MONDAY REPORT
February 19, 2002
SPECIAL NOTE: Copyright 2002.
The Monday Report is produced each week as a benefit to the member agencies of
the Child Care Association. Please protect this membership benefit - DO NOT copy
and distribute this report to agencies/staff that are not members of CCA. Thank
you for your cooperation.
Table
of Contents
CCAI�s
SPRING MEMBERSHIP MEETING..
1
CHILD
WELFARE.
2
CHILD
WELFARE ADVISORY COMMITTEE REPORT.
2
�
Budget Status:
2
�
Homemaker:
2
�
Committee Reports were provided by:
2
�
Federal Child and Family Services Review:
3
SED
COMMITTEE REPORT.
3
UIR
WORK GROUP REPORT.
4
THE
CARE ACT OF 2002.
5
CWAC
MEDICAID WORKGROUP.
5
SACWIS.
6
HIPAA.
6
GENERAL.
6
FUNDING
FOR HEALTHY FAMILIES.
6
CWLA
MIDWEST PUBLIC POLICY COMMITTEE.
6
UPCOMING
EVENTS.
7
Calendar:
7
CCAI�s SPRING MEMBERSHIP MEETING
You should have received a �Save the Date� information page and
registration for the Association�s Spring Membership Meeting. Further
information on the meeting will be sent to you as soon as possible.
In the meantime, if you would like to take advantage of the early bird
registration fee, please send us your registration and fee before March 4th.
CCAI now accepts Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.
Please call the CCAI office to charge your registration fee.
There will be a Leadership Dinner at 6:15 at The Hyatt Lodge on March 20th.
Executive Directors and executive level staff are invited to join the
CCAI board at the dinner. Guest
speaker will be Jerry Stermer, President, Voices for Illinois Children.
On March 21st the Membership Meeting will begin at 9:30 a.m.
with registration at Hamburger University Conference Center, Room 222, adjacent
to the Hyatt Lodge. Topics will
include: CCAI Three-Year Strategic Directions; Specialized Foster Care
Developments; Trends in Residential Care; CCAI Outcomes Findings and Future
Directions; Current Illinois Budget Status; and Legislative Agenda.
If you need a registration form please call the CCAI office at
217.528.4409, ext. 22.
Reservations at Hyatt Lodge: If you need an overnight room at The Lodge you need
to call 800.233.1234 or 630.990.5800 before February 26th to
guarantee a rate of $113.00. There
are only a few rooms left in our block, so please call now if you need a room.
Be sure to say you are attending the CCAI meeting.
(SKA)
CHILD
WELFARE ADVISORY COMMITTEE REPORT
CWAC met in
Chicago on February 15.
�
Budget Status:
Director
McDonald shared his current thoughts on the status of the extremely tight state
budget and impacts on DCFS. DCFS
general fund budget was $925 million+ for FY�02 which represented a small
increase from FY�01. Twenty five million was cut in November and an additional
$35 million will be cut from FY�03. They are expected to be diligent in
drawing all federal funds possible. Their budget assumes maximum foster parent
reimbursements for licensed homes. This impacts the current unlicensed kinship
homes and the imminent imposition of DHS policies preventing administrative
reimbursement for unlicensed placements, if the rate of licensing does not
significantly improve. Additionally,
DCFS has to be concerned about 2 year periods. If there is significant excess
draw down from the Children�s Services budget this puts stress on FY�04.
There could be additional cuts imposed if the state revenue continues to fall.
If there are further cuts, DCFS will have to look at prioritizing service areas.
Some programs will be immediately impacted. Placement Stabilization is already
being reviewed. There will be significant shrinkage of Specialized Foster Care.
�
Homemaker:
Status
of Homemaker services was discussed. In the previous CWAC meeting, the Director
had announced DCFS� agreement to change the program plan and revise the rate
structure. That has now changed. As Bureau of the Budget reviewed DCFS� budget
for �03, cautions were issued about unauthorized rate increases. As DCFS
finance staff reviewed the revised program plan, it did not seem it would
survive BOB scrutiny as being sufficiently new and different. Given the scenario
of the entire state budget situation, DCFS has now chosen not to pursue the
potential increase. Providers reinforced the severe financial situation in some
Homemaker programs. Additionally, the group stressed that the work group
highlighted the inequities in Homemaker use across regions and the disparities
between DCFS foster care and POS foster care use.
