Children & Youth Committee - Senate & Aging, Children & Youth, and Legislative Affairs- House
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- October 2, 2026
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
2:42
right colleagues we'll go ahead and get this meeting startedreddie to get to their seats appreciate your patience. I just had a
little bit long in physical therapy session so thank y'all for being here today. I appreciate y'all coming in and it's a very important committee I thank y'all for showing up today. 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 got a motion got a 2nd 2, OK. all those approved sayy aye thank you all very much we'll move forward. OK so we have some great discussions today that I've been looking forward to for
a bit so hope that you all as well so
we're gonna kind of jump out of order just a little bit. we've been asked to have Mrerre Brown andritian Butler come and give their presentation first so if they want to come to the table be happy to take them first thank you all so much for being here and thank
you so much for what you do for our children across the state so when you get to the table if you will please recognize yourselves and then we'll let you begin with your presentation
Speaker 9
3:47
Good morning my name is risten Butler I'm honored to serve as the executive director for the call and the answerswer foster care. good afternoon doctorctor
Derek Brown
Unverified
3:56
Derek Brown Arkansas Batist Children and Family Ministries. I'm glad to be here with you today. thank you both for being
Speaker 9
4:04
here and you may begin. I'm so appreciative of your time and your advocacy so before we get started today in sharing about the
Speaker 16
4:09
work that we're so blessed to be a part of 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. as we begin I would love to share
Speaker 9
4:33
make sure we're working. 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 Arkansan but as we look within this we see
Speaker 16
4:43
our local counties and then with each local county theres 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 home local communities. So within
Speaker 9
5:01
this of course this number does fluctuate day by day but on average we're seeing around3,400 children and youth in foster care in our state on average around 835 traditional foster homes that are equipped to be able to stand up and support them and this is
Speaker 16
5:14
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
5:32
we also currently across our state are seeing an average of60 to65% of our kids in foster care that are being placed outside of their home
Speaker 16
5:38
county I'm gonna share some statistics about that here in just a moment but do want to highlight that as it's on the 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.
Speaker 24
6:27
What would you do if Lindsay someone told you that you had to leave your home
Speaker 28
6:33
home 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'll be staying with.
Speaker 28
6:43
what happens to kids like me every day we leave behind
Speaker 30
6:46
our bedrooms our schools our friends our favorite toys everything
Speaker 28
6:49
that feels familiar and suddenly we're walking into
a seasons we never chose it's scary not knowing what comes in not knowing where you'll
Speaker 31
7:02
sleep, not knowing who will be there when you wakeaka. not knowing if anyone understands what
Speaker 32
7:07
you're feeling but what if we didn't have to enter that season alone.
Speaker 31
7:10
what if someone chose to stay with us to us to care for us to remind us that we're not forgotten. that's
Speaker 32
7:17
where people like you can make all the difference
Speaker 24
7:22
you don't have to be perfect. you don't have to have all the answerss.
Speaker 30
7:29
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 when
Speaker 36
7:50
theurch stands together hid by plane don't have to face foster carolina. right
Speaker 30
7:56
now more than3,400 children in Arkansas are walking
Speaker 32
8:00
through a season of uncertainty. Children who need someone to stand beside them someone to believe in him, someone to remind them they matter today we're asking you
Speaker 30
8:10
to do more than just see the need. we're inviting you
Speaker 28
8:14
to a spawn to stand for children like me
Speaker 31
8:20
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
8:36
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 ultimate
ly it is why we do this it's to help support these kiddos like can I help thank you sir thank you as Blake shares and gets us set up for our next piece and the call began in 2007 really out of a heart to raise more foster families
Speaker 9
9:25
here in Pulaski countunty we began kind of a new partnership with the state with the division of childrenldren 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 wrapparound support services so that those families have a reason and an opportunity to
Speaker 16
9:44
continue to say yes we've now expanded to all75 counties offering local support and services to each county still 100% donor funded through the generosity
Speaker 9
9:53
of fellow Arkansans and also still as partners with DCFs so this slide is very busy and I
Speaker 16
10:00
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 with 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 are70 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 a 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 past 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 healthal 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 poster op families begin to struggle510 years down the road so we offer the 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 a 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 love from
Speaker 9
13:23
our state and people who stood up to say yes. since we began in 2007 over4,600 families have been trained through the call who have gone on to serve
Speaker 16
13:32
over35,000 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
Speaker 9
13:45
throughout our support services we also have38 support centers all across our state we've provided a map
Speaker 16
13:50
with 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 th38 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 callll 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 at any point. we we also
Speaker 9
14:44
offer within this our support center and our family
Speaker 16
14:48
time visit spaces so children 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 adCfS office but since 2007 they've been able to come into our call support centers and have a familylike visit where they can sit on the floor and play a game they can play basketball in the backyard ard 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 practice that bedtime
Speaker 9
15:33
routine before they went back home for reunification. we're also in our support centers able to meet the needs
Speaker 16
15:38
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 over4,900 biological family visits in our centers sometimes that includes cleaning apples sauce 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. Since2017 we have been able to host over 15,000 biological family visits in these homelike
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 a 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 in the request of DCfS we launched our partner organization the Answer oster Care as you can see by this graph, the call continues to work on recruitment the pre certification paperwork training and then the answer and the counties where we are currently at which is7 moving to 11 soon. they handle the licenger and then they help assist with the placement of children within those homes and 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 wrapround services. h r ough 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 to 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 and care. Through this partnership of the call and the answer the call remains focused on the areas of our expertise awareness, recruitment, holistic wrapparound support services and the answer can remain focused on their areas of expertise home certification in the ideal child placement. I'd like to share a little bit more with you about the answers
foster care. so since we began really two years ago July2024 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 our values together and we're seeing real local
impact. we deeply value local relationships Through this they're offering our countyle support the call local staff and the answer caseworker worked 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 incounty placements I alluded to that60 to65% out of county placement number earlier
when that happens it creates a duplicative issue on the entire systemy 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 kiddos 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 answers andartnership with the call we've been able to have a 91% 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% 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 into 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
MrRoger. I didn't make up his name. his name really is MisterRoger but if I was gonna give a fake name it would probably be that right MrRoger is a middle aged man he lives in central Arkansas and he is already raised his kiddos they've launched into adulthood MisterRoger 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 MisterRoger felt like he had space both in his life and in his home to help serve but see
MisterRogers extra special because he felt especially called to help care for teenagers. Through the answer, MrRoger 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.Roger 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,2 were in a group home,1 was in a residential home and would soon
be ready to step down to a traditional homelike 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 MrRoger 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 MrRogers' home was that of these three brothers together. MrRogers Church stepped up and they had a weekly
meal train coming to help this man who now is carrying for three teenage boys. I imagine that was a very large mail train and lots of food to handle that home. The call provided clothing continuing ad wrap on services. The answer checked in daily, then weekly to help with the transition needs both of MisterRoger and these three young men. you see at the heart of the work of what we do is a man in Arkansas like MisterRoger. just willing to say yes and open his heart and his home, a
community like his church willing to stamp 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 supports 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
Speaker 41
24:26
MisterRogers and these three brothers deserve our best. thank you so much for
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
24:31
your time today. we'll be up for a few questions before we start with the next presenter. 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
24:46
adding? Yes, we just received approval from our partners at DCfs we're adding on clark Grant, Pike and Montgomery. and we
Speaker 16
24:51
actually have the approval but we haven't de 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 next
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
25:04
question is so what is we as legislators what would you ask of us to help? I know you just said but what could we personal I think in our positions do to help this move forward Yes particularly
Speaker 16
25:14
are you speaking of private license agency or just foster care awareness in general with the call and answer what could we do as state leaders 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 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 grow and expand the private
license ag agencies. great thank you
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
26:05
so much Representative Gonzalez Wworthy. Yes,
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
26:08
you mentioned thank you for your presentation. you mentioned the need for more foster families and I was just curious in in my community of Springdale in northwest Arkansas. how how we might be able to help with recruiting Latino andmarshallese families because I know that there's a need in that regard. There is a desperate need for minority
Speaker 16
26:32
families across the board and so some of the work that we've been working 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 torector DC director Tiffanie 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 so what would you what do you think would be the next steps
for that in particular I think that we would need to meet withrector Wright to talk through if there's any language barriers within that and if not it would
Speaker 41
27:10
be working to create a recruitment path to be able to meet with those different communities OK thank you thank you for
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
27:21
that question Representative Springer. thank you madam Chair. Good afternoon. I would just like
to know the address of the call center in pulaski County it is4020 Woodland HeightsRoad.
