You're welcome. 367 4/7/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Councilwoman Brown, your light is on.
Yes. I have many more questions, but my opening question and comment was around this grid that we keep here on what department goals are.
Okay. Thank you, Madam President. Discuss with us or share with us what is the RFP process for the 231 providers. Just stipulate what happens. You release an RFP -- no. You got to do the homework first and the crafting of the language, the text, and then what? COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: Correct. What we try to do is research what the need is, look at what the best practice standards are, what the evidence shows us works, put all of those requirements in the RFP. We use the e-contracting process. We then select a group of sort 368 4/7/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. of experts within the agency that don't have any conflict with who might be selected. We usually try to make those teams not know who is reading the RFPs so that there's a level of confidentiality involved in the selection process. We consider performance. So we look at how the agency, if they've previously done business with DHS, how they've performed on our --
Their track record? COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: Correct. And we evaluate them fairly. We usually ask them -- a new step that we put in the process last year is, we ask them to come in and do a presentation for us, because sometimes what you write in a response to an RFP doesn't necessarily translate into good services. You can hire somebody to write a response.
Exactly right. COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: And so 369 4/7/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. we want to hear from them what they believe is the best service delivery system that they can provide to kids and families that are serviced by DHS. That has been a really great addition to our process. In some instances we pull in additional folks. So when we did the Achieving Independence Center RFP, we brought in a young person who received services from the Center to help with the selection process.
And then you make your determination of the awardees, do the release letter, they receive the grant. What happens on the back end? It's a year later, time for renewal possibly. What happens then? COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: Then we look at performance. In the interim, there may be issues that come to our attention through our Provider Relations and Evaluation of Programs Unit. If we get complaints from social workers, if we 370 4/7/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. get complaints from families about service delivery, all of those complaints are investigated. The court sometimes is part of the selection process based on what they see, and then we either reissue the RFP or renew it depending on what the guidelines are.
I've worked for the Youth Services Coordinating Office. I was actually in the evaluation unit where I had to go into the trenches and look at programs and take the proposal and look to see if they were in compliance, for lack of a better word. So is that function still real or possible where professionals from DHS hit the trench? COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: Yes. That's the unit we talked about, the program -- the PREP Unit. We have program analysts who go out and every six months they go through a tool that we have that looks at program standards, compliance with State regulations, 371 4/7/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. documentation of service delivery, interviews with children and families receiving services, and all of those things are evaluated in their performance and they get a report. We go over the report with them. Sometimes there are areas of concerns. Sometimes they have to write a plan of correction based on our findings. But that's something that we've spent a lot of time working on since the death of Danieal Kelly, since obviously there were many concerns about how we monitored our programs.
Can one assume then that that process you just described is one of the reforms that came out of the Child Welfare Review Panel? COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: That's correct.
In FY11 there were several decreases projected for Lutheran Children and Family Services, Presbyterian Children's Village, Turning Point for Children and 372 4/7/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Youth Services. Might there be a particular reason for the decrease in those, separate from program operations or program delivery of service not being up to -- COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: Yeah. Actually, that's a good thing for kids, because fewer children are going into placement, and that's where those reductions are coming from.
That's a good signal. Okay. New Education Support Center that will track the educational progress of students in DHS care. Again to put this in context, another one of Mayor Nutter's pledges, if you will, coming into office was to look to see how we could deal with the dropout rate. And we know that by sixth grade, if they aren't reading, chances are we're going 373 4/7/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. to lose them. Truancy signals start to go up. So speak to the relationship with the School District, what's in place to tighten the connectors there, because the two are linked. COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: Hugely linked. I mean, this has been one of the most exciting things I think that we've done at DHS. We recognize -- and Cynthia Figueroa, Deputy Commissioner for Prevention Services, Lisa Rodriguez, who is our Director of the Education Support Center, are both here, but what we realized early on is that we finally had I think a Superintendent who cares about our kids in the way that we've been waiting for someone to care about our kids for a long time. And so we had an opportunity and we've spent the last 18 months working very closely with her leadership team around these issues, with the assistance of Lori Shorr from the Mayor's Office of Education. We've recently, actually two 374 4/7/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. weeks ago, we had a meeting where we pulled together the leadership of DHS and the leadership of the School District and we sat for about three hours putting them in their geographic regions, having real conversations about how are we all going to be partners here. So many things have resulted. We have a Memorandum of Understanding around data sharing, so we're now able to talk about kids in a real way and --
Bravo. That took about ten years. That's a good thing. COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: Well, Dr. Schwarz was --
At least the needle has been moved now. COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: That's right. And so the Education Support Center is a real understanding of DHS, is that the place that we're really going to make a difference for kids is where they're all supposed to be, which is 375 4/7/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. school. And if we have better partners with our educators, we're going to make a huge difference in preventing them from coming deeper into the system. And so Lisa -- we're starting with a pilot program. Lisa is working with one of our ongoing service regions, and we're just working with a Regional Superintendent. The cooperation from the School District has been terrific. This meeting that we had with the two leadership teams coming together was a really amazing experience. They want to talk to each other. They want to talk about these kids. They're both frustrated by the lack of communication and collaboration. And so we're very excited about what this might bring for outcomes for kids.
You should be. I know it did take hard work, because I remember three or four years ago grappling with the issues of confidentiality and the different types of information those two worlds have to 376 4/7/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. keep. So to have overcome that hurdle is huge. So I commend you for that. I think, Madam President -- this is a small item. I notice the change in the title of Social Worker Trainee positions open at DHS to Social Worker Trainee -- no; Social Services Trainee? COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: This is a source of frustration for us at DHS. There was actually a legislative change that we weren't part of and didn't know about, and it impacted Philadelphia only, because in other counties the civil service system calls their workers case workers. In Philadelphia our workers are proud to be called social workers. I did engage in a bit of a battle with the assistance of Rita Urwitz from District Council 47, but ultimately we had to comply with the law. And so we came up with a title that we thought worked best, and we're trying to make the best of it.
Okay. All 377 4/7/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. right, then. Well, thank you all for your testimony. Thank you for the progress. COMMISSIONER AMBROSE: Thank you.
You're welcome. Any other questions? (No response.)
Seeing none, thank you very much. Thank you. The Committee will stand in recess until Monday, April the 12th at 10 o'clock. Thank you. (Committee of the Whole recessed at 6:00 p.m.) 378 CERTIFICATE I HEREBY CERTIFY that the proceedings, evidence and objections are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me upon the foregoing matter on April 7, 2010, and that this is a true and correct transcript of same. ______________________________ MICHELE L. MURPHY RPR-Notary Public (The foregoing certification of this transcript does not apply to any reproduction of the same by any means, unless under the direct control and/or supervision of the certifying reporter.)