Last week, the Department of Human Services announced new co-payment and eligibility rules for the child care subsidy program, which we discussed in this post. By lowering the eligibility threshold for subsidies, the new rules will worsen the “cliff effect” whereby workers with the opportunity to move up the income ladder are penalized by losing work support benefits. Here we rerun a blog post on this subject that first appeared in June 2009; we have also discussed how health care reform promises to significantly improve the situation.

In recent years, whenever I’ve participated in forums on poverty and barriers to self-sufficiency, the single barrier raised most often and most fervently by those who work with low-income individuals and by low-income individuals themselves is the “cliff effect”. A 2007 report prepared for the Women’s Foundation of Colorado and the Women and Family action Network Coalition defined the cliff effect as follows:

Eligibility for work support benefits is typically based on income, so as their earnings increase, families lose eligibility for supports. A benefit cliff occurs when just a small increase in income leads to the complete termination of a benefit. The result is that parents can work and earn more, while their families end up worse off than they were before. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.

This week at OK Policy, we looked at what the Legislature did and did not do this session to try to stop the runaway train of tax expenditures.  Click here for our issue brief exploring tax expenditures and principles for improving accountability and transparency.  Our quick take on May general revenue collections shows that while revenues are rebounding, they are still way down from pre-downturn levels.  The state is collecting almost 25 percent less in personal income tax in FY ’11 than in FY ’07, reflecting both an impartial economic recovery and the ongoing impact of income tax cuts and tax breaks.  Go to our website to view an updated version of our Budget Trends and Outlook presentation. Read the rest of this entry »

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services this week approved changes to the state’s child care subsidy program that  will increase hardships for struggling low-income working families, threaten access to quality child care, and harm child care providers who serve low-income children. [UPDATE: In late July, the Commission decided to defer a vote on these changes until November]

DHS’ actions were precipitated by budget shortfalls for the upcoming year exceeding $30 million. The Legislature reduced state appropriations to DHS  for FY ’12 by a modest $6.0 million, or 1.1 percent, compared to FY ’11. However, the agency also faces the loss of one-time funding in this year’s budget, expected increases in program utilization, and higher employee benefit costs. To balance its budget, DHS proposed a series of  measures, which included voluntary buyouts of 231 positions, mostly within its field operations division for children and family services, and cuts in contracts for various social services. Read the rest of this entry »

The budget deal is done, and nearly every state agency is receiving another round of funding reductions. That leaves an important question: what programs will be cut to make up the loss? How cuts are distributed will have a huge effect on state services, but the Legislature seems to be abandoning its responsibility to make these hard decisions.

In previous years, the Legislature would approve budget limit bills directing agencies on how to spend state dollars. Although each agency’s budget bills looked a little different, sections typically included:

That changed last year, when leadership chose not to run budget limit bills for most agencies. This year there are less than a handful. Read the rest of this entry »

The senior vice president and director of the Human Services Research Division of Mathematica Policy Research, Inc will be the final speaker in the spring 2011 OKDHS Policy and Practice Lecture Series.  Barbara Devaney, Ph.D., will present “Oklahoma’s Building Strong Families Project” on Thursday, May 19, from Noon to 1pm at the Oklahoma History Center in the Chesapeake Room. The event is free and open to the public.

Devaney received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.  She is a nationally recognized expert in maternal and child health, nutrition and risk-reduction programs for youth.  She is co-director of Mathematica’s Building Strong Families study and has served as principal investigator for the firm’s evaluation of abstinence education programs, which received the 2009 Outstanding Evaluation Award from the American Evaluation Association.

Devaney has played a leading role in many of Mathematica’s studies of family formation, children’s nutrition and public health programs.  She has served on scientific committees convened by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. She publishes widely in peer-reviewed journals and presents findings at conferences of researchers, policymakers and practitioners.

The Building Strong Families project is an initiative to develop and evaluate programs designed to help interested unwed parents strengthen and stabilize their relationships.

Related information:

• Guest blog post by Scott Stanley on Family Expectation, one component of this initiative in Oklahoma.
• OK Policy roundtable: Should Oklahoma be promoting marriage?

The next lecture in the OKDHS Practice & Policy series, ‘The Economics of Oklahoma’s Single Parents’, will be presented by Dr. Larkin Warner and Dr. Jean Warner.  The lecture takes place between 12:00 and 1pm on March 24, 2011 at the Oklahoma History Center in the Chesapeake Room.

Larkin Warner is a former professor at Oklahoma State University who served as the Director of the Economic Studies Division at the Kerr Foundation.  Dr. Warner will use Census data to address the economics of Oklahoma’s single mothers and report on key factors that contribute to poverty in the state.  Co-presenter Dr. Jean Warner helped establish the Oklahoma Women’s Coalition, a non-profit organization that advocates for the state’s women and girls. The Journal Record named Dr. Warner one of the “50 Women Making a Difference in Oklahoma” in 2010. Her presentation will focus on innovative initiatives to improve the financial futures of single-parent families. Read the rest of this entry »

The Office of Planning, Research, and Statistics of the Oklahoma Department of Public Services and the University of Oklahoma Center for Public Management will host the former director of Oklahoma Developmental Disabilities Services, Ed Skarnulis, on February 23rd, 2011 as part of their Practice & Policy Lecture Series.  Dr. Skarnulis, appointed by various federal courts to oversee the closure of institutions, including the Hissom Memorial Center in Oklahoma, will lecture on ‘Why the Institutions Died.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Fogarty, Chief Executive Office of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, will be speaking on “The Economics of Health Care Reform” at noon on Thursday, January 20, 2011 at the Oklahoma History Center. The talk is the first spring lecture of the Practice and Policy Lecture Series co-sponsored by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services and the University of Oklahoma Center for Public Management. The event is free and open to the public, with lunch available for purchase.