Speaker 46
27:35
and it's a great space. we would love for you to come and see it has the best backyard you love that thank you so much for your presentation Doctor Bramn we're ready for you
Derek Brown
Unverified
28:12
thank you all for giving us this time and attention I'm
Speaker 74
28:15
so grateful to represent the vulnerable children and families of Arkansasgain my name's doctorctorerrickk 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 the largest religious group in the state of southern Baptists 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's 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 do is designed
Derek Brown
Unverified
29:37
to support families to stabilize families and to get kids to permanent family as quickly as possible
Speaker 74
29:45
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, familycented treatment and family advocacy for different aspects of what we do to support and stabilize families largely in partnership with the state of Arkansas 9 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 Ministry store connected Famies program provided half of all of the private placement foster kids and I 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 they're 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 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 lastst year we cared for507 children in our foster care program that was75,232 knights of care for safety stability for children in foster care
for the kids that we discharged around just over 200146 were able to leave our program and go into a permanent arrangement Something that's incredibly important to us asristen 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 of3,4,5,6 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 9 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'll 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 94% 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 iemonger particularly Si groups4,5,6,7 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 to24.
if necessary and at times it's necessary the state can request a waiver to exceed that number nected 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 to18 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 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 her care. what does that ultimately translate to? if you also have to consider budget here's a beautiful thing what's what's in the best interest for kids is also in the best interest for our state budget 15% of kids going into higher levels of care out of foster care is not great for a state budget.8% of kids coming out of this private foster care into higher levels of care it's
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 kids 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 and relative foster care through partnership with DCFs one of the the accomplishments we've been able to have at nected Families in kinship placement as we've had a65 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 369 vsus5.65 moves. So a typical child in foster care has5.65 moves versus3.69 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 home evidencebased 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 a30% 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 incredible opportunity and here's 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 247 care
for far fewer dollars familycentered 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 medicaidbas counseling through our counseling provider Livingwe counseling we were able to to provide32,14 counseling sessions just last year and you can see there on the map the 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 semiprivate 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 gonna be better because we kept those counselors and we trained them and equipped them and supported them more. christieitchin their family visit centers we just launched a family visit center
and LittleRock with se visit spaces and some level of support for DCfS and for the families and just 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 a 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
Derek Brown
Unverified
41:59
with 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
Speaker 74
42:10
was wrong when DCFS said it's time up. time's up we have to 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 caseworker didn't know what to do she was not expecting that
so what do we do 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 in and she said hey I'm on your
Derek Brown
Unverified
43:00
side but this isn't the way we do it and immediately calm 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 to do then the next time the visit was scheduled, he showed up early and he held
Speaker 74
43:24
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 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 a trap between transportation childcare 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 were 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 of43 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 familyfocused retreats because I'm sure as you know Arkansas leads the state in or leads a country rather 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 premarriage a 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 through building strong families we will build a
Derek Brown
Unverified
45:23
stronger Arkansas thank you thank you so much for your
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
45:26
presentation and we have a couple of questions for you uhpresentative shepherd thank
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
45:31
you madam chair and that was a great presentation thank you so much I have a two part question in regards to the 8% of children that went on to a higher level of care. What number does that 8% represent and where are they and then when
DHS comes to the table I like them to be able to answer the same question
Speaker 74
45:54
in regards to the 15% so the higher levels of care that I'm referring to could include therapeutic foster care most of the time it's gonna include a a qualified residential treatment program or a PRTF a psychiatric residential treatment program so some type of residential care
Speaker 80
46:09
non nonfamily type care OK thank you and what number does the 8% represent? so the the 8% and the
Speaker 74
46:20
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 is 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% statewide in
Speaker 83
46:38
traditional foster care upon disruption have to go to a higher level of care just a quick follow up
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
46:44
so it's 8 is that 10 children 15 children do you have that number and if
Speaker 74
46:50
you don't have it with you that's fine. so can't give you an exact number but if we had 230 230 kids who left our care it it'd be what 2019 I think might be the
Speaker 83
47:01
number so thank Thank you Senator Clark. thank you madam chair I'm gonna try
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
47:46
trying to contain my emotions thank you thank y'all for what you do not blaming
anybody but I went 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 the 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 they see us we have the former
director who had the pleasure of working with and becoming friends with the director before an investigation that we conducted took 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 Plasky County would hold DCfS workers in contempt if they placed with family S shoulduld 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 I want to bring up with you and probably with the department and hopefully y'all are gonna 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
Speaker 73
50:30
allowing that to get in the way are we? so so what I mentioned is65 days to being
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
50:40
fully open as a foster family and and let me say yeah preface I appreciate y'all doing that and appreciate y'all getting them the help and the benefits and all the things that we're doing but we're not allowing that them becoming certified to
stand in the way of getting kids with family AAP
Speaker 74
50:57
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 it's 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
51:34
thank you madam chairir. thanks for the presentation 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 you
Speaker 74
51:48
think you're having the better success I breeze 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 that academic world into this
world so that we could provide more practical solutionsrough my time in education I've seen the agency model that puts so much strain on therapists the agency model that puts so much strain on therapists and 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 insurances through working with an agency so most 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 semiprivate practice work we were able to to create a system through what we do that's semiprivate 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 careers should they stay in that so so it it's 95 plus retention rate compared to what's typically a60 to70% retention rate at best so thanks for that I appreciate you sharing your model. thank you sir Senator Love.
