What's New
COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES
July 16, 2008
Members Present: Dorinda Edmisten, Pam Davidson, Merlin Leach, Christina Carr, Steven Oliver, Mary Hartwig, Annette Watson, Karen Worley, Steve Bingham, David Goodson, Lisa Channell, Gracie Gonner, David Reynolds, Judge Vicki Cook
Members Absent: Carie Breazeal, Judge David Reynolds, Sharon Schrantz, Carol Maxwell, Dr. Jerry Jones, Pat Page, Aurian Zoldessy, Mike Paladino, Avis Lane, Karl Mounger, Eddie Schmeckenbecher, Robert Parker, Stacey McKeown
Guests: Debbie Roark, Wilma Tatum
Others Present: Max Snowden, Candy Garland, Cherry Carruthers, Sherry Williamson, Lori Gardner, Kendra Simpson, Michelle Cline, Elizabeth Waldrum and Stasia Burk (ACCARDV)
CALL TO ORDER – Karen Worley
The meeting was called to order at 1:30 p.m. by Karen Worley. The meeting is being held in the AR Medical Board Building this meeting and in October. Guests were welcomed.
Dr. Worley read the designated proxies: Dr. Worley for Dr. Jerry Jones; Steve Bingham for Stacey McKeown; Judge David Reynolds for Aurian Zoldessy; Dr. Merlin Leach for Avis Lane; Pam Davidson for Pat Page; Dr. Mary Hartwig for Eddie Schmeckenbecher; Dorinda Edmisten for Carol Maxwell; Steve Oliver for Mike Paladino; Christina Carr for Sharon Schrantz and Annette Watson for Karl Mounger
REVIEW OF MINUTES FROM LAST MEETING – Karen Worley
The minutes from the April 16, 2008 meeting are in your packets. These came ahead of the meeting but please just take a minute and review them.
Dr. Hartwig made some editorial corrections, line 11 of paragraph 2 needs to be deleted; on page 2 take out will become and add prepare; on page 3 take out passion for and add interest in helping; on page 3 paragraph 2 under State Protocol, sentence12 add meeting; on page 4 paragraph 3 remove the s from responds..
Dr. Merlin Leach moved that the minutes be accepted with the noted corrections. Judge David Reynolds seconded and motion was so moved.
CHILD ABUSE PROJECT/COMMITTEE REPORT – Sherry Williamson
Child Fatality Review Update:
The first item is a flow chart for the State CFR Team that I developed. We had a meeting June 20th to formalize the state child fatality review team for the commission and with this flow chart, I took all of the duties that are assigned to the Commission on things that we need to do and divided them out so everything that is in a box is something that is part of that legislation. One of the things that the state team will do as a whole will be to establish local and regional review panels. Then I divided out into two work groups, a Coroner Workgroup and a Data Workgroup to handle some of the other specific things I have an initial meeting set up with each workgroup the Coroner Workgroup will be August 7th at 1p.m. and that group is going to work on reviewing training requirements in other states, different curricula that is out there and discuss what we need to have in Arkansas and what we think would be effective. That group is made up of two coroners in this state; one is the head of the State Coroners Association and one is the former head of the State Coroners Association as well as Dr. Kokas from the Medical Examiner’s Office and Carol Griffin is from MidSouth because we are going to work on some SANE issues and a couple of other folks. We are also going to determine what information will be included in this CFR investigation report and we also have the Data Workgroup that is made up of several numbers people that we have on our committee; we have people from the Bureau of Vital Statistics, Department of Health and the Public Hospital. Then the whole group is going to come back together and meet quarterly and our next quarterly meeting is set for September 18th at 9 a.m. Another one of the things that will be accomplished down the road will be developing some educational information for the public about the incidence of child danger and child fatality in Arkansas. One of the things we will do at the next quarterly meeting will be reviewing programs from other states.
Child Abuse Project/Committee Report:
This is the training report for the 4th Qtr. SFY 2008; I have conducted 14 trainings and trained 346 individuals between April 1st and June 30th. I also want to talk about something that we put in the CJA Grant and that is the web based training. I put something out on the Criminal Justice List Serve to find out from all the different states if any of them have web based training for mandated reporters and I have had some good information passed back to me. Right now I am in the process of reviewing a website that Illinois has, it is a really good website, it is interactive. They have a pre test and a post test and it precipitates certification process and that is something that we would like to do to help get the huge increase in things that we have requested because of ACT 703. The third sheet is a chart which is visual support for developing web based training. You will notice at the top in SFY 2007 I did 35 training sessions and trained 1287 professionals and in SFY 2008 I conducted 70 training sessions and trained 3133 professionals. So a very big part of that are training requests from colleges and universities and the annual training comparison which is the second chart you will notice that in SFY 2007 I trained 148 college students who were going to be mandated reporters and this last year I trained 637. I had increases in most every group trained so that is really good. I also want to highlight the increase in school personnel, it makes me very happy to get out to schools and do trainings to folks who are there. ACT 703 will cover the new teachers but it is not going to cover those teachers who are already out in the school system. I do want to note the section for conference attendees because they typically fall into one of the categories that are listed; I work with Michelle and she handles the Child Abuse Forums. Michelle works with Headstart to determine what types of topics are being presented and whenever they have a lot of requests for someone to do training on mandated reporting she will ask me. Their programs cover a lot of other topics as well. The last sheet covers meetings attended during the last quarter and scheduled meeting and training sessions for the first quarter. She reviewed those items of importance.
RAPE PROJECT/COMMITTEE REPORT – Lori Barksdale
Quarterly Report
The second quarterly reports were due on May 20th. Our program provided 428 educational seminars to 8,125 participants and they provided 70 professional trainings to 1,208 participants and we handed out over 29,608 handouts. The report behind this report is the summary from the quarterly report and Lori highlighted some of those items with the commissioners.
CDC Continuation Application
The continuation application for the Rape Prevention Education Program was due on June 3rd to the Department of Health. We did not have any major changes this year we are continuing with the comprehensive planning process. We are going to be sending out the RFP for the rape prevention programs in mid August.
Sexual Violence Comprehensive Planning Process
The workgroup, whose task is to complete the Needs and Resources Assessment, has continued to meet monthly. We have revised and sent out a survey to the funded programs to find out what their needs were and some in-depth information about their strategies. We also sent out a survey to potential partners and to people who are not funded through rape prevention. We sent it out to about 50 different programs and received 8 responses. The overall committee will be meeting at the end of July to go over all of this information.
Adult Sex Offender Management
We are continuing to implement proposed activities on the implementation plan. The grant will end September 30th. We did hold a two-day conference for all stakeholders on June 2nd & 3rd at the Wyndham hotel. We had about 110 participants and we received a lot of really good comments and made over $3,000 which we can use to hold another conference next year. The training subcommittee will now be working on some other training efforts within groups. The treatment subcommittee continues to work on standards for treatment providers, this summer they are focusing on making sure the standards work with the Adam Walsh Act. The research subcommittee is continuing to enter data from the sex offender assessments. The last number I received was 1,292 assessments they have entered and by the end of summer it should be around 2,000 because they have had several people working on it over the summer.
Meetings/Trainings
I have listed meetings and trainings I have attended and on page two there is a listing of meetings I have provided. Lori reviewed those items with the commissioners.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PROJECT/COMMITTEE REPORT - Kendra Simpson
Trainings Conducted
Kendra referred the group to the training report included in her portion of the packet. She reviewed the trainings she has conducted since the last meeting. She has conducted 7 trainings and trained 104 individuals and since January they have conducted 14 trainings and trained 293. Kendra reviewed her upcoming trainings as well.
Trainings Attended
Kendra listed the trainings she has attended and the dates that those took place.
Act 1414 Legislation
We have been working on this for about the last six months. We are currently working on a final draft of a document addressing the six key issues contained in Act 1414. We have developed about 30 different safety plans and we are going to put these on our website as well as the Coalition Against Domestic Violence website and then also, if we can find the money somewhere, we are going to print some of these safety plans and be able to distribute them to law enforcement and healthcare providers. Our next is scheduled for August 14th right now. If anyone would like to come to this meeting they are welcome.
Other
Kendra reviewed her participation in the Crisis Response Team Call Out, there have been two and those are listed. She helped at the AR Victim Assistance Academy coordinating volunteers. She has updated and re-ordered the Commission’s Domestic Violence brochures.
RURAL PROJECT REPORT- Michelle Cline
Trainings/Meetings Attended
Michelle shared the information on trainings and meetings she has attended.
Forum on Endangered Children
The Arkansas Heat Start State Collaboration Office and the Arkansas Commission on Child Abuse, Rape and Domestic Violence sponsored a forum on “Endangered Children in Arkansas” in Newport, Arkansas on Tuesday, April 22nd at the University of Arkansas Newport. The topics were indicators of child abuse, mandated reporting and drug endangered children with a total of 45 participants and the evaluations were very good.
We do have another forum scheduled for the fall of 2008 in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Michelle shared the topics they are looking at. We are going to have Dr. Dorea come and talk about post dramatic stress disorder as it relates to child maltreatment and domestic violence so all of that should be very interesting. We have a tentative date for late October, the 29th & 30th but when those dates are confirmed I will send out the information to everyone along with the registration forms.
Next we have our Statewide Child Endangerment Conference in the spring of 2009 and we do want to put together a conference committee so if anyone is interested in being on that committee please let me know, we can always use the help. Michelle shared some of the topics they have been discussing and we got these topics from the evaluations that people have turned in and these are the ones that repeatedly came up. We found Shaken Baby Syndrome and Traumatic Brain Injury, Attachment Issues in Children, Child Sexual Abuse, Child Development and Age Appropriate Discipline, Reintegration Issues for Soldiers and their Families, and Internet Safety. Michelle asked if any of the commissioners knew anything about these topics or knew of good speakers for these topics she would appreciate hearing from them. Michelle mentioned the Preventive Health Block Grant Trainings for 2008 and reviewed those with the commissioners. They did a total of 4 trainings and total participants were 132.
Other Projects
The Domestic Violence Shelter Program Block Grant and this is the grant that we provide to fund the Domestic Violence Shelters throughout the state and it is through the Aging and Adult Services. The quarterly reports were due last week, I have received all the reports. They provided shelter to 246 women and 333 children. We expect to pay out approximately $9,142.
Preventive Health Services Block Grant - is the program that supports the Rape Prevention Education Program and it also purchases sexual assault kits for the hospitals. The semi-annual report is due soon, the oral report for the advisory committee at the Department of Health is coming but I don’t have a date for that yet but I am preparing the report and I should be doing that some time next month.
Domestic Peace Fund RFQs – these were sent out in April and the committee met on June 23rd to review the applications and it was decided that 34 shelters will be receiving the Domestic Peace Fund money.
Michelle reviewed the upcoming training and she reminded them that there is a registration form included in the packet. It is on Sexual Violence Prevention: Men’s Programs and Bystander Intervention it will be held July 25th at 9 a.m. at Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock, lunch will be provided and it is free.
MDT PROJECT REPORT – Stasia Burk
The MDT Coordinators were trained on the new State Model Protocol on April 23 & 24 at the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute on Petit Jean Mountain. Off of that I conducted state-wide regional trainings and trained anyone who was a part of an existing MDT and any of the coordinators were allowed to come again with their team so they could hear the questions their team was asking and be able to respond to those and be educated along with their team. I did five trainings state wide and trained over 220 people. Some of the coordinators have decided not to renew their contract so I have visited with those teams and hired new coordinators and trained those teams with their new coordinators. I have also conducted meetings here at our office as new coordinators have been hired. There are several MDTs that did not have coordinators and those positions have also been filled and they did not participate in the regional trainings because at the time they did not have a coordinator so now I am going to those teams individually and training them as well. We have a new team where there was a vacant county and that is Sevier County, Max and I went last month and met with Sevier County, they want an MDT so we have hired a coordinator, she has been trained and now I will go back to Sevier County and train that team. The State Model Protocol was implemented state wide on July 1st so now all the teams are operating under the state model protocol. Stasia explained how the old system worked and the teams are finishing up with those reports and beginning with the new all in the same month so it is a difficult month for them. In the coming months I am going to be developing MDT in vacant counties. When I started in December there were 31 counties with MDTs and there are now 37 counties with functioning MDTs and by October first that number will go up to 46 counties and that is due to existing MDT Coordinators picking up vacant counties and simultaneously that number will go up to 56 depending on how fast I can get to all these counties and set up MDTs. I also have a listing of trainings and conferences I have attended and you are welcome to review those.
CHILD SAFETY/ADVOCACY CENTER UPDATE – Elizabeth Waldrum
If you will remember at the last meeting I mentioned that I planned to visit all of the existing centers; well I have done that. The sub-committee met on May 7th and we developed RFP criteria for existing centers and a timeline for distribution which was May 28th and receipt of RFPs is June 20th. We need to get additional information from some of the centers and the CAC in West Memphis is the only one that was approved without needing changes, they had all personnel that they wanted to fund. The next section is
meetings and trainings I have attended and just below that is scheduled meetings and trainings. At the bottom it talks about the next step with the sub-committee is going to be; now that the RFPs have been turned in and hopefully today the Commission can vote on the second page which is the CSC Proposed Funding if they accept it. The next step will be developing a system for financial reporting and having a quarterly system that they will have forms to submit and I will probably be doing quarterly site visits, audits and just making sure everything is on track. Elizabeth outlined the second page for the commissioners and she explained the way the funding was set up and why. Dr. Worley called for a motion to approve the funding.
Lisa Channell made a motion to approve the funding as presented and Christina Carr seconded the motion. The motion was so moved without discussion.
FUNDING UPDATE – Candy Garland
The Children’s Safety Centers Update
Originally we were told we were going to get $1,188,750 for this appropriation but on April 8th we received an email notification that the funding increased in 2007-2008 by $61,250 to $1,250,000 for 2007-2008. On the same day we received exact notification that the same funding for 2008-2009 would be decreased to $674,125. So in short we are going to be receiving $1,924,125. I would like to reassure everyone that even though we have this deduction in funding for our appropriation that funds our children safety centers, some of our MDTs, especially with our new additional MDTs that we received. Everything that we have in place that was originally budgeted for this appropriation we will be able to support due to the fact that we have a significant amount of carry over dollars left. All of our funding that we normally receive each year, we were approved for and we also didn’t receive any additional cuts on.
Child Welfare Act
As of July 1st ACCARDV received $274,400 in the Child Welfare appropriation to assist MDT Coordinators throughout the state to review and process child abuse complaints.
The Domestic Violence
Effective July 1, ACCARDV received $63,767 this funding goes to support our two domestic violence coordinator positions within the Commission.
The Division on Aging Grant from DHS
On the 23rd of May we received $161,066 to support client services for domestic violence shelters in the state.
The Social Services Block Grant from DHS
May 23, 2008 we received notification of award from DHS for $35,000. These funds will be used to provide training for child abuse prevention professionals in the state.
Medical Services Grant from DHS
On June 6th we received a one-time lump sum payment of $200,000 from DCFS to fund a qualified medical entity for education, peer review, and consultation to medical service examiners and mental health examiners for children interviewed and examined at the state’s Child Safety Centers.
There are some concerns for next fiscal year’s funding. We will not know until the legislature meets in January of 2009; we are hopeful that we will continue to receive the dollars that were submitted this past session to our MDTs and Children’s Safety Centers however we don’t know until then. We are truly optimistic at this time that we will.
OTHER BUSINESS/ISSUES
Max mentioned that there is a listing in the packet of Commissioners whose terms are expiring. Michael McGrew with the governor’s office is the person that typically handles these applications and he suggested that I apprise those members who are up for renewal that you can apply on line at www.governor.arkansas.gov then on the left side you choose board appointment and click on that and then application is under that, please be sure and hit submit. Max said he would encourage folks to do that as quickly as possible. So if you would do that it would be very helpful.
We are going to be establishing a workgroup to work on developing rules and regulations for Act 703 from the last legislative session. This is the Act that we have spent a great deal of our time and effort on in the last few months to get CAC funded and to build more MDTs up and so now that we have finished that first wave of effort we need to now began looking at how to develop the rules and regulations that will help facilitate the language of that Act. So if you are interested in serving on that workgroup that would be wonderful. It is probably be more time consuming than some others have been but we will make it as palatable as we can but if you have an interest in doing that we would appreciate your being involved.
Max invited everyone to come over to the new remodeled Commission office since that is the reason we are here today, we have half the space we used to have for a boardroom now. It was far more reasonable for us to do it this way than for us to find another office that had a boardroom that would accommodate all of us, it just wasn’t feasible. We will keep you apprised of where we are meeting and try not to run you around each quarter.
RESOURCE INFORMATION-Max Snowden
Max reviewed the resource information and encouraged the Commissioners to attend the conferences that are in the packet. We have scholarships available if you are interested.
ADJOURN
Dr. Worley asked members to sign the attendance sheet if they had not done so and to see Candy if you need reimbursement for travel. She thanked members and guests for their attendance and reminded them that the next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday October 15, 2008 at 1:30, in this same building. There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned.