Carol Olson, executive director of forensic
services, talks with reporters during the public open house and 150th
anniversary celebration at the Minnesota Security Hospital in St. Peter on Wednesday, Oct.
12. She and DHS Commissioner Emily Piper also gave remarks during a program that day.
Loren Colman, assistant commissioner of the DHS
Continuing Care for Older Adults Administration, interpreter Fadumo Yasuf,
facilitator/interpreter Hassan Ibrahim, Abdullahi Sheikh, senior health and
wellness coordinator at the Brian Coyle Community Center, and Kari Benson,
director of the DHS Aging and Adult Services Division and executive director of
the Minnesota Board on Aging welcome Somali elders to a community engagement event on Tuesday, Oct. 11.
Minnesota’s newest
adoptive families, as well as those interested
in adoption, will celebrate together Sunday, Nov. 6, during the 19th annual
Celebrate
Adoption: A Circus of the Heart, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Envision (formerly the
Prom Center Event Facility) in Oakdale. Recognizing the 662 children who have
been adopted from the foster care system in the past year, the Minnesota
Department of Human Services and its partners celebrate and encourage families
to consider making a lifelong impact on children through adoption. Celebrate
Adoption is open to the public to gather information from state, county,
nonprofit and private agency adoption experts. Families will enjoy face
painting, pony rides, music, games, crafts and prize drawings. The Minnesota
Department of Human Services, MN
ADOPT, counties and adoption agencies are sponsoring this year’s
celebration.
The Minnesota
Security Hospital (MSH) in St. Peter celebrated its 150th anniversary Oct. 12
with a public open house and a formal program with remarks from Department of
Human Services Commissioner Emily Piper, and tours throughout the day of the
nearly complete $56.3-million expansion of the hospital. Construction of the
transition housing units and social center are complete. Acute housing units
and other areas of the expansion project will be complete at the end of
November, with occupancy slated early in January of 2017. More information is
in a news
release about the open house.
Additional
psychiatric beds will open at Minnesota’s state-run mental health hospitals
under a plan recently approved by the Legislature and now in the early stages
of implementation at the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS). In
response to rising demand for inpatient care, DHS will gradually bring the
state’s network of Community Behavioral Health Hospitals (CBHHs) up to full operating
capacity. The change — part of Gov. Mark Dayton’s budget package approved
earlier this year — will add another 12 psychiatric beds systemwide. In
addition, 20 beds at the Anoka-Metro Regional Treatment Center (AMRTC) will
become available as patients who no longer need treatment in a hospital are
treated at a new program that provides a less intensive level of care. More
information is in a news release about
the hospitals.
Forty-one
community-based mental health programs have received grants designed to help
sustain and improve much-needed intensive residential mental health services
across the state. Residential crisis services and short-term intensive
residential treatment programs received $2.9 million in grants from the
Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) to improve program stability and
sustainability. These services are critical pieces of the continuum of adult
mental health services available to Minnesotans with serious mental illness,
including support, stabilization and treatment for individuals who may
otherwise need inpatient psychiatric hospitalization or following inpatient
hospital services. More information is in a news release about
the grants.
After more than 38 years of state service,
Inspector General Jerry Kerber, the first to fill that role for the Department
of Human Services, retired Oct. 18. Kerber began his state career in 1978
working with children experiencing emotional disturbance in what was then the
Brainerd State Hospital. He then worked in mental health treatment programs in
the Stillwater Prison, the Anoka-Metro Regional Treatment Center and the former
Oak Terrace Nursing Home in Minnetonka. In 1988, he moved to the DHS Licensing
Division where he held a variety of regulatory positions including director for
16 years. Five years ago, Kerber was appointed as the first inspector general
for DHS when the Office of Inspector General (OIG) was created, combining
several regulatory functions and putting greater emphasis on this work. More
information is in a news release about
Kerber’s retirement.
DHS is partnering
with the University of Minnesota to study racial inequities in nursing homes
under a recently awarded National Institute of Health $1.8 million, five-year
grant. The work builds off work Dr. Tetyana Shippee, assistant professor in the
University’s School of Public Health, has been doing in recent years under
contract with the DHS Nursing Facility Rates and Policy Division. Shippee has
used data from the division’s nursing facility quality of life survey for her
initial research. In her work under the grant, she will continue to work with
Bob Held, director of the Nursing Facility Rates and Policy Division; Val
Cooke, division manager; and Antonia Wilcoxon, DHS director of community relations.