Fogarty has been CEO of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority since 1999. The agency administers the Oklahoma SoonerCare (Medicaid) programs with a staff of more than 430 employees. As CEO of the Health Care Authority, his statutory duties include service on several agency boards including the University Hospitals Authority and Trust, the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth and the O.S.U. Medical Authority.

Fogarty previously served as the Health Care Authority’s State Medicaid Director and Chief Operating Officer. His career includes stints at the Oklahoma Department of Human Services as the Deputy Director and Assistant Director for Medical Services. He was a member of the Washington D.C. legislative staff of former U.S. Senator David Boren. Fogarty’s career also included private law practice and private health-related business.

In 2005, Fogarty was named Administrator of the Year by the Oklahoma Chapter of the American Society for Public Administration. The award is given annually to a public servant in Oklahoma whose career exhibits “the highest standards of excellence, dedication, and accomplishment.”

For additional information and for the full list of lectures in the series, click here.

Ron Haskins, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, was this month’s speaker at DHS’ Practice and Policy Lecture Series. Haskins looked at causes and offered solutions to the persistence of poverty in the United States. He attributed poverty to four main causes:

1. Low rates of working and low wage rates. Only 83 percent of working-age adults had full-time jobs in 2008, down from 89 percent in 1980. The rate is dramatically lower, 42 percent, for African-Americal males. Haskins attributes the increase for that group in part to higher incarceration rates and blames relatively generous welfare and retirement systems for some of the general decline in working rate. At the same time, low- and middle-income workers are not seeing meaningful gains in wages.
2. Changing family composition. The marriage rate has declined greatly, mainly for less-educated women. Forty-one percent of births are now to single mothers, almost all of them with less than a college education. Given the clear link between single-mother family status and child poverty, Haskins suggested higher marriage rates would reduce poverty. Read the rest of this entry »

“Is there anyone here from Oklahoma?”

I was at a national conference of health care policy experts and advocates last month when the morning’s plenary speaker, Cindy Mann, Medicaid Director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, posed that ominous question. “Uh-oh. What have we done this time?”, I wondered, as I tentatively lifted my hand.  But this time, Oklahoma was being singled out for major praise, not ridicule. What Oklahoma had done that had Mann and several others at the conference gushing was launch a new streamlined enrollment system for the Medicaid program that may be the most user-friendly in the nation – and that positions Oklahoma at the front of the pack as states face the challenges and opportunities of implementing health care reform in the coming years.

Until the launch of the new enrollment system, applicants for SoonerCare health insurance coverage, the state’s Medicaid program, submitted a paper application to the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS) during regular office working hours. In most cases an eligibility determination would be made 20 to 30 days later after information was entered into the agency’s legacy mainframe computer and verified. Policies and procedures were handled at least slightly differently in each county office and by each caseworker, and the client numbering and tracking system was prone to errors. Read the rest of this entry »

The first event in the Oklahoma Department of Human Service’s fall Practice and Policy lecture series will be held Thursday, October 7th from Noon to 1 pm at the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City. Dr. Gerald Clancy, President of OU-Tulsa and Dean of the OU School of Community Medicine, will be speaking on “Start Smart – Benefits of Early Childhood Education.”

Dr. Clancy, a physician whose practice and research has focused on outreach psychiatry,  will offer a discussion on new advances in understanding brain development and brain imaging, enlightening participants by providing new insights that will guide early childhood programs of the future. The event is sponsored by OKDHS Oklahoma Child Care Services.

The event is free and open to the public. Click here for a map to the Oklahoma History Center, located at 800 Nazih Zuhdi Drive, Oklahoma City.

We’re pleased to call your attention to two events that are coming up next week that should be of interest to many Oklahomans.

The 35th Annual Oklahoma Conference on Aging, “The Art of Aging,” will convene May 18-20, 2010 at the Tulsa Southern Hills Marriott. With more than 60 concurrent lectures and three plenary sessions, the conference draws attendees from across the state. Tuesday, May 18 is Senior Day and free to anyone age 60 and older. Dr. Jean Root will discuss “Optimal Aging” during her keynote address. Wednesday and Thursday, May 19-20, are programmed for professionals in the field of aging and cover a wide variety of subjects. The conference’s keynote speaker will be Dr. Bill Thomas, founder of Eden Alternative and the Green House project. Dr. Thomas is an internationally renowned expert on long-term care and will be presenting on May 19 at 8:30 a.m. For more information about the conference, or to register, go to the conference website or call 405-521-2281.

Anyone interested in the subject of child well-being should take note of a lecture on Friday, May 21st by Dr. Charles Wilson titled “Impacts of Childhood Trauma  – What to Do About It”. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place from noon to 1 p.m. at the Oklahoma History Center, 800 Nazih Zundi Drive in Oklahoma City. It is the final event in the excellent Practice and Policy spring lecture series that has been organized jointly by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services and University of Oklahoma.

Dr. Wilson  is the Executive Director of the Chadwick Center for Children and Families and the Sam and Rose Stein Endowed Chair in Child Protection at Children’s Hospital in San Diego where he oversees a large multi-service child and family maltreatment organization providing prevention, intervention, medical assessment, and trauma treatment services along with professional education, and research. He has an extensive background in public child protection, including serving as past President of the American Professional Society on Abuse of Children and past Vice President of the National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators.