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HomeMy WebLinkAbout05 SOCIAL SERVICES BOARD MINUTES 05-05-2021 SOCIAL SERVICES BOARD MINUTES May 5th, 2021 The Grant County Department of Social Services Board meeting was held, with some board members appearing via zoom (z). The meeting was called to order by Vice Chairperson Dale Hood at 9:00 AM. Roll Call was taken with Dale Hood, Don Splinter, Lester Jantzen, Greg Fry, Robert Scallon, Dwight Nelson (z). John Beinborn, Chairperson, came in after the meeting started and resumed his duties. Also present was Fred Naatz, Director, Bob Keeney County Board Chairman (z), Garry Pluemer Maintenance Supervisor (z), Tonya White Grant County Clerk (z) LeaAnne Smith, Office & Financial Coordinator (z), Shane Drinkwater, Director of IT. The meeting was found to be in compliance with the open meeting laws. Lester Jantzen made a motion to approve the agenda. Greg Fry seconded, the motion carried. Minutes of April 7, 2021 meeting: Dwight Nelson made a motion to approve the April 7th, minutes. Don Splinter seconded the motion, the motion carried. COMMUNITY SERVICES BUILDING MAINTENACE UPDATE: Garry has been in touch by email with Brad for finishing up some items. No update on the 52 building. FINANCIAL REPORTS: Summary of Vouchers: The board reviewed the vouchers Accounts Payable Reports, printed 04.23.2021. The LAD Lake, Northwest Passages and Marinette County payments; are the big placements now. The budget is in much better shape than the past couple of years and this has to do with only having a couple kids in residential care compared to last year when we had 5 kids. Dane County Juvenile court program, we needed to place a kid there for a while and he is now moved to a residential placement. Greg made a motion to approve the Summary of Vouchers. Lester seconded, the motion carried. Bob Scallon stated he was in attendance at the April 7th meeting. LeaAnne will do an Amendment with the change. Administrative Report: We are 25 % done and our expenses our 24%, revenue is higher than expected. Under secure detention it shows there is $40,000 to use and we have not used any out of that. This will change due to a Platteville incident involving a juvenile. The juvenile is going through adult court instead of juvenile system. The jail is not able to hold him and tried several other jails. Judge ordered him to be held in Juvenile Corrections in LaCrosse and we are responsible to pay. Greg made a motion to approve the administrative report. Dwight seconded, the motion carried. Training Costs: March and April not a lot of money spent. Most are Foster Parents that have done webinars. Eventually the trainings will go back face to face, but some feedback from other counties is if you can do trainings virtual this would be better to reduce the time of traveling. The leadership at the Professional Development System has done some research and found if the training is heavy on information that people retain a lot more than being in person. But if the training is more relationship focused you don’t retain as much out of the training doing virtual. Beinborn asked if we could track comparing virtual and attending in person and if we wanted to do a cost analysis in the future. Keeney asked what the time frame was on the virtual trainings; Naatz stated it is about 6 hours a day. Naatz stated we have learned with some families we work with respond very well with a virtual meeting. Dale made a motion to approve the training costs. Greg seconded the motion, the motion carried. CORRESPONDENCE: Child Welfare Transformation + Family First virtual Town Hall meetings: Fred received an email from John Elliot, Administrator for Children and Families, specifically about Family First program, which is changing how child welfare services are delivered throughout the Country. States could apply to have waivers when they need to implement it. Wisconsin asked for a waiver and will have to have it implemented by September 29th. The Department of Children and Families has hired 2 staff at their level to focus on this. The major changes are a much heavier focus on paying for services on the front end where you can keep families together and de-emphasis of placement. They are holding different virtual Town Halls for Supervisors and staff, Directors and the stakeholders for the legal side of things. They are inviting people if they want to participate and they will be recorded for the board if interested. Federal APS COVID money/application: There is some recognition at the federal level that it has been difficult providing services to people with needs around the Adult Protective Services including Elder Abuse. There was $1.5 million allocated to Wisconsin, we can apply for this extra funding, Grant County would be eligible, which would be a little over $12,000. In talking with Dustin and Ben our APS Staff and Shane, IT one of the things we have been looking for is replacing an old database where we track this information. We can use this money to develop a database. All the material right now is paper and we would like to transfer