JOINT SENATE/HOUSE HEALTH, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICES STANDING COMMITTEE February 11, 1997 3:05 p.m. SENATE MEMBERS PRESENT Senator Gary Wilken, Chairman Senator Loren Leman, Vice Chairman Senator Johnny Ellis SENATE MEMBERS ABSENT Senator Lyda Green Senator Jerry Ward HOUSE MEMBERS PRESENT Representative Con Bunde, Chairman Representative Joe Green, Vice Chairman Representative Al Vezey Representative Brian Porter Representative Fred Dyson Representative J. Allen Kemplen HOUSE MEMBERS ABSENT Representative Tom Brice COMMITTEE CALENDAR ALASKAN CHILDREN'S TRUST FUND UPDATE WITNESS REGISTER ARLISS STURGULEWSKI 7957 Sheldon Jackson Anchorage, Alaska 99508 Telephone: (907) 561-5286 POSITION STATEMENT: Presented update on the Alaska Children's Trust. MORRIS THOMPSON 2008 Capitol Avenue Fairbanks, Alaska Telephone: (907) 452-4955 POSITION STATEMENT: Presented update on the Alaska Children's Trust. CAROL H. BRICE, President Family Training Associates P.O. Box 81016 Fairbanks, Alaska 99708 Telephone: (907) 479-7461 POSITION STATEMENT: Presented update on the Alaska Children's Trust KAREN PERDUE, Commissioner Department of Health and Social Services P.O. Box 110601 Juneau, Alaska 99811-0601 Telephone: (907) 465-3030 POSITION STATEMENT: Presented update on the Alaska Children's Trust. ACTION NARRATIVE TAPE 97-8, SIDE A Number 0000 CHAIRMAN CON BUNDE called the Joint House and Senate Health, Education and Social Services Committee meeting to order at 3:05 p.m. Senate members present at the call to order were Senators Wilken, Ellis and Leman. Representative members present at the call to order were Representatives Bunde, Green, Vezey, Porter, Kemplen and Brice. Representative Dyson joined the committee meeting at 3:13 p.m. Senator Ward, Senator Green and Representative Brice were absent. A quorum was present. This meeting was teleconferenced to Homer, Dillingham, Sitka, Fairbanks, Anchorage and Kenai. CHAIRMAN BUNDE said the Joint committee would receive an update on the Alaska Children's Trust Fund and afterward the House committee would address a subcommittee report on HB 54 and then address HB 1. ALASKAN CHILDREN'S TRUST FUND UPDATE Number 0108 ARLISS STURGULEWSKI said the members of the Alaska Children's Trust were here today to ask for the committee's general support for issues affecting children, not to make a specific request. She said members of the trust include; Carol H. Brice, Family Training Associates; Morris Thompson, President and CEO of Doyon Limited; Mark Williams, Alaska Children's Trust Chair, Vice-Chair of Carr Gottstein Foods Company; Attorney General Bruce M. Botelho; Commissioner Shirley Holloway of the Department of Education; and Commissioner Karen Perdue of the Department of Health and Social Services. She said Nila Rinehart serves half time as staff for the Children's Cabinet and half time as staff for the Alaska Children's Trust and that she was here at today's meeting. She said it is great to have Ms. Rinehart work in the two sectors because it gives an inter-relationship between the various programs. Number 0233 MS. STURGULEWSKI said the Alaska Children's Trust was formed back in 1988, but it had a quiet life as it had no money. Last year $6 million was made available to the trust and is now being managed by the Department of Revenue (DOR) with Wilson Condon acting as treasurer for the Alaska Children's Trust. She said the legislation mandates, through the retention of capital, that the fund be inflation-proof. The method DOR is using in investing will give the Alaska Children's Trust slightly better interest than the rate of inflation. She said the corpus of the trust will be available for expenditure. MS. STURGULEWSKI said the primary purpose is to work in partnership and collaboration with communities, private business and government to reduce and prevent child abuse as well as promoting healthy families and communities. The Alaska Children's Trust will be looking at collaborative efforts. She said she would not go into a lot of detail about the goals and how they were achieved, but mentioned that a lot of thought was spent on what to do. She said the Alaska Children's Trust will be a year old in April and it has taken a lot of time to get to this point. The trust members were careful as to selecting where the Alaska Children's Trust would be heading and what they would do. Number 0353 MS. STURGULEWSKI said currently under formation now, working for a 5013 status, is a group called the Friends of the Alaska Children's Trust. This group will be the major fundraising arm for the trust and they have already received some private corporate grants; $50,000 in two year increments from Sohio and BP (Alaska) Inc. She said there is hope that this group will be able to raise major, private funds from individuals, corporations and various endowment trusts throughout the country. This is an area where the legislature could assist the Alaska Children's Trust if there are other additional funds that could be made available. She said the Alaska Children's Trust's budget will be proposed during this legislative session. They are looking at $250,000 to $290,000 which will be put out in grants, but it will need action of the legislative body as well as of the operating budget. Number 0458 MORRIS THOMPSON , President and CEO, Doyon Limited, spoke briefly about why we need the Alaska Children's Trust and cited some statistics. He said these numbers were unfortunate, but very real and need to be addressed by communities, by families, individuals, by leaders and hopefully by the state. He referred to a handout, located in the committee file, titled, "Alaska Children's Trust, Annual Report 1996." He said in the three categories of physical, sexual abuse and neglect the state of Alaska is so far out in front that it is horrendous. He read, "In children substantiated indicated reports of abuse and neglect, Alaska is 36.6 per thousand children in the population. The median is 14, the low is 2." MR. THOMPSON said it is clear that this is a problem that needs to be fixed by families, by communities, by citizens, by municipalities and by leaders. He said every year 1,400 children are arrested for offenses including assault, rape, robbery and drug sales. He said 2,200 children drop out of school and more than 10,000 preschoolers live below the poverty level. Alaska leads the nation in per capita cases of child sexual abuse and neglect. He said we must work collectively, hopefully with other agencies, to reduce those numbers. He said on social indicators, we do not want to be constantly leading the nation in these areas. MR. THOMPSON said thanks to the legislature there is $6 million in the corpus to be managed by the DOR as a trust fund. Number 0673 MS. STURGULEWSKI mentioned that Robert Storer, the investment officer for the DOR, was available to provide information on the management of the trust fund. Number 0682 CAROL H. BRICE , President, Family Training Associates, said she has been involved in parenting issues for almost 15 years and added that it is the toughest job in town with little training available. She said she is excited about where the Alaska Children's Trust can go and wanted to tell the committee where they are today and what they see happening in the next couple of months. By March 1, 1997, the first proposal, the first request for proposal (RFP), the first invitation for people to look carefully at what is going on in your community, what do you see that might be a solution dealing with issues related to children and whether you want to talk with the Alaska Children's Trust about them will occur. She said the proposal is only going to be ten pages long, which is very different from a lot of RFPs. Ms. Brice said Alaska Children's Trust hopes to reach out to the smaller communities, to the people that are right there in the community, who are able to say what is going on with their kids and what they think might be able to be done to help. If it is a small project, the Alaska Children's Trust is willing to give anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 to support it. She said the Alaska Children's Trust will have between $250,000 and $290,000 to award. She said they expected to have the RFPs back by mid-May, take a look at them, address the issues, consider them and by July 1, 1997, the trust will give their first awards. She said the Alaska Children's Trust is not in competition with the state and other programs. Hopefully the Alaska Children's Trust will be supplemental by looking at issues that have never been able to be funded and help people think creatively about what can happen. Number 0811 Ms. Brice remembered, as an example, a situation that occurred when she was serving on the Health and Social Services Commission in Fairbanks a few years ago. A young man came to their office and said for almost a year he had been teaching school children boxing in the Northrup Building. He requested $10,000 to send some of those kids to Juneau to compete in a boxing tournament. It was a very non-traditional proposal that he made, the paper work was not adequate at all, but they went into session, considered it and gave him his $10,000. She said this is an example of somebody dealing, in a practical way, with youth. Youth that otherwise were on the streets. She said, today, that is an up and going organization that has a lot of community support. Number 0870 Ms. Brice said the Alaska Children's Trust will not fund any program 100 percent. They will fund it 75 percent the first year. If they come back to the Alaska Children's Trust for a second year with another level of their program that they want the trust to consider, again the trust will fund 75 percent. The third and fourth year the funding is down to 50 percent and the fifth and sixth year the funding is down to 25 percent. She said there is going to have to be collaboration, networking in the programs and that the Alaska Children's Trust is not a give-away program. She said there are people out there doing good things and we need to collaborate and build on services that are already being offered. Number 0911 Ms. Brice said, in her mind, children are the indicators of the health of a community. The statistics, Mr. Thompson referred to, show us