist with the placement of children within those homes.
In the counties where the answer is not yet active, we still actively partner with DCFS. DCFS obviously handles the placement of the child, and then together we're able to offer full wraparound services. Through the answer, we have been able to see a decrease in the amount of time that families are waiting to open. From the time a family says that they're interested into the time that a child is placed in their home can be a lengthy process for many different variable reasons. But with the answer, we've been able to move to a software that allows every piece of this to be 100% electronic.
It helps our families move through the process quicker and easier. And then also it allows us to then be able to put children in their home quicker, meeting the need of our kiddos in care. Through this partnership of the call and the answer, the call remains focused on the areas of our expertise, awareness, recruitment, holistic wraparound support services. And the ANSER can remain focused on their areas of expertise, home certification and the ideal child placement. I'd like to share a little bit more with you about the ANSER foster care.
So since we began really two years ago, July 2024 is really when we began. 2023 is when we began the paperwork. But since then, we've opened 83 private licensed foster homes and have cared for 229 children. We have many values within this while the numbers look great. we're really more proud of this next slide I'd like to share with you. Together at the call and the answer, we're able to really partner our values together, and we're seeing real local impact. We deeply value local relationships.
Through this, they're offering our county-level support. The call local staff and the answer caseworker work together. They know their families firsthand. They know the families who are able to take teens, who are able to take medically fragile children. So that makes the ideal placement for children and stability of that placement even stronger. We deeply value in-county placements. I alluded to that 60% to 65% out-of-county placement number earlier. When that happens, it creates a duplicative issue on the entire system.
By having children remain within their own home local county, it reduces the secondary caseworker by DCFS. It eliminates the extensive travel time for court hearings and those weekly family time visits. It minimizes the additional travel strain on our biological families who are already working incredibly hard just to meet the needs of their court cases and get their kids back. It reduces additional time missed from school when many of our kids in foster care are already behind in needing additional learning services.
And it also retains critical core community relationships with teachers, coaches, and friends. through our work at the answer and partnership with the call we've been able to have a 91 percent placement in the home county for the kiddos that we're serving we deeply value placing obviously with with siblings we've been able to see a 96 percent historical placement with siblings reducing the secondary trauma of these kiddos being separated and it allows us to retain those family bonds through the work of the call and the answer we have this extra level of support that's
been able to be offered to these families where our staff can be in their homes they can come to our support centers we know them on a deeply careful basis and we can also bring them in to an existing level of community as i wrap up i would like to share a story with you all and i'd like to introduce you to mr roger i didn't make up his name his name really is mr roger but If I was going to give a fake name, it would probably be that, right? Mr. Roger is a middle-aged man.
He lives in central Arkansas, and he has already raised his kiddos. They've launched into adulthood. Mr. Roger was at church, and he heard someone from the calls sharing about the local need of foster care, and he came and spoke with them afterwards. And Mr. Roger felt like he had space both in his life and in his home to help serve. but see Mr. Rogers extra special because he felt especially called to help care for teenagers. Through the answer, Mr. Rogers completed all of his paperwork electronically.
He attended the local foster family training through the call and was able to connect with his local community and other foster families in the process. Mr. Rogers needed a few improvements at his home before he could open, but his church family stepped up, and those men from his church came out and they helped him with those basic needs that he needed for his home repairs. Through a regular meeting with our local DCFS partners, the call and the answer began to share about upcoming families and homes beginning to open. Every home and every family is deeply important.
But someone willing to serve teenage boys, that's going to get a lot of attention around the room, and that's a pretty special home. DCFS shared about the need for three particular brothers. These three teen brothers, two were in a group home, one was in a residential home, and would soon be ready to step down to a traditional home-like setting. They were all separated and had not been together for quite some time. So as we began to hear about that story, we went back to Mr. Roger, and we shared about the potential for these brothers coming in.
He felt like he had what he needed. We could wrap around and support this. And so when these kiddos were ready, the very first placement in Mr. Roger's home was that of these three brothers together mr rogers church stepped up and they had a weekly meal train coming to help this man who now is caring for three teenage boys i imagine that was a very large meal train and lots of food to handle that home the call provided clothing continuing ed wraparound services the answer checked in daily then weekly to help with the
transition needs both of mr roger and these three young men you see at the heart of the work of what we do is a man in Arkansas like Mr. Roger, just willing to say yes and open his heart and his home, a community like his church willing to step up, wrap around him, and support him, and three brothers who were reunited together. As we sit here today, I know you're probably thinking, what are the biggest needs? We need more foster families. We need more awareness. We need families to be
able to step up and care for these kiddos that are in care today, specifically teens and sibling groups. We need to continue our local support so families don't have to travel and go far so they have the resources they need to be able to support in their local communities. We need to continue to be able to provide these extra layers of support. We're seeing an increase in the needs that these kiddos have when they enter these homes. We need to be able to support them but also support the foster families and through the private license agencies we have been able to meet some of those
needs and we desperately need to continue our support of dcfs and our frontline workers because every day arkansans like mr rogers and these three brothers deserve our best
Speaker 41
24:21
thank you so much for your time today we'll be open for a few questions before we
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
24:28
start with the next presenter um first thank you i'm very excited to see the answer is
covering my district i think that's phenomenal so thank you can you tell us what the next four counties you're thinking about
Speaker 9
24:41
adding yes we just received approval from our partners at dcfs we're adding on clark grant pike
Speaker 16
24:47
and montgomery and we actually have the approval but we haven't we haven't gone through all the details with our local staff but that should be coming on in the next few weeks we're very excited to add those services there great my
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
24:59
next question is so what does we as legislators what would you ask of us to help i know you just said but what could we personally i think in our positions do to help this move forward yes um particularly are you speaking
Speaker 16
25:09
a private license agency or just foster care awareness in general with the call and answer what could we do as state letters yes
local advocacy is critical and so we have support centers all across our state i would love to introduce you to the local team in your area but if you can help us raise awareness locally when you walk into these support centers it is monumentally changing um we had a staff our volunteer that said, amazing things happen here, extraordinary things happen here, and we get to do it often. And so if we can allow our community to step in and engage and to see this, then I think we can have all the support that we need on a local front to raise up foster families. From our
private license agency piece, that would be supporting with DCFS and continuing the advocacy to raise the financial needs to be able to
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
26:00
grow and expand the private license
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
26:03
agencies. Great. Thank you so much. Representative Gonzalez-Worthing. Yes, you mentioned, thank you for your presentation. You mentioned the need for more foster families, and I was just curious in my community of Springdale in Northwest Arkansas, how we might be able to help with recruiting Latino and Marshallese families,
because I know that there's a need in that regard. There
Speaker 16
26:25
is a desperate need for minority families across the board, and so some of the work that we've been talking about with DCFS is providing some of our literature in other languages so that they can help. There are some requirements within the state for English speaking, so I would defer to Director Tiffany Wright with DCFS on that piece. But we are definitely interested in helping share the need within those communities because we know that kiddos do best when they're placed in a like family, and we want to be able to meet those needs as well.
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
26:54
So what do you think would be the next steps for that in particular? Yes, I think
Speaker 16
26:59
that we would need to meet with Director Wright to talk through if there's any language barriers within that. And if not, we'd be
Speaker 41
27:05
working to create a recruitment path to be able to meet with those different communities. Okay, thank
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
27:16
you. Yes. Thank you for that question. Representative Springer. Thank you,
Madam Chair. Good afternoon. I would just like to know the address of
Speaker 46
27:23
the call center in Pulaski County. Yes, it is 4020 Woodland Heights Road.
Yeah. And it's a great space we would love for you to come and see it has the best backyard Thank you so
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
27:38
much for your presentation dr. Brown we're ready for you
Derek Brown
Unverified
27:59
Thank you all for giving us this time and attention. I'm so grateful
Speaker 74
28:10
to represent the vulnerable children and families of Arkansas. Again, my name is Dr. Derek Brown. I'm the executive director of Arkansas Baptist Children and Family Ministries. We were started a little over 130 years ago to meet the needs of the state's most vulnerable residents, children who did not have family. We started at that time in a time where there was no true communication or transportation
to be able to reliably meet the needs of those children. And so out of necessity, we started as an orphanage. But the intent and the heart has always been to get kids to family with a sense of urgency. Everything that we do today serves that same purpose, to support and stabilize families because we believe when we take care of the family, our state is going to be in a much better place. And so we do represent the largest religious group in the state of Southern Baptist, but we're much more than that.
