COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
STATE CAPITOL MINORITY CAUCUS ROOM ROOM 418 HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA
THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2009 9:05 A.M.
PRESENTATION ON CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM IN PENNSYLVANIA
BEFORE: HONORABLE KATHY MANDERINO, MAJORITY SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN HONORABLE MATTHEW D. BRADFORD HONORABLE TIM BRIGGS HONORABLE DEBERAH KULA HONORABLE JOHN MYERS HONORABLE CHERELLE L. PARKER HONORABLE JAKE WHEATLEY HONORABLE KATIE TRUE MINORITY SUBCOMMITTEE CO-CHAIRMAN HONORABLE BRIAN L. ELLIS HONORABLE JOHN R. EVANS HONORABLE DOUGLAS G. REICHLEY HONORABLE RICHARD R. STEVENSON
ALSO IN ATTENDANCE: HONORABLE MATTHEW E. BAKER HONORABLE CURTIS SONNEY
————————— JEAN DAVIS REPORTING 7786 Hanoverdale Drive • Harrisburg, PA 17112 Phone (717)503-6568 • Fax (717)566-7760 2
1 ALSO PRESENT: LISA FRAELICH 2
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4 JEAN M. DAVIS, REPORTER NOTARY PUBLIC 5
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1 I N D E X
2 TESTIFIERS
3 NAME PAGE 4 LISA FLEMING 5 BUDGET ANALYST HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE...... 5 6 ESTELLE B. RICHMAN 7 SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE...... 20
8 ANNE MARIE AMBROSE COMMISSIONER, PHILADELPHIA DEPARTMENT 9 OF HUMAN SERVICES...... 33
10 JAMES A. LAUGHMAN EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF THE 11 HUMAN SERVICES ADMINISTRATOR, LANCASTER COUNTY...... 40 12 TERRY L. WATSON 13 DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH SERVICES, CENTER COUNTY...... 46 14 MARC CHERNA 15 DIRECTOR, ALLEGHENY COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES...... 55 16 DANIEL A. STYBORSKI 17 PROGRAM DIRECTOR, LAUREL YOUTH SERVICES, BLOSSBURG...... 64 18 ANDREA H. BOYLES 19 DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, CENTRE COUNTY YOUTH SERVICES BUREAU, 20 STATE COLLEGE, PA...... 74
21 NANCY E. SABOL, MA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 22 GANNONDALE, ERIE, PA...... 82
23 GWENDOLYN BAILEY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, YOUTH SERVICES, INC., 24 PHILADELPHIA, PA...... 87
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1 (TESTIFIERS, cont'd.):
2 NAME PAGE JAMES E. ANDERSON 3 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JUVENILE COURT JUDGES COMMISSION...... 95 4 JUDGE REA B. BOYLAN 5 COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, BUCKS COUNTY...... 105 6 ROBERT STANZIONE 7 BUCKS COUNTY CHIEF JUVENILE PROBATION OFFICER.....110
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S
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3 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Good
4 morning.
5 We're ready to start our hearing.
6 Lisa.
7 MS. FLEMING: I hope I can do this in eight
8 minutes. Again, my name is Lisa Fleming. I am a
9 budget analyst with the House Appropriations
10 Committee.
11 What I tried to do is I tried to boil down a
12 very complex system into a few slides for you. And
13 there should be PowerPoint handouts available. If we
14 run out, I'm going to have this posted on our
15 website, www.hacd.net, hopefully by the end of today,
16 if not, by the end of the week.
17 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: I'm sorry.
18 I didn't read my agenda. We did allot you a little
19 bit longer than eight minutes. I'm sorry.
20 MS. FLEMING: That's okay. Just in case.
21 The child welfare budget in the General Fund
22 budget, for those who don't know, is under the county
23 child welfare appropriation.
24 And when discussing what to do with the
25 Subcommittee hearing, we found out that the overall 6
1 budget for DPW tends to be dominated by questions
2 about the really, really big programs, your medical
3 assistance programs.
4 A lot of people like to talk about the
5 income maintenance programs, what they see as the
6 cash welfare programs, for political reasons and
7 other reasons.
8 But this is a really large cost driver in
9 the DPW budget that people don't always realize how
10 much money is actually going into the system. And
11 it's unique in that it's really heavily weighed on a
12 balance between the State and the counties and the
13 private providers.
14 So there's a lot of people affected by this
15 in the realm of the budget and, of course, the
16 Commonwealth's children are the ones that are most
17 affected at the end.
18 So with that, I'll try to do this overview.
19 And like I said, it's a pretty complex system. I
20 tried to make it as user-friendly as possible.
21 Basically, like I was saying, the child
22 welfare system is designed to provide government
23 services that are geared toward promoting the safety,
24 permanency, and well-being of the children of
25 Pennsylvania. 7
1 There's various goals of the system. The
2 ones that I picked out that I thought were worth
3 noting is protecting the children who have been or
4 are at risk of being abused and neglected, assisting
5 children who have been temporarily or permanently
6 removed from their parents' homes, and supporting and
7 preserving families.
8 Like I said, this is a State-supervised and
9 county-administered program. The ultimate
10 responsibility lies with the Department of Public
11 Welfare, in particular their Office of Children,
12 Youth, and Families, OCYF.
13 That office will review county plans and
14 budget requests relating to the child welfare system.
15 They also develop and implement policies and
16 regulations. They monitor the policies and the
17 programs then and enforce program standards and
18 requirements. And it looks like I put county request
19 twice, but, you know, mistakes happen.
20 The counties provide the services to the
21 children and their families. The child welfare
22 services are administered by Children and Youth
23 Agencies at the county level.
24 Juvenile justice services are administered
25 by juvenile probation offices. And the determination 8
1 of need, of course, they use the guidelines the DPW
2 puts down and what's in State law and Federal law.
3 But the county agencies are responsible for
4 determining a child's need for services.
5 Like I said, there's many laws that govern
6 the system. There's the Public Welfare Code, the
7 County Code, the Juvenile Act, the Child Protective
8 Services Law, and Adoption Act.
9 The Public Welfare Code will probably come
10 up a little later because there are some proposed
11 changes dealing with the oversight authority of DPW
12 and the reimbursements of counties for services as
13 part of this budget proposal. So it was important to
14 point that out.
15 Just a little brief blurb about the county
16 responsibility. Regulations require that each county
17 provide services, again, to keep children in their
18 own homes; prevent abuse, neglect, and exploitation;
19 and to help families overcome problems that result in
20 dependency and delinquency.
21 Counties are also required to provide
22 reunification services, designed to reunite children
23 in placement with their families, and to provide a
24 permanent home for a child in placement where
25 reunification is not an option. 9
1 Those are what they're required to provide.
2 But counties often and should try to provide services
3 to prevent children from coming into the system in
4 the first place. And unfortunately, in tight budget
5 times, these are the type of programs that tend to
6 not get as much funding.
7 So when there's a possibility to fund these
8 prevention programs, I know that it's a concern of a
9 lot of members on both sides of the aisle to try to
10 find money for prevention programs because we know in
11 our heads that, you know, prevention is going to stop
12 a more costly system in the end. But when times get
13 tough, we are so often just pouring money into the
14 mandated services. So I think that's important to
15 note.
16 Again, this is just a list of the required
17 services that they're required to take at the county
18 level, placement services, adoption services, and any
19 other services that are ordered by the Court as well.
20 So the Courts also play a key role in the child
21 welfare system.
22 County employees are required to perform the
23 following activities: intake, investigation, family
24 assessment, case planning, and case management. But
25 for other services, counties may contract with 10
1 private providers. And that's where the private
2 providers come in in this joint system that we run
3 here in Pennsylvania.
4 And because the counties are contracting the
5 private providers, there's going to be a lot of
6 variance amongst the different counties with how many
7 private providers are providing those services, the
8 cost of those services. So that's important to keep
9 in mind, too, when we're discussing budget issues.
10 There's a few categories of services that
11 you might hear come up today. I tried my best.
12 There's not really good definitions out there, I
13 discovered, so we did some brainstorming in our
14 office to try to find some good definitions of these
15 types of services so when they come up in testimony,
16 you're not sitting there scratching your head.
17 In-home services includes things like
18 counseling, parenting skills, training, treatment,
19 and therapy. The overall goal is usually to improve
20 the home environment to prevent abuse, neglect, and
21 prevent placement and keep these children in the
22 home.
23 These services are provided to a family when
24 there's a problem that doesn't require the child to
25 be removed from a home. There's no imminent danger 11
1 to the child.
2 Also, in-home services may be provided to
3 families with the child in placement if they see that
4 family reunification is an option. Budgetwise,
5 in-home services are a lot less expensive. And
6 there's lots of research backing in-home services as
7 a good placement option than institutional settings.
8 Placement services are out-of-home living
9 arrangements provided to children who have been
10 removed from their families. There's community-based
11 placement that could be your kinship or relative
12 care, foster care, emergency shelter, and independent
13 living.
14 And then there's institutional placement
15 with State-run juvenile detention centers and also
16 private residential treatment programs.
17 Then we have family preservation and
18 prevention services. These again are those
19 preventive programs aimed at keeping children out of
20 the child welfare system. And they can include
21 after-school activities, youth activities, perhaps
22 employment readiness for parents to have stability in
23 the households.
24 And again, that overall goal is to
25 strengthen families and prevent all those things that 12
1 might put a child into our child welfare system.
2 And again, the family reunification services
3 are focused on keeping families together and not
4 pulling them apart and getting a family unit the help
5 that they need, not just, you know, the child, to
6 help the children have a stable place to return and
7 remain at home.
8 And then there are adoption services. These
9 are provided to children where perhaps family
10 reunification is not a possibility or a Court orders
11 parental rights to be terminated.
12 Services will include preparing the children
13 for the adoption process and also helping the
14 families who are adopting the children.
15 Historically, larger counties had maintained
16 their adoption units and smaller counties had bought
17 into the statewide adoption network. There's been a
18 move over the past few years to sort of pull everyone
19 into the statewide adoption network and have a more
20 unified system.
21 So I thought I'd point that out as well in
22 case that came up because there's some special grant
23 money associated with that in the budget.
24 Now, getting into the funding stuff. Child
25 welfare services in Pennsylvania are funded with 13
1 State, Federal, and local revenue sources.
2 DPW reimburses counties for a portion of
3 their expenditures incurred while providing these
4 services. And you might hear these referred to as
5 Act 148 payments.
6 The counties are then responsible for the
7 difference. And that's referred to as a county
8 match. So those are some terms you might hear come
9 up today that I thought I should point out.
10 Depending on the type of service, there's
11 different reimbursement rates. I won't read through
12 all of them. But it ranges from 100 percent for
13 adoption services to 50 percent for juvenile
14 detention costs.
15 This is an important slide you might want to
16 refer to later on again, with some of the changes
17 that are being proposed with changing some of the
18 reimbursement rates to focus on in-home services and
19 a few other things.
20 Again, the funding streams are State and
21 Federal funds and the county match. State funds,
22 again, you might hear it referred to as Act 148
23 payments. County funds might be referred to as
24 county match.
25 Federal revenues, there's the Title IV 14
1 E-funds, which some of you might have heard quite a
2 bit about for various reasons. These are funds that
3 are provided to the States for children in foster
4 care, adoption of eligible children, and for some
5 administrative and training costs related to these
6 services.
7 The Title IV and the Social Security Act at
8 the Federal level, if you ever want to have some fun
9 reading.
10 You might have heard about the Title IV
11 E-funds because there's been some audits that
12 Pennsylvania has undergone relating to IV-E that
13 we're sorting out still and have come a pretty long
14 way. They also have served the purpose of having us
15 re-examine our IV-E spending in Pennsylvania and how
16 we do things. There's some issues that might come up
17 with that later.
18 You might have also heard it because it was
19 part of the Federal stimulus package. We're getting
20 a slightly enhanced rate on some other IV-E funds.
21 Likewise, with the Federal funds, there's
22 Title IV B-funds. These are also specifically
23 targeted funds. They are for services with the goal
24 of keeping families together, your preservation,
25 prevention, reunification. 15
1 And then there's two Federal funding streams
2 that are a bit more flexible, meaning they're not
3 targeted toward specific purposes like Title IV-E and
4 IV-B.
5 Those are some TANF block grant funds. This
6 was an issue a few years ago because we had to rein
7 our TANF block spending back and target it more
8 toward its initial purpose of funding employment
9 services for people trying to move off government
10 dependency to self-sufficiency.
11 We weren't able to use some of the surpluses
12 we had put into the child welfare system and it
13 created a big hole we had to backfill with State and
14 county dollars. It strapped the system for a little
15 bit.
16 And if you looked at old budget books, you
17 would see that, you know, the child welfare State
18 budget component has increased by like $500 million
19 over the past few years. And that was largely the
20 result of the TANF block grant funds going away.
21 Likewise, there's social services block
22 grant funds. And those are more general purpose
23 funds as well.
24 The big part of the budgets that you'll
25 probably hear talked a lot about today deals with the 16
1 needs-based budget process that was outlined in Act
2 30 of 1991. It requires that DPW submit a
3 determination of the statewide child welfare funding
4 based on these needs-based plans and budgets that are
5 submitted to them by the counties.
6 Each year each county will assess and
7 identify their service needs for their county and
8 outline the strategies that they plan on doing to
9 institute the services and develop a supporting
10 budget which they then submit to DPW for review.
11 DPW sits down with them. And there's a
12 give-and-take to the process; but in the end, OCYF
13 will certify what they determine to be the county
14 need. And that's what is the basis for the budget
15 request for the county child welfare services
16 appropriation.
17 For this year -- this coming year, I should
18 say, the 2009-'10 budget, OCYF certified a total
19 needs-based budget expenditure of $1.785 billion.
20 And that's not just State dollars, I should point
21 out. That's the total expenditures. So that would
22 be paid with all the funding streams that I mentioned
23 earlier.
24 The certified budget includes an increase
25 for mandated services where necessary. But there's 17
1 no cost-of-living adjustment for purchase services.
2 That's what's affecting a lot of the providers that
3 will be talking today, as there has been in few years
4 past. And I believe that would be about $17 million
5 per 1 percent increase if we would do a
6 cost-of-living adjustment. And given the current
7 revenue situation, you can see how tight that would
8 be.
9 In addition to the needs-based budget
10 expenditures, DPW -- OCYF approved about $93 million
11 in State funds for special grants. And these are
12 targeted pools of money that are trying to align the
13 child welfare system with some of the goals that DPW
14 has set forth. And this again is outside of the
15 needs-based budget prices. So these are State funds.
16 There's money there for evidence-based
17 programs, PA promising practices, adoption programs,
18 independent living programs, some housing
19 initiatives, information, technology, and State
20 reintegration.
21 And again, a lot of these programs, while
22 related to keeping mandated services in check, are
23 dealing a lot with trying to improve the system to
24 help children, to keep children in home services, to
25 save money, and hopefully to sort of realign the 18
1 process.
2 Again, there's some related proposals out
3 there you might hear about today. One deals with
4 amending those reimbursement percentages and some of
5 the requirements of Act 30. I believe DPW might be
6 talking about that -- I'm sure others will as well --
7 and some of their proposals to help realign the
8 system.
9 Again, Act 30 was passed in 1991. And the
10 system has changed dramatically since then as well as
11 the budget situation.
12 There's also a contract documentation
13 bulletin that was put out that caused quite a bit of
14 a stir dealing with how providers and counties submit
15 invoices or submit administrative costs, so that
16 might come up as well.
17 And again, Representative Manderino talked
18 about this but we were hoping this Subcommittee
19 hearing will allow stakeholders in the needs-based
20 budget process because we are the Appropriations
21 Committee so we're initially focusing on budget
22 issues, not that policy issues don't play a key role
23 in a budget, but allow them to have an open
24 discussion about the proposed budget and also to
25 receive some of their suggestions on how to sustain a 19
1 stable and effective system for the Commonwealth's
2 children.
3 And again, I know we had a lot of people ask
4 to testify today. But we hope that this is the first
5 step in opening a dialogue on this very important and
6 complex issue.
7 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you,
8 Lisa.
9 When we pull the screen up, I would invite
10 all the members who are here to come up to the chairs
11 in the front and we'll get started.
12 Good morning again. And before I let
13 members introduce themselves and we get started,
14 housekeeping. The restrooms on this floor are a
15 little tricky to find. The women's is on this side.
16 The men's is on this side. But you have to walk in
17 the first door. It looks like you're walking in an
18 office. And then when you walk inside the first
19 door, you can ask somebody. They'll point you to the
20 restrooms. You won't see men's and ladies' until you
21 walk through the front door.
22 Let me reintroduce myself. I'm going to
23 let my co-chair, Republican Chair, introduce herself
24 and we'll move down the line.
25 SUBCOMMITTEE CO-CHAIRMAN TRUE: Good 20
1 morning, everybody. Katie True from Lancaster
2 County.
3 REPRESENTATIVE KULA: Good morning. Deb
4 Kula from Fayette and Westmoreland Counties.
5 REPRESENTATIVE STEVENSON: Dick Stevenson,
6 Mercer and Butler Counties.
7 REPRESENTATIVE SONNEY: Curt Sonney from
8 Erie County.
9 REPRESENTATIVE J. EVANS: John Evans from
10 Erie and Crawford Counties.
11 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you.
12 And just as a reminder to members, since we
13 have to do our homework as well, we are going to hear
14 from all of the presenters and then do questions and
15 discussion at the end.
16 So we need to be a little bit more diligent
17 ourselves in making notes about our questions or our
18 comments. And I see Representative Briggs has joined
19 us from Montgomery County. So as he makes his way up
20 here, I have now introduced him.
21 And, Secretary Richman, you are in order to
22 proceed.
23 SECRETARY RICHMAN: Thank you.
24 Good morning, Representative Manderino,
25 Representative True, and Subcommittee members and 21
1 staff.
2 I am Estelle Richman, Secretary of the
3 Department of Public Welfare. And I appreciate the
4 opportunity to testify today. I particularly
5 appreciate it because, as you mentioned, there is
6 little discussion in the appropriation process around
7 some of the most important issues of our budget. And
8 people stay very close to eligibility and medical
9 assistance as to the many other things that we're
10 responsible for oversight.
11 Pennsylvania's child welfare system is State
12 administered and county operated. Approximately 75
13 percent of our funding comes from a combination of
14 Federal Title IV-B and Title IV-E dollars and State
15 Act 148 funds.
16 The remaining 25 percent is funded by the
17 counties. DPW, through the Office of Children,
18 Youth, and Families, administers the child welfare
19 program.
20 In Pennsylvania, State law prescribes the
21 administration for the child welfare system and
22 includes providing the minimum standards, the
23 reimbursement of funds to the counties for their
24 provision of approved services.
25 Our primary focus is always on the safety, 22
1 permanency, and well-being of the children. We
2 operate from the assumption that children belong with
3 their own families and should receive necessary
4 services in the community rather than being placed
5 outside of their homes and away from their families.
6 However, when a situation requires the
7 removal of a child, the county must intervene and
8 place the child. Placement should be the last resort
9 and children should be placed in the most appropriate
10 setting to meet the child's needs in a location that
11 promotes reunification with the family, if possible
12 and as soon as possible.
13 DPW has the responsibility to make sure our
14 taxpayers' dollars are going to appropriate services
15 and that we are receiving positive outcomes from
16 these services. This is the basis of the proposed
17 changes that I will outline today.
18 While accountability to the taxpayers and
19 good outcomes for children are always the goal, the
20 current economic climate has underscored the need for
21 change.
22 Under the existing legislatively mandated
23 needs-based planning and budget process, this year's
24 spending is based to a large extent on last year's
25 spending without regard to outcomes. 23
1 Counties have admittedly had problems with
2 the current funding practice because their past
3 spending does not always reflect their future needs.
4 In fact, if the counties achieve better
5 outcomes for the children and families they serve,
6 they face the real possibility of a shrinking budget
7 and less State and Federal financial support in the
8 next fiscal cycle.
9 From my perspective, the current system does
10 not ensure the wise investment of tax dollars nor
11 does it produce the best results for children and
12 families.
13 We need to refocus the system so we can
14 increase the quality of care and produce better
15 outcomes, while at the same time minimizing the
16 negative financial impact to both the State and the
17 counties.
18 Before I describe our proposed changes, I
19 would like to give you a little background about a
20 longstanding and continuing Federal audit. In the
21 late 1990s, the Federal Administration for Children
22 and Families, ACF, through its Office of Inspector
23 General, began a multi-year audit of the Title IV-E
24 reimbursement program.
25 The audit started with a look at 24
1 reimbursements in Philadelphia from 1997 through
2 2003. The Federal Government has completed four
3 different reviews and the audit continues today in
4 Allegheny County. The total amount of funding that
5 had been audited and still under review is close to
6 $1 billion.
7 In order to try to resolve the situation, I
8 initiated conversations and negotiations with the
9 Commissioner for ACF in 2006 regarding eligibility,
10 services, and allowable costs.
11 DPW and the Federal Government agreed on a
12 framework for moving forward and we initiated a new
13 process on July 1st, 2008.