More information is on the University
of Minnesota Academic Health Center's website.
Seventy Somali
elders talked about their needs for care and desires for community and social
activities to live a healthy and safe life in their own homes in one of a
series of community engagement sessions underway with members of the racially
diverse communities DHS serves. The event was hosted by DHS Oct. 11 at the
Brian Coyle Community Center in Minneapolis with funding from a Community
Innovation Grant from the Bush Foundation. More information is in a story
about the community engagement event.
The Child Support
Task Force, established by the 2016 Minnesota Legislature, has chosen four
final members to represent parents, and convened its first meeting Sept. 28.
Responsible for making recommendations to DHS, the task force looks to maintain
and improve child support guidelines and objectively discusses complex data and
policy issues facing the child support system. Parent members include Tammie
Campbell, Plymouth; Jimmy Lloyd, Fridley; Jason Smith, North Mankato; and Laura
Vang, Brooklyn Center. They will work with representatives from the department,
the Minnesota County Attorney’s Association, the Minnesota Family Support
Recovery Council, Minnesota Court Administration, the Minnesota Legal Services
Coalition, Minnesota Native American Tribal Child Support Programs, the
Minnesota State Bar Association, the Minnesota House of Representatives and the
Minnesota Senate. The task force will meet three more times this year, and
quarterly in 2017, and submit a report with recommendations to the Minnesota
Legislature in February 2018. More information on the task force, its members
and upcoming meetings is on the department’s
Child Support Task Force page.
Gov. Mark Dayton
proclaimed Wednesday, Oct. 19, as County and Tribal Financial Worker and Case
Aide Day in Minnesota. In his proclamation
(PDF), the governor stated that they are “dedicated to providing
outstanding service to the people of Minnesota through their administration of
public assistance programs” and that they are “responsible for the prudent
expenditure of millions of dollars annually and must meet high standards of job
performance in determining eligibility of public assistance.” Hundreds of
county and tribal financial workers and case aides across the state support
Minnesotans by administering public assistance programs and continually
expanding their knowledge of federal and state legislative changes to programs.
They help families establish eligibility for programs and are responsible for
millions of dollars of program expenditures.
The annual Minnesota County Human Service Cost Report for Calendar Year 2015
(PDF) is available on DHS’ public website. The report, compiled by the
Financial Operations Division, contains statewide and county-specific costs and
revenue shares for economic support, health and social service programs.
DHS recently
received two studies that look at the needs of Minnesotans who are deaf,
deafblind and hard of hearing and how well they are being met by services of
the department’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Division. The first report (PDF) presents findings of consumer surveys,
stakeholder surveys and town hall meetings and makes recommendations regarding
next steps to improve the division’s services. The second report
(PDF) studied whether the Telephone Equipment Distribution (TED) program is
meeting communications needs of Minnesotans who are deaf, deafblind, hard of
hearing or who have communication challenges due to speech or physical
disabilities. This report includes recommendations for updating the TED
program. DHS plans to use findings of the studies to prepare a report to the
2017 Minnesota Legislature on the future of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Services Division and its services.
DHS is asking
stakeholders in the disability services and the aging and adult services
systems — including people receiving services, lead agencies, case managers and
advocates — to ensure that people receiving services know they have the
opportunity to comment on the revised statewide transition plan (PDF) for the Home and Community
Based Services (HCBS) rule. The statewide
transition plan communicates how Minnesota proposes to implement the rule,
which says people must receive publicly paid long-term services and supports in
the most integrated setting and have full access to community living. The
comment period is open until 4 p.m. Nov. 3, 2016. People who receive services
can provide feedback by emailing hcbs.settings@state.mn.us.
Fact sheets about DHS programs were updated during October:
Links to some news articles about DHS during October:
Questions and comments about navigation and technical issues should be emailed to the DHS webmaster. Send news story ideas for the public website to DHS Communications.
For accessible formats of this publication or assistance
with additional equal access to human services, write to DHS.Communications@state.mn.us,
call 651-431-2911, or use your preferred relay service.
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