And so we work with and serve far beyond that. But we still are at heart Southern Baptist group. And so our three priorities I'll talk to you about today, safety, stability, and permanency. We believe when we can provide these things for kids, we help kids to thrive. And it is our belief that these three elements are provided truly in the context of family. And so everything that we
Derek Brown
Unverified
29:32
do is designed to support families, to stabilize families, and to get kids to permanent family as quickly as possible.
Speaker 74
29:40
A couple of the services that I will talk to you about today, although we do provide a continuum of services, A few of the things that I'll talk to you about this afternoon, foster care, adoption, family-centered treatment, and family advocacy. Four different aspects of what we do to support and stabilize families, largely in partnership with the state of Arkansas. Nine years ago, the state began private placement foster care.
We were fortunate and blessed to be a part of that partnership between the state and private agencies to be able to launch private placement foster care. Since that time, we have at Arkansas Baptist Children and Family Ministries through our Connected Families program provided half of all of the private placement foster kids. And I tell you that to tell you that we've learned a lot of lessons along the way. This has not been an easy feat. anytime you're working with children or families, there are going to be challenges, and we certainly
faced a lot of challenges alongside of the families that we've served. And so over the course of this time, we've become more and more passionate about the reality of the need to partner between the state and private entities to be able to best serve families. Last year, we cared for 507 children in our foster care program that was 75,232 nights of care for safety stability for children in foster
care for the kids that we discharged around just over 200 146 were able to leave our program and go into a permanent arrangement something that's incredibly important to us as kristen mentioned is keeping siblings together As you can imagine, when kids come into foster care, they leave behind everything that they know. At least we can keep them with their brothers and sisters.
Many times that's not just a brother or a sister. Many times that's sibling groups of three, four, five, six. We've even had sibling groups of nine. Can you imagine in the middle of the night trying to find one placement for a sibling group of nine? And can you believe that some of your constituents will say yes to a sibling group of nine? We've been able to see that, and I will tell you, when we can keep brothers and sisters together,
the chance of them moving through the foster care system and back into permanency increases substantially. And so it's so important for us to be able to work with, train, support, advocate for those families who are willing to say yes. And so then we can celebrate numbers like this. Ninety-four percent of kids last year in our program were able to be kept with their brothers and sisters. That is tremendous.
Statewide, that's still a big struggle because most homes and most families, even when they say the most sacrificial yes that can be said, a yes to foster care, keeping brothers and sisters together is still a challenge. One of the ways we do that through our Connected Families program is we actually have homes that we own that we rent out lease-free to foster families so that they can keep brothers and sisters, large sibling groups together. And so that's been something that's been helpful for large sibling groups, particularly sibling groups 4, 5, 6, 7, so that they can be able to stay with their brothers and sisters in foster care.
So what makes private foster care different? I would say it always comes back to relationship. It always comes back to trust. But how do we do that? We have a minimum standard at our organization that's different than the state minimum standard. State minimum standard right now is 1 to 24. If necessary, and at times it's necessary, the state can request a waiver to exceed that number. Connected families cannot.
We don't get that same opportunity. But at the same time, we set our standard lower than that. Higher than that, technically. 1 to 18 is our standard. And so that means that at a maximum, a caseworker who's working with connected families has 18 kids on their caseload. If we get to 18, we're looking at how can we hire and reduce this caseload. That means relationship quality is higher.
That means trust is built. That means when a crisis occurs, People are calling, foster family is calling someone they trust, that they know has their interest in mind, is going to take care of them. Because of that, the kids who stay in our care, 81% of them stay in their first placement. 96% of them have two or fewer placements while in our care. What does that ultimately translate to? If you also have to consider budget, here's a beautiful thing.
What's in the best interest for kids is also in the best interest for our state budget. Fifteen percent of kids going into higher levels of care out of foster care is not great for our state budget. Eight percent of kids coming out of this private foster care into higher levels of care is substantially better for the budget. But more importantly, it's better for the kids. Because keeping kids with family is what ultimately matters.
And as you can imagine, when a kid who doesn't have family goes into higher levels of care, it's really difficult to get them out of higher levels of care. Private foster care isn't the only solution. As a matter of fact, I would go as far as to say, if we can keep kids out of foster care, let's do it. No kid should be in foster care if we can keep them out. What's one way to keep them out of a traditional foster home?
In other words, having to live with a stranger? When a family is in crisis, if a relative could step up, wouldn't that be ideal? If it was your family, your kids, your grandkids, your niece or nephew, wouldn't you want a relative to step up if that was possible? Of course we would. And so I am incredibly honored to work with the state to be able to help make kinship foster care successful, To be able to help support and equip relatives who are willing to say yes to a kid who's come into a situation that they didn't cause where they have to live outside of their home.
We've been able to take care of 120 placements in relative foster care through partnership with DCFS. One of the accomplishments we've been able to have at Connected Families in kinship placement is we've had a 65-day median home opening rate. That means we're able to get those homes open a lot faster. They can move from provisional status to being a fully opened foster home. Why does that matter? aside from the fact that these are familiar people to the child these placements are also
far better than traditional placements and they're better than private traditional placements and they're better than state traditional placements relative placements have better outcomes 86 this is a statewide number by the way and so you can congratulate dcfs on this accomplishment as well. 86% have no placement change in three months if they're able to be placed with a relative. Statewide stability rate versus traditional foster care, 3.69 versus 5.65
moves. So a typical child in foster care has 5.65 moves versus 3.69 if we're able to get them with a relative. That's a huge difference. Another component that we're able to bring to the table in partnership with DHS is family-centered treatment. In-home family services. What we're
finding is that when we can come alongside families with in-home evidence-based practices that those families are far more stable because of that service. 24% fewer youth end up in placement because of FCT. Those who do have a 30% reduction in length of stay. And with the families that have been worked with in Arkansas, across all of the family-centered treatment providers, 97% have reported improvement in family stability.
That's an incredible opportunity. And here's the thing that most people don't realize. Do you know that when you provide family-centered treatment in home for far fewer dollars than residential treatment, families are actually spending more time with a practitioner than if kids are going into care for 24-hour-7 care? For far fewer dollars. Family-centered treatment is a great option to keep kids with family and to provide better outcomes.
Another service that we provide, we do partner with DHS and provide Medicaid-based counseling through our counseling provider, Living Well Counseling. We were able to provide 32,014 counseling sessions just last year. And you can see there on the map the locations where we're providing that. We began providing these services in 2019 because we saw a real deficit in what was being provided across the state. particularly when you look at the state's most vulnerable residents, have been counseled by the least competent therapist.
Because our system has not worked for them. And so we thought, what if we can provide a way to provide highly trained, trauma-informed trauma counselors and to continue to provide services for the state's most vulnerable residents, for those on Medicaid and Medicare? And so we've been able to create a semi-private practice model counseling that provides counseling for the state's vulnerable residents while maintaining a 95% retention rate for therapists. Which means we're providing the best therapy in the state and next year it's going to be better because we kept those counselors and we trained them and equipped them and supported them more.
Christy mentioned their family visit centers. We just launched a family visit center in Little Rock with seven visit spaces and some level of support for DCFS and for the families. And in just a short period of time, we went from in January with 10 family visits to July. July alone, we had 150 family visits in that one space. And I'll tell you really quickly a story on Thursday. I just happened to be in the hallway of the visit center when this happened.
We've had a man who's come in and visited with his child every single day. He's there, he's early, and he is so excited to visit with his baby. And he'll walk through the halls and he'll say, have you met my baby? And he'll introduce her. And it is the most incredible, sweet thing. And this little baby will not break eye contact with her daddy. She loves him. Even as an infant, she is bonding with him. and he's bonding with
Derek Brown
Unverified
41:54
her and our staff have bonded with them and they've enjoyed those visits
so much but on Thursday everything in him felt like it was wrong when DCF has said it's time up time's up we have to
Speaker 74
42:07
take her now he didn't want to let her go as any good dad he wanted to hold on to her and to keep her and to take care of her, but the time wasn't right for him to do that. He said, I'm not letting her go.
