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.

From time to time, we use the OK Policy blog to post submissions we receive from Oklahomans who have interesting perspectives on important policy issues for the state. This entry is from John F. Gajda,  Executive Director of TARC, an organization that advocates for the rights of citizens with developmental disabilities.

It’s hard to read a newspaper or listen to a local news programs without hearing about new or planned funding cuts for services provided by Oklahoma state and local governments.

As advocates for people with developmental disabilities and their families, TARC is concerned about how changes in state funding will impact services for these individuals.

The Developmental Disabilities Service Division (DDSD) of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (OKDHS) is the largest provider of services to individuals with developmental disabilities in Oklahoma. When talking about cuts to the OKDHS budget it is easy for the needs of the people served by DDSD to not receive much attention. Cuts of the magnitude currently being proposed for OKDHS in State Fiscal Year (SFY) ’11 must, however, trickle down to DDSD and directly impact the lives of thousands of individuals. Read the rest of this entry »

With the health care reform bill now signed into law, the next event in the OU-OKDHS Practice & Policy Spring Lecture Series couldn’t be more timely. On April 8th, Dr. David Cutler, one of the foremost health care economists in the nation, will be delivering a free public lecture titled “What Did We Do In Health Reform?”. The lecture will be from 12 – 1pm and will take place at the College of Public Health of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The lecture can will be broadcast in Tulsa atthe OU Schusterman Center,  Rm. 3108.

Professor Cutler is the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, Department of Economics and Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He served on the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council during the Clinton Administration and was an adviser to Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign.

Dr. Cutler will examine insurance coverage and population health, medical care delivery and costs, and public sector financing.   No registration is required.  Click here for more information on this event.

Update: Video of Dr. Cutler’s presentation is available here (wmv)

Note – Occasionally we plan to re-run blog posts on topical subjects that you may have missed the first time around. Last week brought word from DHS that the number of confirmed cases of child abuse and neglect in Oklahoma plunged last year to 8,618, a drop of 26 percent from last year, and a full 40 percent fewer than at the start of this decade. We reported on the encouraging decline of child abuse cases and possible factors explaining the trend in this post from June (the graph has been updated):

We’re out with our latest Numbers You Need bulletin for June, tracking economic and fiscal trends in Oklahoma and the nation. While the bulletin focuses on monthly and quarterly data on jobs, inflation, work support programs, and the like, each month we present annual data on some indicator of Oklahoma’s general prosperity and well-being. This month we look at the trend in the annual number of confirmed cases of child abuse and neglect in the state. The news is decidedly encouraging.

Last year’s total of 11,714 confirmed cases of abuse and neglect is the lowest this decade. The rate of child abuse and neglect cases – 13.0 per 1,000 children in the population -  is the lowest since FY ’94 and is down 35 percent from the peak rate of 20.0 confirmed cases of abuse and neglect per 1,000 children in FY ’98.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, April 2nd, the Oklahoma Department of Human Services is hosting a lecture by  Tony Campolo titled “What Role Should the Faith Community Have in Human Services?”.  The talk is from noon to 1 p.m. at the Will Rogers Theater in Oklahoma City.

According to Campolo’s website, he is professor emeritus at Eastern University and founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, an organization that develops schools and social programs in various third world countries and in cities across North America. His latest book is titled Red Letter Christians, A Citizen’s Guide to Faith and Politics. Read the rest of this entry »