Thank you to our November Meeting guest speaker DCF Commissioner Staverne Miller, state agency partners, and members who engaged in productive dialogue. We apologize to our members who were unable to join live due to CLM maxing out our Zoom capacity for this meeting.
Here are some highlights from our insightful conversation with DCF Commissioner Staverne Miller:
- Cross-secretariat collaboration is a priority. Particularly for DCF, the focus is:
- Safety: assessments, timeliness for reporting, responses, and monthly visitation;
- Permanency: keeping kids with kin, meeting goals in 12 months, utilizing Family Resource Centers to help work with families, engage more youth turning 18; and
- Wellbeing: on the medical front, they're working to ensure kids are healthy. To promote school attendance, they are talking to families and working with DESE to identify young people at highest risk and plan to work intensively to get them through graduation.
- Support and Stabilization RFR is in process. Key pieces for members to support include:
- permanency with an eye on kin and lifelong connections
- identifying young people with the highest needs
- our collective focus on supports that keep kids at home or in the least restrictive environments
- working together to reduce unnecessary 51A filings from programs
- timeliness of responses
- DCF is working on documenting their contact in timely ways and hitting targets too.
- DCF Annual Report FY23 Highlights:
- case load reduction,
- 15:1 caseload ratio at more than half of DCF's offices.
- 148% increase in kinship placements,
- 13% reduction of children in foster care, and
- increase in 18-year-olds signed on with DCF.
- Significant plans for FY26:
- DCF is working with Chief Justice Brieger on court improvements:
- more adoptions to be completed in a timely manner,
- work on racial disparities in caseloads, and
- cultivating respectful processes with all families across agencies.
- DCF is committed to enhancing lifelong connections for transition age youth (TAY). They are particularly concerned with emerging adults whose goal becomes Another Planned Permanent Living Arrangement (APPLA). Some of the means by which they're addressing this work:
- partnering with Wendy's Wonderful Kids to create a position focused on kids stuck in that APPLA space,
- working with the National Center for Diligent Recruitment to find more families as long-term connections for youth,
- changing recruiters supervision from regional to Central Office,
- developing permanency round tables (15 of 29 offices so far) to include youth, social workers, foster parents, and providers.
- Major Roadblocks to Permanency & Ways to Address Them:
- Housing
- creative independent or semi-independent living programming is really important
- have built a position for an outreach/housing specialist
- have worked to get more vouchers for youth and emerging adults to stay in their communities
- Life Skills Reimagined (better technology for remote learning; updates PAYA)
- Improving TAY transition planning and recommitting to starting this work at age 14,
- Improving school attendance/graduation rates
- Other Initiatives:
- DCF noted they can offer some compensation for internships with providers to help emerging adults with lived experience gain experience in the field.
- Fostering relationships with graduate-level programs to make it easier for new social workers to join the field early and further develop human services pipelines.
- Working to improve retention of social workers, such as by reducing burdens and barriers while maintaining a high-level of qualification.
- Ensuring that homelessness alone is not a reason for filing; working with families to stabilize their housing needs, including with expanded housing unit.
Commissioner Miller also praised providers for doing more than what they’re necessarily set up to do.
Below are the state agency updates from the meeting:
DCF
- Central Office move to 1 Ashburton Street is complete.
- Holiday allowances will begin being disbursed on Monday, November 25. This allowance will be $200 per child for gifts and special activities.
- The new Deputy Commissioner for Clinical Support, Candice Gemski was introduced. With 35 years of experience at DCF, in this new role she will oversee the Services Network, Foster Care, Community Engagement, and Missing and Absent Youth Units. The key goal for Gemski in this position is to engage more intently with community providers.
DMH
- Implementing bipartisan safer communities act with evidence-based treatment practices on violence reduction as SAMHSA partnership.
- Reiterated cross agency commitment to complex youth and family situations. They believe their cross-agency team will be able to take referrals soon, especially to help with figuring out how to support youth presenting with aggressive behaviors.
DYS
- Working with EOHHS and other agencies on complex cases to support youth and staff and make processes easier.
- The Trauma and Racial Equity Empowerment Academy (TREE) program is rolling out to provider services to youth and make sure all systems are lined up for Medicaid reimbursement.
OCA
- Noted the Center for Trauma and Wellness in supporting state agencies, as we are already seeing dysregulation of families fearing deportation and potentially large budget cuts.
- Continue to partner with agencies to support training needs of their staff, such as on the secondary trauma issue supporting front line helping newcomer populations, as well as working with individual residential providers
EEC
- Continuing with cross-agency collaboration and will share new vision core areas to address together.
- Area Director Margie Gilberti is retiring on January 24; Joe Rucker, currently Deputy Commissioner of Field Operations, is taking over her role.
Post-Election Next Steps
For the final 30 minutes of this member meeting, we left space for members to discuss any concerns associated with the 2024 federal election results. A collaborative space was facilitated where members offered to help develop resources. Concerns were shared regarding:
- migrant families and undocumented families in our spaces, including staff
- LGBTQIA+ youth
- support for staff in our programs
- potential impact on Medicaid rates
- potential cuts or prohibitions on federal funding for DEI initiatives
- potential dismantling of data collection on key initiatives and civil rights issues
- the intersection of potential funding impacts with the end of ARPA and ESSER (pandemic) funding that has been a temporary cushion for programs
CLM shared a summary of our post-federal election action plan and urged members to reach out to their legislators to pass priority bills before the end of 2024.