The caseworker didn't know what to do. She was not expecting that. So what do we do? The caseworker was getting ready to call the police. She ran into one of our employees. Our employee said, please wait. and she got the lady who'd been building a relationship with this man and with his baby. And this lady came
Derek Brown
Unverified
42:55
in, and she said, hey, I'm on your side, but this isn't the way we do it. And immediately he calmed down.
She said, this isn't in your best interest. We want to help you get this baby, but you've got to get her the right way. And he did exactly what he was supposed to do. Then the next time the visit was
Speaker 74
43:19
scheduled, he showed up early and he held his baby. And he looked her in the eye. And when it was time to give her up, he gave her up. Why? Because trust. Because relationship. Because it's what really matters when it comes to changing the trajectory of a family.
That's what matters. That's what the private agency brings alongside the state as we work together to build our state's most vulnerable residents. A couple other things we do. So many single mothers get caught in the trap between transportation, child care, and employment. If you don't have one, it's hard to get the other two. Through our housing for our single mothers and their kids, we're able to help mothers keep their kids.
get their kids back from DCFS, and get stable and move out toward independence. This past year alone, we were able to take care of 43 families through that family care program. We have a family advocacy program, works with those same families through several levels of mentorship to help them to be stable. We also provide marriage and family-focused retreats because I'm sure, as you know, Arkansas leads a country in divorce rates.
and we're certainly strong on the single parenting side of things and so if we're going to change that statistic then we have to do things that are outside of the box and so that's something we launched recently we provide pre-marriage and marital workshops we also do parent training and through all of these things together this is our statewide reach with foster care counseling our family care homes and our campus homes where we do the sibling foster care and so I really appreciate your time and attention and i hope that you know that we're your partner to build
strong families and that through building strong families we
Derek Brown
Unverified
45:18
will build a stronger arkansas thank you thank you so much
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
45:21
for your presentation and we have a couple questions for you representative shepherd
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
45:26
thank you madam chair and that was a great presentation thank you so much i have a two-part question in regards to the eight percent of children that went on to a higher level of care what number does that eight percent represent and where are they and then when DHS comes to the table I'd like them to be able to answer the same
question in regards to the 15
Speaker 74
45:49
percent so the higher levels of care that I'm referring to could include therapeutic foster care most of the time it's going to include a qualified residential treatment program or a PRTF a psychiatric residential treatment program so some
Speaker 80
46:04
type of residential care non-family type care. Okay, thank you. And what number does the 8% represent?
Speaker 74
46:12
So the 8% and the corresponding 15%, we're looking at children who were in traditional
foster care and upon disruption had to go to a higher level of care. And so the 8% for us as kids who are in a connected family, one of our homes, 8% upon disruption had to go to that higher level of care as opposed to 15 percent statewide
Speaker 83
46:33
in traditional foster care upon disruption have to go to that higher level of care just a quick follow-up
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
46:39
so it's eight percent is that 10 children 15 children do you have that number and if you don't have it with you that's fine so i can't
Speaker 74
46:48
give you an exact number but if we had 230 um 230 kids who left our care it'd be what 2019 i think may be the number so okay
Speaker 83
46:56
thank you thank you Senator Clark thank you madam I'm going to try.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
47:38
trying to contain my emotions thank you thank y'all for what you
do not blaming anybody but I wince when I hear still the number of moves that there's any moves for those
who think we should never take children
I always tell them they should they should go out with a caseworker for a week because I hate that we ever have to because of the trauma that no matter how good our reasons are is lasting with your patience madam chair and the committee 12 years ago
we have the director in the room dcls we have the former director
who i had the pleasure of working with and becoming friends with the director before an investigation that we conducted some unfair criticism during that time but as her last act before she left she
came and testified to the JPR committee and shared what I already knew and everyone was afraid to say that judge here in Pulaski County would hold DCFS workers in contempt if they placed with family should not have been a hard fight they should have known what you know and what I who was completely ignorant of
the system knew by instinct that where we could go with family it was so much less traumatic so thank you for what you had to say i do have a concern though that i want to bring up with you and probably with the department and hopefully you are going to give me a really good answer we're not waiting two months for families to become certified as foster parents
before we place with family we're not allowing that to get in
Speaker 73
50:29
the way are we so so what i mentioned is 65 days to being fully open as a
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
50:35
foster family and i and let me say yeah preface i appreciate y'all doing that and i appreciate y'all getting them the help and the benefits and all the things they were doing but we're not allowing that them becoming certified
to stand in the way of getting kids with family
Speaker 74
50:52
that's right so so prior to that they're able to
be at provisional status through legislation that you guys have passed and DCFS authority and so they're they're provisional foster parents they have a period of time they can do that but we want to get them fully open as soon as possible and that means they're fully trained and fully supported so we do that as absolutely quickly as possible but just to make sure the answer is clear to your question that they do not have to wait until that's done to receive placement thank you and thank you again for all you do thank you sir representative eaton
Representative James Eaton
Unverified
51:28
thank you madam chair thanks for the presentation uh let's let's talk a little bit more about the counselors you said you were having
a higher retention rate sorry i missed that could you cover that again and why
Speaker 74
51:43
you think you're having the better success i breezed through that really fast so I didn't want to take too much time on everything but through our clinical program that we do provide I am professionally I'm an educator for counseling and really stepped out of the academic world into this world so that we could provide more practical solutions through my time
in education I've seen the agency model that puts so much strain on therapists the only way to really as a graduate of a counseling program in that first three years, the only services that you can provide through third-party payment, Medicaid, or insurance is through working with an agency. So most newly graduated counselors will go into agency work. In order to be able to meet the demands for the agency,
they have to do a lot of service provision, which usually means by the time they're terminally licensed, fully licensed, they're going out to do semi-private practice work we were able to to create a system through what we do that's semi-private practice in nature for them right out of graduate school but then also because of that they're able to stay in this work and not have to leave this this work providing medicaid to go to a different type of practice when they get to that fully licensed status which means that we bring counselors in we train them out of the gate and
the best trauma counseling models out there and then we retain them all the way through their career should they stay in that so so it's 95 plus retention rate compared to what's typically a 60 to 70 percent retention rate at best so thanks for that i appreciate you sharing your model thank you sir senator love thank you madam chair first of all thank you
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
53:32
all for the work that you're doing first let me let me start back with kristin and i want to say thank you for the work
that the call is doing um my wife and i started with the call and so i have a i have a soft spot in my heart for the call you all are also involved with my church so thank you all for the
work that you're doing uh doc i want to come to a question for you you had a slide that said that you all are You all have 146 children in permanency. Is that, what is that, permanent, is that adoption, or is that, can you kind of let me know what that number was when you talked about permanency?
Speaker 74
54:15
For sure. So that was in 2025, children who discharged from our care. It's our goal that they come into our home and then leave our home to go toward permanency. Okay. Because we're working with DCFS, we don't always have control of that, but we did track that 146 kids left our care and went straight to that. Generally, it's a pre-permanent placement, so it's pre-adoption or it's to their biological family. Good deal, and I want to say
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
54:40
thank you for the work that you're doing in regards to the wraparound services that you're providing
because that mental health piece is a very important piece for families because you can step in and just stabilize some of the situations because some of the children do come with a higher level of care than what people do realize and do understand. So thank you all for that work that you're doing. Thank you, Madam Chair. You bet. Thank you.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
55:14
Representative Richardson. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
55:17
To your left over here. So on the sheet that you showed, the 500 and something kids, the 75,000 nights, and then the 140, whatever that number was, moving forward. Where is that in comparison to a national standard? How are you in comparison to national standards of
Speaker 74
55:38
moving kids along? So on that slide particularly, that was more of a quantity slide. It just shows you the amount of care that we, through Connected Families, provided. And so comparison would be a challenge.
