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Oklahoma Department of Human Services Director Howard Hendrick said that he and the OKDHS staff look forward to working with the Oklahoma House of Representatives and others who have a role in Oklahoma's Child Welfare system on making improvements in the system. His remarks came following today's release of the 173-page Hornby Zeller Associates, Inc. Performance Audit that contracted by the Oklahoma House of Representative in spring 2008.

"We welcome the opportunity to improve all services we deliver," said Hendrick. "Many of the simpler recommendations are already in various stages of implementation. Some are more involved and will take longer. The policy and funding recommendations directed toward the legislature will be particularly difficult to achieve given the present budget climate.

"Most of the recommendations directed toward OKDHS can be achieved and will be accomplished where feasible. Restructuring services where a visible improvement to service is clear will be given priority. Restructuring where improvements to services are not apparent will be studied. We look forward to the improvements."

In a report to the Oklahoma Commission for Human Services this week, Hendrick outlined the performance of the agency for the first 6 months of fiscal 2009, which included:

* The number of children in foster care in Oklahoma has dropped by more than 2,000 children in the last 20 months. It's the lowest level in more than 5 years;
* Fewer incidents of child abuse and neglect are being confirmed, fewer children are being removed, and children are going home or being adopted at faster rates;
* More than 900 children experienced a finalized adoption in the last 6 months of calendar year 2008, the most in any 6 months ever;
* There are also more child welfare workers handling child welfare cases than at any previous time ever and the workers are more tenured (more than 700 have more than two years experience); and
* The number of children in care per worker is at the lowest level in more than 5 years.


Many recommendations are directed at improvements for the overall child welfare system, which includes the courts, law enforcement, district attorneys and numerous other organizations that interact with the system.

The report makes 25 recommendations. Many are directed at the Legislature, including:

1. Funding salary increases for OKDHS staff based on performance;
2. Funding for foster care rate increases;
3. Changing the role of the district attorneys from being an independent assessor of the reports it receives from OKDHS to the American Bar Association's recommended "agency representative" model;
4. Repealing the statutory authority for judges to issue "standing orders" that permit law enforcement to remove children without first contacting the judge in each case;
5. Changing the legal standard for removing children by law enforcement and OKDHS to only children who are exposed to imminent safety threats, rather than where a child is being neglected and the removal is in the child's best interest;
6. Changing the responsibility for licensing of the state-operated facilities to the Commission on Children and Youth.

Other recommendations directed to OKDHS include:

7. Restructuring the hotline for child abuse and neglect by merging hotlines into a single statewide hotline for referrals as the sole recipient of all referrals, in lieu of the "no wrong door" approach taken by OKDHS for receiving referrals through its hotline or any local office;
8. More job specific training for workers and a review of training materials to be sure that clarity of goals for training are communicated;
9. Streamlining the licensing processes for foster and adoptive homes, including consideration of merging some licensing functions done for child care and developmental disabilities services;
10. Expanding emergency foster care so the public shelters in Oklahoma City and Tulsa are eventually closed;
11. Using more in-home services;
12. Recruiting more foster families;
13. Requiring workers to have private visits with the children when they are making their regularly scheduled visits in foster care;
14. Moving the SWIFT adoption services unit from the Children and Family Services Division to Field Operations;
15. Changing the organizational structure for Tulsa County and Oklahoma County services;
16. Requiring area offices to assume more direct responsibility over some cross county functions;
17. Consider modifying the instrument used by the Continuous Quality Improvement unit to assess county performance so the results can be better used for both positive rewards and negative sanctions;
18. Acting with greater speed on personnel problems;
19. Experimenting with alternative ways of recruiting staff with different demographic characteristics, especially older workers; and
20. Conducting periodic regional needs assessments for all services.