14 A major element was for the State to set the
15 Title IV-E maximum allowable costs for eligible
16 services and eligible children and youth. While this
17 has meant some change for the counties, it has also
18 helped us re-establish credibility with the Federal
19 Government.
20 The negotiations with ACF continue as we try
21 to meet their requirements for accountability,
22 consistency, and continuity. Too much is at stake
23 for us to fall short of Federal standards. Failure
24 to meet these standards puts $330 million in Federal
25 IV-E funding at risk. 25
1 There is no viable way in this budget to
2 make up the loss of one-third of a billion dollars.
3 Many of the recommended changes I am going to outline
4 today are designed to make sure we meet Federal
5 standards and protect Federal dollars.
6 Before I outline our proposed legislation, I
7 would first like to update you on the status of the
8 draft bulletin DPW issued in February of 2009.
9 The bulletin outlined several changes,
10 including limits to allowable administrative costs
11 and retained revenue as well as a minimum occupancy
12 standard for the purpose of establishing appropriate
13 rates.
14 These proposed modifications were developed
15 with the goal of making sure we are managing costs,
16 especially administrative costs, wisely throughout
17 the child welfare system.
18 The draft bulletin concerning administrative
19 costs, retained earnings, and occupancy rates
20 generated significant controversy. Let me emphasize
21 that again. Significant controversy.
22 In response to these concerns and in order
23 to make sure there was ample opportunity for public
24 comment, I asked OCYF to hold six public forums
25 throughout the Commonwealth on the draft bulletin. 26
1 We also extended the period for written input to
2 allow for feedback from all of the public forums.
3 These proposals do represent a major change
4 for many providers, particularly those outside the
5 proposed standards for administrative costs and
6 occupancy rates. While we want change, we also want
7 providers to have sufficient time to adjust to the
8 new standards, because it's already at the end of
9 March, and there may not be ample time for providers
10 to make the changes for the new fiscal year.
11 As a result of the feedback, we are deleting
12 the sections of the bulletin -- deleting the sections
13 on the bulletin on retained earnings, administrative
14 costs, and occupancy rates.
15 While we still believe we need to manage
16 administrative dollars more tightly, we will make
17 these changes through the legislative process with a
18 proposed date of July 1st, 2010.
19 As a point of clarification, though, there
20 are several other sections of the draft bulletin that
21 are not affected by this decision.
22 We will proceed with portions of the
23 bulletin that outline the required budget format
24 completion and uniform cost documentation process to
25 set the maximum rate in Federal reimbursement levels. 27
1 These elements of the bulletin are needed to
2 ensure compliance with Federal IV-E standards and
3 protect Federal dollars.
4 I would now like to turn to our legislative
5 proposal. Pennsylvania's needs-based budget law
6 creates financial disincentives for counties to
7 improve the delivery of child welfare services.
8 As it now stands, positive outcomes for
9 children, including fewer children in out-of-home
10 placements, more children in permanent homes, and
11 more placements in less expensive settings, may
12 actually result in lower county allegations from the
13 State in the following fiscal year.
14 DPW is proposing legislative changes to
15 create better incentives for counties and better
16 outcomes for children. Instead of basing next year's
17 funding solely on this year's dollars, we propose to
18 review county budget requests by looking at these
19 factors:
20 What were the actions of the county during
21 the last year?
22 What were the outcomes achieved?
23 How much of the funding was spent?
24 And what does the county plan on doing
25 upcoming, including outcomes and plans to deliver 28
1 services?
2 Let me briefly summarize the four major
3 changes in our proposed legislation to bring about
4 this change.
5 County reimbursement. First, the proposed
6 legislation will modify selected county match ratios
7 to increase the State reimbursement for services that
8 lead to permanency for children.
9 Examples of these services include in-home
10 services, foster care, foster family services, and
11 independent-living services.
12 It will also reduce State reimbursement for
13 out-of-home services, such as congregate group homes
14 and residential institutional services, that do not
15 promote permanency for a child and often lead to a
16 child aging out of our system with no life or family
17 connection.
18 We're proposing to roll out the
19 reimbursement changes over a three-year period
20 beginning in the fiscal year 2010-2011 cycle and
21 ending with the fiscal year 2012-2013 cycle.
22 Provider reimbursement changes. The second
23 category is provider reimbursement changes. We are
24 proposing to cap indirect administrative costs at 15
25 percent beginning on July 1st, 2010; 14 percent 29
1 beginning on July 1st, 2011; and 13 percent beginning
2 on July 1st, 2012, and thereafter.
3 We also are going to look at executive
4 salaries. And we'll probably be relying greatly on a
5 survey of executive compensation that is already
6 underway as part of our rate-setting process in the
7 mental retardation system and will be expanded to
8 include the child welfare system.
9 We're also proposing a minimum 85 percent
10 occupancy for all residential services, excluding
11 emergency shelter and foster family services, when
12 formulating a per-diem cost.
13 Finally, we're proposing a 3 percent maximum
14 retained revenue per legal entity, which is per
15 provider, not program.
16 Changes to the contract and budget amendment
17 process. The third area covers contract changes.
18 Currently, a county may overspend up to 10 percent in
19 a cost category before requesting approval from DPW.
20 We're proposing to limit the amount a county
21 may overspend before seeking a budget amendment to 3
22 percent for counties of the first and second class
23 and then the lesser of 10 percent or $1 million for
24 other counties.
25 The tighter limit is designed to improve 30
1 accountability. We're not suggesting counties cannot
2 make budget and contract amendments. We're just
3 instituting a review mechanism earlier than current
4 practice.
5 Request for out-of-State placements.
6 Finally, we are proposing that counties work with DPW
7 before an out-of-state placement occurs in order to
8 receive reimbursement from the State.
9 For the vast majority of cases, our goal is
10 that children belong with their own families. The
11 distance involved in many out-of-state placements may
12 hinder the ability of children to reunite with their
13 families.
14 We're not suggesting that out-of-state
15 placements cannot occur. In fact, in many -- in some
16 cases, out-of-state placements may actually reduce
17 the distance between a child and his or her family.
18 For example, a placement in New Jersey may
19 make more sense for a Philadelphia youth than a
20 placement in Erie. Likewise, a placement in Ohio
21 makes more sense for a family who lives in
22 Pittsburgh.
23 DPW has already reached out to the Juvenile
24 Court Judges Commission to work with us on a process,
25 not hamper youth being placed appropriately in an 31
1 efficient and effective manner.
2 These are the major changes in the proposed
3 legislation. We have built in transition periods and
4 retained the ability for counties to work with DPW on
5 special cases.
6 Our desire is to have more, not less,
7 dialogue with the counties to find ways to reduce
8 counties' share on highly desirable services like
9 adoption support.
10 Most of all, I want dialogue and, thus, I
11 have requested that we form a work group that will be
12 led by my Executive Deputy to focus on the
13 legislation to ensure that we arrive at a workable
14 framework that has the support of our stakeholders.
15 The Executive Deputy did the same work with
16 the Office of Developmental Programs. And unlike a
17 one-time forum, the work group will be an ongoing
18 process with a relatively small group of people from
19 the child welfare community who share a commitment of
20 better outcomes and better management of system
21 resources. This includes protecting Federal dollars.
22 As you know, the legislative process
23 involves give and take, discussions on impact and
24 compromise. I fully expect these issues will produce
25 debate and I personally am willing to work with all 32
1 stakeholders to reach a conclusion.
2 Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
3 As I mentioned before, I unfortunately have an
4 emergency. I will need to leave, but I will be back
5 well before the roundtable begins.
6 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you
7 very much, Secretary Richman.
8 SECRETARY RICHMAN: My pleasure.
9 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: And next
10 we have the County Administrators. We might need to
11 pull two more chairs up. I think we are just going
12 to kind of pass the microphone down.
13 Anne Marie Ambrose, Commissioner,
14 Philadelphia Department of Human Services.
15 James Laughman, Executive Director, Office
16 of the Human Services Administrator, Lancaster
17 County.
18 We have Terry Watson, Director of the Office
19 of Children and Youth Services from Centre County.
20 And Marc Cherna, Director, Allegheny County
21 Department of Human Services.
22 I note that we have also been joined by
23 Representative Wheatley. And again, we're going to
24 move right through all of the panels and everyone is
25 going to be taking notes so that we can ask all of 33
1 our questions and have our dialogue at the end.
2 I don't care if you go in the order that you
3 were introduced. Or if you had a different thought
4 about order, you're welcome.
5 Who wants to start?
6 COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: I'll go first.
7 Thank you for the opportunity to appear
8 before you today to discuss Governor Rendell's
9 2009-2010 budget for the Department of Public
10 Welfare.
11 My name is Anne Marie Ambrose and I am the
12 Commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Public
13 Services, the largest child welfare agency in the
14 Commonwealth.
15 We serve over 35,000 children and 17,000
16 families each year through child welfare and juvenile
17 justice programs. In addition, over 45,000 children
18 and youth are served in our prevention programs.
19 Our mission is to provide and promote safety
20 and permanency for children at risk of abuse,
21 neglect, and delinquency.
22 I'm sure that the Legislature understands
23 that children need to be protected during this time
24 of economic challenge. As funding decisions are
25 made, it is imperative that the children entrusted to 34
1 the care of DHS and DPW remain safe and that their
2 well-being is assured as we work to move them to
3 stable and permanent homes.
4 Under this unique budget process that was
5 described by Lisa Fleming, each county is to identify
6 its projected child welfare and juvenile justice
7 needs and develop a budget and plan to address them.
8 The Court plays a vital role in identifying
9 these needs and must sign off on the plan.
10 The Department of Public Welfare is to
11 assess whether or not a county's needs-based plan and
12 budget is reasonable and certify the aggregate
13 needs-based plan and budget for the counties to the
14 Governor and the leadership of the General Assembly.
15 I regret to report that DPW's certified
16 aggregate needs-based budget for FY 2010 is not a
17 certification of the counties' reasonable needs of
18 the children of this Commonwealth for child welfare
19 and juvenile justice services.
20 As a result, despite the statutory mandate
21 to fund the child welfare system based on the needs
22 of the children and families that we serve in
23 Philadelphia, DPW's needs-based certification for
24 Philadelphia County for FY 2010 is $40 million less
25 than what the DPW ultimately certified as the need in 35
1 FY 2009.
2 More troubling is that the FY 2010
3 allocation is $69.2 million less than the city's
4 projected expenditures for 2009 and 69.5 million less
5 than the actual expenditures for 2008.
6 To the extent that DHS has received any
7 explanation for DPW's substantial cuts in its
8 programs and funds this year, it appears that the
9 changes in the city's plan and budget are not based
10 on whether the plan was reasonable, as the law
11 requires. It appears that they are unrelated to the
12 documented needs of the children and families and
13 actual expenditures of the city.
14 DPW also jettisoned the needs-based budget
15 process for 2009. Although the General Assembly
16 appropriated funds for Children and youth Services
17 for FY 2009 based on DPW's approved needs-based plan
18 and budget for that fiscal year, DPW recently
19 announced unilateral cuts in those allocations.
20 It is greatly distressing that the needs of
21 families and children were ignored by the
22 Department's unilateral decision to cut DHS funding
23 for FY 2009 by $11 million seven months into the
24 fiscal year.
25 This level of unpredictability and 36
1 instability makes operating an effective child
2 welfare system extremely difficult and jeopardizes
3 the children that we are committed to protecting.
4 Further, despite the requirements and
5 mandates of the needs-based budget statute, these
6 2009 cuts were made without explanation and without
7 the advice and consent of the General Assembly.
8 The net effect is that DPW is withholding or
9 reallocating funds appropriated by the General
10 Assembly for child welfare programs.
11 The bottom line is that the city is left
12 with a disproportionate share of the child welfare
13 costs mandated by State law.
14 DPW's failure to adhere to the needs-based
15 budget process for 2009 and 2010 violates the State
16 needs-based budget law. But more importantly, it
17 most certainly jeopardizes the safety of
18 Philadelphia's children.
19 Our only recourse is to appeal to this
20 Committee and the General Assembly for help. We need
21 a FY 2010 budget for child welfare and juvenile
22 justice services that is realistic and fair to our
23 children.
24 We need the FY 2009 funds appropriated for
25 Children and Youth Services restored. We understand 37
1 the dire financial constraints of the State. But the
2 City of Philadelphia cannot absorb the shortfalls.
3 And the needs of our children have not diminished
4 with the economic crisis. We fear they will grow.
5 We ask that you instruct DPW to work with
6 counties in a true partnership and follow the
7 needs-based budget process and identify the actual
8 needs of children and families and make budget
9 decisions based on this process, as the law requires.
10 I am further asking you, as legislators, to
11 clearly look at the needs of Pennsylvania's children
12 and families and to restore needed funding to the
13 child welfare budget.
14 We are willing to work in partnership with
15 DPW to reduce the financial strains on the system.
16 In fact, during these difficult fiscal times, I have
17 already taken a number of aggressive steps to ensure
18 that DHS is a fiscally responsible agency.
19 DHS strongly believes that it must be
20 responsible for achieving positive outcomes for our
21 children and families in order to receive State
22 funding. In the past year alone, the number of
23 children in placement has decreased by 10 percent.
24 And DHS is partnering with the Casey Family
25 Program and DPW in its pledge to reduce the number of 38
1 kids in care by 10 percent in 2010.
2 DPW's proposed legislation to amend the
3 needs-based plan and budget of Act 148, as described
4 by the Secretary, so that reimbursement rates create
5 an incentive to reduce placements has merit.
6 It reflects a policy position that is
7 currently driving DHS practice in Philadelphia but
8 again, the counties must be part of the process if we
9 want to achieve better outcomes for children.
10 In partnership with the Courts, under the
11 leadership of Administrative Judge Kevin Dougherty,
12 we have increased adoptions and permanent legal
13 custodianship.
14 We have also decreased placements to the
15 lowest rate in over 20 years. Unfortunately,
16 juvenile justice placements have increased, which is
17 an issue that Judge Dougherty and I are working on.
18 But we also need to keep communities safe.
19 We will continue to work to improve the
20 long-term stability of children in our care, but the
21 financial resources are needed to continue this work.
22 Difficult economic times have placed
23 enormous stress on families in Philadelphia and
24 throughout the Commonwealth. When families are
25 suffering economic hardship and more and more parents 39
1 are working two jobs, we need to increase the safety
2 net for children.
3 Many of the programs are not fully funded by
4 the county's local share. Therefore, counties have a
5 choice to make; either increase their local share or
6 reduce programs such as after-school programs.
7 Our Mayor is deeply committed to continuing
8 to provide these services for Philadelphia's
9 children, but it will be a challenge to do so in the
10 face of the cuts that the State is proposing.
11 Again, we ask that you insist that the
12 Department follow the needs-based plan and budget as
13 the law provides and let counties determine their
14 needs and DPW review and certify the needs in a
15 transparent process that results in a budget that is
16 truly based on the county's reasonable needs.
17 We understand that there is a give-and-take
18 process. It hasn't occurred this fiscal year.
19 Philadelphia is more than prepared to tighten our
20 budget. However, we need to do so in partnership
21 with the Department of Public Welfare so we can make
22 the cuts based on what we know will not threaten the
23 safety of the children and families in Philadelphia.
24 Thank you.
25 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you. 40
1 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR LAUGHMAN: Good morning
2 and thank you for the opportunity to provide
3 testimony on behalf of Lancaster County.
4 Lancaster County, according to the U.S.
5 Census Bureau, has surpassed the 500,000 population
6 mark and continues to be one of the fastest growing
7 counties in PA.
8 In perspective, Lancaster County is the
9 sixth most populated county in the Commonwealth.
10 Lancaster County has a three-member Board of
11 Commissioners who has been elected to oversee all
12 county government services, one of which is the
13 Lancaster County Children and Youth Social Services
14 Agency.
15 Currently, Lancaster County Children and
16 Youth Agency has 481 children in placement services,
17 including foster homes; 452 children receiving
18 in-home services; and 430 children engaged in the
19 in-take phase of services. On average, we serve
20 3,600 children each year. Additionally, in 2008, we
21 conducted over 870 child abuse investigations, a 20
22 percent increase from the previous year.
23 While I appreciate the ability to give you
24 some background information about Lancaster County
25 and our Children and Youth Agency, please allow me to 41
1 get to the serious issues at hand -- the budget,
2 service delivery, and the long-term effectiveness of
3 the child welfare system to protect children.
4 Let's start with the fiscal reality that
5 there is minimal funding provided directly to our
6 local Children and Youth Agency to address
7 prevention.
8 The child welfare system is reactionary and
9 until we have sufficient stable funding allocated to
10 purely prevention programs, it will be difficult to
11 be proactive in protecting children. While
12 prevention dollars have been allocated in other areas
13 of the budget, little can be found in our fiscal year
14 '09-'10 budget. Sufficient sustainable prevention
15 funding is necessary to protect children.
16 In the fiscal year 2009-2010 budget,
17 Lancaster County requested a $45.2 million budget
18 through the needs-based budget process. However, we
19 were only approved for $43.1 million.
20 We did receive special grants funding for
21 over $2.1 million. However, these funds are
22 categorically limited and have no guarantee of
23 sustainability. It is the issue of categorical
24 limitations and the lack of sustainability that leads
25 to larger concerns. 42
1 In a mad dash to reduce in-home placements
2 by an arbitrary 15 percent by the end of 2010, county
3 agencies have been informed that while OCYF will
4 support efforts to reduce placements, failing to get
5 to our designated levels will have financial
6 consequences to counties.
7 To be more succinct, during this fiscal
8 year, funding has been specifically allocated to
9 placement services and protective in-home services.
10 Counties have been told that if they exceed their
11 placement budget, the Commonwealth will not only
12 forbid any supplemental payments but will refuse to
13 allow counties to shift costs from their in-home
14 portion of their needs-based budget to cover
15 placement costs.
16 This means counties will be solely liable
17 and responsible for any placement costs above the
18 initial budget. No ifs, ands, or buts. No
19 partnership and no communication. It appears that it
20 is a bureaucracy telling a community what their
21 priorities should be and then punishing them for
22 their values, standards, and the day-to-day realities
23 of child welfare practice.
24 To be successful in protecting children
25 across the Commonwealth, there needs to be 43
1 reciprocity, not deficits, from the Commonwealth.
2 Respecting the values and cultures of the county
3 should be seen as a strength. I'm going to say that
4 again. Respecting the values and the cultures of the
5 county should be seen as a strength, not a deterrent,
6 to push an agenda that may ultimately cost the county
7 financially beyond their means.
8 And more importantly, it creates potential
9 risk to children by returning them to situations that
10 have not yet fully been resolved to meet an arbitrary
11 deadline. While this may indicate fiscal prudence,
12 it is not effective child welfare practice.
13 Honesty and good communication is essential
14 as well. Poorly thought out and blatant disregard
15 for experience and advice from counties only
16 compounds the problems that child welfare programs
17 face in these unparalleled times.
18 Let me explain. Despite hesitation and
19 previous experience from county child welfare
20 agencies, they were instructed, if not in essence
21 ordered, to add in their FY '09-'10 needs-based
22 budget the costs of legal counsel for parents'
23 attorneys in child welfare cases.
24 Administrators questioned and warned against
25 such actions but we were told, quote, the rules would 44
1 be re-written, unquote, and, quote, the law
2 interpreted differently this time around, unquote.
3 So attorney costs were included in the budget.
4 In Lancaster County, we were told just this
5 week that the costs were not allowable and were
6 removed from our '09-'10 needs-based budget. No
7 warning, no discussion, just a few program
8 representatives delivering the bad news. No
9 apologies or cares about the implication to counties
10 who might have been counting on yet another
11 unfulfilled promise from Harrisburg.
12 One positive step that we did see from OCYF
13 was the requirement to use a standard safety
14 assessment across the Pennsylvania child welfare
15 system. The idea is to establish a consistent
16 approach to making sound decisions when the child
17 enters the child welfare system.
18 While the concept and tool is sound, the
19 implementation has been a fiasco and has put a drain
20 on the county. Children and Youth Agency, OCYF, for
21 the first time that we can remember, required the
22 counties to assume the burden of training all their
23 staff between January 2009 and June 2009.
24 After being assured by the Department there
25 would be no burden to the counties, in reality, it 45
1 was fraught with problems. The time, energy, and
2 resources county staff had to put into doing training
3 has been massive.
4 Not only has there been no consideration for
5 the already burdensome responsibilities of local
6 agencies, now we had to do the Commonwealth's job
7 without any extra assistance from OCYF.
8 It made a lot of people wonder why the
9 Commonwealth's contractor, the University of
10 Pittsburgh's Child Welfare Competency Training
11 Program, wasn't doing what they are paid millions of
12 State funds to do.
13 Before I end my testimony, I would like to
14 mention a positive step undertaken in Lancaster
15 County. Last year, a Court-approved CASA Program was
16 established in Lancaster County. We have had
17 incredible interest in our community for this program
18 but we do have one glaring problem. No money is
19 allocated for CASA.
20 While CASAs have been listed as a best
21 practices initiative and can clearly play a key role
22 in an improved child welfare system, we need
23 designated funding to make CASAs a reality across the
24 Commonwealth. For Lancaster County, it would only be
25 a mere $75,000 to get our CASA up and running. 46
1 Please don't get me wrong. Many good
2 evidence-based practices and initiatives are helping
3 to improve the child welfare system and, more
4 importantly, assure child safety.