It just, it shows largely the scope of what we're doing so that really gives support for the percentages that came after that, the outcome, so. - Yeah, I know you guys are doing good work. I would just, me personally,
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
56:04
I'd be interested to see how we, how you and we as a state compared to other states with the same problems that we see across the country. Thank you. thank you okay well thank you all for both
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
56:19
being here today we appreciate your time okay next to the table we'll take represent a director Wright and the folks
that we have with her from across from Ashley County Cleburne County and Conway County if you all work you give
your names when you get to the table and We'll recognize you. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Tiffany Wright.
Speaker 112
56:57
I'm the director for the Division of Children and Family Services.
Ashley Ryan
Unverified
57:02
Good afternoon. My name is Ashley Ryan. I'm an investigator with Conway County. I am
Speaker 114
57:09
Chelsea Blanchard. I work out of Cleburne County. I'm a generalist, meaning most of my caseload is everything across the board. Good afternoon. My name is Carvietta
Speaker 116
57:17
Walker-Bridges, and I am a social services supervisor expert from Ashley County for DCFS. Thank you all for being here. If you pull
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
57:25
your microphones a little bit closer, it would help us all to be clear.
Speaker 120
57:28
Thank you so much. So I just wanted to say to committee that this today we're starting a hiring campaign at DCFS to try to fill our current vacancies in an effort
Speaker 121
57:39
to try something different and new to fill our vacancies that we have across the state. But most importantly, you all hear from me, but I wanted to hear from you all to hear from these ladies that are doing the work day in and day out at DCFS. And so I'm going to turn it over to Ashley first and just they have prepared things that they want you all to know about what it's like to work for the division.
Ashley Ryan
Unverified
58:06
Good afternoon and thank you all for having me be here. As Ms. Wright said, my name is Ashley Ryan. I work in Colmway County, which is Borlton, Arkansas, in Area 5 for DCFS. I've been with the department for about nine and a half years. In the beginning, I did foster care work, but then later did, or later turned into investigations, and I've been doing investigations for the department for just about seven years. I'm very passionate about investigations. To me, working investigations is the, you know, I'm the first face that people see within DCFS.
And with that, I have a lot of passion in not just empowering families that I work with, but also educating the community in which I work in with what DCFS stands for because again I think someone has stated about how removal is our last thing that DCFS wants to do if we can keep these children in the home then ultimately that is our goal providing support and services for these families. I've worked with a lot of families, and I love watching a family reunify with their
children or child. I worked with a parent who actually inherited the case when I first started DCFS. Mom had a long history of drug use, which started in, you know, her teenage years. Her parent was an addict as well. Her children had come into foster care due to parental drug use. During her time, she started with, when I started, visitations were only, or family time visits were only an hour long. In those family time visits, her infant child who had come into care in a
Garrett's Law due to parental drug use at the time of birth would cry the whole time. I mean, scream did not know that that was her his mother and it was really hard she worked all the way up into actually getting unsurvized visits however due to her substance abuse and her trauma she ultimately ended up relapsing and we ended up having to terminate her rights on her children due to the age of the mom I knew that there was going to be a time where you know I'd probably
get another investigation or another there would be another investigation at that time I had to actually switch to investigations I'll never forget the day that I got a call I was out in the field and my supervisor had told called me and told me that there was a priority one in the inbox for Garrett's law I asked who it was and they stated the name mom had actually delivered in Little Rock for DCFS if you know a family a parent or a child is in another county we request secondary, I immediately decided, hey, don't even request it. I'm going to go out because
I had also built a relationship with this mom of rapport. I went out, ultimately ended up having to remove this child due to drug use. She again had another child in care and actually soared this time. She did absolutely amazing. She was reunified with her child. About a year and a half later, she had reached out to me and she was actually pregnant and I got to attend her baby shower for her little girl and then later ended up getting to go visit her child in her home and
there was you know there was no investigation she had no cases with DCFS and due to the fact that Moralton is a small town I ran into her in Walmart one day and she told me that she now does ministry work in the jail for Conway County. And to me, ultimately, that is why I do this job. It's not about the numbers. It's not about the amount of parents that I help. It's that one mom that I saw that had so much trauma and lost her children, but continued to fight and is doing
absolutely amazing. And that to me is ultimately as to why I continue to do this job. But it's not just helping families it's also it's also educating the community you know we work with a I tell people all the time DCFS is not black and white there's a lot of gray area and it takes a village to do this job you know with juvenile probation with law enforcement I go out to homes that I mean I don't know these people a large amount of them have criminal history I'm going
into this home and I'm going into this home unannounced they have no idea who I am I'm asking them hard questions and sometimes I need juvenile probation or law enforcement to assist me with this because ultimately I could be removing their child and so working with with law enforcement juvenile probation the schools talking to schools letting school schools know exactly how DCFS works because again my goal is not to remove a child immediately my job is to make sure that we
can provide resources services for families to better them to hopefully prevent removal and to keep children in the home because removing a child from the only thing that they know even though we don't believe that it's you know right their living conditions is the only normal normalcy of course foster homes and provisionals are great as well but taking them is just as traumatic as them staying in that home um yes and so but with that being said i love my job i'm very passionate about my job but there are a lot of hardships with this job and that is this job is not a nine
to five um i'm a mom myself i have two children that are very active in sports in school and all of those things and there are several times where i've had to be on call which i do understand that comes with the territory of my job and I am I'm fine with that but I've had to sleep on three chairs in a hospital for you know from midnight to nine o'clock because a child went acute and we couldn't or was going acute to a behavioral hospital and we couldn't find a hospital to take him and so my bed for the night was three plastic hard hospital chairs and I slept there until about
off and on because i was getting calls from different hospitals to get information and again this is also another county's child so i didn't have a lot of information so it was going off of what i knew to the best of my ability until he was actually approved and then was transported by ambulance to the resident or the acute facility until nine o'clock and then i get to get home and I have children to take care of and I have to go about my day and make sure that
my children are good and taken care of because I don't ever want my children to feel neglected because of my job my job my my job is my priority and so is my children or so are my children just like with on call I am in this central Arkansas so I will tell you a lot of my on call is transporting and I was on call last week um Tuesday through Friday and every night I transported um different foster kids that were going from one one corner to the state to the other
um and I was not getting home till 11 o'clock at night or and then by the time I get home my children of course you know can't sleep until I get home so they know that I'm safe um and so we're getting in bed by you know midnight and then we're getting up at six o'clock to start the day and do it all over again so there are a lot of hardships with this job but I do understand that you know what it comes what comes with my job um and again I work in the community in which I live and so if I can better families and help them in the community that I
live like ultimately that is my it is my job or my goal sorry no it is kind
Speaker 122
1:05:59
of my job too but um so yes thank you they're
Speaker 125
1:06:03
real nervous y'all okay good afternoon madam chairperson
Speaker 116
1:06:11
and the members of the committee i thank you for this opportunity to speak on behalf of the division of children and family service and yet again i am carvey at a walker bridges i am a social services supervisor expert for ashley county southeast
Arkansas, Area 10. I've been doing this work for 22 years now, and like Ashley stated, this is not easy work. We don't work a typical 9 to 5 or 8 to 5 like other individuals do. We are working day in and day out. We're dealing with families. We're dealing with children. We're dealing with their lives. So this job, yes, we may make mistakes. Do we try to make these mistakes? No, we do not, but we go in as human we treat these individuals and families as human beings so we have to keep
that in mind um again we work those non-standard hours we are going out all times of the night and some people may not know we are approaching situations under uncertainty we're going in with paper pencil a badge um and knocking on doors in the middle of the night and early mornings and sometimes it's unsafe and we do have to collaborate with our law enforcement to ensure that our staff are safe in the field and when the staff is out us as supervisors we have to be
aware of what's going on as well whether we're in the field with them or we're at home or we're at the office but we have to ensure that they feel safe and making the right decisions to keep these children in their homes. So a memorable moment for me going through, well, I have many. 22 years, I have many, but this one stood out as far as family preservation. I had this young lady that was in care. She came in around August of 2020, and she was in care until June of 2024 with 15
plus placements during this time due to the struggles with her mental health, her defiant behavior, separation, and not understanding why her family didn't want her in the home anymore. You know, she had several issues and why her parental parents' rights were terminated. Me, being the person that I am, I did not care. I still do not care for terminations of parental rights, so I'm always going to do my best and have my staff do their best with trying to keep these children in the home with their families when it's safe, most appropriate.
If it's not with their families, I mean, biological parents, it's going to also be with their families, specific kin, provisional placement providers of their family, people that they know, aside from the strangers, that we place them in the non-traditional homes. And we try to do those placements that night at the time of removal, if at all possible. So this particular child, she was in several placements, and we was having this conversation with her about, you know, if adoption is not achieved, and she said she didn't want to be adopted, so we was like, okay, what do you want?
What is it you want to see happen in your life? What's next for you? And she was like, well, can I just call my dad? And this was after four years. Can I just call my dad? And we was like, do you have your dad's number? Because we lost contact with the family after the rights were terminated. She provided the number, you all. She provided us with that number. That number worked. The number worked. We called, we talked to dad, we talked to mom, we told them what her wishes were, what
she wanted, and asked them if they would even consider. And with our policies and procedures that's been put in place for us, that allowed us the opportunity to open that door for reinstating these parental rights. And with that, we had to go through a lot of steps, you know, give the justification as to why we thought this was the best placement for this child, why we wanted to return this child was rights were terminated and it was because this was the child this is what the child wanted and it was safe to return her and reinstate those rights so they went through a series of
telephone contacts started off being supervised to unsupervised visits during the day then unsupervised visits on the weekend and then we finally was able to do a trial home visit and after some time you all the rights were reinstated this child was returned home to her family and has done well since that time we hadn't had any other instances or incidents with this family or this child and with that that's why I do what I do because it's about the children it's not about us it's not about the people that the naysayers it's about what these children want
what makes these children happy what keeps them safe providing them with the permanency that they need that's going to strengthen them and their families we must learn to be intentional about this work we do each and every day. As Director Wright would state, every child deserves a safe and appropriate home each and every day, and my motto is the service that we give to these families is far more important than these seats that we occupy. Sometimes we have to step outside of these seats, you all, and see what's best for these children and families, keeping them in their homes,
keeping them safe, not with strangers. Okay. I enjoy working with the call, Ms. Kristen and her team, also with Arkansas Baptist Home, which is now Connected Families. They do very well with assisting us with putting our children in safe homes that are appropriate when we're unable to keep them with their families. And with that and the collaboration of the community, you know, just the vision that we have goes beyond the resources that we have. So with you all's help and support of this team, DCFS, Division of Children and Family Services,
and the investments, we will have healthier children, stronger neighbors, and brighter futures for everyone that we touch each and every day. And thank you all for your
Speaker 114
1:11:58
time. Again, I'm Chelsea Blanchard. I am a part of
Speaker 115
1:12:01
Area 9. I work in Cleaver County. I've lived there since seventh grade. So sometimes it's hard to grow up in a community and then turn around and see the people you grow up with not do what they're supposed to do as parents and then meet them in that
later walk of life and have to confront them with that. To speak on behalf of my county, it is so imperative that we have collaboration with our community partners, that law enforcement, the school district, nonprofit agencies. across the board mental health providers in our area health care i mean the doctors they have really proven to be vital sorry vital um to completing a holistic approach with our
families we have found that when we have those things happening families are identifying their needs and and what they need to be doing later on their own which means they have less contact with us they've learned something they've taken away from that they know what their community can provide without us identifying it for them um i would like to tell you that a big difference in my county we have several local faith-based treatment inpatient treatment for mothers and we can
place the child with them there it's a supervised setting it's controlled this is leading to a sooner trial home placement can begin and a more successful case outcome because they finish treatment usually when their child is there they do complete that treatment some of the challenge i think one of the largest challenges that i have faced are having adequate treatment for children with complex needs these are children who do not function in a traditional foster home they have
sexually aggressive and physically aggressive behavior. They have developmental and intellectual disabilities. They have extreme mental and behavioral health care needs. Most of our residential facilities are not designed and equipped to treat children with intellectual, you know, disabilities. There is a severe lack in the state of Arkansas for children that can receive care in facilities under the age of 12 and I've noticed that there's a large upward trend of
children displaying this behavior and then we can't put them in a foster a traditional foster home who have other children in the home who are being assaulted and so it's it's very hard to find community resources to support them and so I think that that's been a large concern they self-harm when they're back in the community they run away they're they're not safe to be with themselves
there have been nights well into the night we're calling for placement and a foster parent says yes I'm willing but due to the lack of child care they're not able they work so that is a big barrier in my community and when I've asked some of these child care facilities they state lack of funding is the reason why they're no longer able to remain open and so I said that this would
be my last note card but over the last several months our county and the other counties in the area have had a staffing shortage more than normal this has directly impacted our county and with the launch of the new recruitment and retention effort I think it's imperative that the department has the resources needed to continue that and for it to be successful and have longevity the outcome of that success is not only workplace safety but ultimately safety
of the children across our state and then the part I did not prepare I wanted to let you all know that on Thursday, just this past week, we had a removal in Cleburne County. It was around three or four o'clock and we did everything we could to call this grandparent. We knew she was appropriate. She had guardianship of her other children, but she just hadn't answered the phone and called us back. And so probably around seven or eight PM, we were like, we got to call it. We got to get this kid a place to stay, a bed. And then she called. We secured a foster home because
he's six and he's so cute and he's good and so that's relatively easy to get a yes and then she called and by 11:00 p.m. we are placing with that relative thank you okay thank you for being
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:16:59
here we do have some questions if that's okay we're gonna start with
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:17:06
Senator love thank you madam chair and first of all ladies thank you all for the work that you're doing. Just a couple of questions. I want to know what type
of mental health and peer support services that you all are receiving or your employees are receiving because, you know, I've been involved with DCFS and DHS for quite some time and I do have people reach out to me and they're saying, hey, we see traumatic things. So what kind of what kind of mental health services or peer support services do you all provide your staff or or you know employees i can i can
Ashley Ryan
Unverified
1:17:47
answer i know i can just speak personally actually because
i had had a traumatic situation happen to me okay i was just making sure that was on and that i guess we're partnered with uams um and i spoke with a mental health counselor um due to the trauma that I had had um while working and it really benefited me um and they reached out to me um well actually Ms. Wright had reached out to me about it and then I had reached out to UAMS I believe her name was Dr. John and it was absolutely amazing I did a couple sessions and so I really appreciated that
Speaker 120
1:18:23
from a personal experience so recently um we launched I'm I'm
gonna get the name wrong but it's in collaboration with something called C-CERT which is a secondary trauma response for staff and so we have a safety response for staff who can reach
Speaker 121
1:18:37
out when there's been a situation to professionals at UAMS and they will go to the county office or meet with our staff however they deem appropriate in that response that's something new even
Speaker 135
1:18:48
we have not had that before outside of the traditional EAP that the state insurance offers all right okay thank you
Speaker 136
1:18:56
thank you madam chair you're welcome senator Sullivan thank you madam
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
1:19:03
chair my question be to the chair so the group that came out prior I didn't hear them mention the groups that came out prior to this I didn't hear them mention funding or lack of funding could the chair could we ask both groups to provide documentation on what it would look like for them to be quote fully funded lack of funding is different than what budgetary issues are so if the DHS can tell us what it's like what it looks like to be fully funded and the groups
that spoke prior if they have funding needs what it would look like for them to be fully funded again I hear a lot of folks say well we lack money I don't even know what that means sure we all do yeah thank you thank you senator I'll be happy to reach out to them
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:19:49
ask that information for you and we'll get it back to the committee thank you sir um
ladies my quick question for you is what is your current caseload of the two of you that are specialists what's your current caseload that you have
Ashley Ryan
Unverified
1:20:04
right now mine thankfully right now is 11 which is to me ideal because i can give the families exactly
what they need i mean i will be honest and there's been times i've had you know 40 um it just depends investigations is different i guess i would say from um case work because and i'm the only investigator in my county and so i could maybe not get any investigations for a couple days and then get hit with with two one day three the next and then two more um so there's not but right now it's 11. okay 21 21 okay
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:20:38
i'm just curious thank you uh director wright can you tell us what and
And I forget the supervisor, she has everybody underneath her. But, Director, can you give us some specifics on what you're looking at for your recruitment and your launch
Speaker 120
1:20:52
that you're bringing out right now? Yes, and I just wanted to clarify, we do have some supervisors
Speaker 121
1:20:58
in the state that do carry caseloads when we have workforce issues. So I didn't, but she does not have any. So, yeah, so we are, so we stood up a DCFS jobs webpage. We're planning to also stand up monthly webinars to try.
So on that web page, you can click and see all of the available jobs in the state. Then you also can send in an inquiry to learn more. And we're planning to have monthly webinars to engage people who are maybe not applying or don't want to apply. And I'm happy to have guests from all over the state for DCFS to join and talk about their why and what that will look like. Just a different way to try to engage people. We haven't tried this before. And then all of my partners across the state have pledged to share and promote all of our hiring efforts as well.
So hopefully to saturate social media in an effort to get qualified applicants on the list. If you'll send that to Blake
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:21:55
and let him send that to us, we'd like to be able to help in getting
Speaker 72
1:22:01
that word out as well. I would sincerely appreciate that. All right. Representative Shepard. Thank
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:22:07
you, Madam Chair. Thank you all for being here today. Your work is greatly appreciated. Listening to what you all were sharing in regards to the trauma, and Dr. Wright, I'm sure, well, Director Wright. Director Wright, I'm sure you all are very familiar with ACEs,
Adverse Childhood Experiences, and that children in Arkansas face more trauma than most children in the nation. So thank you for the work that you do. Going back to my question to the gentleman before you, and you may not have those numbers, And Madam Chair, the reason I ask for those numbers is, you know, we talk about school-to-prison pipeline, but there's also such a thing as DCFS-to-prison pipeline, meaning because of what you are describing at the table, children facing so much trauma in their lives and lack of community placement, lack of being able to get the services that they need, they end up going to, quote, unquote, earlier, a higher level of care.
And so, Madam Chair, I'd like to know from DCFS, if you don't have it today, the number of children that are in DYS's custody that are also in DCFS custody, which is what we call crossover
Speaker 152
1:23:20
youth. Yeah, we call them dual custody. 16 in DYS custody,
Speaker 154
1:23:24
and an additional 11 are incarcerated, so they could be in a JDC. Okay, thank you. Can you
Speaker 155
1:23:32
and I meet offline later on in regards to those children?
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:23:37
Yes, ma'am, we can. Thank you. And thank you,
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:23:43
Madam Chair. You're quite welcome. Representative Gonzales-Whorthing. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank you for sharing with us how you're trying to fill your slots with HR. And your stories were compelling, and I just wanted to know if by chance there could be maybe placed on your website a mini version of those testimonials for people that might be interested in those various positions
if you wanted to do that. And I don't know, maybe you're already doing that. Yes, ma'am. So there
Speaker 158
1:24:15
is a video that is already out there,
Speaker 120
1:24:18
I'm pretty sure, on the website. That's an older video, but not a bad idea to include some of the testimony from the staff as well, which was why during the webinars it will be important for people to hear
Speaker 121
1:24:27
from those doing the frontline work, which we plan to include in that work as well so thank you senator clark thank you madam chair the um
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:24:42
thank you ladies um you know we say you know thank you for your service so many times to a lot of people some of us do and I know it comes across as empty or it feels like it does but you can't
imagine how thankful some of us are you know there was a time when my
name was literally used as a curse word DCF offices across the state may still be
some places the um but uh always told people then actually most of most of problems i found out about came came from people like you that actually were working those cases but i told people you know one of the problems is it's such a hard job people have no idea how difficult it is so it's hard to hire people
and then it's hard to keep people thank you not just for doing it and telling us these wonderful stories thank you for staying because after it being such a hard job the next thing i tell people is the good ones burn out is the good ones the ones who really care the ones who really care about kids tend to burn out and so thank you not just for doing the jobs thank you you for staying. And let us know what you need. As Senator Sullivan said, I'm a fiscal hawk. I don't
like spending money on anything, and nor does a center hammer. But about eight years ago, we laid the way back then for $40 million more in your budget for hiring and for raises because we were couldn't keep people because they were underpaid but since then we've had coven in the rapid inflation and so on and it's hard to keep employees anywhere these days so tell us what we need as long as we get people just like you and
I also you know one of the problems with term limits and I'm for term limits but one of the problems with term limits is that so many people haven't heard they're hearing the stories today but they weren't here to hear back when and Ms. Walker Bridges I wanted to stand up and cheer I mean I did for all of you
but when Director Martin and parent counsel Glenn Hallgard and I had the idea that terminated parents could come back and claim
a child that had never been adopted, that was still in the system. People literally thought we were insane. So thank you for telling that
story. Because however bad the parents were and are,
kids of a certain age are never going to forget
who the parents are. were and so ever anytime we can come up with a solution that goes back to that family even if we've had to give up as you brought up even if we've had to give up before uh just you know for those of us in a place where we hear the bad stories it's always great to hear the good but most importantly the most important thing for me today was to meet you because i talk i've talked
about you for years about the good ones and it's just thank you director for bringing them thank you madam chair you're quite welcome and uh but it my question is it's a partnership isn't it we can't do it without you we can't do it without the very good ones and the leadership and you can't do it without us can you you can't do it if we don't do our part if we don't provide the
funding if we don't uh if we don't insist that things get done right and if we don't uh spread the word isn't that correct
so again thank you thank you madam chair thank
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
1:29:24
you senator senator scott thank you madam chair i have a couple questions um director wright what
does turnover look like now I know he addressed the issue and we couldn't keep staff I know we did raises what is your turnover looking
Speaker 164
1:29:40
like now so I'm actually happy to say well I do have some count
like I don't have this down to the
Speaker 121
1:29:47
county level but on a state level and happy because this is a better number than where it's been approximately 43 percent for the specialists which is an
Speaker 154
1:29:55
which is improved I'm y'all will probably remember the days where it was 75 60 and so
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
1:30:02
43 right now okay And my additional questions are, what is the average pay for the incoming
Speaker 154
1:30:09
caseload worker? Oh, off the top of my head, I think it's roughly around $55,000, I think, with the new salary.
Speaker 150
1:30:16
I had the old number memorized, like 36 was the old. That's not
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
1:30:21
it anymore. I think it's $55,000. That sounds significantly better than what we were paying. Yes. But when she said her caseload, it reminded me of very high, kind of comparative to the caseload that our probation officers have. And when I think about the level of care that those inmates are, you know, once they're released getting, they're just running by to see them for five minutes. So what does it look like carrying
Speaker 115
1:30:46
21 cases? And if I may, these past few months have not been typical.
Typically our summertime is our slower season because our mandated reporters, the kids are not at school with them. You know, people are home. We did not have that this year. In fact, it has been one of the most challenging summers that we have had in my area. And so this is not a typical caseload. Usually 16 is where I sit in my county. Right now, I manage this caseload well.
We also are short a staff member in our office. I manage this caseload well because of my supervisor and my other staff, and so I just have to say that I could not do it without them. And, you know, when I need some help with paperwork or just a home visit here and there, we all jump in, And I think that speaks to the quality of staff that we have. And
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
1:31:50
to echo off of Senator Sullivan,
I think a lot of agencies come before us, like the Department of Corrections and higher ed or education, and they oftentimes will not tell us what they need.
And so as we're asking what are the financial needs, Director Wright, if you had endless money, what could we give you to make lives better for these children in Arkansas? you know what would that look like and I know that's a big ask I know directors are not comfortable sometimes coming down here for whatever reason and giving us those numbers but it's a lot of us that do care and we'll try to find the pieces for things that make sense and that are reasonable and we have money and so I think some of the agencies are significantly underfunded and we
need to look at some of those priorities so I'm not trying to get you in trouble or anything but I am trying to ask you and we could talk about
Speaker 121
1:32:48
it offline what does that look like if we can give you some more resources um I definitely would just say that supporting my partners across the state who are doing the work is critical for DCFS um you know you heard today from the call the answer Arkansas Baptist I have many more of them um obviously if I I mean if I could retain the current
Speaker 154
1:33:08
workforce um I feel like it would DCFS would feel drastically different um retain and
fill my vacancies DCFS would feel different because the caseloads would be um lower um I I um would like to think further about your question just because I would want to give a very articulate answer to that thank you all so much ladies you can go we're going to ask a few more
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:33:35
questions to director right so thank you all so much for being here we cannot tell you how much we appreciate your work just
know that we really care about what you're doing
Speaker 120
1:33:45
i did think for sure senator clark was going to ask them about placing with relatives but he let them off the
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:34:00
hot seat i excuse me madam chair i didn't from those three i had no doubt what
Speaker 120
1:34:05
the answer would be they were sitting behind me when you asked the question going all the time all the time we place with relatives all the time so i could i was like ask them
Speaker 179
1:34:16
when they get up here okay so i um now get to present to y'all um the family preservation report um that
is on the agenda today. I just want to say one thing. This indicates it's state fiscal year 26. It's actually calendar year 2025. So this will be for the year of 25 different than our other
Speaker 121
1:34:38
reports that are by state fiscal year. And then I also wanted to point out that if you're interested in very specific counties, you go to the very
Speaker 179
1:34:48
back of the book and there is outline of specific counties and then this report is broken down into safety permanency and well-being
and there are strengths highlighted at the end of each section so strengths and areas for improvement as we go through the book and so on page two I'm just going to start and go through a couple of the figures and then if you all have questions happy to take those page two the figure one is just a breakdown of the accepted child maltreatment reports statewide and in that chart you'll see the this is historical 23 24 and 25 broken down by investigation to dr and so the top line is
Speaker 121
1:35:33
investigations the bottom line is dr as a reminder differential response is our lower levels of maltreatment and at the figure two at the bottom of
Speaker 179
1:35:43
that you can see how it's broken down across each area of our state and I don't have another handout with the area map I always try
Speaker 154
1:35:53
to tell you to look at the front of a
Speaker 179
1:35:58
cover of a previous presentation so I'm sorry about that on page three you'll see our time timeliness to investigation statewide again the three-year
comparison we ended the calendar year at 77 percent and below that you can see the areas we continue in pulaski county by area to struggle with timely initiations they are
Speaker 121
1:36:20
a county that we continue to struggle with workforce that we hope will benefit from some of the workforce work that we're doing um on
Speaker 179
1:36:31
page four you'll see the timely investigation completion statewide um and that's
at 71 percent this year
Speaker 121
1:36:39
you heard Chelsea say it but usually the summer is of time where we get a lot we catch up on different things we manage workload we have been struggling in two of our areas with overdue investigations which impacts the timeliness of closure those that's our northwest Arkansas region in
Speaker 179
1:37:00
our northeast Arkansas region they had significant overdues that we've been working on all summer daily phone calls to check in and help them prioritize the work
that sort of thing and then the bottom page for figure six is the breakdown by area if you're curious
Speaker 182
1:37:21
by area. I did want to, okay, page five is
Speaker 179
1:37:31
the substantiation rate. So we talk about this sometimes when I present the annual report card of the number of investigations we receive, how many times we're finding true on families for maltreatment. We keep, we continue to average
between the 18 and 19 percent and you can also see that broken down by area as well at the bottom of page five at the on page six figure nine is reoccurrence of maltreatment so again this is when a family has a maltreatment report how many times are after we found true are we um are the children be re-victimized of maltreatment um five percent is the average
which remains underneath the national average and we do deep dive into those and try to review decision making and coach staff through practice concerns that they may have as well as look at the specific areas so as you can see here there are the specific areas and so asking significant questions just around application of practice with our staff page 7 figure 11 is timely differential response initiations and then the bottom is by broken down
again by area area 10 continues to lead the state with the highest initiation rate so that would be carvieta's area and then followed by area nine which would be the actually the area of the state that chelsea was from page eight you can see that the timeline timeliness of completion statewide for those drs increased again in 2025 and just focusing on ensuring that when we're
involved with families we're making good decisions supporting them and then moving them safely from system involvement and again there's the breakdown at the bottom and then continuing to work with all of our area leaders just on their specific area data um i wanted to point out um just that i one of the things that we learned from our workforce was the need to redo our new staff training. In July, we officially went live with our new staff training in the new way. We modeled
Speaker 121
1:40:00
out of Utah who is having significant outcomes to their workforce in a positive way. So July 1st started a whole new staff training timeline. So old way, you would be in training for nine or more months. You are no longer in training that long. And now you're getting hands-on simulation. We also opened the child welfare learning lab on the university of arkansas campus here in little rock we're very proud of that so it's a house just like you might experience if you're knocking on the door
of someone's house that you have a differential response or an investigation on or family that you're working with through in-home and so we're very excited to put that to use and staff are already in it and learning and it is it is real so maybe at some point we can take a field trip and you all can see the house as well um but we are hoping that some of the things that we're seeing
Speaker 179
1:40:57
around decision making will build consistency with through the revamped new staff training model and amber was my she did all that heavy lift in just under a year so would you add anything to
that i'm very proud of the work that amber and her team did anything okay moving into permanency on page 11 ended the year in 2025 with 3,320 children in foster care you can see the breakdown below areas two and eight can lead the state with the number of children in foster care area two is be the river valley area sebastian yale crawford and then area eight is your northeast craighead
that part of the state as you can see and what you saw this statistic earlier in one of the presentations about 66% of our children are children's placements statewide in the county or outside of the county or neighboring county and then the bottom shows you the areas of the state with the proximity of the child's placement i'm going forward to page 14 um 43 of our children are placed with relatives that's at
we are continuing to increase to our goal of 50 we are actively working on continuing to remove any systems barriers that would prevent timely placement of relatives and ensuring that our staff are finding them we've increased some accountability asking more questions reviewing kids who are coming into foster care who are not placed with a safe and appropriate relative and how we continue to navigate through that and you can see the bottom of page 14 shows you which
areas of the state move are placed with placing with relatives more frequently page 15 is placement stability rate statewide and so 5.62 is our placement stability rate and this is something that continuing to focus on the first placement the best placement and hopefully that is with a
Speaker 154
1:43:18
safe and appropriate relative so we do not have to move children
multiple times from placement to placement and page
Speaker 179
1:43:31
16 which is permanency figure 27 permanency within 12 months of entering foster care a statewide number the area number is below so area I had six of my 10 areas in the state who met or exceeded the national standard for 2025 5 area 9 had the highest rate of timely permanency at 49 and then followed by areas 1 and 5
we obviously as you can see we are above the national average and this is all about how do we safely move children who entered foster care out of foster care and how do we do that timely and you we have been focused on those kids who we call long stairs in foster care which are your kids who are here 24 months or longer um and what their permanency goals are and how we're navigating the system but
Speaker 135
1:44:26
also this is a reunification focus and so continuing to work
across not only dcfs but to our judicial partners with how do we safely move kids home
Speaker 179
1:44:40
um page 17 re-entries into foster care within 12 months statewide was at 6.6 percent at the end of 2025 um you may see that we are above the national standard however they just changed the national standard prior to this it was 8.3 and so
Speaker 121
1:44:59
now we have some work to do to determine how to um what's
Speaker 179
1:45:04
happening with re-injuries and we do review some of these cases to understand did we move too fast what was the timeline to permanency did parents not get the correct services and how do we keep navigating through that did we use community partners did we not those are the questions that we're asking number of adoptions finalized in 2025 was 474 and that is lower as you can see
that decline however I would say that we are leading doing a lot of work in the state to move kids to permit and see if their goal is adoption we have 143 children available for adoption which is an all-time low in the state and so the kids that are available are big complex they need specific more specific recruitment and so we continue to work with our partners project zero on that and then and like i said on page 19 is the strengths and the areas for improvement for
you to review some of the things that we continue to talk about using prevention services and safe care as appropriate to prevent the removals but also ensuring that we make the best placement decisions as possible when we're bringing kids into foster care and then can continue to focus on foster parent recruitment as necessary when there's not a safe and appropriate relative page 21 is about well-being and so this is around monthly visitation to caseworkers you can see it
was 79 percent at the end of 2025 and you can see the breakdown by areas on those visits from caseworkers to children in care page 22 is the sorry worker visitation with children in foster care statewide so this would be visiting foster kids in their home at 83 percent and you can see the area break down below areas one and six continue to struggle with ensuring that they're doing those visits and
we continue to monitor and have those conversations about exactly what it what barriers they're facing and how we can support them in doing that work. We have staff helping in Area 1 from all over the state to help them during this time. So there's a lot of different pieces. We're working to stabilize both of those areas. And that is my report. Colleagues, any questions at all?
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:47:51
I just want to commend you for a good job. appreciate all the hard work that you do and I know that you're your heart and souls in this way really appreciate it and I'm excited to see we have any what happens with your recruitment efforts so keep us posted on that all right thank you so appreciate your support thank you okay
next on our agenda we have a major with us here to give us an update Jim and please recognize yourselves and you
Speaker 193
1:48:31
You can be in your report. Jeff Drew, Arkansas State
Speaker 195
1:48:46
Police Crimes Against Children, Division Commander. Jason Aaron, Lieutenant
Speaker 196
1:48:53
Colonel with the Arkansas State Police. All right, good afternoon, everybody, excuse me, I'll be giving you the quarterly report
Speaker 197
1:48:59
from January or March of this year, starting on page two.
You'll see that the hotline received 16,873 calls during this time period, with 9,591 of those being accepted. CACD handled 1,803 of those, and DCFS received 5,934 with 1,854 going to differential response. If you look at page 3, it will have the Priority 1 allegations by type
that were investigated by CACD, a monthly breakdown of the five categories there. On page four, you'll see a breakdown of the calls that came from mandated reporters. On page five, you'll see the monthly breakdown of the cases that were opened and closed. In that three-month time period, 1,734 cases were opened.
We were able to close 1,595. Of those 1,595, we had a true finding in 485 of those, which was a substantiation rate of 30%. There were 3,961 cases that were still active on that time period, with 413 remaining open after 45 days.
Pages 6 and 7, you'll be able to see the counties broken down where you can see what's taking place in your area. On page 9 and 10, we'll reflect the reported allegation type along with alleged victim age groups. Pages 11 through 23 will show the relationships between the offender and the victims with the age groups of the alleged offenders.
And from page 24 through 32 will be a breakdown of prosecuting attorneys, judicial districts, cases submitted to prosecutors. and they're broken down into what was filed declined and pending if you look at the bottom of page 32 it will show you that we submitted 661 with 361 haven't
having something filed and we're waiting on a decision on 219 of those and 81 was declined that'll conclude the CACD report
Speaker 198
1:52:13
any questions thank you gentlemen for being here today I really appreciate it
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:52:20
so a couple questions that I've got can we you were saying that we had 45 back on page 5 we substantiated 30% and we had a few more open so what are some of that what is some of the causes that
were made a case to be rain open past
the 45 days can you give us a kind of a a rundown of what might delay it
Speaker 197
1:52:45
from getting taken care of in that amount of time? Most consistently, a lot of our cases that we're operating have law enforcement involvement, and unfortunately they're not restricted, maybe unfortunate wasn't the correct word, they're not restricted with the 45 days that we have in order to get the case investigated and closed, so it'll have to remain between that time. There are times when we're trying to locate collateral witnesses. Sometimes we're missing victims, we're missing offenders that we need to make contact.
uh, to meet that time restraint. Are you
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:53:13
working in collaboration with local law enforcement when you, when you're doing those cases or no? Yes, ma'am. Yes. Okay. Um, so my other question is back to these prosecutors that are declining these cases. I see 81 cases that they declined to, to prosecute. What is usually their answer for why? Do you know, is there a common thread or anything that we're? Our standard
Speaker 197
1:53:33
is a little bit different. Ours is a preponderance and they're held to a higher standard and there are cases where they need more information and where they
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:53:42
feel they'd be able to prosecute them okay i guess i'll keep asking questions no one has any so can we does our software system it's the privilege of being a chairman in it that's it um does our software system allow and i have had some constituents ask me this while i'm asking this question so um if a call is made on a specific child and that parent jumps up and moves to another county to avoid being caught or whatever or trying accountability for that child does our system can that name be typed in from another mandated reporter and the case come back up does
our software system allow you to do that when it when because when they call back with a mandated reporter comes with another call is our software system able
to say hey this has already been called on this child before we've already had some calls come in on
Speaker 193
1:54:27
that individual yes ma'am but sometimes we'll run into difficulties with the
Speaker 197
1:54:30
name being typed in the correct way and it may cause it not to be attached at that time. Like, well, for instance, my name being Drew, let's say one investigator may type it in as D-R-E-W the correct way and another one might type it in as D-R-U,
which will cause some problems with that.
Speaker 146
1:54:47
Okay. I appreciate that. Let's see. So, you know, as I've
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:54:53
shared many times, what you guys do is so crucially important And I appreciate our opportunities to maybe get our hotline trainers paid more and continue to increase their training and their education so that we can get even a better job done there. So is there any thoughts on that and what we can do to – I know that we have some concerns, right,
some things that have been dropped that shouldn't have been dropped or colleges that shouldn't have been accepted, whatever. It's a very, very tough job that those folks have. So what are some things that we're doing to, as Director Wright is doing with their caseworkers there to encourage the morale or increase the competency or
Speaker 197
1:55:35
we're doing now i think any support that we can receive from here would be great i know some things we're looking at as far as help helping our investigators as was mentioned before they're under a lot of pressure with what they're doing we're looking
at things that handle them uh will assist with some of the mental health issues that come with because they're exposed to ungodly things and people shouldn't be exposed to it and they're being exposed to it on a regular basis. I think we're pretty good with getting support from our director and assistant directors as far as moving forward, but any assistance that y'all could help them make it easier for us would be
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:56:12
greatly appreciated. Okay. No other questions, colleagues? We've got one, Representative Henley. Thank you.
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
1:56:19
Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is that a report that we're looking at is January through March of this year. And so should we assume that there's at least this many cases that went to the next three months, the April, May, June? I'm sorry. Can we not get a
more clear report on where we are in time? We're going to be back in September,
Speaker 197
1:56:45
if I'm not mistaken, the the report through June is that what you're asking I think so so so the June
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
1:56:54
reports are not finalized yet is that right there they're ready it's
Speaker 197
1:56:59
just a matter of present them to you representative
Speaker 212
1:57:04
Henley I received the most recent report from them that goes from April to June I can email that to you the chair at the moment she didn't know how long of the presentations of the other presenters were so I had emailed mr. drew here to hold off the most recent report but it will it will come at a later meeting okay thank you thank you
Speaker 68
1:57:29
okay thank you gentlemen for being here we appreciate your report thank
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:57:41
you for your support okay colleagues with our business taking care where committees adjourned Thank you.
Unknown speaker
1:58:16
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Thank you. Thank you.
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Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration to Approve June 3, 2026, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Discussion of Private Entities Working with Families [Exhibits C1 - C6]
D. Review of Department of Human Services, Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS), Family Preservation Services Report SFY 2026 [Exhibit D]
E. Review of Arkansas State Police, Crimes Against Children Division (CACD), Quarterly Oversight Report, January – March 2025 [Exhibit E]
F. Other Business
G. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
Speaker 9
Derek Brown
Unverified
Speaker 16
Speaker 24
Speaker 28
Speaker 30
Speaker 31
Speaker 32
Speaker 36
Speaker 41
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
Speaker 46
Speaker 74
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
Speaker 80
Speaker 83
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
Speaker 73
Representative James Eaton
Unverified
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
Speaker 112
Ashley Ryan
Unverified
Speaker 114
Speaker 116
Speaker 120
Speaker 121
Speaker 122
Speaker 125
Speaker 115
Speaker 135
Speaker 136
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
Speaker 72
Speaker 152
Speaker 154
Speaker 155
Speaker 158
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
Speaker 164
Speaker 150
Speaker 179
Speaker 182
Speaker 193
Speaker 195
Speaker 196
Speaker 197
Speaker 198
Speaker 146
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
Speaker 212
Speaker 68