Legislative Updates from The Covenant with North Carolina's Children

Provided by Stacey Massengill, NCSPA Legislative and Public Policy Committee Member


The Covenant with North Carolina’s Children is a coalition of over 60 civic groups, professional associations, advocacy organizations and service providers who have formed a covenant by promising together to advance public policy to benefit children in North Carolina and to put children and youth first in our public and private lives. NCSPA is a part of this coalition and the Legislative Committee would like to share with you some of the updates provided to us by this organization.


Legislative Update: 9/3/09

I. BUDGET CUTS
II. CASE MANAGEMENT UPDATE
III. CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE TEAM
IV. EARLY CHILDHOOD UPDATE
V. PROGRAM EVALUATION OF CHILD AND YOUTH PROGRAMS
VI. TOGETHER NC UPDATE
VII. COVENANT CALENDAR
VIII. ANNOUNCEMENT

BUDGET CUTS

As you are all aware, numerous child and family programs had their funding slashed in the new state budget. We'll be monitoring what kind of impacts these cuts have in communities around North Carolina. Additionally, the legislature charged DHHS to find hundreds of millions of dollars in unspecified cuts, so we'll also keep a close on eye on where and how the Department chooses to cut costs.

Please let us know what is going on in your community and your area of work, so that we can help to create and implement solutions (or at least mitigate the damage). Below are some repercussions from the new budget that we are already experiencing.

CASE MANAGEMENT

The new budget requires Medicaid to cut case management services by over $40 million this fiscal year and over $70 million in the next fiscal year. The legislature justified this cut by citing the fact that many people have multiple case managers and that these services could be provided more efficiently by one case manager working across service areas. While this makes sense superficially, it's proving to be extremely problematic.

Many case management services - such as child and maternal care, HIV/AIDS, mental health and substance abuse - require specific expertise and direct involvement in the care of patients. Consolidating these services would result in a dramatic reduction in the quality of care. While nothing has been decided, it appears that the Division of Medical Assistance plans to include these services in the consolidation. Stakeholders within DHHS are currently meeting to try to resolve the situation, and we expect to have a final answer within a couple of weeks.

CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE TEAM

We learned earlier this week that WakeMed has eliminated the Child Sexual Abuse Team, citing budget restraints. The Child Sexual Abuse Team evaluates potential victims of sexual abuse to ensure proper treatment. More on this to come when we find out more.

EARLY CHILDHOOD

This is a pretty big deal - it appears that the federal government will not allow the state to use money from the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) to supplant state funding for child care quality initiatives. Translated into English, this means that the state cannot use this specific pot of federal dollars (CCDF) to replace state funding of child care quality projects, including the TEACH program. Unfortunately, that's exactly what we did in the new state budget. It is my understanding that this jeopardizes the entirety of federal CCDF dollars, which fund large portions of our early childhood infrastructure. DHHS is currently working to figure out a solution, and I'll keep you updated as the situation progresses.

Additionally, we are monitoring the nine person task force to study consolidating early childhood programs, including Smart Start and More at Four. This task force will include three Senators, three House members, and three members appointed by the Governor. We learned yesterday that Stephanie Fanjul, Executive Director of the NC Partnership for Children, will be one of the Governor's appointees. As soon as other appointments are made and meetings are set, we'll let you know.

TOGETHER NC UPDATE

Here's an abbreviated version of the most recent Together NC update:

TOGETHER NC COALITION MEETINGS

Through the fall, Meg and I, along with other Together NC organizers, will be traveling across the state to conduct local Together NC meetings. We plan to work with local partners on creating an appropriate agenda, but two primary goals include: 1. Gathering feedback on this summer's coalition efforts; 2. Educating the staff, board, and constituent groups on what revenue reform looks like and why it's important to progressive causes.

These meetings will likely begin in late September and continue through November. We'll send out a specific list of locations as we finalize the events.

Lastly, if you have any board, membership, or constituent meetings where you'd like a speaker, please let us know and we'll do our best to get someone there. We'd love the opportunity to talk about challenges and opportunities around our state's budget and fiscal outlook.

BRAC

The governor convened her Budget Reform and Accountability Commission (BRAC) for the first time last week. The Commission's goal is to consolidate and streamline state services to achieve cost savings while at the same protecting the core mission of state services and programs. We will begin discussions this fall with Together NC partners about how we want to participate in and influence BRAC recommendations.

COVENANT CALENDAR

As I'm sure everyone has seen, the Covenant launched a new website in August - http://www.nccovenant.org/. Whoo hoo!

A exciting feature of the website is a community calendar where Covenant members can go to check out upcoming events and to publicize their own events. We've already got a few events posted, but we'd sure love to have more. To see the calendar, go to http://www.nccovenant.org/index.php?option=com_jcalpro&view=calendar&Itemid=37.