5 However, a county-based child welfare system
6 like Pennsylvania's requires special care. It
7 demands open communication, reciprocity, consistency
8 in message, elimination of unfunded mandates, and
9 sufficient funding. These issues must be addressed
10 if we are truly going to be successful in
11 transforming the child welfare system today,
12 tomorrow, and for years to come.
13 Thank you.
14 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: You timed
15 that in the mirror. You were eight minutes exactly.
16 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR LAUGHMAN: You are
17 absolutely correct.
18 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Good job.
19 DIRECTOR WATSON: Good morning.
20 My name is Terry Watson. It's a privilege
21 to speak to the members of the Subcommittee on the
22 important issues related to the operation of an
23 effective and efficient system to children, youth,
24 and families in the Commonwealth.
25 I have worked with children and families for 47
1 39 years, including over 34 as a Director at Centre
2 County Children and Youth Services. Centre County is
3 a fifth-class county.
4 Over the years, people have said, "I
5 couldn't do your job." Working Children and Youth
6 Services is a tough job. In pursuing our charge to
7 ensure the protection and safety of children and the
8 strengthening of families, there are rarely clear
9 distinctions in making decisions.
10 Rather, what the caseworker faces on an
11 ongoing basis every day are shades of gray. Workers
12 have to ask themselves, "Is it okay to continue to
13 work with this child and family or do other plans
14 need to be made to ensure safety?" "What does this
15 mean when the rubber meets the road?"
16 Most often, there is not an immediate and
17 severe danger to children. But what are the tough
18 decisions and even tougher actions that must happen?
19 What gut-wrenching things cause workers to
20 lose sleep? How about dealing with a child who has
21 been severely beaten or repeatedly raped by a parent
22 or caretaker?
23 What about the agony endured by a child when
24 they just cannot understand why they cannot stay with
25 Mom and Dad? What about making a recommendation to 48
1 the Court that will terminate a parent's rights
2 forever and a day?
3 Thankfully, these extreme situations don't
4 happen all of the time. Most often families or
5 friends can be a safe alternative for the children
6 who are at risk if the person cannot provide that
7 safety.
8 The child welfare system is becoming
9 increasingly focused on engaging and collaborating
10 with families to develop a workable plan to keep the
11 kids safe and resolve the necessary issues. However,
12 there are times the family places the children at
13 severe risk and the Court has to be petitioned to
14 remove the child from the family.
15 More and more, drug and alcohol use and
16 abuse by parents and children contribute to the
17 degree and severity of risk to kids. Then stress on
18 staff also is increasing because of the increased
19 level of intensity in the presenting cases.
20 It is not unusual for all levels of staff to
21 endure sleepless nights because the concrete proof of
22 the family instability is lacking but the child still
23 seems to be at high risk. In addition, the families
24 with whom we work often have untreated mental health
25 and/or domestic violence issues. 49
1 Since last fall, the unstable economy has
2 begun to make a bigger impact on people as well. How
3 will people react who have lost long-standing jobs?
4 Will there be anger, depression, domestic violence,
5 and child abuse? These are not uncommon reactions to
6 economic downturns.
7 The good news is that most often, Children,
8 Youth, and Families can work together to resolve
9 abuse and neglect issues and children can safely
10 remain in the home.
11 Many programs, including those based on
12 research or evidence as well as home-grown services
13 developed in the counties, have come a long way in
14 strengthening families, keeping children safe, and
15 reducing the need for out-of-home placement. Setting
16 and measuring outcomes for services assist in guiding
17 the system in what's effective.
18 What do caseworkers say about our system?
19 This could be summed up by a statement of a
20 caseworker who had worked in our office for some
21 years, left to raise her children, and then returned
22 to the agency.
23 She said, "I spend more time writing about
24 and documenting my contacts of my clients than
25 actually seeing them." When I asked a group of 50
1 experienced caseworkers their thoughts on what they
2 wanted to share with the Subcommittee, they said that
3 the amount of time spent on documentation is
4 counterproductive to the engagement of families.
5 The reality is that current requirements
6 restrict the number of contacts that can occur with
7 families. The time absorbed in documentation robs
8 the time necessary to engage those families.
9 Engaged clients are much more apt to make
10 and keep workable plans in conjunction with their
11 extended family and with other community supports.
12 If there is not sufficient time to do this, the
13 system is set up to fail the children and families
14 they serve.
15 In talking about the potential for budget
16 cuts, the workers said basically when that happens,
17 the agency staff picks the children and families who
18 will not be served, then crosses fingers and hopes
19 something bad will not happen.
20 In a telling statement, a worker asked, "Is
21 this a good business plan?" The other plea from
22 caseworkers to the Legislature and the Governor, no
23 matter who is sitting in those positions, whether
24 it's now or some other time, would be, don't make
25 sweeping, immediate changes statewide based on one or 51
1 a few isolated incidents.
2 Most often, what happens in these instances
3 is the requirement for more documentation of some
4 sort. There has to be a reasonable balancing between
5 the need for documentation and the need to spend
6 productive time with clients.
7 When I talked to caseworker supervisors,
8 they reiterated many of the things stated by the
9 caseworkers and added a request to put a hold on new
10 or expanded requirements and/or initiatives.
11 Over the last approximately two years,
12 county children and youth programs have been
13 presented with around 26 such programs. While it was
14 acknowledged that these programs are positive, the
15 reality is that sometimes too much of a good thing
16 all at once is counterproductive.
17 By meeting these new or expanded State and
18 Federal requirements or suggestions in this time
19 frame, there will actually be disengagement with
20 families and additional stress for caseworkers. This
21 is especially a problem for a system that already
22 historically has a low caseworker retention rate.
23 While it's understood that compliance with
24 State and Federal standards must be met, the best
25 solution would be to proceed in a planned, gradual 52
1 implementation of the requirements.
2 What's the impact of the current economic
3 conditions on counties? Since Children and Youth is
4 a department within county government, the fiscal
5 health of the county government affects how child
6 welfare services can be delivered on a local level.
7 Counties are faced with increasing costs and
8 reduced revenues. Many have already made cuts to
9 specific expenditures or made a general reduction to
10 the net use of county funds.
11 Often, our agency is advanced funds because
12 we receive reimbursement on expenditures from
13 previous quarters. With the reduction of county fund
14 balances, the ability to do so in the future, this
15 year and beyond, may not be possible.
16 A workable and helpful solution to the issue
17 of cash flow for counties would be the adoption of
18 legislation permitting quarterly advances for our
19 services. This would not mean increased funding, but
20 rather it would be given when the funds are needed.
21 If funds are cut from service areas in our
22 proposed budget on a State level and/or if
23 unanticipated high-end expenses occur, counties have
24 to absorb 100 percent of any expenses above the
25 certified amount of State funds. 53
1 In small and mid-sized counties, such
2 expenditures for even one or several youths can cause
3 great fiscal distress. Unless there are excess funds
4 available to cover these expenses, these costs must
5 be borne completely by the county and can never be
6 recouped.
7 Although payment above the certified level
8 by DPW has occurred over the last several years, the
9 current state of the economy makes this possibility
10 appear rather dim.
11 Also, the inability to anticipate the amount
12 of Federal IV-E reimbursement at this point makes it
13 impossible to know with certainty the amount of funds
14 that will be needed at the county level.
15 As an entitlement, child welfare services,
16 as they are currently defined, must be provided by
17 counties. In the end, counties will be faced with
18 reduction in strictly county departments in order to
19 fund required human services and also with reductions
20 to the staff roster and purchased social services for
21 child welfare or other human services programs.
22 If preventive services are eliminated,
23 placements will inevitably increase. The system will
24 be placed on the horns of dilemma.
25 Currently, legislation is being contemplated 54
1 in several areas that could affect the child welfare
2 system. Revisions to Act 30 and Act 148 regarding
3 the funding of the system need discussion and study
4 with all affected parties before anything is
5 finalized.
6 We need to ensure that the outcomes will be
7 good and not have any unintended negative
8 consequences. Many counties are also concerned about
9 the potential requirement for an ombudsman office for
10 the children and youth system. We are concerned that
11 it will be another administrative layer that would
12 duplicate activities already being performed.
13 In conclusion, the best way to achieve a
14 stable and effective system of services for children
15 and families is to have communication and
16 collaboration among citizens, private providers of
17 service, county governments, and the State
18 government.
19 We need to work together to accomplish this
20 end. If this doesn't happen, the system will founder
21 and we will not adequately serve the needs of
22 children, youth, and families.
23 Thank you.
24 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Sorry
25 you're hanging on the end, Marc. Are you okay? 55
1 DIRECTOR CHERNA: That's okay. I think I'm
2 good.
3 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Okay.
4 DIRECTOR CHERNA: Good morning, everybody.
5 Thank you for giving me the opportunity to
6 testify on the child welfare system in Pennsylvania.
7 In Allegheny County, the Office of Children, Youth,
8 and Families is part of the Department of Human
9 Services which also consists of the Area Agency on
10 Aging and the Offices of Behavioral Health, Mental
11 Retardation, and Community Services, which provides
12 employment and training, homeless and supported
13 housing, the food programs, Head Start, LIHEAP,
14 Medical Assistance Transportation, the Human Service
15 Development funds, the Community Services Block
16 Grants, and a multitude of prevention programs.
17 We serve over 200,000 people a year, which
18 is about a sixth of the population, many whom receive
19 multiple services.
20 Having 194 funding sources under one roof
21 enables us to maximize support services to people in
22 need, including families involved in the child
23 welfare system. In 1996, we had 3,318 children in
24 placement. Today we have 1,884.
25 This dramatic reduction in placement was 56
1 greatly facilitated by the creation of the Department
2 and our being able to eliminate a siloed approach to
3 service delivery.
4 The benefits of integration and enabling
5 counties to have the flexibility and incentive to
6 invest in programs that improve safety, permanency,
7 and well being for children are the thrust of my
8 testimony today.
9 I've been in this business a long time and
10 have done a lot of work around the country. During
11 that time, there have been billions of dollars spent
12 to improve child welfare systems, but we still
13 struggle.
14 No State has passed the Federal Child Family
15 Service Review and Pennsylvania is no different.
16 It's been said that "child protection is not rocket
17 science. It's more complex."
18 But in spite of that, there is always public
19 and political demand for the quick fix; everyone
20 wants the answer. But if it was easy, we wouldn't be
21 talking about it here today.
22 There are some things that make a
23 difference. In my 27 years as a top administrator,
24 I've been involved in two major efforts to transform
25 systems. And it's been my observation that child 57
1 protection is most effective when the community is
2 engaged to take responsibility and join in the
3 effort.
4 To think government alone will be able to
5 keep all children safe from harm is flawed thinking
6 and creates a false sense of security. Caseworkers
7 are expected to visit children once a month. What's
8 happening when they're not there?
9 They don't live in people's homes and often
10 don't even live in the neighborhood. If neighbors,
11 teachers, clergy, friends, and family take ownership,
12 children are much safer.
13 Investing in family strengthening prevention
14 services such as family support centers makes an
15 impact. Providing tangible assistance and in-home
16 services to assist parents, as well as treatment for
17 addictive disorders and mental illness when needed,
18 enables children to live safely in their homes.
19 The vast majority of parents love their
20 children and don't want to harm them. Helping them
21 to help themselves often provides the most successful
22 outcomes.
23 In Allegheny County, we have been utilizing
24 family group decisionmaking very successfully for
25 about ten years. I'm pleased that the Court 58
1 Improvement Project and the Office of Children,
2 Youth, and Families have recognized family group
3 decisionmaking and are encouraging all counties to
4 adopt this practice as a way to reduce placements
5 while keeping children safe.
6 Removals are extremely traumatic and should
7 be avoided whenever possible. That said, we must
8 remember that child removals and returns can only be
9 done through the Court. There must be a strong legal
10 representation for all parties so the Judge can make
11 the best decision for the child and family.
12 It's great that we now have an Office of
13 Children and Families in the courts. Their court
14 improvement efforts have begun to make a huge
15 positive impact across the Commonwealth.
16 When children are placed, it's imperative
17 that we place them with their siblings. We must be
18 aggressive in our efforts to identify relatives to
19 care for children. Children are less traumatized and
20 have better outcomes when they are placed with people
21 they know and love.
22 The Family Finding Program that counties are
23 now instituting under the auspices of the Court and
24 supported by OCYF will greatly help these efforts.
25 Collectively, we must have a greater sense 59
1 of urgency to achieve permanency as quickly as
2 possible either through reunification, adoption, or
3 subsidized permanent legal custodianship.
4 When Justice Baer was the Administrative
5 Judge in Allegheny County's Family Court, we reduced
6 our hearing intervals from six months to three
7 months. This made a huge impact in reducing the
8 length of time in care for children.
9 Now many courts around the Commonwealth are
10 moving in this direction and placements are dropping
11 around the State. We also need to remember that
12 almost half of the children in placement are
13 adolescents. Their issues and service needs are very
14 different than the babies.
15 There is consensus across the country that
16 what we need to do is to improve child welfare
17 services. There's much effort focused on reducing
18 out-of-home placements while increasing safety,
19 permanency, and well-being.
20 Casey Family Programs, the largest
21 foundation in the country dedicated to child welfare
22 reforms, is leading this effort and helping our State
23 tremendously.
24 We're making some progress but a lot more
25 can be made if we reform the way we fund child 60
1 welfare services on a national and State level. We
2 can't impact on the Federal level in this forum, but
3 we certainly can improve our State financing.
4 That said, I'd like to offer some specific
5 recommendations to change the way we fund child
6 welfare services.
7 Pennsylvania has a relatively well-funded
8 child welfare system when compared to other States.
9 The problem is that our incentives are not aligned
10 with the permanency outcomes we strive to achieve.
11 Federal funding is heavily weighted toward
12 reimbursement for certain eligible children in
13 placement and the requirements keep getting more
14 restrictive. Federal funding for service to keep
15 children home is negligible.
16 All counties appreciate the efforts of DPW
17 and the Legislature to increase State funds the past
18 few years in order to replace the decreasing Federal
19 funds.
20 According to the recently released report by
21 Child Trends, from fiscal year '04-'06, Pennsylvania
22 State funding increased 33 percent while our Federal
23 funding decreased by 40 percent. However, the county
24 funding increased by 39 percent during this period.
25 This burden on the counties to increase 61
1 funds in order to match the requirements dictated by
2 Act 148 continues to grow. You all know that the
3 hardest place to raise revenue is at the local level.
4 County revenue is generated by property
5 taxes and there is no political will to raise them.
6 This means that many counties cannot draw down the
7 available State funds due to lack of match.
8 The elimination of the State transition
9 grant that was utilized to replace the loss of TANF
10 funds has exacerbated that situation since counties
11 had been able to use those funds as match. Counties
12 desperately need the State to designate other sources
13 of non-matching dollars for specific services.
14 Given the influx of the stimulus funds, it
15 would be advantageous and in everyone's best interest
16 to permit the utilization of the Title IV-E FMAP
17 increase to use towards the county match requirements
18 if possible.
19 My strongest recommendation is to revise the
20 arcane matching formula that was developed in the
21 early 1990s to align incentives to keep children
22 safely in their homes, achieving permanency, and
23 reducing the burden on the counties.
24 DPW's tentative needs-based allocations to
25 the counties which separate funding for 62
1 evidence-based and promising practices with reduced
2 county match requirements is very positive. It puts
3 our money where our mouths are.
4 In addition, DPW's proposal to amend the
5 needs-based plan and budget legislation of Act 148 is
6 a step in the right direction and I commend them for
7 taking the initiative.
8 We all know that any proposal that has
9 winners and losers is going to be controversial.
10 However, I believe that the proposal could be
11 instituted without a lot of dissension if no
12 reimbursement rates were reduced while the proposed
13 increased rates were instituted.
14 I would strengthen this proposal by making
15 the following two modifications. First, the State
16 reimbursement rates for adoption subsidy and
17 subsidized legal custodianship should be increased to
18 100 percent, which is the level that adoption-related
19 activities are reimbursed, instead of the proposed 85
20 percent.
21 It makes no sense to lower the reimbursement
22 rate as soon as a permanent placement is attained for
23 the child. This disparity serves as a disincentive
24 to permanency for counties because the reimbursement
25 diminishes. 63
1 Second, legal representation for children in
2 dependency and delinquency as well as parents needs
3 to be reimbursed at 80 percent instead of the current
4 50 percent. This is critical to maintaining strong
5 checks and balances in the system.
6 Media accounts strongly suggest that the
7 recent scandal in Luzerne County might not have
8 happened if those children had adequate
9 representation.
10 Given the financial realities, I am not
11 asking for an increase in State funds to replace the
12 reduction in county funds.
13 I believe that counties can manage and will
14 be able to reduce spending on high-end placements
15 with the changes outlined and my suggested
16 modifications.
17 Counties should be encouraged to maintain
18 their commitment but not be mandated to do so if they
19 don't have the funds.
20 Thank you for your attention. I look
21 forward to questions.
22 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you
23 very much to all of our panelists.
24 While we shift panels, I want to acknowledge
25 that we've been joined by Representative Reichley, 64
1 Representative Ellis, and Representative Parker.
2 Our next panel includes some service
3 providers. Dan Styborski, Director of Laurel Youth
4 Services from Blossburg; Andrea Boyles, Chief
5 Operating Officer, Centre County Youth Services
6 Bureau, State College; Nancy Sabol, Executive
7 Director of Gannondale in Erie; and Gwendolyn Bailey,
8 Youth Services, Inc., in Philadelphia.
9 And again, I'll remind our presenters, if
10 you see me doing this, that means two minutes, or
11 this, that means one minute. We're really right on
12 schedule. And I really want everyone, both members
13 and the stakeholders, to be able to have that joint
14 dialogue at the end. So we're going to move right
15 through.
16 And whoever wants to start first is welcome
17 to.
18 DIRECTOR STYBORSKI: My name is Dan
19 Styborski and I am the Program Director for Laurel
20 Youth Services, a private not-for-profit agency
21 located in beautiful Tioga County.
22 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Dan, pull
23 the microphone a little closer to you and make sure
24 the green light is on.
25 DIRECTOR STYBORSKI: Okay. 65
1 Laurel Youth Services provides services to
2 children, youth, and families through residential
3 programming and a variety of community-based
4 programs, including specialized foster care, in-home
5 care, and evidenced-based program models of
6 functional family therapy and multi-dimensional
7 treatment foster care.
8 I have been working in the field of juvenile
9 justice since the late 1970s and can remember the
10 financial hardships of the '80s and the challenges
11 that DPW faced with the sudden influx of Cuban
12 refugees.
13 Both of these circumstances necessitated
14 quick planning and dramatic measures involving the
15 State, the counties, and the private providers. We
16 were able to meet those challenges then and somehow
17 we managed to survive. And I am hopeful that many of
18 us will also survive these challenging times.
19 I am aware that Pennsylvania's budgets have
20 been difficult for some time. I am not a budget
21 historian, but it seems that since the Ridge
22 Administration, and possibly before, there have been
23 large budget holes to fill each year.
24 In addition, the State has had challenges
25 from the Federal audits concerning the IV-E monies 66
1 and in not meeting the benchmarks of the Federal
2 child and family service review.
3 The IV-E audits have placed a great burden
4 on the Department of Public Welfare, potentially
5 requiring payback of millions of dollars. These past
6 practices created the need to restructure the process
7 of documentation and accountability to ensure the
8 Federal dollars are used for allowable activities.
9 Pennsylvania, along with most other States,
10 has not met the standards set by the Federal
11 Government for the child and family service review.
12 The failure to meet these benchmarks that the Federal
13 Government calls outcomes may result in millions of
14 additional dollars not flowing to the State.
15 These are all very real problems for the
16 State and the counties, problems that private
17 providers want to be part of solving. Unfortunately,
18 it feels, and I emphasize the word feels, that
19 private providers are often seen as part of the
20 problem and not part of the solution.
21 Just as we wish to partner with the State
22 and counties in finding solutions and remedies for
23 these problems, we also want the State to partner
24 with us in surviving these difficult times.
25 Since private providers supply 80 percent of 67
1 the direct care services to dependent and delinquent
2 youth in Pennsylvania, why are we not more directly
3 involved in the budgeting process?
4 We only appear in the State budget within
5 the total requests for the needs-based budgets of
6 each of the counties that purchase our services.
7 There is not a formalized process for us to be
8 included and often we do not know if the counties
9 request included dollars to increase per diems for
10 our services.
11 Act 148 of 1976/Act 30 of 1991, the two
12 major laws addressing funding for county child
13 welfare and juvenile justice, do not reference
14 private providers or purchased services in any direct
15 way.
16 We are requesting that amendments be made to
17 Act 30 to more directly connect the dollars with the
18 service delivery and reflect actual costs. This
19 involves redistribution of existing dollars, not
20 necessarily new dollars.
21 Private providers used to negotiate directly
22 with the counties for our services. If the cost was
23 too high or they believed the increases for services
24 were too much, they could choose to take their
25 business elsewhere and they often did. 68
1 For most providers, these were per diem or
2 fee-for-service rates, meaning that dollars were only
3 paid if a child was placed with that agency. These
4 were not program-funded contracts. The risk of the
5 program operation stayed with the provider.
6 The county controlled referrals and could
7 control their costs through number of placements. So
8 we were executing the contract in hopes that we would
9 be able to provide services but going into the next
10 year with no guarantees.
11 The rates were based on audited expenses
12 showing the cost reports from the previous year and
13 increases were negotiated with the counties.