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
53:37
thank you madam first of all thank you all for the work that you're doing first let me let me start back withristen and
I want to say thank you for the work that the call is doing my wife and I started with a 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. doc
I want to come to a question for you you had a slot that said that you all are you all have 146 children in permanency is
that what is that permanent is that permanent is that adoption or is that can you can you kind of let me know what that number was when you when you talked
Speaker 74
54:20
about permanency 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 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
prepermanent placement so it's a pre-adoption or it's to their biological family good
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
54:45
deal and and I want to say thank you for the work that you're you're doing
in regards to the wrapparound services that you're providing because that mental health piece is is a very important piece for families because that can you could step in and just stabilize some of those situations because some of the children do come with a high level of care than what people would do
do realize and do understand so thank you all for that work that you're
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
55:19
doing. thank you madam chair you bet
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
55:22
thank you Representative Richardson. thank you madam chair to your left over here so on the sheet that you show the500 something kids75,000 nights and then the 140 whatever that number was moving forward where is that in comparison to a national standard? how how are you in comparison to national standards of moving kids along.
Speaker 74
55:43
so on that side 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 a challenge it just it shows largely the scope of what we're doing so that really gives support for the the percentages that came after that the outcome so yeah I know you guys are doing good work I
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
56:09
would just me personally 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.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
56:24
thank you we're thank you all for both for being here today and we appreciate your time. OK, next to the table we'll take are represent uhrector Wright and the folks that we have with her from across from Ashley County, Cleburne County and conway County. if y'all re give your names
when you get to the table and we'll recognize you. thank you.
Speaker 112
57:01
Good afternoon. I'm Tiffanyright and I'm the director for the division of Children and Family Services good afternoon.
Ashley Ryan
Unverified
57:07
My name is Ashley Ryan. I'm an investigator with Conway County. I amellsea Blanchard. I
Speaker 114
57:14
work out of Cleburne County. I'm a generalist meaning most of my caseload is everything across the Good afternoon my name is Carvieta Walker Bridges and I am
Speaker 116
57:22
a social services supervisor expert from Ashley County for DCfS. thank you all for being here in if you pull your microphone's a
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
57:32
little bit closer and help us all to
Speaker 120
57:36
be clear. 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
Speaker 121
57:44
an effort 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 gonna turn it over to
Ashley first and just they've prepared things that they want you all to know about what
Ashley Ryan
Unverified
58:11
it's like to work for the division. good afternoon and thank y'all all for having me be here as Miss Wright said my name is Ashley Ryan. I work in Coway County which isorleton, Arkansas in area ive for DCfS um, I've been with the department for 9 about 9.5 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 se 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 commu community in which I work in with what DCfS stands for because again, I think someone had stated about how
removal is our last thing that we DCfS wants to do if we can keep these children in the home then ultimately that is our goal providing support in 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 momm 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 and those family time visits her infant child who had come into care in a garrets all 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 unservised visits. However, due to her substance abuse and her trauma, she had ultimately ended up relapsing and we ended up having to terminate her rights on her children do 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 actually switched investigations
I'll never forget the day that I got a call I was out in the field and my supervisor had toldl called me and told me that there is a priority one in the inbox for Garrett's law. I asked who it was and they stated the name. momm had actually delivered inlittlerock for DCfs if you know a family a parent or a child is in another county we we we request secondary I immediately decided hey don't even request it I'm gonna go out because I had also built a relationship with this mama 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 sort 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 thatorralton is a small cau 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 not about the amount of parents that I help it's that one mom that I saw that had so much trauma and you know, lost your children but continue to 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 to 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 provides 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 the living conditions is the only normal s normalcy of course foster homes and provisionals are great as well but taking them is just as traumatic as them staying in that home. 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 9 to5 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 9 o'clock because a child went acute and we couldn't er was
going acute to behavioral hospital and we couldn't find a hospital to take him and so my bed for the night was3 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 trans transported by
ambulance to the resident or the acute facility until 9 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 taking care of because I don't ever want my children to feel neglected because of my job. My job my my job is my pri priority and so is my children so are my children just like with on call I am in the 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. different foster kids that were going from 11 corner to the state to the other. 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 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 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 is my job or my goal sorry no it is kind of my job
Speaker 122
1:06:04
too but so good job yes thank you they're real nervous y'all.