this to electronic. Met with IT and hoping $10,000 out of the $12,000 will be enough to do this and the $2,000 we have left over we would purchase smart phones for the APS workers. The board will need to approve and then Naatz will take to the full county board. Don made a motion to approve applying for the grant. Bob S, seconded the motion, the motion carried. ADMINISTRATION – GENERAL: Foster Care FBI Fingerprinting Policy: Smith explained we need the Fingerprint Policy for the Department of Justice to make sure we are following the Statues and Policy and Procedures. The Department will also need this policy for an audit being done by the DOJ. Keeney asked if Smith was in charge of the files, Smith explained Amber and Morgan the Foster Care workers are in charge of the Fingerprint checks. Don made a motion to approve the Fingerprint Policy. Bob S seconded the motion, the motion carried. Economic Support Position: Naatz is requesting to rehire Sadie Lawson’s position. Naatz talked with Joyce and she asked if with the tight budget for next year, are we able to not refill the position. Naatz’s response to Joyce was with this particular program we subcontract with Rock County and are a part of the Income Maintenance Consortium, which also includes 6 other counties. We are contracted to have a certain number of Fulltime Employees. Greg made a motion to approve rehiring Sadie’s position. Lester seconded the motion, the motion carried. Human Services Day at the Capital: A meeting with the Wisconsin County Association, (WCA) was held. Went over the points WCA was presenting to different legislators in regards to what is in the Governor’s budget and what we support and would like to see happen. Met with Marklein’s office along with 6 other counties virtually and met with Travis Tranel’s office. Since Howard or Travis was not available we met with a staff member. The counties presented what points they wanted to have and they listened very well. Social Services Department COVID-19 Update: Naatz explained the Department is still using the risk level for Grant County and talking with Jeff of the Health Department who suggested we are better off waiting to get to a medium risk level. The Management team expressed one of the fears is the low percentage of people in Grant County who have received the vaccine and are willing to get the vaccine; this could take a really long time to get to a medium risk level. If we start getting a trend downward we will start bringing more people back and unlock the doors, possibly June. The Department is not tracking whether or not staff has or has not been vaccinated. Orion In-Home Intensive Family Therapy Contract/Funding: We wanted to contract with Orion to do some Intensive in home therapy with some extra funds from the TSSF and SSF. We did some more research on it and it had to be a case specific. We did a contract with them stating we will pay them per case specific. Jeff Lockhart contacted Naatz stating he wanted to relook at the Substance Abuse Grant and could get DSS $90,000, but it has to be used up by the end of September if DSS wanted to fund an intensive in home therapy team with Orion. Naatz contacted Stacy Park of Orion letting her know we got $90,000 asking her if she could pull together a team. DSS Board Member Terms and Upcoming Election: Naatz received an email from Tanya White, County Clerk, stating when Bob Scallon and Lester Jantzen were appointed it was for a one year term and it expires this year; Greg Fry’s position also ends this year; will be going to the County Board for re- elections in May. Director’s Report – DHS Completed a CLTS audit and it went very well. The auditors look at a certain number of cases for Social Services and Unified. We do need to pay back $67.00 to Unified for a case that was billed for case management when a child was in the hospital. Overall we were compliant. Naatz attended a state wide HIPPA training, part of it was the Department of Children and Families presented. A question we have always had is since we are not a Health provider or clinic, does HIPPA apply to us and how. The clarity was if you have a question talk with your Corp Counsel. Naatz met with LeaAnne and Amanda of Finance regarding a new section in the Department of Health Services contract. A new requirement the state wants is for counties to track how much business they contract with businesses with owners who are minorities and Veterans. They are requiring a monthly report tracking this from counties. LeaAnne went through the accounts to see which accounts are included in this and sent to Amanda. Beinborn asked Naatz if he talked to Nate, Sheriff’s Department regarding prisoners getting released. Naatz said he met with Lori, ADRC and emailed Nate asking to meet. One of the issues is when someone gets released from the jail they tend to wander in the lobby. The front desk does have access to the security cameras. CITIZEN COMMENT- None ADJOURMENT- At 10:35 AM, Dwight made a motion to adjourn until June 2nd, 2021, which was seconded by Bob S. The motion carried, the meeting was adjourned .