14 This fiscal year, new fiscal reporting
15 formats were initiated by the State to comply with
16 Federal requirements for IV-E. In addition, OCYF
17 directed counties to limit any increases to providers
18 to the COLA approved in the State budget.
19 To my recollection, this is the first time
20 that rate increases were directly connected and
21 limited to the COLA. One county who had submitted a
22 5 percent increase for providers within their
23 needs-based budget informed us it was denied by the
24 State in their request.
25 This fiscal year, DPW did not include a COLA 69
1 in their budget request, in spite of the counties
2 receiving increases for their staff and their
3 programs. As a result, private providers advocated
4 and the Legislature included a 1 percent COLA. This
5 was done in consideration of the rising cost for
6 providers of 30 percent for health care, around 8
7 percent for food costs, and transportation costs at
8 that point were running around $4 a gallon.
9 Private providers across human services
10 worked hard to have the COLA included, yet most never
11 saw the benefit of their work. Many counties kept
12 the 1 percent since their allocations were reduced by
13 1.3 percent.
14 A few counties were willing to increase
15 rates. But since our organization deals with several
16 counties and we maintain the same costs for the same
17 services, we were unable to attain an increase for
18 our services.
19 While I understand the budgetary problems in
20 the State, this process has left our organization in
21 a tenuous position. We have 14 different cost
22 centers in Laurel Youth Services and we are losing
23 money in eight of the service areas with overall
24 losses of around $100,000.
25 While this is not a lot of money in the 70
1 world of bailouts, the difference between our
2 programs remaining viable has always been based
3 around a percentage point or two. The inability to
4 negotiate any increase places several of our programs
5 in peril.
6 In addition, the contracting process with
7 counties was extremely confusing and lengthy. With
8 the need for the State to establish new procedures
9 for the accounting of IV-E monies, a bulletin was
10 released that outlined the process, including
11 cost-reporting forms for the providers.
12 Training provided by OCYF for providers on
13 the completion of the new forms was inadequate and,
14 as with anything new, there were a lot of bugs that
15 developed along the way.
16 This confusion, unrealistic time frames, and
17 the lack of good training on the completion of forms
18 developed a contracting quagmire that is still being
19 unraveled.
20 Currently, we have 20 contracts completed.
21 We're still working on five others. It is difficult
22 to calculate the amount of time and energy expended
23 on these contracts and the completion of the forms,
24 since it has yet to end.
25 In addition, communication between the 71
1 State, counties, and providers was confusing since
2 the State was reviewing per diems more than $200;
3 counties were responsible to review the programs that
4 were under $200; and timing, clarity, roles, and
5 responsibilities were unclear.
6 What that meant for providers, who had above
7 and below $200 programs, was duplicative questions
8 from counties and the State office. Some counties
9 did not want to review providers' cost reports until
10 the State had completed the ones over $200.
11 With the delays in the contracting process,
12 most providers did not have contracts in place by
13 July 1 of '08 and many still do not today. This has
14 placed some providers at great risk.
15 The lack of contracts meant many counties
16 were unable to pay providers for services. Many
17 providers had to extend lines of credit to remain
18 solvent and operational while the contracts were
19 being completed.
20 I have heard of providers extending their
21 lines of credit into the millions of dollars to
22 remain operational. Interest dollars will never be
23 recovered because rates will not be increased to
24 include these hard costs.
25 Providers demonstrated commitment to their 72
1 mission and to the children of Pennsylvania by
2 continuing mandated services without disruption.
3 Despite the problems with this fiscal year's
4 contracting issues, DPW released a draft bulletin in
5 February. The bulletin was sent to counties several
6 weeks prior to us.
7 The bulletin was released February 17, 2009,
8 and comments were due on February 23rd. Stakeholder
9 forum meetings were held after that with the
10 extension moved from the 23rd to March 12th.
11 This proposed bulletin dramatically changes
12 the manner in which private providers interact with
13 the counties and the State by establishing new
14 requirements for reporting and calculating budgets.
15 The elements in this bulletin of 3 percent,
16 the 15 percent administrative overhead, and the
17 occupancy rates are not regulations governing
18 residential or foster family care services.
19 These particular elements need to be
20 addressed in a regulatory format and not a bulletin.
21 I also want to make note that this bulletin would be
22 effective on July 1, but the requirements apply to
23 providers prior to the implementation date.
24 I support many of DPW's and OCYF's
25 initiatives, including efforts to reduce the use of 73
1 restraint, the emphasis on including the family in
2 the daily treatment of youth, and the inclusion of
3 evidenced-based practices models.
4 These are all valid initiatives that support
5 better outcomes for children. However, there needs
6 to be recognition that these initiatives require
7 additional monies to implement. Most evidenced-based
8 model programs operate through OMHSAS and require
9 additional licenses.
10 The private provider community has changed
11 considerably during the last 30 years. We have moved
12 from orphanages, to juvenile justice programs, to
13 shelter programs for children, to mental health
14 treatment models, and more.
15 Through all these changes, we have worked in
16 partnership with the counties and the State to find
17 ways that work best for children.
18 As we develop these programs and cross
19 systems lines, there are additional costs that need
20 to be addressed. Where it once took one secretary to
21 do the billing, we now need several due to the
22 complexities and the contracting with several
23 agencies.
24 These additional expenses need to be
25 considered in our cost of care. It is important to 74
1 recognize that the field that exists today is much
2 different than yesterday, and if the providers are
3 really partners in this system, they need to be
4 considered in all decisions as they pertain to the
5 children they serve, including the dollars it takes
6 to serve them.
7 DIRECTOR BOYLES: Good morning. Thank you
8 so much for paying dedicated attention to the
9 provision of services to children and youth in the
10 Commonwealth. I will keep a close eye on you.
11 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Could you
12 move the microphone a little closer to you?
13 DIRECTOR BOYLES: Yes.
14 I am Andrea Boyles. And I'm the Director of
15 Operations of the Centre County Youth Service Bureau.
16 I'll keep a close eye on you, Representative
17 Manderino, because I've done this dozens of times
18 before the mirror. And I have yet to land eight
19 minutes.
20 You two can elbow me.
21 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: I know
22 there's a lot to say, but there will be some dialogue
23 at the end of this.
24 DIRECTOR BOYLES: Yes. There's a lot to
25 say. 75
1 The YSB, Youth Service Bureau, is a private,
2 not-for-profit that has been in operation for a
3 little over 40 years. It began as an all-volunteer
4 organization led by one of our Judges, then President
5 Campbell, who was very concerned about delinquencies,
6 seeing kids come before the Court.
7 And so he brought folks together. And his
8 legacy is what the YSB is today. We're the parent of
9 12 distinct programs operating in Centre County,
10 Pennsylvania.
11 We have about 85 paid staff, over 300
12 trained volunteers, most of them in our Big
13 Brothers/Big Sisters Program. And we are very
14 diversified in what we do.
15 We have about a three and a half million
16 dollar budget. And on the last page of my testimony,
17 I did give you a statement of our financial position
18 as well as our funding plan for this year.
19 If you take a look at that, what you'll see
20 is that only just under 60 percent of the services we
21 provide are funded through OCYF Department of Public
22 Welfare. 40 percent, a little over 40 percent, comes
23 through other private sources, direct Federal grants,
24 those sorts of things.
25 So naturally, my heart beats a little faster 76
1 when I hear things like 3 percent retained revenue
2 per legal entity. My legal entity is much more than
3 Children and Youth dollars.
4 Quick example. We had a major gift from a
5 woman in State College this year to support Big
6 Brothers/Big Sisters.
7 We have an open PCCD grant. We don't need
8 that money this year, so we're carrying it forward so
9 that we don't have to stop those services when that
10 grant runs out.
11 So obviously, we're pleased that the
12 bulletin will look different but continue to be very
13 concerned about the issues that are out there.
14 For today's purpose, though, I will focus on
15 county dollars and more specifically the county group
16 home per diem dollars.
17 To give you some perspective, my agency has
18 24 beds available for placements, county placements,
19 boys group home, girls group home, and transitional
20 living program.
21 Typically, we have about 18 kids sleeping
22 with us at night. This year, when we did our budget,
23 we projected about $33,000 in private dollars needed
24 in those programs. At the end of the third quarter,
25 I'm projecting a $90,000 need in those programs. 77
1 And that comes because costs go up. We
2 certainly had hardships by the fuel cost this year as
3 well as health care, as you all know.
4 Our group homes serve young people who
5 really don't have other options. You will hear that
6 we want to do more in-home services and we want kids
7 in foster care. And that is absolutely true. All of
8 us in the private sector believe in that.
9 And certainly my agency invests considerable
10 dollars and considerable energy in becoming expert at
11 prevention services and in-home services. But there
12 are young people who need group homes, who need
13 residential services.
14 I'll give you a quick example with this
15 young woman's permission. We have a young woman in
16 our girls' group home right now who has been in 31
17 different placements.
18 She has slept in 31 different beds in her 17
19 years. She has stared at 31 ceilings wondering,
20 what's going to happen to me next? And she's
21 thriving in a group home. For her, it's the best
22 thing.
23 And she is bright. She is -- you know, you
24 can imagine living in 31 different settings with
25 hundreds of parent figures, she has a lot of needs. 78
1 She needs constant attention to be socially
2 appropriate to, you know, kind of get through her
3 days.
4 But she's thriving. She's holding a
5 part-time job. She's very involved in her church.
6 And I am confident that we will move her into a dorm,
7 which is what ought to happen. That's the ideal
8 situation.
9 So these are the kids we're talking about
10 who we're spending the big dollars on in residential
11 care.
12 As Dan described, the contracting process
13 with counties was terribly disruptive this year as a
14 direct result of the fiscal forms.
15 I absolutely welcome clarification about how
16 to calculate IV-E. But that needs to be done in a
17 more inclusive process. It needs to be done with
18 respect for our expertise as well as our time.
19 In a typical year, my agency will contract
20 with about 25 of the 67 counties. This year today I
21 have eight fully executed contracts. I'm serving
22 kids from almost as many counties as I always have
23 but I don't have contracts.
24 The young woman I referenced, I don't have a
25 contract with her county. They're paying me and 79
1 we're providing the services, but there's no contract
2 because of the chaos around the fiscal forms.
3 At this point, contracts are still coming
4 in. And given the plan to deal with the fiscal forms
5 this year, which the training for my region is on
6 April 3rd, forms are to be back by May 1st, I can
7 only anticipate it will far worse this year.
8 And obviously, we run small businesses. We
9 should not be doing these services without contracts
10 in place. We know that, but we are doing it. And
11 every sign says we'll be doing it again next year,
12 which is a grave concern to me.
13 Related to contracting, the flat group home
14 rates which have been referenced are creating
15 hardship for providers. In my agency, we've received
16 no increases for residential rates this past year
17 despite the Legislature calling for a COLA for
18 private providers.
19 As you all know, the cost of living went up
20 significantly. As I referenced, the gasoline prices
21 affected us considerably and health care. Health
22 care is huge for us.
23 When our costs go up and our revenues don't,
24 we have three choices at my agency. We can get more
25 kids in our beds, which goes against everything we're 80
1 trying to do.
2 We can move development dollars into
3 residential services, which takes away from the
4 prevention that is so important. Lisa in her
5 PowerPoint talked about that. Those are critical
6 dollars.
7 I raise money by fly fishing and skeet
8 shooting and those sorts of things. I don't want to
9 move those dollars into residential care because that
10 care is mandated and ought to be paid for fully
11 through the counties and through the Commonwealth.
12 And so what we're left with is cutting
13 costs. And what that means for us is health care.
14 Now, you all know I'm not getting better rates on
15 health care. I turn full-time people into part-time
16 people. That is the only way I can keep afloat. And
17 that's not good for kids.
18 I have wonderful part-time staff. But the
19 minute someone else offers them a full-time job,
20 they're gone. They're gone.
21 And so we are in a terrible position to try
22 to keep our service afloat and yet have the best
23 quality of care we can with the exact same dollars
24 year after year. It's impossible. It's impossible.
25 In my written testimony, I speak a great 81
1 deal about the bulletin. And I will not read that to
2 you because for the moment, that issue is on hiatus,
3 I suppose. I'm very grateful for that. I'm very
4 grateful that the bulletin will look different when
5 it comes out in final form. And I look forward to
6 the legislative discussion about the Act 30 issues
7 and the issues put forth in the draft bulletin.
8 In closing, it is my hope that you are able
9 to see the need for group home services and the
10 critically important role they play for a subset of
11 the youth we serve.
12 I hope that you see that it is in everyone's
13 best interest for the private providers and the
14 counties to work together with OCYF when changes need
15 to be made.
16 I hope you will take action to ensure that
17 Act 30 is opened, is discussed, and that we are
18 included in that process so meaningful productive
19 discussion can take place to ensure that every
20 critical dollar is flowing through the system in the
21 most effective, efficient way.
22 We realize, looking at Act 30, things may
23 happen that we don't like. We understand that, but
24 we look forward to the process.
25 I thank you for your time and attention. 82
1 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Nine
2 minutes. Not bad.
3 DIRECTOR BOYLES: Not bad.
4 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SABOL: The pressure's
5 on.
6 My name is Nancy Sabol. I'm the Executive
7 Director of Gannondale in Erie, Pennsylvania.
8 Thank you for allowing me to share my
9 experiences with you. I'm high-end service.
10 Gannondale provides residential services,
11 including a secure, completely locked facility to
12 both juvenile justice and child welfare adolescent
13 females throughout the State.
14 Although located in Erie, many of our girls
15 come from Philadelphia and other urban areas. The
16 youth we serve are among the most difficult, often
17 displaying severe aggression, developmental delays,
18 and past failed placements.
19 They often have serious charges, mental
20 health issues, are low functioning, and have no
21 viable family resource. The trauma they have
22 experienced will not be healed in the home where the
23 very damage was done.
24 My frustration today is as much about
25 process as policy. Make no mistake, the problems we 83
1 are encountering have very little to do with the
2 current economic crisis.
3 Rather, they have been sparked by a
4 mentality established over the past several years
5 where providers were forced to respond to efforts to
6 change funding streams, look at alternative treatment
7 models, and adjust to increasing regulation.
8 We are repeatedly being asked by DPW and
9 others to hit a moving target. First, it was medical
10 assistance realignment, then a move to reduce or
11 eliminate restraints, and now the budgeting and
12 contracting process.
13 Each of these initiatives has led to
14 instability and uncertainty within our organizations.
15 The outlay of time, resources, and energy is
16 tremendous.
17 For an organization my size, where our
18 budget is around $3 million, these mandates have
19 stretched us to the breaking point. Good providers
20 simply don't have the resources to keep pace and no
21 consideration is given to that reality.
22 I'm not here today to ask for money. I'm
23 here to ask that we move forward in a way that honors
24 the children we serve and shows respect for the
25 people entrusted to do the work. 84
1 Last year the budget process was poorly
2 planned and defined. While providers were given
3 extremely tight deadlines, responses from DPW were
4 months in coming.
5 We are just now finalizing contracts for the
6 current fiscal year. Because of these delays and
7 multiple other sources of confusion, some counties
8 decided to withhold payment, their legal prerogative,
9 pending confirmation of contracts.
10 For me, that meant that as of the end of
11 November, several counties were in debt for services
12 rendered since July, one for almost half a million
13 dollars.
14 I used every resource at my disposal to
15 cover payroll and other costs. To date no one has
16 offered to compensate me for lost interest or
17 expenses incurred.
18 And then we have the staff. Staff in our
19 area begin with a salary of around 21 to 22,000
20 dollars a year. Last year we withheld the
21 discretionary payment to their pension plan in order
22 to recoup some losses. We are not overstaffed, as
23 some may believe, and, in fact, my administrative
24 team works in the units as needed.
25 Last week two of my staff were injured 85
1 intervening in a situation. My clinical director
2 with 15 years' experience was punched in the head by
3 a youngster who became enraged because she was asked
4 to clean up jelly she spilled on the carpet. Jelly.
5 We're fighting over jelly.
6 The youngster had to be discharged. Sadly,
7 after the fact, I reflected on how that was going to
8 impact my occupancy rate and my outcomes for success.
9 There are those who would deem this a failure.
10 I would add a little reality. This is the
11 work we do. These are the kids we see. This is the
12 type of damage that we're trying to repair.
13 Best practice and evidence-based programming
14 isn't about highly paid professionals sitting in
15 their offices writing treatment plans and coming up
16 with diagnoses. It's about the front-line staff who
17 deal with these children the other 23 hours out of
18 the day. Those people are at the core of what we do.
19 Trust me, you do not want the children I
20 serve living next door to you in the community until
21 we are relatively certain of their ability to behave
22 in a socially acceptable way.
23 For years, counties have neglected to pay
24 for the actual cost of service; and when that occurs,
25 the safety of staff, residents, and the community is 86
1 jeopardized.
2 I have told my staff and I will tell you, I
3 refuse to make critical decisions about the welfare
4 of children or staff based on a predetermined set of
5 percentages.
6 No additional help is forthcoming when we
7 agree to take the toughest kids, the ones no one
8 wants, for fear of destroying their numbers.
9 Our very existence is being threatened, and
10 I believe the loss of quality residential care is
11 imminent and one that will cost us dearly. Utilizing
12 the least restrictive environment is fine.
13 But to allow youngsters to deteriorate
14 within the community until they are completely out of
15 control is cruel to them, and it is unconscionable
16 that placements are asked to repair the damage as
17 though it can be a fix. These kids need to be
18 reparented. They need to find hope and they need to
19 realize their potential.
20 In my years as Director, every cent we have
21 made was returned to the program. As long as we have
22 existed, we have subsidized our work with private
23 dollars and balanced the budget on the backs of our
24 staff.
25 Imagine our frustration then when I say to 87
1 you that in 25 years of doing this work, I've never
2 been so demoralized as a professional. Never before
3 have we experienced a climate where we don't talk
4 about the children anymore.
5 I apologize for being passionate about this.
6 The ones who hold the power can break the ones who
7 don't.
8 Thank you.
9 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you.
10 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR BAILEY: I am Gwendolyn
11 Bailey, Executive Director of Youth Service,
12 Incorporated. Thank you for convening this hearing
13 on the child welfare system in Pennsylvania.
14 In the 35 years that I have worked in child
15 welfare, I do not recall a time when it has been more
16 critical to ensure that the child welfare and
17 juvenile justice systems are supported and
18 strengthened.
19 As you have heard several times today, there
20 is a strong correlation between economic stress and
21 child abuse, neglect, and delinquency. During this
22 economic crisis, quality, responsive, appropriate,
23 and accessible services to protect and support
24 children and families must be available.
25 YSI, located in West Philadelphia, is a 88
1 private, non-profit agency that has been saving
2 Philadelphia's most vulnerable children, youth, and
3 families for over 50 years.
4 YSI offers a broad range of services
5 including emergency shelter care for runaway and
6 homeless teens, mother/baby group home care, foster
7 and kinship care, emergency foster care, family
8 preservation, etc., etc.
9 In 1990, YSI also pioneered a crisis nursery
10 program in Philadelphia. Currently, we operate two
11 crisis nurseries which provide 24-hour emergency care
12 for at-risk families with children up to the age of
13 five years. We also offer short-term respite care
14 for families with children ages 6 to 12 years old.
15 YSI is one of four agencies selected by the
16 Philadelphia Department of Human Services to deliver
17 a new prevention service, alternate response service,
18 aimed at diverting families from the formal child
19 welfare system.
20 I am also quite proud to report that YSI is
21 accredited by the Council on Accreditation. YSI
22 employed 140 Pennsylvanians and in the last fiscal
23 year, YSI served a total of 5,000 children, teens,
24 and families.
25 Our primary funding source is purchased 89
1 service agreements with the Philadelphia Department
2 of Human Services. DHS partners with private
3 providers, like YSI, to deliver the majority of both
4 mandated and non-mandated services.
5 In discussing my testimony with other
6 private providers delivering services in the
7 Southeast Region, they asked that I let you know that
8 YSI's experiences and concerns are shared by the
9 broader provider community.
10 A concern that I have heard repeated
11 throughout the provider community is that the
12 Governor's budget for FY '09-'10 has no funding
13 designated for a COLA for mandated purchased
14 services, even though $11 million has been restored
15 from cuts to the Office of Children, Youth, and
16 Families' FY '08-'09 budget and an additional $9
17 million has been requested.
18 Last year, the General Assembly passed a
19 budget that included a 1 percent COLA for services
20 purchased by counties. Even though it was your
21 intent that the COLA reach private providers, very
22 few counties included the 1 percent cost of living
23 adjustment in purchased service rates.
24 I want to thank Philadelphia Department of
25 Human Services Commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose for 90
1 including a 1 percent COLA for most purchased service
2 rates in fiscal year 2008-2009.
3 Commissioner Ambrose has convened a number
4 of meetings with private providers and we are
5 confident and happy that she has heard the
6 longstanding concerns that we have brought to her
7 attention.
8 The absence of a COLA in the proposed
9 Commonwealth budget this year means that most private
10 agencies will once again not receive dollars to
11 offset the significant increased cost of doing
12 business. Allegheny County has already projected
13 that for the third year in a row, rates will be flat.