Speaker 116
1:06:16
OK good afternoon madam chairperson 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 Carvieta Walker Bridges. I am a social services supervisor expert for ashley County southeast Arkansas areaa 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 to5 or 8 to5 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 again we work those nonstandard hours we're 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
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 is supervisors we have to be aware of what's going on as wellhether 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 in 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 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 behaviors 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 gonna do my best and have my staff do their best with trying to keep these children in the hall with their families when it's safe most appropriate if it's not with their families I mean biological parents is going to also be with their familypeak of kin provisional placement providers of their family people that they know aside from the strangers that we place them in the nontraditional 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 OKok 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 ris were terminated she provided the number you all she provideds us with that number that number worked the number worked we called we talked to dadd we talked to mom we told them what her wishes were what she wanted and ask them if they would even consider and with our policies and procedures that's been put in place for us that allowed us the opportunities 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 final ly 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 gonna strength en them and their families we must learn to be intentional
about this work we do each and everyda as director Wwright with state every child deserves a safe and appropriate home each and every day and my motto is this 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 y'all and see what's best for these children and families keeping them in their homes keeping them safe not with strangers ok I I I enjoy working with the call Miss Kristen and her team
also with Arkansas Baptistone which is now connected familiesmilies 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 this team DCFS division of childrenldren and Family Services and their investments we will have healthier children stronger neighbors and brighter futures for everyone that we touch each and every day and thank you all
Speaker 114
1:11:59
for your time. I again I'mellsea Blanchard I am a
Speaker 115
1:12:06
part of Areaine. I work in Cleburg County. I've lived there since seth 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 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 aggencies across the board mental health providers in our area healthcare, I mean the doctors and they have really proven to be vital sorry vital 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. I would like to tell you that a big difference in my county we have several local faithbased 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 finished treatment usually when their child is there they they do complete that treatment some of the challenges 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 healthcare needs. uh, 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 and facilities under the age of 1el 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 fost 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 childcare 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 notec card but over the last several months our county and the other counties in the area have had a a staffing shortage more than normal this is 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 Cleveburn County. It was around3 or4 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 around7 or
8 p.m. 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's6 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 pm. we are placing with that relative thank you thank you all for being here we do have some questions if
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:17:04
that's OK we're gonna start with Senator Love. thank you madam chairir and first of all
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:17:12
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 that you all are receiving or or your employees are receiving cause 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 they're saying hey we see traumatic things so what kind of what kind of mental
health services or peer support services that you all provide your staff or or you know employees I can answer. I
Ashley Ryan
Unverified
1:17:52
I can just speak personally actually cause I had had a traumatic situation happen to me. OK I was just making sure that was wrong and that I guess we're partnered with UAMS and I spoke with a mental health counselor, due to the trauma that I had had while working and it really benefited me
and they reached out to me well actually Miss Wright had reached out to me about it and then I had reached out to UAMS I believe her name was Doctor John. and it was absolutely amazing. I did a couple sessions and so I really appreciated
Speaker 120
1:18:28
that from a personal experience. So recently we launched I'm I'm going to get the name wrong but it's in collaboration with something called Cert which is a secondary trauma response for staff and so we have a safety response for staff who can reach out when
Speaker 121
1:18:45
there's been a situation to professionals at UAMS and they will go to the county office or meet with our staff however they dee m appropriate in that response. that's something
Speaker 135
1:18:53
new we've we have not had that before outside of the traditional EAP that the state insurance offers all right ok thank you thank you
Speaker 136
1:19:01
madam chair you're welcome Senator Sullivan thank you madam chair my question
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
1:19:08
would 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 a 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 we all do thank you thank you senator I'll be happy to
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:19:54
reach out to them and ask that information for you and we'll get it back to the committee
thank you sir ladies, my quick question for you is what is your current caseload? Are the two of you that are specialists what's your current caseload that you have
Ashley Ryan
Unverified
1:20:09
right now? 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. it just depends investigations is different I guess I would say from casework because and I'm the only investigator in my county and so I could maybe not get any investigations for a couple of days and then get hit with with 21 day,3 the next and then two more. Um, so there's not but right now it's 11 so 22 OK I was just curious thank
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:20:43
you uhrector Wright can you tell us what and I figure the supervisor she has everybody underneath her but directorr can
you give us some specifics on what you're looking at for your recruitment and your launch that you're bringing out