that we don't have a very healthy community and said it is of great concern to her. She hoped that when she came to Juneau in succeeding years to talk about children's issues that when she meets people in the hall they also are talking about children's issues. Number 0916 MS. STURGULEWSKI said the Alaska Children's Trust is on their way, but want to keep in frequent communication with the legislature so that it is known what is being done. She said they don't want the work of the Alaska Children's Trust duplicated in the Administration. She said they'd like to see some innovative programs, people reaching out and finding ways to deal with some of these issues. She referred to articles in "Time", "U.S. News and World Report" and said there is an explosion of what happens to kids in that zero to two years of age. She said these years determine what they are going to be intellectually for their life. Number 0962 CHAIRMAN BUNDE thanked the witnesses and said the committee is often faced with problems and challenges. He said it is nice that someone has taken the ball and started to run with it. He added that the committee is pleased that the trust is coming back in just a year and given the committee some positive results. He said, as the legislature often does, the trust will be rewarded by being given even higher expectations. Number 0989 MS. STURGULEWSKI said in many of the communities, certainly in the community that she is from, organizations are not seeing as many federal or state dollars coming through. She said, as a result, there is a lot more collaboration and working together happening in the community where the need is, a better utilization of resources. She said the biggest challenge is how to get people more involved, whether it is people in schools or getting them to help with other existing programs. Number 1027 CHAIRMAN BUNDE thanked all three of the people who made the presentation for their time and energy because they have hit the nail on the head when they said you do not solve these problems by throwing money on them. He said the personal involvement and the buy-in is going to make progress in these type of problems. Number 1042 CHAIRMAN GARY WILKEN said he has been briefed on a lot of things since November 5, 1996, and one of the most exciting ones was when Ms. Brice came to him and discussed the Alaska Children's Trust. He said he embraced the trust as an Alaskan and hoped that, through the legislature, he can help. He hoped that sometime in the future he would be able to embrace the results as well. He said he would admonish them and encourage them, as they go through the selection process for the first couple of years, to make sure that they make the right choices. He said the way we're going to measure the results and the worth of their project is by what happens in those first few years. He said the first decisions will be the most difficult as you are laying some new foundations for youth. It is an exciting concept and a lot of good things will come out of it if it is handled right. Number 1095 MS. STURGULEWSKI said there is a self-evaluation within the Alaska Children's Trust. She said the toughest thing will be to prove that the Alaska Children's Trust works because they are doing little things, spread broadly which can be more effective. Number 1115 REPRESENTATIVE FRED DYSON referred to the presentation done by the Alaska Children's Trust at the Children's Caucus. He wanted to identify with both chairs' comments. Number 1137 REPRESENTATIVE BRIAN PORTER also wanted to identify with the chairs' comments. Number 1165 REPRESENTATIVE JOE GREEN said he hoped that in the Alaska Children's Trust presentation to the Children's Caucus the lack of majority members was not a deterrent and said there was a prior commitment. He said the legislature takes these issues seriously. REPRESENTATIVE GREEN said he watched a film by a psychologist which said if we can change or help a child during their formative years, we can save tons and tons of money because that child won't get into a problem lifestyle. Number 1202 MS. STURGULEWSKI said the chairman of the Children's Caucus was careful to point out that fact that not all of the legislators could be there. She said she was impressed by the number that attended the caucus and added that it is a good way to get into a number of these issues, not just the issues involving the Alaska Children's Trust. Number 1228 CHAIRMAN BUNDE recognized Commissioner Perdue and asked her if she wanted to make some comments. Number 1243 KAREN PERDUE , Commissioner, Department of Health and Social Services, said, because of her position, she appreciates the members of the Alaska Children's Trust and their efforts. She said the fact that the money is going to the communities instead of state entities is doubly important. She wanted to thank them for all their work and apologized for not being at the Children's Caucus because there was a bomb scare at the state office building. Number 1280 CHAIRMAN BUNDE thanked the trust members again and adjourned the Joint House/Senate Health, Education and Social Services Committee meeting at 3:27 p.m.