14 As an example, our health benefits have gone
15 up 18 percent and utilities 22 percent in the past
16 three years. The COLA adjustments in the State
17 budget and county purchased service rates do not
18 begin to address the real increases in the cost of
19 doing business.
20 The absence of a process to realistically
21 and regularly adjust rates for purchased services
22 highlights a key concern about the public sectors'
23 funding for mandated services delivered by private
24 providers.
25 Although State regulation requires county 91
1 children and youth agencies to review rates on an
2 annual basis with necessary revisions and update
3 rates for purchased services, they are frequently not
4 adjusted for years to reflect changes in operational
5 costs, including the addition of new regulatory and
6 contractual requirements.
7 Unfunded mandates, including the
8 implementation of new Federal and State laws, Adam
9 Walsh, Act 160, Ages and Stages, and State Title IV-E
10 fiscal reporting requirements continue to
11 proliferate.
12 This fiscal year, the Office of Children,
13 Youth, and Families required that DHS switch its
14 prevention services funding mechanism from program to
15 fee-for-services reimbursement.
16 The transition process has been very
17 difficult for both DHS and providers and ultimately
18 resulted in delayed payments to providers who
19 continued to deliver these needed services.
20 Significant delays were experienced in
21 payments for contracted prevention services. These
22 delays came on the back of payment delays for
23 mandated services. In order to keep services
24 available, we were compelled to borrow against our
25 line of credit, which we eventually exhausted, while 92
1 waiting for payment. To date, we have incurred
2 $30,000 of interest payments which will be paid with
3 privately raised dollars.
4 As the gap between actual and reimbursed
5 rates widens, increasingly YSI has used private
6 dollars to compensate for the shortfall. In the last
7 fiscal year alone, YSI contributed in excess of
8 $100,000 in privately raised dollars to pay for
9 mandated services.
10 These private dollars historically have been
11 used to offer specialized enhanced services to our
12 children and families that were not available through
13 public funding.
14 YSI no longer can afford to supplement
15 delivery of mandated services. The value of our
16 small endowment has dwindled, as have private dollars
17 raised through contributions. Our experience is
18 replicated throughout the provider community.
19 While there are no simple solutions to the
20 issues that I have raised, I urge the members of the
21 General Assembly to amend Act 148 of 1976 and Act 30
22 of 1991, which established the needs-based plan and
23 budget process.
24 Amendments to require counties to show that
25 purchased service rates reflect the reasonable costs 93
1 based on actual expenses with annual per diem
2 increases reflecting increased costs of doing
3 business to comply with regulatory and statutory
4 mandates are sorely needed.
5 Adequate funding must reach the direct
6 service provider. This does not require new money
7 but rather serious efforts to redistribute dollars
8 already allocated in the system.
9 As you have heard from Commissioner Ambrose
10 and others, increasingly, the intent of Act 30 has
11 been eroded as funding allocations are not based on
12 assessed county needs. The legislative intent of Act
13 30 must be reinforced so that the county identified
14 and documented needs are met and to support service
15 delivery through purchase of service agreements with
16 private providers.
17 I want to share two real-life examples of
18 what we do and why we continue to do it even as we
19 confront fiscal challenges. James came to the crisis
20 nursery for emergency care for his newborn son when
21 his wife had a stroke following delivery.
22 The social worker at the Hospital of the
23 University of Pennsylvania called the nursery when
24 she realized that James did not have a relative to
25 care safely for his new son during his wife's 94
1 rehabilitation and that missing work meant missing
2 wages. His son remained at the nursery until James
3 could arrange safe care.
4 Laura spent three years in a different group
5 home and shelter placements. At age 31, Laura called
6 YSI -- actually, she called me -- to share how her
7 life was going.
8 She had purchased her own home, completed
9 her associates' degree, had a job with benefits, and
10 that her son, whom she lived with in our mother/baby
11 group home, was on the Honor Roll in high school.
12 She cried as she explained how important it
13 was that she had a place to live when her mother just
14 couldn't take care of her. She reminded me that
15 staff were willing to stay the course, although we
16 were not perfect, with her through very challenging
17 behaviors and situations.
18 In closing, my colleagues in the Southeast
19 reiterate the concerns you have heard from providers
20 across the Commonwealth regarding OCYF's effort to
21 use a bulletin to make substantive changes in
22 existing regulations.
23 We are pleased to hear that DPW has
24 reconsidered this process and look forward to
25 discussion and debate on changes in a legislative 95
1 venue.
2 Thank you for this opportunity.
3 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you
4 very much. And thank you, everyone, so far for
5 staying on schedule.
6 We are ready for our last group of
7 presenters and then hopefully we'll do our best shot
8 at giving members as well as the stakeholders a
9 chance for questions and roundtable discussion.
10 Jim, Judge Boylan, and Mr. Stanzione, would
11 you please come up?
12 We have Jim Anderson, Executive Director of
13 the Juvenile Court Judges Commission; Judge Rea B.
14 Boylan of the Court of Common Pleas in Bucks County;
15 and Bob Stanzione, Bucks County Juvenile Probation
16 Officer.
17 You guys can go in whichever order makes
18 sense to you.
19 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ANDERSON: Thank you very
20 much, Representative Manderino, Representative True,
21 and all of the members here this morning. I very
22 much appreciate the opportunity to appear before you
23 today to discuss the issue of funding both
24 delinquency and dependency services in our system.
25 As you've already heard this morning, the 96
1 same Federal and State funding streams are utilized
2 to fund services to both dependent and delinquent
3 children in our State. Yet, the legislative mandates
4 with respect to these two groups of children have
5 distinct differences that must be considered.
6 And while the responsibilities of the child
7 welfare system and the role of the Court in cases
8 involving a child who's been abused and neglected is
9 generally well understood, that is not necessarily
10 the case with respect to delinquent children.
11 Since 1995, our Juvenile Act has provided
12 that consistent with the protection of the public
13 interest, the purpose of our Juvenile Act is to
14 provide for children committing delinquent acts;
15 programs of supervision, care, and rehabilitation
16 which provide balanced attention to the protection of
17 the community; the imposition of accountability for
18 offenses committed; and the development of competency
19 to enable children to become responsible and
20 productive members of their communities.
21 In every case in which a child is found to
22 be a delinquent child, the Court is specifically
23 required to enter an order of disposition determined
24 to be consistent with the protection of the public
25 interest and best suited to that child's treatment, 97
1 supervision, rehabilitation, and welfare and which is
2 appropriate to the individual circumstances of that
3 child's case and provides balanced attention to the
4 protection of the community, the imposition of
5 accountability for offenses committed, and the
6 development of competencies to enable that child to
7 become a responsible and productive member of his or
8 her community.
9 With respect to the judicial role in the
10 area of dependent children, I think the most
11 important information that you need to know -- and
12 some of you I know are aware of this -- is the
13 exciting work that is being done by the Supreme
14 Courts' Office of Children and Families in the Court
15 led by Justice Max Baer and their administrator,
16 Sandi Moore.
17 And in a very short period of time, this
18 office, under their leadership and the partnership
19 with many Children and Youth agency administrators
20 and judges from throughout the State and many private
21 agencies as well, is making some really exciting
22 progress in dealing with issues involving dependent
23 children and their families.
24 In Pennsylvania, juvenile court judges have
25 multiple roles to play. The first, of course, is 98
1 presiding in delinquency and dependency proceedings
2 or both.
3 The second, for judges who function as
4 juvenile court administrative judges, may be to serve
5 in an administrative capacity with the Juvenile
6 Probation Department.
7 And a third is that judges are uniquely
8 positioned to assess the adequacy of services to
9 children and families who come within the
10 jurisdiction of the Court and to provide leadership
11 in advocating for our new or additional services when
12 this is needed.
13 In fact, the needs-based budgeting process
14 as it has evolved requires documentation of
15 participation by the Judiciary, including assurances
16 that the Court has had the opportunity to review,
17 comment, and/or participate to the level desired in
18 the development of the needs-based plan and budget
19 and that plan accurately reflects the needs of
20 children and youth served by the Juvenile Court.
21 And I have to tell you, that's been in those
22 requirements for some period of time. But over the
23 years, it has meant something to a lesser or greater
24 degree. And it didn't always matter what the Judges
25 said about the adequacy of that plan. But 99
1 nevertheless, it is there. It is a very important
2 aspect of that system.
3 As to the juvenile justice system, it is
4 important for you to know that Pennsylvania's
5 county-based juvenile justice system is highly
6 regarded as a national model for a variety of
7 important reasons.
8 These reasons include, first, the fact that
9 Judges have extensive authority to craft specific
10 dispositions in delinquency cases to address the
11 specific needs, the specific risks, and importantly
12 the specific strengths of every child who appears
13 before the Court.
14 Secondly, the funding structure of our
15 system has historically encouraged innovation and
16 community-based services.
17 And finally, that Pennsylvania's
18 private-sector service delivery system is regarded as
19 perhaps the strongest in the nation.
20 The Pennsylvania status as a national model
21 is very much in jeopardy if we don't commit ourselves
22 as a Commonwealth to ensuring that the funding and
23 regulatory structure of our system remains consistent
24 with the statutory mission of our systems, but
25 particularly our juvenile justice system. 100
1 For example, the needs-based bulletin in
2 recent years has required juvenile justice system
3 objectives relating to accountability, relating to
4 competency development, and relating to community
5 safety to be considered in the development of the
6 plan.
7 However, the relevant DPW regulations
8 dealing with planning and financial reimbursement
9 requirements for Children and Youth social service
10 programs have not been revised to so ensure that
11 these balanced-attention mandates of our Juvenile Act
12 are incorporated. And that makes a real difference
13 as the plans are developed and considered.
14 For example, the goals that are in these
15 regulations now are to protect children from abuse
16 and neglect, to increase the use of in-home services
17 for dependent and delinquent children, to use
18 community-based residential services whenever
19 possible when placement is necessary to reduce the
20 use of institutional placements for dependent and
21 delinquent children, and to reduce the duration of
22 out-of-home placements.
23 The specific requirements of the juvenile
24 justice system are not there in regulation. And we
25 look very much forward to working with the Department 101
1 of Public Welfare to address this issue in coming
2 years. It's been an issue we've talked about, but,
3 as you know, the regulatory process is a different
4 one. But this is critically important for us.
5 It is also important for you to understand
6 that over the last several years, as has been alluded
7 to by several of the speakers earlier, there's been a
8 major transition in Pennsylvania to utilize medical
9 assistance funding to pay for the treatment costs of
10 Court-involved children in residential settings.
11 This initiative, known generally as MA
12 realignment, requires a managed-care organization to
13 approve the placement of a child in a residential
14 treatment facility, or an RTF, which has led over
15 these last several years to a number of our
16 traditional residential programs to be converted to
17 residential treatment facilities so that they are
18 eligible to have the treatment services paid for with
19 medical assistance funding.
20 Now, what this has meant is that the
21 Commonwealth has saved a lot of money. The counties
22 have saved a lot of money because these medical
23 assistance funds have been able to replace the
24 combination of Federal Title IV-E funds under the
25 Social Security Act, the State Act 148 funds, and the 102
1 local funds that we're paying for treatment services.
2 And I think no one argues that the effective
3 use of these funds is very important for our system.
4 But it's important for all of us to remember that
5 these treatment services are being provided in the
6 context of a delinquency disposition and that that
7 disposition must deal with the community safety
8 issues and the accountability issues and most
9 importantly the competency development issues that
10 are required by our statute in Pennsylvania.
11 And unfortunately, this often has negative
12 implications as children wait in detention, in some
13 cases, while the managed-care organization is making
14 that determination as to what level of service the
15 child might be eligible for. So that does impact
16 what happens in the case-by-case basis. And this is
17 something certainly that Judge Boylan can address.
18 Before I turn the microphone over to Judge
19 Boylan, I do believe that I should address the issue
20 that was raised by Marc Cherna on the issue of the
21 use of the Act 148 funding stream, as we know it, for
22 the payment of counsel for delinquent and dependent
23 children.
24 I agree with Marc that the issue of counsel
25 was a major issue in the travesty that occurred in 103
1 Luzerne County. And, in fact, children waived
2 counsel in a majority of cases in that county.
3 In Pennsylvania, we do not have a good way
4 to pay for indigent defense services either in the
5 criminal justice system or in the juvenile justice
6 system. This is a major issue. But in the juvenile
7 system, a number of counties have used the Act 148
8 funding stream for the payment of these services.
9 And I think, looking forward, one thing that
10 needs to happen -- and I know that there are several
11 legislators looking at this and the Juvenile Court
12 Procedural Rules Committee, I'm certain, will be
13 considering it -- is that we should not allow
14 children in the delinquency system to waive counsel.
15 We have to ensure that we have a way to pay
16 for that. I would encourage your consideration of
17 these issues dealing with the provision of counsel as
18 has been suggested here. I look forward to these
19 ongoing discussions with Secretary Richman and her
20 staff in this regard.
21 And in a related issue, though, it's not a
22 DPW direct responsibility. One thing that's been
23 very important to the Juvenile Justice and
24 Delinquency, Prevention Committee of the Commission
25 on Crime and Delinquency on which I sit, is the need 104
1 for us to somehow develop a strategy to provide for
2 year-round education for children who are in
3 Court-committed placements.
4 We just have to do this. It's a difficult
5 issue, but we can't have kids coming into programs
6 with the deficits that they have and, depending on
7 when they land in that program, not being able to be
8 provided with the educational services that they
9 need.
10 And as I said, this is not a DPW direct
11 responsibility. It's something that we're going to
12 have to do in partnership certainly with the
13 Department of Education and the Governor's Office and
14 the Legislature.
15 But for this small group of children, this
16 is very important. So as we look to achieve this
17 mandate of our system in the juvenile justice system,
18 which really comes down to the word community
19 protection, victim restoration, youth redemption --
20 you heard the speaker passionately earlier talk about
21 that we don't spend enough time talking about the
22 kids.
23 That's really what this is all about. And
24 we, together, all of us, have to ensure that in each
25 and every case, we have a funding system, we have a 105
1 regulatory system in place that truly can allow the
2 courts, the agencies, that work with these children
3 to make that difference in the life of child because
4 that's why we're all here.
5 We look forward to ongoing dialogue with
6 Secretary Richman and her staff as we deal with these
7 issues.
8 Thank you very much.
9 JUDGE BOYLAN: I am most grateful for the
10 opportunity to speak today. I am Rea Boylan. I am
11 the Administrative Judge for juvenile court in Bucks
12 County as well as the criminal court system in Bucks
13 County. I'm in the unique position to be able to see
14 when our system succeeds on the juvenile side and
15 also those sad days when we have failed.
16 I apologize. I didn't know that I would be
17 able to be here, so I have no written remarks. My
18 colleagues -- we are short-handed, as some of you may
19 know, in Bucks County in terms of the number of
20 judges. But my colleagues thought enough of how
21 important it was for me to be here to help me out
22 today.
23 I would like to talk about and sort of build
24 on what Mr. Anderson talked about in terms of the
25 difference between the dependency side and the 106
1 delinquency side of our court system.
2 One of the things I'm grateful for every day
3 when I sit in delinquency court is that we have the
4 benefit of legislation that was enacted that is a
5 lodestar that is, a guide, for me every day in court.
6 It is legislation that I believe in. I believe in
7 the Juvenile Act. And it is something I look at and
8 go back to guide me as to what I do.
9 Forgive me for a moment. I would like to
10 read to you from it because you will see that the
11 purposes that we've been talking about today are very
12 different from the purposes of the delinquency side.
13 The purposes are to preserve unity of the
14 family whenever possible or to provide another
15 alternative permanent family when the unity of the
16 family cannot be maintained.
17 Provide for the care, protection, safety,
18 and wholesome mental and physical development of
19 children coming within the provisions of this chapter
20 and consistent with the protection of the public
21 interest to provide for children committing
22 delinquent acts; programs of supervision, care, and
23 rehabilitation which provide balanced attention to
24 the protection of the community; the imposition of
25 accountability for offenses committed; and the 107
1 development of competencies to enable children to
2 become responsible and productive members of the
3 community.
4 So you see when we talk about needs in
5 juvenile court, we are not just talking about the
6 needs of the child. While they are paramount, we are
7 talking about the needs of the victim, the needs of
8 the community. And therefore, when a child comes to
9 juvenile court, we use this to balance out whether or
10 not we place the child.
11 First of all, is the child in need of
12 supervision and treatment? And if they are, I am
13 blessed as a juvenile court judge in our State to
14 have a large realm of placements available to us that
15 can meet the unique needs of a child.
16 You only have to be a parent or someone who
17 has worked with a child or to have two children to
18 understand that children's needs are very different.
19 And when you make it more complex by the kinds of
20 traumas and experiences the children who come into
21 our court system have had, you recognize that there
22 is not one cookie-cutter placement that will meet
23 their needs.
24 It saddens me to think -- I'm a Judge who
25 goes out and visits facilities. I drop by 108
1 unannounced. There are people in this room who know
2 that. I will show up and ask to tour the facility
3 and see how our children are doing.
4 Is saddens me when I visit a program and am
5 excited to find out that an outward-bound-type
6 program has been developed for girls and we have a
7 need for programs for girls and it's closing and they
8 are unable to proceed with the program. We need to
9 have very different alternatives because of the
10 different needs of the children that come before our
11 bench.
12 Let me try to help a little bit for you to
13 understand the thoughts I have when a child comes
14 into the courtroom. You can't just focus on the
15 child's needs when you're talking about a child who's
16 committed a rape or a robbery or a burglary.
17 You need to concern yourself with how the
18 child is held accountable, how the child accepts
19 responsibility, what kind of decisionmaking is going
20 on here.
21 Does the child have a mental health
22 diagnosis that must be addressed? Does the child
23 need some aid in terms of criminal thinking and
24 decisionmaking? Is the child impulsive? Does the
25 child need to pay restitution? Should I impose 109
1 community service? Where is the child educationally?
2 And I would underscore what Mr. Anderson has
3 said in terms of education. One of my criticisms of
4 the facilities I have gone out to visit is that we
5 sometimes in facilities have children parked in front
6 of a computer and that's how they're getting
7 education.
8 It is our goal for them to go back into the
9 community. And they should be having meaningful
10 education at their level in these placements and it
11 should be year-round so they can make up the time
12 that they have lost.
13 Those are some examples of the things that
14 we're looking at when we're looking for placements.
15 And you can see that a judgment about medical
16 necessity is not consistent with the needs of the
17 victim with the protection of the community. And
18 therefore, juvenile court is very different from the
19 goals we have discussed so far.
20 It's unfortunate to me that the dialogue
21 that we're having now, even in an Appropriations
22 setting, is not what needs we should be trying to
23 meet in the future. Such things as, do we have
24 enough sanctuary model programs for girls who have
25 experienced trauma? Are we meeting the educational 110
1 needs of the children in our system? And how can we
2 prevent the fact that children who are going through
3 the medical assistance process are languishing for 90
4 days in detention centers waiting for a placement?
5 You talk about frustration. You bring those
6 kids into the courtroom and you say, I will do
7 everything I can for you. But they need to wait
8 until all those packets go out to all the facilities
9 as part of this process. Ninety days in the life of
10 a child is a very long time. It is a marking period.
11 It is the development of certain competencies and
12 goals that are missed sitting in a detention center.
13 I am pleased and honored to be in a room
14 full of people who are passionate about the needs of
15 our children. I ask all of you to remember that the
16 monies we allocate for these efforts are the
17 investment in the future of our society.
18 Thank you.
19 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you.
20 MR. STANZIONE: Good morning.
21 I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
22 And since both Mr. Anderson and Judge Boylan stole
23 all my lines, I will try to give my perspective from
24 being a chief probation officer and someone who's
25 been around for 30-plus years in the system and has 111
1 worked both on the treatment side, the residential
2 side, delinquent side, and has worked as a probation
3 officer, supervisor, chief.
4 When BARJ came out, the justice practice
5 really identified and set some very specific goals
6 for the juvenile system. Prior to that, what we had
7 were simply treatment and rehabilitation, which
8 caused a lot of public outcry over the fact that kids
9 would get some treatment and nobody would ever hold
10 the kid accountable.
11 By adding the third dimension of the victim
12 and community, what we were able to do is really keep
13 communities safe while still making sure the victims
14 were able to get their loss re-established. We were
15 able to try to develop competency in kids and were
16 fairly successful.
17 We have taken strides to try to develop
18 programming and best practice standards from the
19 juvenile justice side using these three goals. And
20 we have worked cooperatively with the Juvenile Court
21 Judges Commission and the Pennsylvania Council of
22 Chief Juvenile Probation Officers, of which I'm the
23 vice president.
24 Those strides that we've taken seem to be
25 undermined and undercut by a series of changes over 112
1 the last few years, both in funding and in
2 philosophy.
3 What you see here and heard here is the
4 child welfare system in Pennsylvania. What an
5 outsider would believe that to mean is a child who
6 has been neglected, abandoned, when you hear the term
7 child welfare and when they talk about foster kids
8 and foster placements and foster facilities.
9 Well, a neglected, abandoned child goes to a
10 foster home. And a lot of the changes that have been
11 talked about in addressing IV-E and so on are
12 reactions to the Adoption and Safe Families Act which
13 looked to establish permanency, safety, and
14 well-being of those neglected and abused kids who may
15 be languishing in foster placements to try to make a
16 decision on permanency. Either you're going to work
17 and put them back into the family or adopt them out
18 so that they don't lay in foster homes forever.