Speaker 120
1:20:57
right now. and just wanted to clarify we do have some supervisors in the state that do carry caseloads
Speaker 121
1:21:03
when we have workforce issues so I didn't but she does not have any so yeah so we are plan so we stood up a DCfS jobs web page 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
1:22:00
and let him send that to to us we'd like to be able to help in getting
Speaker 72
1:22:06
that word out as well. I would sincerely appreciate that right Representative shepherd thank you
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:22:12
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 Doctor Wright I'm sure will director right?rector right I'm
sure you all are very familiar with aces adverse childhood experiences and that in 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 and you may not have those numbers and and madam chair the reason I asked 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 placements 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 chairir 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 youth
Speaker 154
1:23:28
we call them dual custody 16 NdYs custody and an additional 11 are incarcerated so they could be in a
Speaker 155
1:23:37
JdC. thank you can you and I meet offline later on in regards to those children
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:23:42
and thank you madam chair you're quite welcome Representative Gonzalezarthy
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
1:23:48
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 if if you wanted to do that and I don't know maybe you're already doing that yes ma'am so there is a video that is already
Speaker 120
1:24:23
website that's an older video but not a bad idea to include some of the testimony from these staff as
Speaker 121
1:24:31
well which was why during the webinars it will be important for people to hear from those doing the frontline work which we plan to include in that work
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:24:44
as well so thank you. Senator Clark Thank you madam chair the
thank you ladies 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 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 officers across the state they the but
always told people then actually most of most of the problems I found out about came came from people like you that actually were working in those cases but I told people you know one of the problems is is 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 one's burn out is the good ones the ones who really care. the the ones who who who really care about kids tend to burn out and so thank you not just for doing the jobs thank you for staying and what let us know what you need is enatorulllivan said I'm a fiscal hawk I don't like to spend money on anything
and nor does a center hammer but about eight years ago we led the way back then for40 million dollars 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 COI and 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 limit this but one of the problems with term limits is that so many of the people haven't heard they're hearing the stories today but they weren't here to hear back when and Miss Walker Bridges I wanted to stand up and cheer I'm in a d for all of you but whenrector Martin
and parent counsel Glenn Haggard 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
the kids of a certain age are never going to
forget who the parents are. or were. and so every any time we can come up with a solution that goes back to that family even if we've had to give up and she brought up even if we've had to give up before 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 you're quite welcome and but 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 if we don't provide the funding if we don't if we don't insist that things get done right and if we don't spread the word isn't that
correct So again thank you thank you madam chair thank you
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
1:29:29
senator senator thank you madam chair I have a couple of questions director Wwright 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 like now?
Speaker 164
1:29:46
So I'm actually happy to say well I do have some count like I don't have this down
Speaker 121
1:29:52
at the county level but on a state level and happy because this is a better number than where it's been. approximately43% for the specialists which is an which is improved y'all
Speaker 154
1:30:00
will probably remember the days where it was7560 and so43 right now and my additional questions are for the
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
1:30:07
what is the average pay for the incoming caseload worker off the top of my head I think it's
Speaker 154
1:30:18
roughly around55,000 I think that with the new salary I had the old number
Speaker 150
1:30:22
memorized like36 was the old that's not it anymore I think it's55 if
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
1:30:26
I'm that sounds significantly better than what we were paying but when she said her caseload it reminded me of very high kind of comparative to the case load 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 just running by to see them for five minutes so what does it
Speaker 115
1:30:49
look like carrying 21 cases and if I may this these past few months have not been typical typically are summertime is our slow slower season because our mandated reporters are not their 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 managed this caseload well. we also are short a staff member in our office. Um, 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 that we all jump in and I think that speaks
to the quality of staff that that we have. and to
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
1:31:55
echo off of Senator Sullivan I think
a lot of agencies come before us like the department of Corrections and higher edd or education and they oftentimes will not tell us what they need and so as we're asking what are the financial needs directorright if you had endless money what could we give you to make lives better for these children and Arkansas you know what would that look like
and I know that's a big ass 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 it offline what does that look like if we can give you some more resources
Speaker 121
1:32:54
I definitelyd would just say that supporting my partners across the state who are doing the work is critical for DCfS you know you heard today from the call the answer Arkansas Baptist, I have many more of them obviously if I, I mean if I could retain the current workforce I
Speaker 154
1:33:13
feel like it would DCfS would feel drastically different retain and fill my vacancies DCfS would feel different because the case loads would be
lower I I 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 and we're gonna ask a few
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:33:40
more questions torector Wright 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 think for sure Senatorlark was going to ask them about placing
Speaker 120
1:33:58
with relatives but he let them off the hot