DCFS staff did agree that regional staff should not be applying any of
the recommended program plan changes since the rate did not change. This issue
may be revisited later in the spring, as the total state budget scenario becomes
clearer.
�
Committee Reports were provided by:
UIR
WORK GROUP REPORT
The
UIR work group met on Feb. 6, 2002. First
issue addressed was criteria being used for approvals/denials. . DCFS reported
that it received approximately 40 requests for waivers. These waivers often included multiple requests.
They indicated that they were more likely to approve requests where the
behavior was low risk, and if it involved aggression, the aggression was not
assaultive behavior. No requests for restraint reporting were approved. The DCFS
staff reported that often times there were no previous incidences of the
requested behavior on file in the state record of UIR.s. The staff reported that
they had approximately a 25 percent approval rate, however Jane Gatner would be
providing us with specific statistics regarding this issue, broken down by the
type of incident/waiver.
The staff from
the private agencies reported that many people had stopped applying for waivers
as the approval rate was very low. They also indicated that the paperwork
involved in requesting a waiver exceeded the paperwork necessary to report the
incident. A discussion of the process of reviewing waivers and
notifying staff of the reason for their denial indicated that there is some
confusion regarding procedures that will be corrected.
The staff from the private agencies suggested that there be a phone call
at the end of the process to review why a waiver was denied. In some instances
the staff reported that licensing was not willing to go along with the waiver
for reporting incidents, in spite of the procedures being published.
Second major
issue discussed was the fact that most incidents reported by private agencies
had not been notified of the incident report ID number needed to complete the
Disposition. This is running anywhere between 50 percent for foster care
cases and 100 percent for some residential agencies.
A number of agencies indicated that they have been sending the
disposition form with the incident report as a way of circumventing this.
Committee
agreed to review the final procedures as distributed and make recommendations to
resolve the following issues:
1
� review all listed behaviors that can be waived in light of other procedures
and policies requiring they be reported.
2
� UIR training will be reviewed to identify areas to improve consistency in
training.
3
� review the distribution data of waivers that have been approved or denied
based on specific behaviors and risk factors to increase the frequency of
successful requests.
4
� develop draft revisions for the UIR waiver procedure to incorporate the
issues addressed above.
5
� maintain contact with Larry Small of DCFS in order to assure the
appropriateness of waiver requests.
6-
DCFS staff will use the UIR data presented by participants to confirm the
database for accuracy in capturing the UIR�s that have been submitted.
7-
the workgroup suggested that any wavers that are submitted could include UIR�s
prior to the 9-1-01 start-date of the current system to document prior behavior.
(We thank Ed
Sherk of Shelter, Inc. for this report.) (MB)
THE
CARE ACT OF 2002
Last week,
Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and Rick Santorum (R-PA) introduced the Charity
Aid, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Act of 2002 (S. 1924) which includes tax
incentives for charitable giving and other support to help nonprofit
organizations address community needs. The
Senators who co-sponsored the bill include: Evan Bayh (D-IN), Sam Brownback
(R-KS), Jean Carnahan (D-MO), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Orrin
Hatch (R-UT), Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Bill Nelson (D-FL).The Charitable Giving
Incentives Package, Title I of the CARE Act, creates eight new or enhanced ways
to encourage all Americans to expand their generosity and increase giving.
Three of the more notable provisions of the package are: 1) the
charitable deduction for nonitemizers, 2) the IRA Charitable Rollover, and 3)
the reform of the excise tax on net investment income of private foundations.
For a summary or the full text of the legislation, please visit www.independentsector.org.
Agencies may also wish to sign on to a letter of thanks to the sponsor and to
express support for the proposed CARE legislation. A standard letter is also
available on this web site. CCAI has signed on in support of this legislation
via a joint letter from the Alliance. (MB)
CWAC
MEDICAID WORKGROUP
The CWAC
Medicaid Workgroup met at the Baby Fold in Bloomington on Feb. 7, 2002.
The agenda included SACWIS; HIPAA; Suspension, Termination and Appeal
Procedures; Post-Payment Reviews; Additional FY01 Billing Runs for Comp
Programs; Certification of Campus-Based Programs and 45 Day Pre and Post Billing
for FFS Contracts.
SACWIS
The issue
related to what elements related to Medicaid would be included in SACWIS was
discussed and what actions were occurring within DCFS and the SACWIS Advisory
Committee to address the issue. A
small workgroup was formed with representatives from POS agencies, DCFS co-chair
of Medicaid Workgroup, representative from Infant Parent Institute and SACWIS
project staff from DCFS. It was
reported that there is a meeting on March 5th with Director McDonald
to review the service plan information developed for SACWIS so the group needed
to meet prior to that date in order to submit at least preliminary
recommendations related to Medicaid needs.
The group scheduled a meeting on Feb. 25, 2002 at 1:00 to begin review of
Medicaid needs in relation to SACWIS.
HIPAA
Stephanie Hanko,
DCFS co-chair of the Medicaid Workgroup, reported on the status of HIPAA
requirements and the potential impact on child welfare services.
There are two parts to implementation of the HIPAA requirements � one
relates to transaction codes and one relates to privacy aspects. Compliance with the code transaction requirements has a
deadline date of October 2002 and the privacy aspects deadline is April 2003.
The more critical issue is related to the privacy aspects.
What impact will the privacy requirements have on client information
systems? Stephanie noted that DCFS
attorneys had initialed reviewed the requirements and determined DCFS was not
affected. With ongoing discussions
with DPA, that position has now changed. Also
what will be the impact on the development of the SACWIS application?
A meeting was facilitated by the Governor�s with a large number of
state agencies to review what is happening in Illinois with HIPAA.
There are no funds in the FY03 state budget to address the HIPAA
requirements. It was suggested that CCAI take a look at the regs on behalf
of its members to determine what minimum preparation agencies could be working
on now and what steps are needed for agencies to ramp up.
Also check with other organizations to determine what steps they have
taken and review potential for joint seminars or training.
(JMS)
FUNDING FOR HEALTHY FAMILIES
Last November, Governor Ryan announced a
number of budget cuts in the response to the projected $500 million deficit in
the current year�s operating budget. Original reports indicated that most of the Fiscal Year 02
budget increase for Healthy Families Illinois would be eliminated.
Fortunately, the final reduction of $249,000 in the FY02 Healthy Families
budget was less than was originally anticipated.
However, as a result of this cut, the amount allocated for expanding HFI
services this year was decreased by 50%; the Illinois Department of Human
Services has notified the 14 HFI grantees affected.
For FY03 members of the HFI Policy and Advocacy Committee have expressed
concern about the possibility of any further reductions in the Fiscal Year 03
budget for HFI which begins July 1, 2002. A
review of the Healthy Families line in the FY 03 budget that is announced this
week will be provided to members. (JMS)
CWLA MIDWEST PUBLIC POLICY COMMITTEE
The CWLA Midwest Public Policy Committee met
in Chicago on Feb. 7th and 8th.
Legislative priorities for the League during this Congressional session
will be: 1.) TANF Reauthorization; 2.) Child Protection/Alcohol and Drug
Partnership Act; 3.) The Younger Americans Act; 4.) Social Services Block Grant
Restoration Act; 5.) Child Protection Services Improvement Act � this includes
the workforce issue; 6.) The Act to Leave No Child Behind.
With the introduction of the federal FY03 budget, TANF has received level
funding so at this point it is not the administration�s position to cut
funding to TANF. Juvenile Justice
reauthorization is on hold for the moment.
Republicans had amendments they wanted to offer which were very
controversial. (JMS)
Calendar:
Feb. 21 � Downstate Agencies Cash Flow
Meeting
Feb. 25 � Medicaid/SACWIS work group �
Bloomington
Feb. 28 � Healthy Families Advocacy/Policy
Committee
March 5 - �Discipline of Students with
Special Needs in Illinois,� Bev Johns, Gary Kerr,
Springfield IL, register by phone:715-833-3959
March 8-9 � 2002 Spring Foster and Adoptive Parent Conference��Every
Child is a Success
Story.� Crowne Plaza
Hotel, Springfield.
March 12 � CWAC SACWIS Advisory Committee
March 20 � CCA Board Meeting and Leadership Dinner, The Hyatt Lodge, Oak
Brook
March 21 � CCAI�s Spring Membership Meeting, Hamburger University
Conference Center,
Oak Brook
May 3 - Learning Disabilities Association of
Illinois Spring Workshop, featuring Reed Martin,
Special
Education Attorney, Holiday Inn, Naperville, (708) 430-7532