19 The delinquent side, the perspective on
20 that, we have very few of those cases. And it might
21 only be a carryover. The 85, 90 percent or more of
22 our cases don't have any similarities. We're dealing
23 with kids who are coming in who are committing crimes
24 in the community. The community wants a response.
25 They want to be protected from those acts of those 113
1 kids.
2 Our programming is geared to more than just
3 mental health treatment. The shift to the MA funding
4 while it helped reduce some State costs as well as
5 some county costs, it limits us to simply mental
6 health funding.
7 And having done direct service, you need
8 more. Delinquents may have a mental health issue,
9 some of them, but there's a lot of other behavioral
10 issues. And our experience with some of the RTF
11 processes, which is really taking some of the
12 authority away from Judges, now we have to rely on a
13 psychologist or a psychiatrist to say, okay. We have
14 medical necessity and managed care. Will you pay for
15 this? Okay.
16 The mental health system is a voluntary
17 system. A juvenile can say, no, I don't want to go
18 to that program. A parent can say for a kid under
19 14, I'm not going to sign off on this because I don't
20 want my kid to go to this program.
21 So then we're in a bind when we start
22 looking at community protection. We've had some
23 scenarios where we've had to rescind that order and
24 remove the kid and place him into another program.
25 So one of the RTF programs that were flipped 114
1 could no longer provide that service because now they
2 have a delinquent kid not in the same RTF treatment
3 process. So we've run into some of those problems.
4 We also are relying for the length of stay
5 on managed-care providers to reauthorize placement
6 after the 30, 90-, 60-, 120-day period is up. And
7 some of our kids need longer-term placement.
8 We've also run into the problems with RTFs
9 actually saying, well, we've worked with this child
10 for three, four months. This kid is not ready for
11 the voluntary treatment we offer. You need the
12 services of delinquent behavioral approach to get the
13 child under control before we can provide the
14 treatment.
15 The need for delinquent services exists.
16 And the varying programs that we have allows us to
17 tailor services in the community, as best we can, to
18 avoid placement. We've always taken that philosophy.
19 There are some counties -- and some of my
20 colleagues don't see it that way. The majority of
21 the more progressive counties take the philosophy
22 that it's best to work with a kid in his home.
23 That's fine. But when they're not cooperating with
24 the parents, they're not cooperating with the school,
25 and you have that risk in the community, we need to 115
1 work with local providers to structure various means
2 of control in the community and, in some cases,
3 secure control.
4 So what my concerns are coming up over the
5 next year or two is the fact that we've reduced some
6 judicial authority by limiting some of the money
7 that's available for delinquent services.
8 We're looking at a system geared towards the
9 primary goal of permanency, where our goals are
10 completely different or mostly different. And we
11 have potential changes in the needs-based budget
12 where the rate percentages are going to change which
13 will further reduce money for delinquents and
14 delinquent services.
15 And over the course of these last few years,
16 most of the Federal match money and the money that
17 has come out of OCYF budget to draw the other Federal
18 funding down came from the delinquent side in
19 reduction of delinquent programs.
20 So we're taking some pretty good hits. If
21 we are to meet our objectives of community
22 protection, we need to have a certain level of
23 programs and commitments and services available.
24 That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you
25 for the opportunity. 116
1 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: I thank
2 you very much. You may go back into the audience.
3 Here's hopefully how our question-and-answer
4 and roundtable is going to work.
5 First, I do want to acknowledge that we were
6 joined during the last panel by a number of other
7 Representatives. Representative Matt Baker,
8 Representative John Myers, and Representative Matt
9 Bradford all joined us during that time period.
10 As you'll note, there are three microphones
11 at the aisles. I'm going to ask members first if
12 they have any questions or comments. And you can
13 either direct them to a specific person who testified
14 and then that person can come to the closest
15 microphone or if you want to open it to one of the
16 panels and then the appropriate person can step up.
17 Then I'm going to ask -- hopefully, the
18 members won't use all the time. I'm going to ask the
19 stakeholders that testified if you have any brief
20 comments or counterpoints that you want to make about
21 other testimony that you heard.
22 And then I know a number of other folks came
23 who didn't have the chance to be presenters, if you
24 want to offer comments on any of the testimony that
25 you had heard. I hope we will have time to do all 117
1 three of those aspects adequately.
2 With that, let me turn first to my
3 counterpart, Representative True, and see if she has
4 any questions or comments.
5 SUBCOMMITTEE CO-CHAIRMAN TRUE: Thank you,
6 Representative Manderino.
7 One comment I have, certainly I am gratified
8 that all of you took your time from what you do,
9 which is so important that you could come and talk to
10 us today.
11 I really appreciate Representative Manderino
12 pulling this all together. This is an issue near and
13 dear to my heart. And, you know, I would be happy if
14 we could have a hearing once a month to talk about
15 this to try to get us to a place where we really need
16 to be, maybe not as large, but there's a lot of
17 issues to deal with.
18 And I want to say thank you particularly,
19 Ms. Sabol. You know, there are a lot of us that do
20 care. And we would never be able to do what most of
21 you do on a regular basis.
22 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SABOL: Thank you.
23 SUBCOMMITTEE CO-CHAIRMAN TRUE: It's so
24 helpful that you come and share with us. We each
25 represent about 60,000 people and we have many issues 118
1 to deal with. And it's important for the members to
2 be educated as well as the public.
3 One of my concerns over the many years is
4 how much we pay everybody. And I know this is the
5 wrong year to really get into that. But I really
6 wish that we'd come to a time where this is a main
7 priority that we could do a lot better with funding.
8 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SABOL: Right.
9 SUBCOMMITTEE CO-CHAIRMAN TRUE: And I'm not
10 the only one that thinks that way. That's an issue
11 of mine of trying to raise child welfare to another
12 level where we think it's as important as some of the
13 other issues that we talk about every day.
14 I just have one question. And aside from
15 the funding issues, we heard a lot about the problems
16 of working within the Department of the Children and
17 Youth Agency.
18 And, Secretary Richman, welcome back.
19 SECRETARY RICHMAN: Thank you.
20 SUBCOMMITTEE CO-CHAIRMAN TRUE: Secretary
21 Richman, you were not here to hear some of those
22 concerns. But you had outlined some changes in your
23 testimony. There were many, you know; and I don't
24 know how you deal with that. And I'm sure you'll
25 probably read the testimony. 119
1 Would you care to comment yourself? How do
2 we address some of these problems that some of the
3 folks are having, you know, getting to the point of
4 doing more, you know, in what they feel is a better
5 best interest of the child?
6 SECRETARY RICHMAN: Is this microphone on?
7 SUBCOMMITTEE CO-CHAIRMAN TRUE: You have to
8 touch it. There's a little button there underneath.
9 SECRETARY RICHMAN: Yes. Now it's on.
10 Let me make two comments. One, I believe
11 that at my level, I very much want to work in this
12 area. For many of you who probably don't know, my
13 very first job was as a child welfare worker, not
14 supervisor. BA coming out of college, my first job
15 for two years was actually on the street doing child
16 welfare.
17 So this is my background and the bulk of my
18 experience. I have to tell you of all of the
19 different areas that I work in -- and, as you know,
20 it's a fairly wide plate -- this particular area is
21 probably the one that concerns me the least in terms
22 of having me come to meetings, meet with them
23 individually, whether it's been the provider
24 organization, the county organization.
25 The only group that consistently meets with 120
1 me and calls me and now has quarterly meetings with
2 me is the Judges, whom we are accommodating. We meet
3 with them as frequently as they would like. But I
4 will tell you, most of the other groups haven't done
5 that.
6 Let me extend an invitation to you. I
7 happen to be the Secretary of Public Welfare.
8 Everybody reports to me. I enjoy meeting with
9 people. I meet with folks whenever they ask.
10 And I believe that part of what I heard is a
11 great deal of communication issues, a great deal of
12 process issues.
13 Do you want my phone number? Do you want my
14 e-mail address? Both are easily available. I think
15 that part of the reason that we changed from bulletin
16 to legislation is because people did reach out to me.
17 And when I hear feedback, I think I'm pretty
18 well known for listening and adapting to changes.
19 But I read minds really badly. So if you're thinking
20 you have a problem and you haven't communicated that
21 problem, it's really difficult to know you have a
22 problem.
23 So all I can assure you of is that if people
24 want to talk, if people want to meet, if people want
25 to communicate to work these issues out, we want to 121
1 do that.
2 Unfortunately, this is a bad budget year.
3 We do have a cadre of people that would like to see
4 the DPW budget reduced by 10 percent and be
5 zero-based. While I strongly disagree with that as a
6 goal, that doesn't mean that I don't have to listen
7 to that as an issue and a goal.
8 And it would be very nice to have the kind
9 of dollars in all of DPW, including child welfare, to
10 always give COLAs, to always give money that people
11 need to operate. But that's also not the real world
12 that we're functioning under in an economic crisis.
13 With all of that said, I believe there are
14 always compromises. There are always ways to get to
15 a better bottom line for children. But it's not
16 going to be easy right now.
17 SUBCOMMITTEE CO-CHAIRMAN TRUE: I appreciate
18 that, Madam Secretary. I'm going to close.
19 I just wanted to say, over my career here,
20 probably I've worked with the Department in a couple
21 of Administrations a lot.
22 And I have found even if you're not agreeing
23 with things, you will get your meeting, you will get
24 to go in, and actually you will get something done if
25 you're persistent. So I wanted to add that. 122
1 SECRETARY RICHMAN: Sure.
2 SUBCOMMITTEE CO-CHAIRMAN TRUE: And thank
3 you again. I want to thank you for your comments.
4 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you.
5 Representative Kula.
6 REPRESENTATIVE KULA: Thank you.
7 I guess having everyone here today and maybe
8 hearing different aspects, whether it's probation or
9 the Court or Children and Youth Services -- but my
10 dealings with youth before I came in as a
11 Representative was on the issue of truancy.
12 I don't know how much each of you deal with
13 that. I'm not sure. I can tell you as a former
14 District Judge, probably my most frustrating, trying
15 hearings were the problem of truancy because there
16 was nothing you could do.
17 I mean, hopefully, it reached Children and
18 Youth. Hopefully it reached the Court for a
19 dependencies hearing. But I can tell you, if
20 Children and Youth had to decide, we're going to work
21 on this child abuse matter or we're going to work on
22 this truancy matter, obviously, your choice was going
23 to be the abuse matter.
24 But it still -- and I think our last topic
25 everyone was dealing with was education, education 123
1 throughout the year for these children that are in
2 the programs. But I think what we're missing are the
3 children that are not in the programs, the children
4 that no one has reached yet.
5 And I'm watching -- I have actually had
6 parents come to me and say, I've been told the only
7 way we can do anything is if they commit a crime. I
8 mean, I have parents wishing their child would commit
9 a crime so someone could help them, someone could do
10 that.
11 When you're looking at more single parents,
12 more mothers raising children, and you see a 90-pound
13 mother and a 300-pound or 250-pound child and they're
14 saying, I can't make them go to school, I think we
15 need to look at a better way of dealing with these
16 problems. And hopefully we can all work together to
17 accomplish that.
18 Thank you.
19 REPRESENTATIVE KULA: Thank you.
20 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you,
21 Representative Kula.
22 Representative Briggs.
23 REPRESENTATIVE BRIGGS: Thank you,
24 Chairwoman.
25 I want to thank all the testifiers for 124
1 coming out today, not just for your testimony but
2 also for everything you do every day to help
3 children. I want to encourage you.
4 I want to thank Representative True for
5 asking the question regarding the communication. I
6 was going to ask a question of the Secretary also,
7 but I'm going to encourage all of you to reach out to
8 her and voice your concerns directly, especially
9 regarding the Office of Children and Youth. It seems
10 like there was a lot of friction between the
11 providers and that office.
12 Secretary Richman, I want to ask a question
13 about the COLA. My impression was that it was in the
14 Governor's initial budget last year. But during the
15 testimony today, it sounded like there was a
16 legislative addition to the budget.
17 Can you address that?
18 SECRETARY RICHMAN: No. It was not in the
19 budget -- the Governor's budget last year. You mean
20 '07-'08?
21 REPRESENTATIVE BRIGGS: Yes.
22 SECRETARY RICHMAN: No. But then the
23 legislative addition added the 1 percent.
24 REPRESENTATIVE BRIGGS: Okay. And also
25 during the -- 125
1 SECRETARY RICHMAN: But wait a minute.
2 REPRESENTATIVE BRIGGS: Sure.
3 SECRETARY RICHMAN: But then to be able to
4 compensate for the other cuts in the budget, there
5 was a 2 percent cut.
6 REPRESENTATIVE BRIGGS: Okay.
7 SECRETARY RICHMAN: So there was a net 1
8 percent cut to the budget.
9 REPRESENTATIVE BRIGGS: Would that be in
10 line with what some of the testimony was that the
11 Department of Children and Youth were encouraged not
12 to have passed along the COLA?
13 SECRETARY RICHMAN: No. We always want the
14 COLA passed on. Always. COLAs are meant for
15 providers and they should always -- in past years,
16 the Legislature has put in language that required it.
17 REPRESENTATIVE BRIGGS: Okay.
18 SECRETARY RICHMAN: In the last two years,
19 maybe three years, that language has not been there.
20 Without that language, we can't mandate it.
21 REPRESENTATIVE BRIGGS: I see.
22 SECRETARY RICHMAN: At that point, the
23 counties have the decision power to determine whether
24 they're going to pass it on or whether they're going
25 to use it. 126
1 But our position is, COLA belongs to the
2 providers.
3 REPRESENTATIVE BRIGGS: Thank you very much.
4 SECRETARY RICHMAN: With that said, that
5 means that counties go without. Remember, we are
6 squeezing these folks to death. Very rarely has the
7 DPW budget been large enough to suit the needs of
8 everybody who needs it.
9 REPRESENTATIVE BRIGGS: Right.
10 SECRETARY RICHMAN: We've gone --
11 traditionally, we've tried to get larger COLAs so
12 both people are satisfied. We've been in an
13 economic -- you don't want me to go on. You
14 understand.
15 REPRESENTATIVE BRIGGS: No. I understand.
16 SECRETARY RICHMAN: You understand the
17 economic climate we've been under.
18 REPRESENTATIVE BRIGGS: Thank you very much.
19 SECRETARY RICHMAN: Representative Manderino
20 was giving me that look.
21 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO:
22 Representative Parker.
23 REPRESENTATIVE PARKER: Thank you,
24 Madam Chair.
25 And good morning to everyone. Let me also 127
1 start just by thanking each and every one of you for
2 being here this morning.
3 I want to first just talk about the
4 providers who we heard from, your testimony, because
5 you are on the front line. I feel about you the way
6 I feel about teachers who are actually in classrooms
7 teaching students who are doing more than just
8 teaching, but being social workers and parents and so
9 many other things. So I really thank you so very
10 much.
11 But what I really thought while you were
12 testifying is, wow. I wish that testimony from the
13 providers could have been heard during the
14 Appropriations Committee hearings when the Department
15 of Public Welfare was testifying.
16 And it was recommended that there be a 10
17 percent cut to their budget across the board. And
18 you wonder, why can't you cut waste and spending and
19 why can't you stop having this budget increased?
20 Because of the amount of recipients receiving cash
21 from the Department.
22 And particularly those of you who are from
23 Erie and from Allegheny, the non-Philadelphians, for
24 you to talk individually and very specifically about
25 the cases of the young people that you are working 128
1 with, I think that's what matters to legislators.
2 So aside from being providers, I hope you,
3 too, find an opportunity to become advocates and talk
4 to legislators who represent your respective regions.
5 My question is for James Anderson and Judge
6 Boylan and Bob. You know, when I listen to your
7 testimony, each of you talked about challenges facing
8 the young people when they reach our system.
9 And one of the constant complaints that we
10 receive from agencies like the Pennsylvania Prison
11 Society are the results of recent studies on
12 incarceration, that incarceration is cyclical. And
13 many of the young people who are actually coming in
14 contact with our juvenile justice system have parents
15 or were actually cared for by a relative or primary
16 caregiver who is incarcerated.
17 I wanted to know from those who are county
18 representatives and if any of you have any comments.
19 Number 1, do we actually collect that data here in
20 Pennsylvania to know when a child enters into our DHS
21 system in any of the counties? Do we know if a child
22 has a parent or primary caretaker who has actually
23 been incarcerated?
24 And the reason why I ask is, we've
25 introduced a resolution. There's something moving in 129
1 the House, something moving here and over in the
2 Senate.
3 But we don't seem to be able to justify the
4 need for resources as a prevention measure and a
5 fiscally responsible measure to address the needs of
6 this very unique group on the front end so they don't
7 end up in the system when you're talking about how we
8 address their needs on the back end.
9 So particularly for the county reps, do any
10 of you have any comments or any recommendations for
11 us?
12 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Step up to
13 the microphone there, Marc.
14 Anybody who wants to comment, step up to the
15 microphone and say your name again for the benefit of
16 the court stenographer.
17 DIRECTOR CHERNA: I'm Marc Cherna. I'm
18 Director of the Allegheny County Department of Human
19 Services.
20 And that is a very big issue. We do keep
21 track. We have a large correlation of children in
22 our system, our Children and Youth system, whose
23 parents are incarcerated.
24 We've had a foundation do a lot of studying
25 on that and actually gave us a grant for a staff 130
1 person to be a liaison around that. The problem is,
2 there's no categorical dollars to provide those
3 services.
4 REPRESENTATIVE PARKER: Right.
5 DIRECTOR CHERNA: It's a bigger issue around
6 county jails because it's all 100 percent county and
7 re-entry and programs for the incarcerated folks in
8 the county jails. But there's no money to provide
9 any services there. It's just when they get out,
10 they're going to commit another crime and then they
11 do State time. Then we have money for re-entry and
12 all of that.
13 But any kind of things that can be done on
14 the county level before they really get there makes a
15 huge difference. And dealing with the children of
16 incarcerated parents makes it even bigger.
17 REPRESENTATIVE PARKER: If I'm a child and I
18 am home and the cops come to my house to arrest my
19 mother or father who cares for me, does the State
20 have some sort of rubric or process in place that law
21 enforcement officers follow? What happens to that
22 child?
23 I know in Philadelphia the police normally
24 contact a DHS. But is there like a statewide sort of
25 process in order? 131
1 DIRECTOR CHERNA: To my knowledge, there is
2 not. And, in fact, in Allegheny County, we just
3 established a protocol where we have a safe place for
4 the police to take children who are not involved in
5 the Children and Youth system.
6 REPRESENTATIVE PARKER: Okay.
7 DIRECTOR CHERNA: So they don't have to call
8 intake to get the child involved because the child
9 didn't do anything. So if they're doing an arrest
10 and the child is there, we have a process worked out
11 now with the police. And everybody is trained about
12 how to do it.
13 REPRESENTATIVE PARKER: Can you forward that
14 information to Chairwoman Manderino?
15 DIRECTOR CHERNA: Absolutely.
16 REPRESENTATIVE PARKER: Thank you.
17 SECRETARY RICHMAN: There's also a major
18 initiative in Philadelphia run by an agency called
19 Children's Treatment Team. And it is trauma. If
20 children are not treated for that trauma in a very
21 short period of time, it actually bodes very poorly
22 for them.
23 But the interaction of that behavior doesn't
24 show up until they are in latency age. So children
25 between three and eight primarily that are 132
1 traumatized in any way, you don't see the result of
2 that until you see it in their adolescence. So
3 there's a big delay.
4 But the research on this through the Yale
5 Study Center really mandates that we be much more
6 responsive because there's severe mental health
7 damage done to the child when they witness those
8 kinds of things.
9 I think there are different initiatives to
10 be able to sensitize police that when you're handling
11 a parent in front of a child to try to be a little
12 bit more tactful. But that's very difficult because
13 sometimes those situations are very dangerous at the
14 same time. So they're forced to make a judgment
15 between the child who is witnessing and the parent
16 who's threatening.
17 And I'm not quite sure we have answers on
18 both sides. And we do need the dialogue in those
19 cases.
20 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Bob, did
21 you have something? Judge, did you have something to
22 say?
23 JUDGE BOYLAN: Yes.
24 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Just
25 remind the court stenographer again. 133
1 JUDGE BOYLAN: Of who I am?
2 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Yes.
3 Judge Boylan.
4 JUDGE BOYLAN: I'm Judge Boylan.
5 It's interesting that you mentioned that. I
6 think two weeks ago I had a young girl who was a
7 selective mute, based on, everyone concluded, the
8 trauma that occurred during an arrest. And it was a
9 very, very, very sad case.
10 One of the things, though, I would like to
11 mention is that I think one of the things we really
12 need to focus on is identifying the strengths and
13 interests of juveniles in the system. We're really
14 starting to work on this in Bucks County.
15 One of the things that I think needs to
16 happen for that child who is in a family where maybe
17 parents have been arrested and gone to prison and
18 maybe neighbors are in prison is to develop
19 opportunities for them to interact with other kids in
20 the community, develop the social skills based on the
21 interests and strengths they have.
22 You know, I always tell a kid when they come
23 back from placement, when you come back from
24 placement, the first person who is going to ask you
25 to sit down is not going to be the president of the 134
1 National Honor Society.
2 So we really need to work proactively, I
3 think, to put money and effort into the issue of
4 having kids develop their strengths and interests so
5 that they can develop positive connections.
6 REPRESENTATIVE PARKER: Madam Chair, I know
7 we're pushed for time.
8 If you can't answer the question now and if
9 you could submit some sort of response in writing,
10 I'd greatly appreciate it.
11 Not long ago I had a Rep from the National
12 Association of Social Workers visit my office. They
13 are actually working now on establishing a bachelor's
14 level licensure for human service professionals.
15 It's going to be coming before the Professional
16 Licensure Committee during a hearing, I believe, on
17 April the 17th.
18 I'm just interested in knowing what the
19 providers, along with our county officials, have to
20 say about that. Because for myself, I was very much
21 concerned with some of the disparities in
22 standardized testing, their results, what they truly
23 measure, thinking about those people who actually
24 dominate that field and who they are and how this
25 would impact them. 135
1 You don't have to respond now. But if you
2 have any comments on this, I would really like to
3 receive them before the hearing so I can just make
4 reference to them.
5 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: And when
6 we do that time where we invite folks to step up, if
7 someone has comments on that, please feel free to.
8 Representative Baker has a question.
9 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Thank you very much,
10 Kathy and Katie, for your leadership on this issue.
11 I'm Representative Matt Baker, Republican
12 Chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee.
13 And I want to applaud Estelle Richman for
14 addressing some of the concerns, especially as it
15 applies to the Office of Children and Youth and the
16 bulletin issues.
17 I've heard from too many providers regarding
18 some of those problems. And Estelle has really
19 stepped up and been very responsive to that. So I
20 want to thank her for that personally and also
21 hopefully be able to capitalize on her comment
22 earlier about communicating and working perhaps a
23 little bit closer, more closely, with the people that
24 are the direct care agencies.
25 What I'm sensing, Madam Secretary, is that 136
1 there's not enough communication or there's a
2 disconnect or there's not the more-needed free flow
3 of information between those entities at the local
4 level and at the State level.
5 I will personally attest that anytime we've
6 had a major problem in Tioga County or Bradford
7 County and we've asked Estelle to come up and meet,
8 she has done that. I appreciate her strong work
9 ethic.
10 But when I start getting a number of
11 e-mails, I know there's usually a problem because I
12 rarely hear from the Office of Children and Youth
13 Services. And when you hear from the county
14 agencies, the providers all over the State, then we
15 know there's a problem.
16 And I just want to say, first of all, thank
17 you. And secondly, thank you also for your
18 willingness to work more closely. And if you have
19 any suggestions as to how we can improve this
20 dialogue and communication level with those folks, I
21 would like to hear it.
22 SECRETARY RICHMAN: Let me just reiterate
23 that I'm very willing to do that. And I'm also
24 willing to do it regionally. As the Representative
25 said, I've been out to his region several times to 137
1 hold meetings with different sets of providers on
2 different topics. And I'm certainly willing to do
3 that again.
4 REPRESENTATIVE BAKER: Thank you.
5 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: At this
6 point, those folks who presented and want to comment
7 on something else that they heard from one of the
8 other presenters, I would -- I don't think we'll have
9 long lines -- like you to start stepping up to the
10 microphones now and then we'll just kind of move down
11 the room.
12 But while folks are coming forward, here is
13 my question or comment. And this is for everyone for
14 when we get to the open dialogue or for those who
15 presented.
16 One of the reasons that I asked Lisa Fleming
17 to give us that PowerPoint presentation in the
18 beginning is because I don't think we realize, as we
19 sit in whatever group of stakeholders that we sit in,
20 kind of the big picture.
21 And if I can put the child welfare budget
22 for dummies into a very succinct picture in terms of
23 the money, this is what I see are real challenges.
24 Secretary Richman talked about the fact how
25 -- and Representative Parker mentioned it -- there 138
1 are many folks in the General Assembly who believe
2 that our welfare budget is too big. And you are part
3 of the welfare budget.
4 Now, there is some real reality in that in
5 terms of the numbers. And also when you are looking
6 at a whole statewide budget that is growing by
7 whatever percent it is growing by -- and some people
8 are in favor of a no-growth budget -- I have to tell
9 you the one slide we didn't show you but is
10 consistent year after year after year is -- and DPW's
11 budget always exceeds that growth number.
12 So legislators looking at the big picture
13 look at the State budget and many say, it's growing
14 too fast. Then they look at DPW's budget and they
15 say, it's growing even faster. And then we look at
16 the child welfare budget and we say, oh, my gosh,
17 it's growing even the fastest.
18 Now, that's where you guys say what
19 disconnect? We're getting squeezed. But if you
20 remember the testimony and the slides, losses of
21 Federal dollars in different categorical areas have
22 been backfilled with State dollars.
23 So we have grown State dollars in the area
24 of child welfare even though in the total pool of
25 dollars that you're seeing, you're not seeing big 139
1 increases. And you're saying we never can get to
2 some of these things we all have said really matters,
3 the non-mandated services, the prevention issues.
4 We heard the counties. We heard DPW say
5 what they said. We heard the counties say, I gave
6 this needs-based budget to DPW and, boy, they just
7 slashed and burned it. They ignored it. They didn't
8 do what we said we needed, that the act requires them
9 to do. And then we heard from providers who said,
10 you know what? We are paying for State-mandated
11 services out of our fundraising dollars. The State's
12 not even giving us enough money to do mandated
13 services let alone preventive.
14 That's my budgeting for dummies. I mean, we
15 are all getting squeezed. So here's the question
16 that nobody is asking, although folks hinted around
17 the edges when a few people said, we're spending more
18 time on paperwork or we have more mandated services
19 that we're not being given monies to.
20 At what point do we have to say, can we
21 afford everything we're mandating? Or the
22 alternative way to say it is, are there things that
23 we are currently mandating which are within the
24 State's control that are costing us more than is
25 benefiting the child? And when do we revisit those 140
1 issues?
2 That is probably not the discussion for this
3 July's budget. But that's when I talked about
4 wanting to have a discussion that goes forward.
5 That's the discussion that I would like to continue
6 going forward because I have just come to the
7 conclusion that we can't afford to pay for everything
8 that we're saying we're going to pay for. And we
9 need a reality check in terms of what's helping kids
10 and what's not helping kids.
11 So that's my kind of input. I'm looking for
12 short term and long term. Think about that as we
13 respond. I think now we're to the point where we
14 want to respond to points others heard.
15 Ann Marie, go ahead.
16 COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: Ann Marie Ambrose
17 from Philadelphia Department of Human Services.
18 I just wanted to talk a second about the
19 legal representation issue. I'm a former public
20 defender. I represented kids for 13 years in
21 delinquency court.
22 I certainly think that my interventions were
23 helpful in preventing something like what happened in
24 Luzerne County from happening in Philadelphia.
25 Unfortunately, our budget that we received 141
1 took out $7 million of longstanding legal
2 representation costs for delinquent youths in
3 Philadelphia. And I think that that's a real
4 disservice to kids and to protections.
5 I wanted to say that community legal
6 services is here at the hearing. And we asked for
7 increased funding for community legal services for
8 parent representation.
9 We have been mentoring a lot with Marc
10 Cherna in Allegheny County and really trying to
11 replicate some of the best practices.
12 I understand why that was cut. We're going
13 to try to find the money elsewhere in the budget
14 because Philadelphia does understand that we are
15 heavily funded and we have to make some tough
16 choices.
17 But I think that for other counties, the
18 representation issue is huge. It's a protection for
19 children. It's a protection for parents. It really
20 provides a level playing field for everybody in the
21 system so there's real social justice and fairness.
22 I also just wanted to say that I appreciate
23 the providers being here today. These are hard times
24 for all of us. And they are partners in this work
25 that we do every day. 142
1 The issue that I think really resonated here
2 is that we don't mind taking cuts. We just want a
3 process and some transparency and a partnership with
4 the Department of Public Welfare.
5 I talk to Estelle frequently and often. And
6 she has always been incredibly receptive. And I'm
7 sure that we're going to be able to make some
8 progress based on the hearing today.
9 Thank you.
10 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Great.
11 Andrea. Am I remembering correctly?
12 DIRECTOR BOYLES: Andrea Boyles, Centre
13 County Youth Service Bureau.
14 My comment is about the question period.
15 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Go ahead.
16 DIRECTOR BOYLES: First, your question,
17 Representative Manderino, I do believe is at the
18 heart of the matter and we need more opportunity to
19 discuss that.
20 I also believe that by looking at how the
21 money flows and efficiency issues, we can do better
22 with the dollars we have.
23 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Andrea,
24 just make sure the green light is on. There's a
25 little button there. 143
1 DIRECTOR BOYLES: Secretary Richman, I
2 appreciate very much your offering to meet with us
3 and interface with us on a regular basis. I will say
4 that we have had near constant contact with Deputy
5 Secretary Gold. And certainly we believe that that
6 was the appropriate avenue for us to take.
7 SECRETARY RICHMAN: I will tell you most
8 other -- every other office comes to me, too.
9 DIRECTOR BOYLES: Okay. And that's great.
10 We'll be happy to do that. Frankly, in my agency,
11 no, that's not how it works. I was working through
12 the chain of command. But we're happy to do that.
13 I believe it was Representative Kula who
14 talked about truancy. And I just wanted to comment
15 on that as well.
16 We are -- and I can speak for Centre County
17 but also many other counties -- looking at ways to
18 work with those kids. In Centre, we use family group
19 decisionmaking. And we're actually working with
20 young people before they ever get to the Children and
21 Youth Office when truancy is an issue and having
22 really great results with that.
23 But again, this is one of those areas where
24 we can't afford to keep cutting into the private
25 dollars. Because if we are squeezing, you know, my 144
1 fly-fishing money to pay for group homes, there isn't
2 money for those -- you know, family group is funded
3 by the county, but other programs that are helping
4 those kids before they hit the system are funded
5 through private dollars.
6 And if we keep dipping into those, we're
7 going to lose those. Community drop-in centers, Big
8 Brothers/Big Sisters, those types of programs, we
9 can't keep bleeding that private dollar.
10 With regard to the COLA, again, Secretary
11 Richman, I was happy to hear you say you are
12 encouraging the COLA. I have to say that is not the
13 message we received this past year.
14 Deputy Secretary Gold was very clear that
15 there would be no increase to private providers, very
16 clear that there would be no COLA, and, in fact,
17 stated that the State would not reimburse counties
18 who gave us a COLA. So that is a very, very
19 different message than we've been given to date.
20 And just finally, just to briefly comment on
21 your question of licensure for human service workers,
22 sadly, when you said that, the first thing I thought
23 was, oh, what will that cost? What will that cost?
24 But my second thought is, that's wonderful.
25 And through our Federal grants, we have been able to 145
1 access accreditation for youth workers, residential
2 youth workers.
3 And that's been a wonderful experience in
4 all of our programs. The county-funded programs as
5 well as our Federally funded programs have benefited
6 because we now do have trainers on staff who can,
7 over a couple of years, certify youth workers. And
8 we're very happy with that system.
9 Thank you.
10 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Madam
11 Secretary.
12 SECRETARY RICHMAN: You know, I often get
13 requests from legislators on what can they do to
14 help. One of the problems on the legal fees is that
15 Act 148 specifically says it cannot be used for legal
16 fees.
17 If we could change that, that would make a
18 difference, because then Act 148 dollars could be
19 used. But it very specifically says we cannot use it
20 for legal coverage and that the only thing that
21 counties can do is pay for guardians ad litem at a 50
22 percent match rate and pay for some mental health
23 issues with some of those dollars.
24 But they can't pay for legal representation.
25 That's a problem. 146
1 SECRETARY RICHMAN: Let me also address the
2 licensure issue. I happen to be a psychologist, not
3 a social worker. Would that mean that at a BA -- and
4 I had a BA in psychology or a master's in psychology,
5 that I couldn't work within the field?
6 So I think we have to be very careful around
7 what we mean by licensure if it's presented by one
8 categorical group. Because certainly professionals
9 with master's or bachelor's degrees can have the same
10 training and be certainly capable of working within
11 the area of Children and Youth.
12 And some of our degrees may be master's
13 and some may be in education and some may be in
14 psychology.
15 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Secretary
16 Richman, while you're up and mentioning legislation,
17 during your testimony, you talked about how, in
18 response to some of the feedback you've got, you've
19 pulled back from some of what the Department was
20 thinking of doing by way of bulletin and going the
21 legislative route.
22 SECRETARY RICHMAN: Correct.
23 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Number 1,
24 have we seen that legislation yet? I assume we would
25 have to do that for this year's budget. 147
1 SECRETARY RICHMAN: Yes.
2 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Number 2,
3 are there still issues that you are hoping to move
4 through by way of bulletin that folks are going to
5 still say, no, that shouldn't be done by bulletin, it
6 should be done by legislation?
7 And then Point 3, is the legislation to Act
8 148, and we can just put this legal stuff in there,
9 or are we talking about two different chapters of a
10 code that we have to look at?
11 SECRETARY RICHMAN: Jennifer, what's the
12 status of the legislation?
13 JENNIFER: Delivering it today to
14 leadership.
15 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Okay.
16 SECRETARY RICHMAN: So the legislation, I
17 would imagine there's always debate on what's in a
18 bulletin and where it should be.
19 The bulletin now, I think I itemized it.
20 Most of it is around information that we still need.
21 And the bulletin -- let me look at it.
22 The bulletin now is going to talk about
23 primarily the budget format completion, uniform cost
24 documentation, and training.
25 Now, those are the primary, I think, issues 148
1 left in the bulletin. My invitation continues to be,
2 if people have issues about that, let me know.
3 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Marc.
4 DIRECTOR CHERNA: Marc Cherna.
5 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Make sure
6 the green button is on there, Marc. Right on the
7 stem there's a little white button that will turn
8 green.
9 DIRECTOR CHERNA: Okay.
10 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Just leave
11 it on. That way when people come to the microphone,
12 it will be fine.
13 DIRECTOR CHERNA: Sure.
14 I just wanted to briefly respond to your
15 question about, what can we do to save money and to
16 use our money more efficiently?
17 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Sure.
18 DIRECTOR CHERNA: And one thing is getting
19 rid of some of the silos, moving more to the
20 integrated children services, which Secretary Richman
21 put in place. And we always have trouble getting
22 funding through a --
23 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: What are
24 the silos? I mean, I know what that term means. But
25 what are the silos in child welfare? 149
1 DIRECTOR CHERNA: Drug and alcohol
2 treatment. You have a family and the family has a
3 disease of addiction and needs drug and alcohol
4 treatment. The child welfare in most systems -- I
5 run both of them so I don't have this issue and it
6 pays off.
7 But most of the time they have to negotiate
8 with their counterpart who says, we have waiting
9 lists, it's not a priority for us, so you end up
10 placing the child because you can't get the
11 treatment.
12 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Is that a
13 State silo or a county silo?
14 DIRECTOR CHERNA: It's a State silo.
15 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Okay.
16 DIRECTOR CHERNA: It starts with a State
17 silo and then the counties continue it because the
18 money goes down that way.
19 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Okay.
20 DIRECTOR CHERNA: I can change that because
21 I have a department where I have that control. It
22 makes a huge difference.
23 Housing assistance, so families don't get
24 placed because of inadequate housing, I can use
25 housing assistance money. Other folks can't do that 150
1 kind of thing.
2 Mental health services. You know, you can
3 use these kinds of supports to maintain families in
4 their own homes by putting that thing together.
5 The other thing is if we look at reducing
6 placements and especially reducing high-end
7 placements. I appreciate all the things that the
8 providers said. And while they provide a critical
9 role for us, there's always going to be some children
10 who need placement and they need to get quality
11 placement.
12 We have to have a sense of urgency from day
13 one. It's not acceptable for kids to sit in care for
14 years. We need to have frequent hearings and we
15 really need to push the issue and reduce the length
16 of stay.
17 You know, at 150 or 160 dollars a day, that
18 money adds up real quick. And you can do things a
19 lot more efficiently if you can reduce those
20 placements. Control the front door more and then
21 moving kids quicker to permanency makes a huge
22 impact.
23 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: There were
24 a lot of people who wanted to testify that I just
25 didn't give them the opportunity. And so if you have 151
1 been sitting and listening very carefully and have
2 comments or questions, please make your way to the
3 microphone.
4 In addition, since I have a zillion
5 questions, let me throw two other ones out there. I
6 don't remember at what point who said this. But two
7 things were said that I didn't quite understand.
8 One of the them dealt with the providers.
9 And one of the providers made a comment about how
10 you're still waiting for something from DPW to be
11 approved.
12 But I thought you contracted with the
13 counties. So why are you involved with DPW at all
14 for approval of contracts? That was kind of one of
15 my questions.
16 And then my second question -- somebody help
17 me understand a little bit more. I think this was
18 the Judge's point. I understood the point she was
19 making. I want to understand from the county and/or
20 the DPW thing about this sitting and waiting up to 90
21 days in detention.
22 Are we waiting for medical assistance
23 certifications? Are we now classifying kids with
24 mental health problems that may or may not -- I mean,
25 can we get a little bit more clarity on this? 152
1 And then some future thought about -- I
2 mean, I understand the money that's driving it. And
3 I don't want to necessarily make it a more costly
4 proposition somewhere else.
5 But it seems to me that if we have people
6 sitting 90 days in detention, the amount of money
7 that that's costing us would better serve someone who
8 didn't have a mental health diagnosis of getting them
9 straight into some other treatment.
10 Those are some other thoughts.
11 DIRECTOR WATSON: Hi. Terry Watson.
12 A couple of comments. One would be on
13 efficiency, cost savings. I think -- and this is
14 something that I've said for years. And people who
15 have been around me a lot probably got sick of me
16 saying it.
17 But I think that there should be a task
18 force that's set by the House or the Senate or both
19 or the Governor or all three and give a strict time
20 frame to come up with an economy of how we run our
21 system.
22 We're just way too parsed. There's too many
23 specific regulations and things that sometimes are
24 redundant and sometimes counteract each other.
25 So I think that there's a lot better way 153
1 that we could do these things and use our resources,
2 both staffwise and otherwise.
3 I would also make a comment about the
4 licensure. We're actually having our State Children
5 and Youth administrator's meeting. The Board of
6 Directors will talk about this bill and what we see
7 in the counties that would make it even harder for us
8 to get staff.
9 Really what we need to do is -- frankly,
10 people who have lots of licensure things behind their
11 names will probably get mad. But it doesn't really
12 matter in many ways sometimes the degree of the
13 person coming into the system. It's how you train
14 them and how you supervise them that makes them a
15 good worker.
16 The child welfare system has a great
17 training program. There's lots of basic training
18 that all workers have to have and then additional
19 training yearly after that, plus supervision.
20 That's what's going to make somebody
21 effective in the child welfare system.
22 Thank you.
23 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you.
24 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SABOL: Nancy Sabol from
25 Gannondale. 154
1 In answer to your question about the DPW
2 issue, providers who had per-diem rates over $200,
3 which I have for my secure facility, were asked to
4 submit that budget to DPW in order for them to
5 determine an appropriate State and Federal
6 reimbursable rate.
7 There was a lot of confusion with counties
8 because counties weren't sure what they were waiting
9 for. Were they waiting for DPW to approve that rate?
10 Could they go ahead and contract? And so many
11 counties got caught in that process and providers got
12 caught as well.
13 When we brought that issue to the Deputy
14 Secretary, the response was, we can't control what
15 the counties do. We've encouraged them to pay you to
16 do the contracts, whatever. When we brought up a
17 concern that we were not receiving our own
18 reimbursement rates in time, in a timely manner,
19 dealing with the counties, we were told that we would
20 get it as soon as we got it. They were very busy.
21 And I understand that.
22 But, again, it impacted our payments. So
23 that was the process.
24 My own situation took four and a half months
25 to get a rate back from DPW. They denied my rate. 155
1 They wanted more clarification. The forms were very
2 confusing. We sent it back. I finally got my rate
3 in January. So that's my response to that.
4 A couple other things. In terms of
5 efficiency, I would say to you that this is a
6 complicated system, but it's not that complicated.
7 It's not that complicated.
8 We're duplicating services. We're
9 duplicating documentation. We're writing policy for
10 the outliers instead of dealing with the norm. And I
11 will tell you that on one day, I literally had more
12 inspectors, contract monitors, and compliance
13 officers in my administration building than I had
14 support staff.
15 I mean, we've just taken this to a whole new
16 level. And I really don't understand it. But I
17 certainly appreciate the Secretary making herself
18 available to us. Perhaps that's the process we need
19 to use.
20 The last point I would make is about the
21 items that are going to be listed now for legislative
22 review. Remember, my budget is 3 million, a retained
23 revenue cap of 3 percent; 3 percent is not a lot.
24 And if the State isn't interested in
25 covering our costs when we run a deficit, I wish they 156
1 would at least allow us to manage what small earnings
2 we make.
3 Thank you.
4 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Marc.
5 DIRECTOR CHERNA: To answer from the county
6 perspective, we are responsible for contracts and we
7 did contract. Our contracts were in place before
8 July 1.
9 But I think in fairness to the agencies and
10 I think some of the other counties, there was so much
11 confusion with these rates, we figured that if it got
12 worked out later, we would negotiate with the State.