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:34:05
seat Excuse me madam chair I didn't from those three I had no doubt what the answer
Speaker 120
1:34:10
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 when they
Speaker 179
1:34:21
get up here OK, so I now get to present to y'all the family preservation report that is
on the agenda today. I just want to say 11 thing this is indicates it's state fiscal year 26. it's actually calendar year 2025. so this will be the for the year of 25, different than our other reports that are
Speaker 121
1:34:43
by state fiscal year. um, and then I also wanted if you were to point out that if you're interested in the very specific counties. you go to the very back
Speaker 179
1:34:53
of the book and there's 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 of the figure one is just a breakdown of the accepted child maltreatment reports statewide and in that chart you'll see that this is hist
or ical 2324 and25 broken down by investigation to DR and so the top line is investigations the bottom line isdR as a reminder differential response
Speaker 121
1:35:40
is our lower levels of maltreatment and the figure two at the bottom of that you can see how it's broken down across the each area of our state and
Speaker 179
1:35:48
I don't have another handout with the area map I always try to tell you to look at the front of a cover of a previous presentation so I'm sorry about that
on page three you'll see our time timeliness to investigation statewidegain the threeyear comparison we ended the calendar year at77%. and below that you can see the areas we continue in pulaski County by area to struggle with timely initiations they are a county that we continue to struggle with
Speaker 121
1:36:25
workforce that we hope will benefit from some of the workforce work that we're doing
Speaker 179
1:36:35
on page four you'll see the timely investigation completion statewide and that's at71% this year you heard
Speaker 121
1:36:44
Chelseaay 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 our northeast
Speaker 179
1:37:08
Arkansas region they had significant overdoes 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 4 figure6 is the breakdown by area if you're curious
Speaker 182
1:37:26
by area I did want to OK page5 is the
Speaker 179
1:37:38
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 8 18 and 19% and you can also see that broken down by area as well at the bottom of page five at the on page six figure 9 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 are the children being revictimized of maltreatment um5% 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 Page711 is timely differential response initiations and then the bottom is 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 areaaine which would be the actually the area of the state that Chelsea was from. page 8 you can see that the timeline timeliness of completion statewide for thosedRs 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. I wanted to point out 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 new way we modeled out of Utah
Speaker 121
1:40:06
who was having significant outcomes to their workforce in a positive way so July firstt
started a whole new new staff training timeline so old way you would be in training for 9 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 LittleRock. 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 homeme 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 but we are hoping that some of the things that we're seeing around decision
Speaker 179
1:41:02
making will build consistency with through the revamped new staff training model and ammber was my she did all that heavy lift and 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? OK moving into permanency on page 11 ended the year in 2025 with3,320 children in foster care. you can see the breakdown below areas two and 8 cons lead the state with the number of children in foster care. Area two is be the river valley area Sebastian umyale
Crawford and then area eight is your northeast Craighead, that part of the state. as you can see what you saw this statistic earlier in one of the presentations about66% of our children are children's placement 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 um43% of our children are placed with relatives that's a we are continuing to increase to our goal of50%. 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 the 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 a statewide and so um5.62 is our placement stability rate and this is something that continuing to focus on the first placement the best placement and
Speaker 154
1:43:23
hopefully that is with a safe and appropriate relative so we do not have to move children multiple times from placement to
Speaker 179
1:43:36
place page six which is permanency figure 27 permanency within 12 months of entering foster care a statewide number the area number is below so I had6 of my 10 areas in the state who met or exceeded the national standard
for 2025 areaaine had the highest rate of timely permanency at49% and then followed by areas 1 and5. Um, 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 stays in foster care which are your kids who are here 24 months or longer and
what their permanency goals are and how we're navigating this
Speaker 135
1:44:31
system but 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
Speaker 179
1:44:45
move kids home? page 17, reentries into foster care within 12 months statewide was at6.6% at the end of 2025 you may see that we are above the national
standard. how they just changed the national standard prior to this it was 8.3 and so
Speaker 121
1:45:04
now we have some work to do to determine how to what's happening with reinjuries and we do review
Speaker 179
1:45:09
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 do we use community partners did we not? those are the questions that we're asking
Number of adoptions finalized in 2025 was474 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 permanency 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 be complex they need specific more specific recruitment and so we continue to work with our partners Project ero on that. and then and and like I said on page nine 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-be and so this is around monthly visitation to caseworkers. you can see it was79% 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% and you can see the area break down below areas 1 in6 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 we have staff helping
in area one from all over the state to help them during this time so there's 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 just want to commend you
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:47:57
for a good job.ppreciate all the hard work that you're doing and I know that your your heart and soul's in this we really appreciate it and I'm excited to see if we have any what happens with your recruitment efforts
so keep us posted on that all right thank you so much thank you
OK next on our agenda we have a majorjordrew with us here to give us an update. Jimin please recognize yourselves and you can be in your report.
Speaker 193
1:48:47
Maeffdrew Arkansas Statelice crimemesgaint Children Division Commander? jason
Speaker 195
1:48:51
aaron lieutenant colonel with the Arkansas State
Speaker 196
1:48:58
Police. right good afternoon everybody excuse me I'll be giving you the quarterly report from January or
Speaker 197
1:49:04
March of of this year starting on page two you'll see that the hotline received 16,873 calls during
this time period with with 9,591 of those being accepted. CACd handled 183 of those and DCfS received5,934 with,854 going to differential response if you look at page three it'll have the priority 1 allegations by type that were investigated by CCd with 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 1734 cases were were opened we were able to close 1595 of those 1,595
we had a s true finding in485 of those which was a substantiation rate of30% there was3,961 cases that were still active during that time period with uh413 remaining open after45 days. pages6 and7 you'll be able to see the county's broken down where we can see what what's taking place in in your
on page 9 and 10 will reflect the reported allegation type along with the 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 through32 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 page32 it will show you that we submitted661 with361 having having something
filed and we're waiting on a decision on 219 of those in'81. was declined that'll conclude the CACD report. any questions
Speaker 198
1:52:18
Thank you gentlemen for being here today. I really appreciate it. So a couple
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:52:25
of questions that I've got can we you were saying that we had45 back on page five we substantiated30% and we had a few more open so what are some of that what are some of the
causes that will remain a case to be raed open past
the45 days. can you give us a kind of a rundown of what might delay it from
Speaker 197
1:52:50
getting taken care of in that amount of time consistently a lot of our cases that were operating have law enforcement involvement and unfortunately they're not restricted maybe unfortunately with the correct word. they're not restricted with the45 days that we have in order to get the case investigated and closed so we'll it'll have to remain between that time. there are times when we're trying to locate collateral witnesses sometimes
we're we're missing victims we're missing offenders that we need to make contact to meet that time restraint are you
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:53:18
working in collaboration with local law enforcement when you when you're doing those cases or no yes ok 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 standard is a
Speaker 197
1:53:38
little bit different than ours is a preponderance
and they're held to a higher standard and and there are cases where they need more information and where they feel they'd
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:53:49
be able to prosecute them. I guess I'll keep asking questions numer has any so can we does our software systems the privilege of being a chairman inn it that's it. does our software system allow and I have had some constituents ask me this why I'm asking this question so if the call was made on a specific child and that parent jumps up and moves to another county to avoid being caught or whatever or trying to 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 it because when they call back with the mandated reporter comes with another call 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 that individual. yes
Speaker 193
1:54:32
ma'am, but sometimes we'll run into difficulties with the name being typed in
Speaker 197
1:54:35
the correct way and it it may cause it not to be attached at that time like well for instance my name Ben Drew let's say one
investigator may type it in as drew the correct way and another one might type it in as dRU. which will cause some
Speaker 146
1:54:52
problems with that I appreciate that let's see so you know
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:54:58
it is and as I've shared many times what you guys do so crucially important and I'm appreciate our opportunities to maybe get our our hotline trainers paid more and continue to increase their training and their education so we can get even a
better job done there so is there any thoughts on that or what we can do to I know that we have some concerns, right? some things that have been dropped that should have been dropped or cos have been accepted that shouldn't 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 directorright is doing with their caseworkers there to encourage the morale or increase the competency or make even get a better
Speaker 72
1:55:36
job of what we're doing now I think any
Speaker 197
1:55:40
support that we can receive from here will 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 with what they're doing. we're looking at things that handle them will assist with some of the mental health issues that come with it because they're exposed to ungodly things and people shouldn't be exposed to it and they're being exposed to it on on a regular basis. I think we're pretty good we're getting support from from our our director and and assistant directors as far as moving forward but any assistance that y'all could help them make it easier for us would be greatly appreciated. OK.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:56:19
no questions colleagues we got one representative henley thank you. thank you
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
1:56:24
madam chairir. 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 and why why and can we not get a more
a clearer report on where we are in time
Speaker 197
1:56:50
we're we're gonna be back in September if I'm not mistaken for the the report through June is is that what you're asking?
Representative Dolly Henley
Unverified
1:56:57
I think so the June reports are not finalized yet. Is that right? they're ready is just a matter of
Speaker 197
1:57:04
presenting them to you p re s ent ative
Speaker 212
1:57:09
in ley 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 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. thank you thank you OK thank you gentlemen for being here and
Speaker 68
1:57:35
we appreciate your report. thank you for your support OK colleagues
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:57:46
with our business taken care our committees adjourned
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 115
Speaker 135
Speaker 136
Senator Dan Sullivan
Unverified
Speaker 72
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