13 We were not about to be dealing with 100
14 percent county funds for a rate that's figured out to
15 be over. And it all worked out. But I think a lot
16 of other folks were hesitant to move forward on that.
17 I mean, there were a lot of things that came
18 down over the last couple of years and the process
19 could have been better.
20 And I think Secretary Richman saying that
21 there will be a better process I think is good for
22 everybody to hear that and to move forward that way.
23 The other piece on the kid's languishing in
24 detention centers, sometimes it does take a while
25 before you get a psychiatrist to see the child. But 157
1 you shouldn't be waiting on that. You shouldn't be
2 waiting on making a placement until all of that
3 happens.
4 You need to make the appropriate placement.
5 And if a child becomes medically eligible, Medicaid
6 eligible, and is eligible for that, you could then
7 start to bill at that point.
8 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: So if
9 that's not happening, is that because the procedure
10 the county has in place isn't working efficiently?
11 DIRECTOR CHERNA: A lot of times there is
12 not adequate psychiatrists to see kids quickly to
13 make those decisions.
14 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Okay.
15 DIRECTOR CHERNA: But it really shouldn't be
16 driven. I mean, this is part of it, where folks get
17 so caught up with the money driving the service. The
18 service should be providing what's best for the child
19 and then you figure out who pays for that and what's
20 eligible.
21 So a lot of the counties, the Medicaid
22 eligibility didn't work out really because you
23 couldn't put a square peg in a round hole. Some kids
24 it did and that was good. And I understood the
25 intent. 158
1 I think the intent was great to try to get
2 us Federal dollars to make up some of the State and
3 county dollars. But the end result is it didn't make
4 that much of a difference in terms of dollars for
5 everybody.
6 But you should never be waiting in a
7 placement because you're waiting on eligibility. If
8 a child needs to go somewhere, they should go
9 somewhere.
10 SECRETARY RICHMAN: I think what you're
11 hearing a little bit is Pennsylvania has 67 counties.
12 And what the Feds crashed down on me on was that we
13 run 67 systems, not one.
14 And with that -- and it's the primary reason
15 that the MR system is now converting to more of a
16 State-run system because there was no way to get the
17 continuity. And in that case, we had a billion
18 dollars in play.
19 In this one, we have about $330 million in
20 play, which is still a lot of money. But they don't
21 want to see systems that where you live determines
22 the services, how long you wait, and what you get.
23 To use Federal dollars and to maintain
24 Federal dollars -- and believe me, I have been
25 dealing with the previous Administration on ACF for 159
1 about four years and have tried to delay an audit
2 fine that could have extended up to a billion
3 dollars.
4 I think I have put in place a system that
5 will keep that from happening, although we don't have
6 a sign that it won't happen. But I think we're close
7 in many of the changes.
8 And one of them was all rates over $250 per
9 day had to be given a range and had to be approved by
10 us and the Feds.
11 It was chaotic this year. It was our first
12 year really through this level. We've tried to be
13 able to do it. I was very appreciative of systems
14 like Marc who could take that initiative and make
15 sure their providers weren't penalized. But there
16 were very many counties for whom this was really as
17 chaotic as it sounded.
18 I think we've learned a lot. I think we're
19 going to hopefully put in place the kinds of things
20 that won't happen again.
21 My understanding is the rates are now up on
22 the web. They're there. We can follow through. And
23 my guess is we aren't working at the same level of
24 trial and error as we did this first time.
25 We are trying to move to a Federal 160
1 compliance system. We have not been Federally
2 compliant since the audit that happened in 1998
3 through 2003.
4 So we have a long history of doing things
5 the wrong way. And it's not going to fix itself
6 overnight without a whole lot of pain, unfortunately.
7 I would like to make that as painless as possible,
8 but I also don't want to come back to the Legislature
9 and say, by the way, I just got fined a half a
10 billion dollars.
11 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: We don't
12 want you to do that either.
13 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR LAUGHMAN: Jim Laughman,
14 Lancaster County.
15 Three points, if I may make. The first one
16 is that in Lancaster County, we decided -- despite
17 the fiasco with the budgeting for the providers, we
18 continued under the premise of the language we had in
19 our contract that would allow us to continue to pay
20 at the rate we had the previous year and that we
21 would make the providers whole depending on what the
22 results were of the contracts from the Commonwealth.
23 So we continue to pay them regardless of not having
24 things established.
25 The 90-day detention, you really do get into 161
1 a lot of cross-system issues. It may be a lack of a
2 psychiatrist or psychologist to be able to do it.
3 But at the same time, you also have to allow
4 providers the opportunity to see the youth and make
5 sure it's the right fit for their facility.
6 And I'm sure the last thing the providers
7 want would be to be told one thing -- because that
8 happens sometimes. You see something on paper or you
9 hear someone on the phone and when you go out, it's,
10 like, wow, we have a totally different picture.
11 So we don't want to set the youth up for a
12 failure. We don't want to set the providers up for
13 failure. And so that sometimes takes time.
14 But also what happens, too, is that there is
15 a rule that within 60 days that if that evaluation
16 runs out, you have to get a new evaluation again.
17 And that's in the mental health side. We look at
18 some of those changes.
19 And also, too, I appreciate it when
20 Secretary Richman said this in the Senate
21 Appropriations hearings. You know, there was a lot
22 of discussion about $20 million was cut from
23 hospitals in the budget in DPW. But hardly anybody
24 mentioned that there's a $35 million budget cut to
25 mental health services. 162
1 We know if there's a cut in mental health
2 services, guess what? It's going to come back and
3 it's going to hurt the kids that are going to be
4 getting services through Children, Youth, and Family
5 Services.
6 Making sure that we have the ability so that
7 the managed care companies that often the counties
8 are responsible for being in charge of, taking a look
9 at the MA dollars that are spent, allowing them to
10 have appropriate retained revenue to make sure in
11 these emergency circumstances so a kid doesn't have
12 to languish there, make sure the counties have the
13 money, managed care companies have the money to take
14 the risk because everybody ultimately wants to know,
15 who's going to get paid? Who's going to pay this?
16 The commissioners and counties don't want to
17 know that's going to come out of the General Fund.
18 Providers are not going to be sitting there saying,
19 well, we hope we're going to get paid. We'll take
20 you on good faith.
21 And certainly with limited funding, we
22 certainly need to be able to make sure that everybody
23 has a fair chance.
24 And again, we don't want to set a kid up and
25 all of a sudden say, well, guess what? There's no 163
1 place to go. Nobody wants to take you because we're
2 not sure of funding. So it really is a cross-system
3 issue that comes with that.
4 And the last thing is -- I think you
5 probably have heard this, Representative, ad nauseam
6 -- about a license for a bachelor's level. I'm a
7 master's level social worker so I will say I think
8 that while it is noble, I am not sure it really
9 accomplishes what maybe people are hoping that it
10 does.
11 Again, I believe -- I worked in the child
12 welfare system for ten years. And what takes place
13 and what's effective is good training, caring
14 supervision, and the ability to have people have
15 experience before having a caseload of 100 kids and
16 not know what they're doing and being green.
17 Representative True is very clear. We need
18 to up the ante. And then people who enter into the
19 system, we pay them adequately and make sure that
20 training is important, not a label or a license but
21 actually having true training is necessary.
22 Thank you.
23 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: I have a
24 zillion questions. And I don't mean to belabor this.
25 This will be my last one. 164
1 I see nobody else standing at the
2 microphones. If you intended to, please do that now.
3 Marc and Ann Marie, you're sitting in front
4 of me and it was actually both of your testimonies
5 that made this confusion in my mind, so I'll direct
6 them to you, although if any of the other county
7 administrators want to chime in as well, they may.
8 I'm not quite sure that I was hearing
9 divergent opinions. Maybe I'm missing nuance. But
10 let me just articulate it the best way I can.
11 It goes to the needs-based budget and then
12 the DPW's interpretation of the needs-based budget in
13 this year's budget.
14 And, Ann Marie, from you I very much heard,
15 you know, we put together our needs-based budget.
16 Here is what it was. And, you know, what we're being
17 told has been appropriated or is being suggested is
18 being appropriated is tens of millions of dollars
19 less than what we need.
20 What I heard from Marc is that he very much
21 thinks that the system is well funded, that our
22 incentives aren't aligned right. My understanding of
23 what DPW did or was doing in their proposal was
24 trying to kind of set goals for the alignment and
25 kind of maybe -- you know, I hear this tension. 165
1 I hear this tension between trying to force
2 kind of best practices and use the money most
3 effectively versus recognizing the counties' ability
4 to control what they think is best within their
5 system. That's probably more the tension I'm
6 hearing.
7 But I'd like each of you to address those in
8 the context of the money that's in this year's budget
9 that the Legislature will or will not be
10 appropriating towards the child welfare system.
11 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ANDERSON: Okay. Let me
12 take a stab and then Marc will correct me.
13 I think one of the issues here is, I don't
14 know what is in Marc's budget and I don't think he
15 knows what's in mine.
16 I also need to say that Marc and I are in
17 two completely different places. Marc is a model, a
18 national model, for child welfare. He's stabilized
19 his system. He has significantly reduced placement.
20 He is what I want Philadelphia to be as soon as we
21 can get there. And so I'm using a lot of the work
22 that Marc has done to replicate in Philadelphia.
23 My placements aren't where they need to be.
24 I'm also bigger than Marc is. And I also have a lot
25 of complicated social problems that are unique to 166
1 Philadelphia. I'm not saying they're worse than
2 Allegheny County. I'm saying they're very unique in
3 Philadelphia.
4 I'm not asking for new money. And we
5 submitted our budget August 15th. That was prior to
6 this global crisis economically. And so we're well
7 aware of the fact that we need to make some
8 adjustments and, in fact, are preparing to do that.
9 The problem that Philadelphia has is that
10 the cuts that were made to our budget were made in,
11 we think, irresponsible ways without consultation
12 with the county.
13 So, you know, having a conversation about
14 where the cuts should be is the first step. I think
15 we know we have to take some cuts. All we're asking
16 for is a transparent process and a dialogue between
17 the State and the county about where those cuts
18 should be.
19 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Okay.
20 DIRECTOR CHERNA: And I don't think Annie
21 and I disagree at all. I mean, we are in somewhat
22 different places. And absolutely I think there needs
23 to be that kind of dialogue around this.
24 What I said was, we are a relatively
25 well-funded State compared to others. It doesn't 167
1 mean we have all the things. But still, you know, I
2 think we can manage within our means.
3 Frankly, I don't get too caught up with the
4 needs-based process because I think in a lot of ways,
5 it's a farce. You know, maybe I shouldn't say that
6 publicly. But at the end of the day, there's limited
7 dollars and you're going to allot a limited amount of
8 money. So we can say, we need billions, and you're
9 going to say, you've got millions, and we have to
10 live within that.
11 So we have this whole pretense of we're
12 supposed to tell you what we need and DPW is supposed
13 to certify what we need, but they certify what they
14 have basically and say, well, that's all you need
15 because they don't have any more and then you make
16 your own decision, so we don't necessarily get what
17 they certify.
18 So that's why we need to do this
19 differently. Let's stop playing this game and go
20 through this whole thing and look at it rationally
21 and change with the times.
22 I think we absolutely have to change
23 incentives, so we deal with, you know, what is best
24 practice, because things have changed since 1991.
25 And, you know, it's a very different environment and 168
1 we need to deal with it.
2 So when I go and ask the State for money on
3 my needs base, which is much higher than I end up
4 with, I don't get too caught up with, you know, they
5 didn't give me what I asked for because I know the
6 reality is I'm going to basically get what I had last
7 year, maybe a little bit more.
8 The revenue mix is what's the biggest
9 problem for me because I can't get county match
10 enough to do this. We have all the demands. Every
11 county is the same. And the city certainly has the
12 same issues. You can't get that money to draw down
13 the rest of the dollars.
14 So that to me is the crux of it. And I
15 think if we stop the game of, you know, going through
16 this and say, okay, now, how do we do this right? I
17 think we'd be a lot better off.
18 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Bob.
19 MR. STANZIONE: Maybe we can get the county
20 commissioners to give you a call and resolve that
21 problem. Tell them not to worry. But that's not the
22 same across the State. I guarantee you that.
23 And that kind of an attitude, which is a
24 great thing, is not what county commissioners want to
25 hear. You know, they're talking about zero, zero, 169
1 zero. And we don't want to hear about cuts. We
2 don't want to hear about it when services get cut.
3 But one of the ways that I think you could
4 help counties that involve MA and RTFs and that whole
5 process is that when that occurred, a lot of counties
6 were not aware of how -- when I'm talking counties,
7 let me be specific. Probation departments.
8 Probation departments were not aware of how
9 to access the money. The money came to the counties,
10 but the County Mental Health or County Human Services
11 looked at additional money. And it did not go
12 specifically to juvenile courts or to the Juvenile
13 Probation Department to access.
14 And one of the problems with managed-care
15 organizations is that they're looking to manage, not
16 to care, and limit the length of stays in these
17 programs.
18 Now, if they know that there's a pooled
19 amount of money that was consistent with the level of
20 service we had before, they're fine with that. And
21 we've not run into kicking a kid out before he's
22 ready or once the insurance runs out.
23 But if it gets diverted into the county
24 needs for other services, other mental health
25 services, regular kids off the street unrelated to 170
1 the delinquent side or the C&Y side, then everybody
2 is competing for it.
3 So I think what you could do is to help us
4 be able to say, well, this is strictly juvenile
5 justice money or C&Y money if it comes into the
6 county budget, because the counties control the
7 contracts with the managed-care providers.
8 So if there was some attachment to that
9 funding stream, if it's going into the county and
10 going through the county, County Behavioral Health
11 has to establish and set aside for C&Y and JPO and
12 you'd eliminate some of that backlog and resistance
13 by providers, managed-care providers, who provide the
14 service.
15 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO:
16 Interesting. Okay.
17 Yes. Please identify yourself for the
18 record.
19 MR. ADAMSON: My name is Craig Adamson. I'm
20 from Community Service Foundation. I'm in Eastern
21 Pennsylvania. I'll make this quick. I think a lot
22 of people have lunch on their mind.
23 As a private provider, we provide services
24 that are community-based. There was some discussion
25 between residential and community-based. And even 171
1 being a community-based provider under $200 as far as
2 the IV-E rates and things like that, I didn't receive
3 contracts until February.
4 And that was because the counties were told
5 that they weren't allowed to contract until the IV-E
6 rates were set in foster care. So there are some
7 IV-E rates, but I wasn't part of that group.
8 But counties were still told not to contract
9 with us until that was done. So as far as a business
10 model, as we sit here today, my line of credit is
11 $525,000 because I haven't been able to get funds
12 from counties.
13 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Wow.
14 MR. ADAMSON: I've reached out to some
15 people in this room to be able to get those funds.
16 It's budget time. We just created our budget for
17 next year. The CPI is 3.8 percent.
18 And I'm creating my budget to send to the
19 county for a 4 percent increase, 3.8 percent
20 increase. My guess is that's not going to be passed.
21 So I'm looking at cutting staff today. I'm looking
22 to close down programs.
23 And I think it's not just these economic
24 times. If you look at the CPI over the last ten
25 years in foster care, I'm behind 10 percent. I've 172
1 been getting zero percent increases for the last six
2 years. This just isn't in the last year.
3 I don't think it's just this short vision of
4 just this budget time. It's the bigger picture. And
5 I'd like to be a part of that larger picture.
6 I think when I've talked with counties, what
7 I've asked for is that if I can get the cost per
8 child, I can grow and I can shrink depending on the
9 need of the counties.
10 And, you know, Bob and Judge Boylan were
11 here today to talk about those specific needs. And
12 I'm in Bucks County as well. And I deal with
13 delinquent and dependent children.
14 And I can create programming around that. I
15 can create -- we do have evidence-based programs. We
16 can do all those things based on their needs. But if
17 I'm losing money on every child that I receive, I'm
18 not staying in business.
19 This past year CSF lost $422,000. I was
20 able to supplement that with private dollars as well
21 as we also take kids from high schools because we
22 have alternative programming and I'm supplementing
23 that.
24 But our Board of Directors are asking, how
25 long is that going to continue? 173
1 The last part, the last piece, that I must
2 make is that there seems to be a drive towards
3 central planning. And I think that this 15 percent
4 and 3 percent retained revenue central planning is
5 not the way that Pennsylvania should go.
6 We have a rich system of providers. We have
7 a huge array of services both on the delinquent and
8 dependent side. And having a State-controlled
9 system, you can look at neighboring States. You can
10 look at Ohio. You can look at New Jersey to see that
11 that's not a very good system for child welfare.
12 Thank you.
13 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you.
14 Let's do Bernadette and end with Secretary
15 Richman.
16 MS. BIANCHI: Thank you.
17 I am Bernadette Bianchi. I work for the
18 membership of the Pennsylvania Council of Children,
19 Youth, and Family Services.
20 And thank you, Secretary Richman, for
21 agreeing to rethink those contentious items in the
22 proposed bulletin.
23 SECRETARY RICHMAN: I have made the offer to
24 meet frequently about those things.
25 MS. BIANCHI: And I will take you up on that 174
1 offer. We were trying to be most appropriate in
2 dealing directly with the Deputy Secretary through
3 the Office of Children, Youth, and Families, not
4 wanting to circumvent that process. But we will
5 follow your direction and meet right with you.
6 I do have another issue that is in the draft
7 bulletin that I think is the potential for another
8 contentious discussion especially as we move quickly
9 into the completion of the fiscal forms.
10 And that's regarding the process that is
11 being proposed for the review of those fiscal forms
12 with State and county partners and review teams.
13 Without a lot of clarity around that,
14 without a lot of consistency and interpretation, we
15 could well end up with just as big a mess this round
16 as we currently have left over from this last round
17 last July.
18 So we would ask that it be closely monitored
19 that providers be included in that process very
20 intimately because it affects our ability to do the
21 work that we are committed to doing, and that there
22 be consistency in that implementation and roll-out.
23 Thank you.
24 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you.
25 SECRETARY RICHMAN: Just to finish up on 175
1 some financial issues.
2 And I think you made reference to it. The
3 OCYF budget, just OCYF budget, between '04-'05 and
4 '08-'09 increased 64, almost 65 percent in total
5 dollars.
6 Now, some of that about 150 million, which
7 would probably bring it down a little bit, was when
8 we moved the TANF dollars, I think, as Lisa
9 referenced, from the TANF line item to the Act 148
10 and children's line item.
11 When the General Assembly looks at a 65
12 percent increase in a single area, the question
13 demands attention and change because you have
14 providers saying they aren't getting enough. You
15 have counties saying they aren't getting enough.
16 And also if look nationally, Pennsylvania
17 ranks third in national funding behind New York and
18 California, appropriately, but way too close given
19 their size to ours. We rank ahead of Illinois and
20 Texas, who are both significantly larger than we are
21 as States.
22 So the money is in the system. The issue
23 becomes, how are we spending it? Who is spending it?
24 And how are we being held accountable?
25 This was the ACF Federal issue. You've got 176
1 a lot of money going in there. What are you doing
2 with it and how are you counting?
3 Ann Marie brought hers up. Their request
4 was about $90 million for this year, you know, new
5 dollars. When we come back to certify, we bring that
6 down substantially. And it's not all based on what
7 we can afford.
8 A lot of it in this particular area is based
9 on how substantiated it is and how can we justify to
10 the General Assembly what the new dollars are going
11 for. Do we have outcomes to justify those dollars?
12 And where we don't, how are we going to get them?
13 The system needs to be changed. I will tell
14 you, the process of how we change is important. And
15 the dialogue needs to happen. But I don't want to
16 leave any misperception that we can afford to leave
17 the system as is, that we can afford to pour the
18 dollars in the system that we pour into the system
19 and not be able to explain more clearly why we had a
20 65 percent increase in this particular budget.
21 Incidentally, that's just about the highest
22 increase we've had in any of our major offices.
23 This is a tough time. We're in an economic
24 crisis that hopefully we'll never see again and our
25 children won't even have to go through. 177
1 But at that same time, we need to still be
2 economically aware of the impact on children. And
3 this is going to be a tough time for our families.
4 And too many of our families who use alcohol and
5 other things to kill the pain they're in, we still
6 need to be attentive. We need to be attentive to our
7 providers. And we need to figure out together,
8 together being the operative word, how we're going to
9 live through the essence of this crisis.
10 Thank you.
11 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Thank you
12 very much.
13 Representative Reichley, I know you had a
14 question and you had to leave. Do you want to ask a
15 question?
16 REPRESENTATIVE REICHLEY: I did have to
17 leave, but Representative True told me it was
18 covered. I understand the provider issue and running
19 the price cap through the bulletin is being addressed
20 by the Secretary. I appreciate that.
21 Thank you.
22 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN MANDERINO: Very good.
23 Thank you all very much for taking a whole
24 morning. I know we kind of sent out the invites and
25 said, please stay for the whole morning, and you all 178
1 did. I hope it was as productive for you having
2 stayed the whole morning as it was for us to have
3 heard everything.
4 So thank you very much. And I look forward
5 to working and going forward with all of you.
6
7 (The hearing concluded at 12:30 p.m.)
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25 179
1 I hereby certify that the proceedings and
2 evidence are contained fully and accurately in the
3 notes taken by me on the within proceedings and that
4 this is a correct transcript of the same.
5
6 ______Jean M. Davis, Reporter 7 Notary Public
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